Cloud SaaS Is as Good as It Seems
May 23, 2012
Anyone can hear companies groan when replacing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is mentioned and for good reason. Replacing software (recommended every seven to ten years) is a costly and difficult process. All that is changing however thanks to the cheapening-down of PLM solutions and the cloud according to the Works Management article, “Not Brain Surgery”, which asserts that cloud based SaaS solutions are not only trendy but practical.
PLM and ERP’s complicated relationship is explained by the article as:
“PLM for the masses may have taken about a decade longer than most pundits predicted, but it’s here now, and manufactures jumping on board will benefit from lessons learned, and improvements in technology and implementation thinking throughout that period. And did you note that reference to cloud computing as an enabler? If you want to improve the cost/benefits ratio, how about considering a sexy new cloud solution for most of your business, engineering and manufacturing software – including ERP? Not long ago such a suggestion would have been laughed out of court. But now?”
As cloud based PLM solutions are proving themselves across industries and enterprises of all sizes more and more are jumping on board. As the article points out when one stops to think about all the benefits of new technologies it just makes sense. PLM providers basing their solutions on cloud technology are creating affordable, customized platforms for their clients that would have been just a dream a decade ago. It’s time more companies realize their dreams.
Catherine Lamsfuss, May 23, 2012
Experian Hitwise Reveals Facebook Search Traffic Statistics
May 23, 2012
There seems be a lot of talk these days pitting Google+ and Facebook against one another. There are a variety of different factors that come into play when comparing the two Internet giants. Search traffic is one of them.
It may be overhyped but based on a new batch of stats just released, Facebook has been getting some traffic that is worth noting. According to a recent CNET News report, “Facebook.com Received 9% of All U.S Internet Visits in April.”
According to the data collected by Experian Hitwise, despite its somewhat controversial business model, Facebook is not hurting for search traffic one bit. In fact, the Internet tycoon received more than 400 million page views this year and 229 visits a day with an average visit time of 20 minutes.
The article states:
“10 states account for 52 percent of visits to Facebook.com — California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina based on year-to-date average. The top states where users are more likely to visit Facebook.com versus the online population are: West Virginia, Kentucky, Maine, Vermont, Arkansas, Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Alabama based on year-to-date average.”
It looks like Facebook is going to be around for a while, so settle in and get comfy Google+.
Jasmine Ashton, May 23, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
The Heat in SharePoint Semantics May 11 to May 17
May 22, 2012
As always SharePoint Semantics points readers, search enthusiasts, and SharePoint end users to create a strategy to deploy SharePoint in a way that benefits everyone in your workplace.
In the post, “Prepare a Robust Adoption Strategy for Your SharePoint Deployment with 7 Tips,” writer Ken Toth stresses that people should be the primary focus of your SharePoint adoption strategy because no matter how great your technology it is the people that make your company succeed.
When describing the list of tips, Toth states:
“Executives need to be visible in their use of SharePoint. Next is getting buy-in from business users because they will drive your business requirements and you need to make sure the end results will meet their needs. Third, influence the organization by forming a core community of successful thought leaders and subject matter experts. Fourth, engage your users by selling the concept and establishing a meaningful connection to its value and benefits. Fifth, offer instructor-based and e-learning training. Sixth, market your SharePoint launch like you would a new product. Finally, promote participation by giving rewards and recognition.”
Looking towards the future, App development is a becoming a very integral part of ensuring a company’s ability to prosper in the 21st century. In order to stay current, SharePoint created the planned SharePoint App Marketplace. The post, “Furuknap Shares Insight on the Expected App Marketplace for SharePoint 2013”
In the referenced article, Furuknap explains:
“In short, the job ad is for a software developer who can help the Visual Studio team build the next generation of tools for SharePoint. The ad, however, reveals more information than I suspect Microsoft intended, and confirms the existence of the new App model, the App Marketplace, simplified HTML and JavaScript, and leveraging Windows Azure and SQL Azure for data, logic, and workflows.”
In the realm of SharePoint troubleshooting, the post “Understand the Difference Between SharePoint Publishing and Collaboration” does an excellent job of fleshing out the details of publishing and collaboration in a way that is easy to digest.
Toth concludes:
“One simple way to get encourage collaboration is by integrating a powerful search feature into your SharePoint system so users can efficiently find and reuse information. The experts at Smartlogic really understand the benefits of metadata. Here you can read about the comprehensive solution, “Tagging information with metadata significantly enhances its findability. Metadata also improves the consistency and quality of the output so content can be repurposed and reused slashing time it takes to create new content.”
Toth is absolutely right. Without third party solutions like Smartlogic, it would be much more difficult to really understand all of the intricacies that come with using SharePoint.
Jasmine Ashton, May 22, 2012
Building a SharePoint Farm
May 22, 2012
Continuing our coverage of the SharePoint series by Robert Schifreen, we turn our attention to, “Building the Farm: From learning to Testing,” on ZD Net UK Edition. (See our coverage of Robert’s first installation in the series, “SharePoint Deployment: Pitfalls of a Pioneer.”) In this piece, Schifreen discusses the details and hardships of starting the actual SharePoint farm.
You’ll need servers set up, SAN storage provisioned, new domain accounts created, DNS entries adding, access to your Active Directory database, firewall holes punching, server licences purchasing, Active Directory security groups creating, installation DVDs downloading, workstations being put into domains for testing, access to VM management consoles granting, servers adding into the load balancer pools, IP addresses allocating, users’ home drives re-mapping, SSL certificates applying for, login scripts amending, and more.
All of the necessities listed above are quite overwhelming. Schifreen goes on to mention the value of expert advice, including paying for outside consulting. For many organizations, expert advice is a sound investment. However, we have another suggestion.
Among the leaders in third-party enterprise solutions is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Mindbreeze can work alongside an existing SharePoint installation, or as a standalone solution. Implementing any new infrastructure will take planning, but a smart third-party solution has built-in customization options, making it a much smoother and intuitive process than trying to get SharePoint to the point of viability.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze also offers a suite of complimentary solutions to link together all aspects of an organization’s information management: mobile solutions, cloud, email management, web site search, etc. While SharePoint is capable of these auxiliary features, too much time and attention has to be devoted to customization.
So if your organization is looking for an effective but less painful way to manage information storage and retrieval needs, consider the offerings of Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Siemens Invests in Tomorrow’s Manufacturers
May 22, 2012
The manufacturing industry has relied largely on labor to function. As technology grows more complex and the average age of the American manufacturer creeps higher a new breed of worker must be developed and trained. In an effort to train the next generation of manufacturing laborers in emerging technology Siemens has begun partnering with community colleges for training as discussed in the Bloomberg article, “Siemens PLM Software Launches New Community College Best Practice Program to Revitalize U.S. Manufacturing”.
The article describes the partnership by saying,
“The program, developed in conjunction with Iowa Western Community College (IWCC), provides resources to interested community colleges and local manufacturers including a recommended associate’s degree curriculum, a guide for obtaining in-kind software grants to provide the technology needed for implementation, and a detailed white paper, titled Community Colleges Revitalize manufacturing, outlining the process for building a successful academic, government and business partnership for the program’s execution.”
The idea behind such training is that as technology becomes more refined so must the laborers using it. Siemens, known for their product lifecycle management solutions, understands the value of highly-trained workers. Their teaming up with community colleges is a great investment in tomorrow’s workforce. PLM solutions are being adopted across all industries, not just manufacturing, as an efficient way to reduce costs and streamline processes.
Catherine Lamsfuss, May 22, 2012
Google Progresses on Semantic Search
May 22, 2012
The keyword-free Web search may be on the horizon. Search Engine Journal reports on the progress in “Google Testing Semantic Search Update.” Though Google has said a full-fledged semantic Web search is several years away, the company seems to be trying out some changes.
Writer David Angotti describes Google’s plan:
“A team of software engineers has been working to develop mathematical formulas that will extract and organize data that is currently spread across the Internet. The combination of an acquisition and the extraction algorithms have provided Google with an index of over 200 million people, places, and things, which Google simply calls ‘entities.’ This index, which Google named the Knowledge Graph, will allow Google to move away from keyword-based results to true semantic search.
“Once the entities are properly organized, semantic search technology enables Google to measure the relationship and separation between two entities to determine search results and rankings.”
Angotti notices that Google seems to be testing some of this functionality. His example is the query, “who directed The Hunger Games.” The results successfully placed the correct answer (Gary Ross) at the top of the list, and for some users included related images down the right side where ads usually appear.
When asked, a Google spokesperson had no information to share. More changes, though, are expected to arrive soon. We wonder– how will these revisions affect the rankings of millions of sites? Are keyword-reliant SEO pros anxious yet?
Cynthia Murrell, May 22, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Search Genius for Scientists with SharePoint.
May 22, 2012
Sys-Con Media reports, “PerkinElmer Unveils Search Genius software for Use with Microsoft SharePoint Framework.” The system, designed for researchers, unifies searching, saving, and sharing of unstructured data in one application. We learned from the write up:
“The Search Genius platform is a powerful search application that enables researchers to use both text and structure searches of reports and technical documents stored using the SharePoint framework and [PerkinElmer's own] E-Notebook system, as well as text searches of the Internet. With the Search Genius platform, researchers can more readily gain broader access to previously difficult-to-access data. This enables greater and more holistic visibility to organization-wide information resources that researchers can then more easily leverage into new and existing projects. Scientists can also save their search results and easily create links and annotations that document their ideas and facilitate collaboration.”
Health care information technology is in the Stone Age. Will this crack the problem of fragmented medical information?
A longstanding leader in the science community, PerkinElmer turns 75 this year. The company is based in Waltham, MA, but has operations around the globe. Their mission statement: “Improving the health and safety of people and the environment.” Let us hope Search Genius is up to the task.
Cynthia Murrell, May 22, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, May 14 to May 18
May 21, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, how unstructured data is shaping the way vendors operate.
In “A Mountain of Unstructured Data” the problem of collecting tweets, posts, pictures, videos and more and making analytic sense is laid out.
“Unstructured Data Investment on the Horizon” shows how many companies are investing in solving their own unstructured data crises.
Finally, “Another Analytics Partnership is Born” showed companies joining forces to tackle this massive problem.
We’ve talked about unstructured data before, but we keep returning to the well because it’s such a massive concern for companies. Thankfully, those problems are being solved and we’re monitoring it every step of the way.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
May 21, 2012
TIBCO News: Hadoop Support added to Spotfire Analytics
May 21, 2012
Organizations around the globe are experiencing challenges with managing the explosion of big data and meeting the demands of digital consumers. Tech entities are eagerly stepping up and collaborating to develop solutions for these big data challenges, including innovative alternatives to industry standards, like SharePoint.
TIBCO Software Inc. is a provider of infrastructure software for companies to use on-premise or as part of cloud computing environments. Chris Kanaracus recently discussed some TIBCO news in the ComputerWorld.com post, “Tibco adds Hadoop Support to Spotfire Analytics Tool.” The new release is explained:
Spotfire 4.5 will become generally available this month and features a data service connector to Hadoop, which is known for its ability to handle unstructured data such as weblogs, sensor information and text. The connector will allow users to combine and analyze information from Hadoop clusters along with structured data from business applications such as an SAP or Oracle ERP (enterprise resource planning) system.
But some analysts, such as Boris Evelson of Forrester Research, are less than giddy. Evelson adds, “However, other aspects of the release, such as the management tooling and iPad support, are less than earth-shattering.” According to Evelson, mobility has become a basic requirement of any BI platform.
TIBCO’s new partnerships are another indication that enterprise search is the hot new market for competition and development. While acquisition and development news is exciting, you may want to turn to an established search solution that already understands the value of federated search and mobility. We like the feedback we’ve seen about Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here you can read about the mobility solutions from Mindbreeze,
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company knowledge available on all mobile devices. You can act freely, independently and yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: Search results are displayed homogenously to the web client with regards to clear design and intuitive navigation.
And with information pairing of your cloud and on-premise data, users can easily access important business information on the go from their smartphones and tablets. The well-established and cost-effective solution is worth a second look at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, May 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Search Solution for Truvo
May 21, 2012
Truvo, a provider of search and digital advertising solutions in Belgium and Portugal, recently announced that it will implement products created by Amdocs to support its sales, billing, and product lifecycle management (PLM) needs as it continues to ramp up its system capabilities to address the growing demand for multi-media advertising. Truvo had deployed software by Amdocs in 2011 to improve the relevancy of its search results to consumers.
In a press release entitled “European Provider Truvo Selects Amdocs to Improve Sales, Ordering and Billing for Digital Advertising Products” that recently appeared on Market Watch, Rebecca Prudhomme, the vice president of product and solutions marketing at Amdocs, comments on the need for data management solutions that enhance the productivity of clients like Truvo:
“Local search and advertising providers today require more sophisticated systems that can support complex, multi-media products, while driving operational efficiencies. The deployment of Amdocs’ products will not only allow Truvo to remain at the forefront of digital advertising innovation, but also simplify Truvo’s operational processes and reduce the associated costs.”
Inforbix, with its cloud-based, scalable, and affordable products, can also offer its clients a PLM solution that enhances their search capabilities so that they can find, reuse, and share their product data with ease.
Tonya Weikel, May 21, 2012
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