BA-Insight: New Angle on Lead Generation
March 13, 2010
The Microsoft Fast search road show was in New York this week. I stayed in rural Kentucky watching the acid run off trickle into my goose pond. I took time out from this strenuous activity to read “BA-Insight Announces New Direct Access to Free Information and Resources for SharePoint Search and Fast.”
BA-Insight develops software, including Longitude which “helps people find an analyze relevant information across the entire enterprise independently of format or location.” The firm’s Web site has been revamped and features “an enhanced support portal and new free resource library specially designed for enterprise evaluating SharePoint or Fast Search or engaging in SharePoint or Fast Search deployments, including Fast ESP.”
I took a look at the site. The splash page is below, but you will see different graphics because the rectangular area features a slide show of information.
Source: http://www.ba-insight.net/Pages/Home.aspx
You can download white papers, get inks to videos, and access the company’s Web logs. One of the documents is the Microsoft Enterprise Search 2010 Roadmap. When I clicked on that link, I saw another link and the icon labeled premium shown below.
In order to access that document, I was given an option to fill in a form with my name, title, organization, phone, email, and interests. The angle seems to be that to get this document, one must go through a vendor like BA-Insight.
One of the goslings filled in the form and the road map is a single page that explains Microsoft’s five search technologies and lists the capabilities, repository indexing, and manageability features of each product. Interesting stuff.
Here’s one snippet of the roadmap, which is more of a table than a map in my opinion:
Interesting stuff. Particularly with regard to scaling, I wonder if organizations will have the appetite for this type of hardware footprint on site. Will enterprise Fast ESP work from the cloud? © Microsoft 2010.
Several questions:
- Will more search vendors shift into education or missionary marketing mode to move their systems?
- In today’s financial climate, will the portal approach supplant the more traditional features-benefit type of marketing that characterizes some search vendors’ Web sites?
- Has the complexity of the product offering broken the back of the adage “KISS” for business oriented communications?
I will watch to see if other vendors embrace the educational portal approach to sales and lead generation. The addled goose just makes information available via a blog, assuming that content with an edge will generate inquiries. Perhaps once again I am wrong?
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Because of the references to Microsoft and its five search options, I will report non payment to the Department of Defense, an organization with an interest in Microsoft’s technology.
Lucid Hits $16 Million in Funding
March 13, 2010
Short honk: I saw an item in the San Jose business journal about Lucid Imagination’s Series B funding. The story “Open Source Search Startup Lucid Imagination Raises $10M” said:
[The] new investor Shasta Ventures of Menlo Park was joined by existing San Francisco-based investors Granite Ventures and Walden International.
Strong interest in open source search contributed to the funding I believe.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this meaty, fact filled news item. Because I reference open source, I will report non payment for the article to the White House where “open” is a key notion.
Microsoft Bing on Motorola Phones
March 12, 2010
Motorola has had its share of troubles, legal, financial, and technical. Not long after its Android powered phones rolled out, Google débuted its Android phone with a fresher version of the Android software. “Motorola to Put Bing Search on Android Phones”, if accurate, provides a little insight into how Motorola wants to show the Google who is in charge. If I buy an Android phone, the mobile search default is Microsoft’s Bing.com. For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
Motorola will start loading Microsoft’s search and map services onto its Android smartphones in China, bringing more non-Google services to the phones amid a row between Google and China.
It might be a simple jersey tug in the soccer match between Google and Motorola. Google’s partners have strange ways of showing their affection. Semi passive resistance?
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
Nope. Nope. No one paid me to write this item. Because it is about sports, I will report the state of non payment to an outfit absolutely against allowing anything to take place without compensation, licensing deals, and consideration—The International Olympic Committee.
Hewlett Packard Trim 7
March 12, 2010
Hewlett Packard, a company that I continue to associate with low cost printers and high cost ink, lit up my radar with its acquisition of Lexington, Kentucky-based Exstream Software two years ago. Exstream (now Enterprise Document Automation), like IBM Ricoh Infoprints and Streamserve, generates outputs like invoices with warranty reminders and auto payment bills with coupons for oil change discounts. I learned that in February 2010, HP stepped up its footprint in document management. One of the source documents I examined is “HPTrim 7… How We Got Here?”. The gray background and the dark blue highlights on text were a bit much for the addled goose’s eyes, however. For me, the most interesting segment in the history of Trim 7 was this passage:
Market consolidation meant that lots of little players were gobbled up, as the larger vendors strived to meet the ever challenging demands of the marketplace, picking up technology from these smaller companies and making them a part of their overall product line. Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest IT companies in the world, did the same, acquiring TOWER Software in 2008, but with one subtle difference. Rather than cannibalize the technology and abandon the product, they kept almost all of the staff from the TOWER acquisition and told them to build the next version of what is now known as HP TRIM. And – there were no other products that HP TRIM had to compete with internally unlike a lot of the other acquisitions: IBM/FileNet, OpenText/Hummingbird/Vignette, and utonomy/Zantaz/Interwoven/Meridio. HP wanted to concentrate on the product that was HP TRIM, and add the backing that only a company like HP can bring to a product. And so, HP TRIM 7 was born.
Digging through the text, HP bought an outfit called Tower and is rolling in other software to create the “new” document management business. You can locate the main page here. Three points jumped out:
First, I did not see any indication that HP’s dynamic document system integrates our “touches” the Trim 7 product. That’s strike me as an indication that HP is chasing revenues from silo sales, not integration.
Second, how does one find a document? I could not locate any information about the search and retrieval functions within Trim 7. I surmise that if I use Trim 7 for SharePoint, I in theory would be able to use the Microsoft Fast ESP system to search for content. That also seems to be quite a bit of work; that is, consulting revenue for HP or its partners. My query “search HP Trim” resulted in 10 hits but noting on point. One result was this page, which was heavy on marketing an light on locating information within the Trim 7 system. After a legal eagle drops a gift on a company named as a party in a legal matter, job one is answering the question, “What’s this about?” Trim 7 may not be able to answer that question.
Third, HP seems to be grabbing enterprise software companies that address really big information problems. With HP’s push into printers and ink, I saw a success that may have caught the firm’s hardware mavens by surprise. The trajectory in enterprise software is being driven from bit money acquisitions. I think that the surprise of printing consumables will be different from the surprise of acquisition-based growth. One was emergent; the latter is closer to MBA spreadsheet fever.
Big bets. Big win or big loss? I am leaning toward the loss option. Outlook: worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because HP derives significant revenue from ink, I think I have to report non payment to the US government’s printer, GPO.
Bitrix in the Enterprise Search Game
March 12, 2010
Short honk: A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Bitrix Introduces the D.I.G.™ Engine: the Ultimate in Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 Search Technology.” Bitrix was a company not familiar to me and there were no data in my Overflight service.
Bitrext, founded in 1998 and based in the Washington, DC are, asserts that it is a “technology trendsetter.” The company says:
Bitrix, Inc. specializes in the development of content management systems and intranet portal solutions for managing web projects and multifunctional information systems on the Internet. Deployed at more than 30,000 customers worldwide, Bitrix products are fast, reliable, easy to use and highly scalable…Bitrix takes pride in serving clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to funded startups, including enterprises like Xerox, Toshiba, Epson, Samsung, Panasonic, Volkswagen, Hyundai, KIA, Gazprom, VTB, Zurich Insurance, DPD, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, PC Magazine, and many more.
The search system makes use of the firm’s D.I.G. Engine. D.I.G. is “an advanced search engine developed specifically for enterprise Intranets and Web sites that enables high-performance data search in texts, media content and documents with smart ranking, sorting and display. The engine is available in the company’s flagship products – Bitrix Intranet Portal and Bitrix Site Manager.”
The system “enumerates texts, media content and documents while looking for morphological stems and considering their density.” The search results are “filtered with respect to the user access rights before being displayed.” The company adds:
D.I.G. offers manual or immediate automatic data indexing, making content searchable right after its submission. Users may create complex search queries using query language, inclusion/exclusion masks and logic operators, as well as choose specific site sections for a highly targeted search. The technology supports AJAX-powered interactive pages, provides advanced taxonomy service with automatic tag cloud generation, allows making Google Sitemap, as well as a user-specific search form design. It covers English, German and Russian and enables fast and painless connecting of other languages with third-party stemming tables.
There are screenshots of the company’s products on the firm’s Media Gallery page, but I did not see a search results example.
The company offers a “virtual appliance”. The idea is that multiple instances of Bitrix products can run on the same computer each in a virtual space.
Prices for the system are located at http://www.bitrixsoft.com/buy/intranet.php with the range in the $1,500 to $20,000 spectrum.
My impression is that search is an embedded feature, which exemplifies the trend of content management vendors trying to improve the utility of their systems.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
No one paid me to write this. With the firm’s location near several interesting Federal entities, I will send an email to one of those Dot Mil addresses and report my status of free writer.
PageZephyr 2.0 Searches Popular Desktop Publishing File Types
March 12, 2010
Desktop search products typically support the popular formats of PDF, RTF, and text files, but it is the proprietary formats, such as Microsoft Publisher files, that companies must go to great lengths to index. Enter PageZepyhr 2.0, Markzware’s new flagship product, completing by-passing the original content creation application while capturing, indexing, and delivering the results businesses need in real time. “Markzware’s Deep Desktop Search Finds Smoking Gun,” highlights the top three file formats that PageZepyhr now supports: QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, and Microsoft Publisher. In addition, Page Zephyr 2.0 allows content merging, editing, and even Boolean search commands to round out its robust package. While not expensive (currently on sale at $149), PageZephyr 2.0 is aimed at a niche market: those interested in the searching, viewing, extraction, and distribution of these unique file formats. If getting inside those proprietary files is crucial, Markzware’s new product could be the ticket. If you use Framemaker, you are still out of luck for most search and query needs.
Sam Hartman, March 12, 2010
ArnoldIT.com paid Mr. Hartman for this write up.
Google Flat: Is the Microsoft Kryptonite Weakening Google?
March 11, 2010
Web search share data are subject to the old plus or minus gambit. A share of 60 percent could be 50 percent or 70 percent, maybe more, maybe less. Most write ups skip the details of method, variance, and any “shaping” done to create a nice, tidy report.
But Web share data are fun. Navigate to “Bing Gains US Search Market Share for Ninth Straight Month” and join in the game. Here’s the passage I found interesting:
February was the ninth consecutive month of slight gains in search share for Bing, which Microsoft unveiled in June accompanied by a 100-million-dollar advertising campaign in a bid to challenge search juggernaut Google.
That is some pocket change. The payoff has been a jump from “11.5 percent in February from 11.3 percent in January, the Web analytics firm [comScore] said.” Maybe Microsoft has found a way to suck the juice from Google with Bing-flavored Kryptonite?
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2010
No one paid me to write this. With the cost of that 0.2 jump in mind, I know I have to report this to the Department of Treasury, which does understand money and its value.
Vivisimo Rivets Social Search Deal
March 10, 2010
Vivisimo and its Velocity Enterprise Search Platform is versatile. I read “Vivisimo Powers Social Search for the Industrial Research Institute” and learned more about the Velocity social search capabilities.
IRI is “a leading research organization representing industrial and service companies that have a common interest in technological innovation and invest billions on research and development annually.” IRI wants to maximize the value of social media for its lead generation activities.
According to the new story:
…Members are able to use the search interface as a single collaboration point, fostering knowledge sharing among users and optimizing information…RI members using Velocity are utilizing a rich set of discovery, personalization and collaboration functionality, empowering them with greater control over their search experience. Rather than just being able to search and find information, users can tag, rate and annotate documents and search terms to optimize future results all aimed at improving collaboration, innovation and productivity.
Approximately 1,000 IRI members will use the new search service.
My definition of social search is more narrow than that presented in the news story. The idea that search is a collaboration tool because a user can add a tag is more in the Microsoft SharePoint approach to information management. If you want more information, point your browser to Vivisimo’s Web site.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. I will report non payment to the social secretary for the White House and if the position is not yet filled, I will report when the new person is on the job and screening invitation lists.
Thunderstone and Its Reseller Program
March 10, 2010
I read “Frederick A. Harmon, CSO of Thunderstone Software, Recognized as a 2010 Channel Chief by CRN” and was delighted to learn about Thunderstone’s juicy reseller program. The company has introduced a partner portal which you can visit at http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/users. In addition, the company has added some financial inducements. For me the most interesting passage in the story was:
Thunderstone has always delivered free and personalized online demos tailored to the customer’s particular needs, plus 30-day eval units shipped pre-configured to the unique requirements of each customer. For Channel Partners with one or more employees who become Thunderstone-Certified Professionals – Thunderstone now offers free virtual versions of Thunderstone search solutions that certified personnel can use themselves to provide demos and evaluations for their own customers and prospects. All Thunderstone products come with a one-time, perpetual license which often saves customers 40 percent or more on their initial purchase. Thunderstone customers also enjoy an Investment Protection Program that makes upgrading their search solutions easy, desirable and affordable.
I gave Thunderstone high marks when I wrote the first three editions of the out of print Enterprise Search Report, published by a firm which has repositioned itself. (Better than the publisher who is now in a far off land enjoying the sun.) You can get more information about Thunderstone from my interview with the CEO and by visiting the firm’s Web site, http://www.thunderstone.com.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2010
A freebie. Now I have to report non payment to the mayor of Cleveland. I haven’t been in Cleveland for a while. Lovely city. Lots of non payment going on, which is sad.
Real Time Search: Poor Layout or Lousy Content?
March 9, 2010
In my Information World Review column which I submitted last week, I talked about the “marshmallow wars” being waged among Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The idea is that these three “big boys” are not doing a particularly meaty job with real time content. I was fascinated to read “Why Do We Ignore Real Time Results from Google Search” in the media-savvy Guardian. I focused on the substance of the real time results, the latency, and the method of displaying these results. Each company rows its real time boat differently, and that makes life difficult for geese like me.
The Guardian’s approach, which was quite interesting to me, focused on eye tracking. You can read the write up and decide whether user experience or the content itself is the problem. I am very skeptical of the razzle dazzle about eye candy and how eyes move. My recollection from my grade school and high school days is that some people are not very adept readers. In my class which underwent a speed reading test in Illinois in the 1950s, few students were able to absorb blocks of text at one glance. Obviously, if there are some slow readers, there may be some difficulty with certain types of layouts. On the other hand, if you are like me and can swallow paragraphs or even pages at a glance, then the eye movement stuff may not be as significant as the value of the information.
My column for Information World Review focuses on substance. I leave the wandering eyeballs of those who read a word or two at a time and may sub vocalize when they grind through information to the arts and crafts approach to information. My opinion is that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are chasing real time content because it is has marketing value. There are useful data in real time results but not in the presentations of the big dogs of Web search. I identify some go-to services for real time search but you will have to wait until the IWR publishing cycle outputs the column.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I wonder if those reading the article glance, move their lips, or follow with their fingers. I suppose this type of non compensated writing and the attendant question means I must report to the FBI, an outfit skilled in dealing with impressions of fingers.
