Protected: SharePoint Forces Organizational Culture Shock
December 15, 2011
Startups Challenge SharePoint
December 15, 2011
Enterprise 2.0 is a term being thrown around the blogosphere to indicate incorporation of social media functionality into workplace software. The leader in enterprise, Microsoft SharePoint, is quite clearly incapable of keeping up in any discussion of enterprise 2.0. Andy McLoughlin, co-leader of the enterprise 2.0 startup, Huddle, offers his insight in, “This 32-Year-Old Entrepreneur is Bent on Beating One of Microsoft’s Largest Businesses.”
McLoughin says,
There’s a huge amount of room to improve upon SharePoint as a content collaboration tool the enterprise. It’s sold as free software, yet any CIO who has tried (and failed) to implement it knows that it’s far too easy to spend many months and hundreds of thousands of dollars getting it ready for deployment. Users generally hate it and most licenses will never be deployed.
We agree. SharePoint at its best is simply a basic platform, or foundation, and functionality is only achieved through potentially costly add-ons for deployment. However, good third party solutions are out there. One is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
To set itself apart from the newer enterprise startups, Fabasoft has been an up-and-comer in the industry for ten years, having received the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years running. With a track record of anticipation and innovation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze will continue to offer solutions that make sense in a changing technological culture. To fix today’s problems, and work toward tomorrow’s solutions, look at a smart installation like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Grasp Your SharePoint Workflows and Evaluate Productivity
December 14, 2011
Adaptation Mandatory for Enterprise Teams in 2012
December 13, 2011
The list of Gartner predictions is out for 2012. The theme? Adapt or be replaced. CMS Wire provides all the details in, “Gartner: 10 Predictions for 2012, IT Departments to Adapt or be Swept Aside.”
“According to Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, the primary characteristic of IT next year will be fluidity, and where that fluidity does not exist, IT departments will be replaced by business managers who see the economy of cloud computing and the value of moving their IT requirements there . . . Devices that are easier to use, combined with more intuitive software, as well as the acceleration towards cloud computing, means that IT will have less responsibility than before.”
Two implications: one, IT teams need to prove their worth when it comes to enterprise, but they need to do it in a way that improves the user experience. Two, they need to find the right solution that ensures that employees maintain high productivity and quality search results. This brings us to another conjecture from the Gartner findings:
“And to add insult to injury, it looks like IT organizations are going to be held responsible when organizations are not able to extract full meaning out of their growing amount of data and when businesses miss out on key opportunities.”
We think that a quality solution is the key to all of the potential IT woes in 2012. One suite of solutions we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. They excel in assigning meaning to results in a way that others, namely SharePoint, lack.
“There are several ways to connect with standard and even highly customized line of business applications. An effective information access tool needs to facilitate users’ access to all of these content sources while preserving value and context of each information object and knowledge asset.”
Will there be challenges in the new year? Yes, there always are. But choose the right solution and meet those challenges head on.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 9,2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Protected: The Contested Fact: Sharepoint Has Social Media Potential
December 13, 2011
Optimizing Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy
December 12, 2011
Two main concerns need to be balanced when pursuing an effective mobile strategy for any organization: efficiency and security. CMS Wire reports in, “Mobile Risks and Opportunities: Is Your Company’s Strategy Optimized?”
“A balance needs to be struck so that the organization can take advantage of the new technology, but not at the cost of lost confidential information or an IT infrastructure that is unmanageable. How can IT be expected to support five versions of essentially the same application but from different vendors (not all of which may be in business next year), running on every imaginable mobile device and operating system — that everybody wants connected to the corporate network?”
Add the necessity for mobile enterprise to the equation to further complicate the challenge. Mobile changes can occur so rapidly that a plan needs to be in place in order to keep pace. But keeping pace without regard to security poses its own threat.
“The internal audit, risk management and IT security teams should provide advice on the risks. However, care should be taken that excessive concern about risks does not result in being slow, or even late, to seize the opportunities.”
Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a mobility solution that ensures security and efficiency are both priorities. Unlike broader solutions like SharePoint, you never have to worry about access and security issues with Mindbreeze.
“Smartphones and tablets allow you to act quickly in business matters – an invaluable competitive advantage. 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.”
Change will always be a challenge in IT, but success is possible through anticipating the threat and responding with a smart solution. We think Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look for this, and many other reasons.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Protected: Take a Gander at PowerShell to Generate a SharePoint Architecture Diagram
December 12, 2011
Protected: FAST Search Research Round-Up
December 9, 2011
Social Media and an Enterprise Strategy
December 9, 2011
Social media is an essential ingredient to the success of any organization hoping to excel in today’s market. However, if not approached intentionally and with a plan, social media efforts can seem daunting and unorganized. Not as linear as traditional IT needs, social media has to be tackled with a different strategy. Jonathan Gourlay gives his insight in, “Effective social media strategy: A must for success in a social world.”
Enterprises large and small are embracing social media as a way for employees, partners and customers to collaborate and communicate, but many are doing so without being fully prepared. It’s an issue that many are finding costly in a number of ways.”
Social media must also be tied in to an organization’s overall enterprise strategy. While the two don’t initially seem to play well together, if combined with a smart enterprise solution, both efforts can be done with more ease.
Gourlay continues:
“The fourth level is described as the stage of enablement. ‘You must get here to scale,’ Owyang said. Enterprises continually measure their use of social media at this stage and are empowering workers rather than constraining them. The more advanced organizations at this level implement their social strategy across corporate functions, ignoring business unit silos.”
Take a solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its Folio Cloud. ‘Fabasoft Folio Cloud enables quick, secure and mobile collaboration both internally and between international companies,’ explained Michael Hadrian. ‘Business processes with customers and partners cannot be realized any quicker or more cost effectively.’
Combining internal and external communications is key to social media, ensuring that dreaded social media crises don’t occur. Such a solution allows an overall view of social media communications, inviting participation from a variety of employees, but ensuring all efforts are moving in the same direction. When tackling an overall social media initiative, planning is key, and solutions such as those offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze can help.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 9, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Microsoft Search: Continuing Clarity of Confusion. You Decide.
December 9, 2011
A reader forwarded me a snippet of a LinkedIn discussion about enterprise search. The issue concerned what Fast Search & Transfer would or would not do. The answers pointed in one direction: Write a widget. The developers in the discussion thread pointed out that such a widget was not a particularly difficult task. The marketing types were, not surprisingly, baffled. The discussion raised a somewhat more important issue; namely, what the heck is Fast Search & Transfer today. It has been almost three years since Microsoft paid $1.23 for the FAST Search & Transfer technology.
In February 2011, Microsoft point out in “Fast Search for SharePoint and FSIS. What Is the Difference?” that there are flavors of Fast Search. Think in terms of the different versions of Windows 7 like Home, Professional, etc. Microsoft is implementing the Microsoft method which is very useful to consultants, integrators, resellers, and Microsoft enthusiasts. For the iPad crowd, Microsoft’s approach is just really different from Apple’s “take what we give you” approach.
Confused? Don’t be. Image from the good folks at Creative Type Dad.
The first thing to keep in mind is that the “old” Fast Search & Transfer technology was tweaked to flush the open source components and to get the old gal running on 64 bit platforms. That, gentle reader, is what is called Fast Search for SharePoint 2010. The Microsoft naming convention converts this five word string to FS4SP.
Next you can get a version of Fast Search tailored to index only Internet sites. Think of this as Microsoft’s answer to Google’s Site Search service. This version of Fast Search is called Fast Search for Internet Sites. The acronym in February 2011 was FSIS. Comperio posted some useful information about FSIS in its article “Fast Search for Internet Sites.”
For the brave souls who are using the version of Fast Enterprise Search Platform stripped of its Linux and Unix DNA is called Fast ESP.
You can also license via a client access license or a per server license a specialized version of the FS4SP software for an “internal application.” The idea is that some luddites do not use SharePoint yet understand the value of Fast Search. This version is called Fast Search for Internal Applications.” The acronym is FSIA, and it is supposed to be an alternative for the Exalead of PolySpot search based application approach which is now widely imitated by most vendors.
There are “free” versions of search floating around; for example, when you install SQL Server, you get search. Other Microsoft products come with their own search components. Examples range from the accounting software to Windows 7, which implements quite an interesting approach to finding a file on a personal computer.
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
