Microsoft Fast’s Web Log High Fives Autonomy
November 10, 2008
I am fuzzy about the ownership and compensation for contributors to the FastForward Web log. I was not fuzzy when I read here a summary of Autonomy’s relatively new governance system for SharePoint. What was quite interesting was that in the guise of summarizing a consulting firm’s seminar about SharePoint, Autonomy got top billing in this Microsoft Fast centric Web log. The focus was not on Microsoft Fast. The spot light was aimed on Autonomy. The article “The SharePoint Sessions Revisited. Part Four. Enhancing SharePoint Information Governance” by Bill Ives.
Autonomy Information Governance Architecture integrates with SharePoint to help with this issue, see their site on Record Management, Information Governance and Disposition. This is consistent with Microsoft’s strategy of integration with best of breed players.
So, FastForward identifies Autonomy as a best of breed vendor. What’s more interesting is that Mr. Ives devotes a full four paragraphs to the Autonomy SharePoint governance system. Does Microsoft Fast criticize Autonomy? No. Does Microsoft Fast offer an alternative to Autonomy’s system? No. Does Microsoft Fast assert that SharePoint can be tweaked to deliver Autonomy type services? No.
In short, Autonomy gets a huge marketing push. I am delighted that Microsoft Fast is showing such support for its partners. I wonder if this is a new page in the Microsoft Fast marketing play book. Quite a change in my opinion. I am certain I will be informed that this type of vendor praise is standard operating procedure. If so, that’s good news in a market sector where carping and sniping are sometimes evident.
Stephen Arnold, November 10, 2008
SharePoint Guidance
November 6, 2008
I have been at a conference for the last two hours. It’s SharePoint this and SharePoint that everywhere. Microsoft has cranked the adrenaline dosage and the conferences attendees are hopping. The presentations so far this morning are how to make SharePoint perform a trick; for example, index email or index a database table outside of a site. I wanted to point the attendees to MSDN’s link to “Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance.” I couldn’t get an opportunity. I am posting the link to this document here so you can locate this reasonably useful resource. Save yourself some time and headaches and get the straight dope from Microsoft.
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008
SharePoint: A Digital Fever Spreads
November 5, 2008
On November 1, 2008, Information Week ran a thoughtful article called ‘Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling’. You can read the full text article by J. Nicholas Hoover here. The article points out that there are 100 million SharePoint licenses now and the product will generate more than one billion dollars in revenue this year. Organizations large and small have embraced SharePoint as what Mr. Hoover calls a ‘Swiss Army Knife’. SharePoint can do collaboration, portal functions, content management, and more. The article cites a number of big name companies that have pushed SharePoint in new directions; for example, a wiki system.
For me the most important point in the article is that Mr. Hoover describes a bait-and-switch aspect of SharePoint that had not occurred to me. As I understand the argument, it is easy and economical to get started with SharePoint, then the for fee versions kick in. Mr. Hoover points out that there are several premium versions of the product. He also points out the concern for lock in; that is, getting out of the SharePoint handcuffs may be more difficult than slipping them on. The notion that SharePoint requires customization before it becomes essential was interesting as well.
Not surprisingly, enterprise software has an upside and downside. Mr. Hoover does a good job of pointing out these aspects of SharePoint. However, after I read the story, I came away with several different thoughts:
- With customization essential to getting full value from SharePoint, how will these tailored experiences be transferred to the cloud computing version of SharePoint?
- Are information technology professionals sufficiently expert to handle a single product that performs such a wide range of functions?
- Will users be able to access services and features without latency that forces some to create time consuming work arounds so an alternative exists when SharePoint experiences a glitch?
For me, these are important questions, and I am baffled how SharePoint training sessions hop over such key considerations. I poked my head into one tutorial about SharePoint, and I thought I was listening to a sales pitch by a Microsoft employee. The presenter was a respected consultant who has what I call SharePoint fever. Microsoft has patiently created a hunger for information about a server platform that I think is one third content management, one third missing, and one third customization. In order to convert vanilla SharePoint into a robust search and content processing system, third party technology is required. The basics in the system are neither easy to configure nor particularly robust. In order to get SharePoint to perform a bandwidth intensive operation such as permit collaboration on a large PowerPoint file, a significant computing infrastructure is required.
Some of the SharePoint fever infected remind me of those people who suddenly understood information because of the graphical browser. Instantly anyone could navigate and explore information. No training or expertise were required. What some people have learned is that a Web experience today is not much different from creating any other software. SharePoint is similar. Behind the sizzle and the snazzy demos is a great deal of technical work.
Personally I don’t see any slow down in SharePoint’s ability to infect users and procurement teams. If Google wants to make headway in the enterprise, it will have to find an answer to SharePoint. Right now, Microsoft is eating Google’s lunch in conference rooms across the world. Score one for Microsoft.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2008
Herding SharePoint Content Sheep
November 2, 2008
Microsoft may be pushing Fast Search’s ESP into large SharePoint installations, but certified gold partners continue to find opportunities to make money from the 100 million SharePoint installations. Autonomy and Open Text recently rolled out systems that make it easier to keep control of SharePoint content. Why control SharePoint documents? You will learn quickly enough when you get caught in a legal matter and have to figure out which version of each document is the one that is the “right” one. SharePoint offers primitive and clunky controls for herding SharePoint content sheep; that is, the many bits and pieces of modular documents, emails with attachments, and PowerPoint decks with some relevant information but perhaps not the best and final version of the deck. When you get the invoice for collecting documents manually, you will understand why you have to have robust tools for governing information.
Let’s look briefly at two products that herd content sheep:
First, Autonomy has rolled out Controlpoint. You can read more about the product on the Autonomy Web site here and in the Marketwatch write up here. In a nutshell, you install Controlpoint, and you get policy-driven control of all SharePoint content. Autonomy includes a number of content processing functions with Controlpoint; for example, classification of documents.
Next, Open Text dubs its governance solution the sveltly named Open Text Content Lifecycle Management Services for Microsoft SharePoint, eDOCS Edition. The acronym is OTCLMSMSE. Between you and me Autonomy does a better job naming products. The Open Text solution delivers life cycle management, policies, and archiving functions. A licensee can hook SharePoint into Open Text’s other enterprise content management services as well. You can read CMSWire’s write up here.
Let’s step back and think about SharePoint. Autonomy and Open Text have identified a glaring weakness in the Frankenstein SharePoint. SharePoint is, according to some, Microsoft’s next generation operating system. I think that’s pretty wacky. SharePoint is a product that changes with each release. First it was content management. Then it was collaboration. Now it is knowledge management. The Microsoft sale pitch makes SharePoint seem easy, cheap, wonderful, and the cure for what ails a modern organization. In reality, SharePoint lacks the chops to deal with content when a lawyer shows up to collect information as part of the discovery process. SharePoint doesn’t do any single function particularly well. What it does is deliver stub functions that work okay when you have two or three people using a small number of documents. Increase the number of documents and the number of users, and you have a multi million dollar investment to get the system stable and running with acceptable performance.
I am willing to go out on a limb and say that Microsoft will introduce enhanced policy and information governance features. The Microsoft certified professionals will install these extensions, and the company will find that liberal injections of money and technical resources will be needed to get the amalgamation working in an acceptable way.
In the meantime, Autonomy and Open Text should be able to make sales. When Microsoft rolls out its own governance solutions, engineers at these companies will develop a fix for another void in SharePoint.
Stephen Arnold, November 2, 2008
SharePoint, Performance Point, and Ajax
October 21, 2008
If you want to get Performance Point and Ajax to work on your SharePoint installation, fooshen points the way. You will need to click here and then save the instructions and screen shots. Then just follow the “simple” directions to get a Microsoft product to work with another Microsoft product and also get Ajax scripts to work with SharePoint. When I read this useful post, I thought “This explains what’s wrong with SharePoint”. The product has too many loose ends. A Certified Professional armed with fooshen’s how to can use Microsoft tools to pinpoint search performance issues. But why should a Certified Professional need a detailed how to? Why not provide a control on the admin console that let’s me activate Performance Point. Why do I or one of my engineers have to cut and paste multi line config statements into another script? The Performance Point functions are useful to SharePoint. Furthermore both are Microsoft products. I can understand fiddling with scripts to get a third party vendor’s product to work with SharePoint. But, heck, these are Microsoft’s own products, yet I have to do work using fooshen’s tips. When companies seek to reduce expenses, a savvy CFO may pull the plug on people who procure products that add unnecessary tasks, thus preventing an engineer from doing more meaningful work than performing script monkey antics. If this post was useful, you will find The Magpie Paradigm an absolute must.
Click here. A happy quack to the magpie.
Stephen Arnold, October 21, 2008
Microsoft SharePoint: Risks and Rewards
October 14, 2008
ZDNet published SharePoint: What Are the Risks and Rewards by Larry Dignan on October 13, 2008. This is a very good write up, and you can read the full text here. The core of Mr. Dignan’s article was a Gartner presentation about SharePoint. Mr. Dignan includes a link to that material, so I can’t rehash the details Mr. Dignan presents. For me, the most important points were three. Also, my opinions are in italics,
- There’s lots of interest in SharePoint. No kidding. Microsoft has 65 million to 100 million licensees
- SharePoint is complex and therefore expensive. No kidding. Everything seems to require a script. Good for Certified Professionals, bad for the licensees.
- Stuff doesn’t work. No kidding. Ever try to hook Microsoft’s own business intelligence or Dynamics CRM into SharePoint. Good luck on that.
My take on the SharePoint frenzy that seems to be sweeping conferences, consultant reports, and the trade publications is that SharePoint sounds great. The demos look good. The Microsoft fan boys think that SharePoint can be tamed without too much effort.
However, none of these points matter. Microsoft has a very good marketing machines. Its Certified Partners know there is gold in those hills. Bottomline: Microsoft will disseminate SharePoint. When the customer wants a search solution that goes beyond the built in functionality, Microsoft and its partners will sell Fast Search’s Enterprise Search Platform. The licensees won’t know the power of that one-two punch until the someone tallies the costs of the licenses, the infrastructure, the staff and consultants, and the time required to customize, tune, and upgrade. SharePoint could, in the right circumstances, put those not in fighting trim out for the count..
Agree? Disagree? Help me learn.
Stephen Arnold, October 14, 2008
Tess: New Beyond Search Analyst
October 10, 2008
We’ve had several emails about the white boxer shown on the splash page of this Web log. The Beyond Search team rescued her. She’s on the mend and learning the ins and outs of Microsoft Office SharePoint Search. After her unhappy experiences with two previous owners, she’s curious about plugs, cables, and anything that will fit into her mouth. We’ve discovered that she’s deaf, which may explain why she had a tough life before discovering the soft-hearted goose at Beyond Search. Watch for her analyses of MOSS and other Microsoft technologies. She told us, “These are easy for a rescued boxer to understand.”
Stephen Arnold, October 10 2008
Microsoft: Frequent Searcher Points and Free Enterprise Search
October 1, 2008
Ina Fried’s “Microsoft Still Paying People to Search” is a useful reminder that Microsoft is “still paying people to search”. You can read various wizards’ comments at Search Engine Journal, LiveSide, and others. I quite liked the approach taken by Nathania Johnson, Search Engine Watch, in her “Microsoft Launches SearchPerks; Like Credit Card Rewards, Except for Search here.” For me, the most interesting point in her write up was this passage:
Microsoft’s Frederick Savoye, senior director at Live Search, assured me that this is an incentive program that fits into their three overall pillars of search: [a] Delivering the best search results [b] Simplifying key tasks such as booking airline, travel, shopping, finding user opinions, etc. [c] Innovating the business model. (Note: I did a bit of format tweaking to keep the passage from becoming hard to read]
The announcement comes hard on the heels of the news that Microsoft will be hurt by the financial problems sweeping through the US and threatening the European markets (more information here) and that Microsoft will make Oslo, Norway, the pivot point for its search research (more information on that here).
I wanted to offer several observations before the addled goose brain I have forgets them.
- Frequent flier blues. Earning points for search is a good idea. I have quite a few air miles, but the airlines change the threshold for an award or retire the miles before I can use them. I am, therefore, deeply indifferent to usage credits because of how other customer reward programs have tricked me.
- Can’t buy me love. I am a rental. I sell time. When someone buys my time, I love them. When that someone doesn’t pay me, I don’t love them. As long as the pay is commensurate with the work, I go along with my rent-my-time approach to business. I don’t think the dough offered for me to change my habits, the automated scripts, and the free Google crawls I run every couple of hours is sufficient for me. For a critical mass of Web users, I am skeptical. I don’t think payola will work in search, but it worked for a while in radio someone told me.
- Business model silliness. Google’s business model is that someone pays Google to give away services. Users of Google expect free or low cost services to avoid the ads. Giving away free services without a third party paying or just paying people to use a service is not a business model. The tactic is marketing. I see these ploys as a type of discount coupon for tires, “Buy three and get one free”. The cost of the fourth tire is covered in the markup on the first three tires, the extra charge for balancing, or the labor cost to undo the lug nuts and put the new tires on.
In the consumer Web space, Google maintains and may be incrementally increasing its market share. I think that some of the research outfits tracking Web search share report that Google is north of 65 percent of the search traffic now. I have some first hand and anecdotal data that indicate the 65 percent figure may be low. From where I sit in my Kentucky hollow with my geese, Google’s market share in Web search is close enough to two-thirds for me. With Ask.com, Microsoft, and Yahoo chopping up the remainder, paying users probably won’t have a significant impact. Users choose what to search. Once habits in online form, those habits can be tough to change. The malarkey about search being a one click easy decision does not reflect the fact that “habits, like a soft bed, are easy to fall into and hard to get out of.” That’s a quote from Miss Costello’s sixth grade classroom poster. Miss Costello was my teacher in the 1950s. Pretty accurate statement for Web search I believe, even 50 years after I first read the message.
A quick horizon scan reveals that in enterprise search, the “give away” approach to market share is keeping Microsoft in the enterprise search game. But vendors tell me that sales of their SharePoint search plug ins continue to sell. What vendors are reaping the rewards of the SharePoint search opportunity. I can’t include the dozens who play in this space but Coveo, Endeca, ISYS Search Software, and Vivisimo have told me or hinted that SharePoint represents a good market. In fact, one vendor told me that the SharePoint market is stronger since Microsoft rolled out free SharePoint, enhanced MOSS, and bought the complex Fast Search & Transfer Enterprise Search System. In one engagement, the vendor was hired quickly, replacing the incumbent Microsoft system with minimal red tape. In the enterprise search sector, where user annoyances are commonplace, Microsoft is not yet paying people to use its search system, but Microsoft may have to take more aggressive steps to keep third party vendors out of the SharePoint members-only club.
To sum up, the search game for the Web and in the enterprise are quite different. Microsoft will have to find a way to leap frog in both markets. That will take some doing. I am excited to learn what Redmond will do on both search fronts. Google, of course, has a more integrated approach to search, which I think may present both technical and cost challenges to Microsoft.
Stephen Arnold, October 1, 2008
SharePoint: Improving Performance
September 23, 2008
In my opinion, SharePoint is a slow poke. Among the reasons:
- SQL Server bottlenecks
- My old pal IIS
- Churning when complex pages experience latency because needed data are scattered far and wide across the SharePoint landscape.
In what has to be the most amazing description of sluggish performance, Microsoft has released SharePoint Performance Optimization: How Microsoft IT Increases Availability and Decreases Rendering Time of SharePoint Sites . This is a 27 page Word document, which I was able to download here.
I scanned the white paper. I did not dig through it. The good stuff appears after the boilerplate about how to find out what part of the SharePoint system is the problem. In my experience, it’s not “one part”. Performance issues arise when there are lots of users, complex “sites”, and when some of the other required servers are tossed into the stew.
A happy quack to Nick MacKechnie who pointed to this Microsoft white paper in his Web log here.
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2008
SharePoint: Picture Perfect Search
September 21, 2008
You have SharePoint search configured, optimized, and humming like a top. You have scaled up and out. Now you are ready for the next level in SharePoint. You are on the starting line for image search. For a useful guide to implementing image search within SharePoint, you will want to read and save Matthew McDermott’s “SharePoint Image Search.” This is a four part series, and you will need all four parts to round out your knowledge of the operation. You can retrieve the series here.
For me, the most useful part of the series was Mr. McDermott’s discussion of the procedures required to index images. Tips include finding and installing iFilters and then troubleshooting the iFilters. What sticks in my mind that multiple crawls and index inspection are necessary in order to find out exactly what has been retrieved and processed. Multiple crawls are trivial and quick on small SharePoint installations. When the SharePoint installation sprawls over hundreds or thousands of servers, the recrawls are non trivial. The procedure for mapping crawled properties to managed properties is a must save bit of explanation. Part 4’s sample code is as important. In fact, without this write up, the likelihood of a mere mortal getting SharePoint to deliver images in search results is pretty close to zero.
Three thoughts:
- This is a lot of work, particularly for large SharePoint installations. I personally would not go through these procedures and the recrawls, manual inspection, and code twiddling. Third party vendors deliver image results without this hassle.
- It’s clear that anyone with the programming knowledge, patience, and SharePoint bug can hack the system to perform some clever search operations. In my experience, large SharePoint installations and hacking are mutually exclusive. A glitch can be expensive to locate and remediate.
- Microsoft should add image search to its SharePoint service. The omission is egregious. I also want to locate other file types as well and without the hoop jumping.
Mr. McDermott deserves a happy quack. Microsoft earns a goose gift for not building this function into the system.
Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2008
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