Azaleos Survey Reveals Increased SharePoint Adoption but also Challenges
November 16, 2012
SharePoint adoption continues to grow and remain high according to an Azaleos Corporation and Osterman Research survey. The survey also revealed some inhibitors to greater SharePoint growth, including lack of administrative skills, training, and knowledge for current staff members. HeraldOnline weighs in on the findings in the article, “SharePoint Cost of Ownership Jumped 16 Percent in 2012 Finds Osterman Research.” This is added about possible challenges:
’According to Osterman Research, SharePoint is still an extremely high growth platform, but soaring management costs, coupled with insufficient staffing levels and training are leading to performance and satisfaction issues. This is threatening its momentum,’ said Scott Gode, vice president of product management and marketing for Azaleos. ‘To derive maximum business value from SharePoint enterprises need to reevaluate current approaches to systems administration and storage management in order to reduce costs. In addition, SharePoint governance should be given a much higher level of priority by both IT and business leadership.’
The author adds that staffing cut backs and poor governance are also challenges for organizations. The article highlights some important SharePoint issues you may want to consider when evaluating your approach to the ubiquitous platform. One approach worth looking at is a cost-effective third party solution to extend SharePoint capabilities, like Mindbreeze. Mindbreeze facilitates the comprehensive incorporation of all electronic data repositories and connects seamlessly with SharePoint. And with an intuitive user interface, users will find can easily adapt.
Philip West, November 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Leading Austrian IT News Portal Adopts Mindbreeze InSite Solution
November 15, 2012
Monitor.at is Austria’s leading IT news portal for small and medium businesses. The organization recently added the Mindbreeze InSite search solution to their Web site. This integrated cloud solution helps site visitors quickly and efficiently find important and relevant facts. Details of the InSite adoption can be read in the article, “Monitor.at with New Site Search.” The author includes this comment from Monitor’s editor:
’With over 13,500 products to monitor.at it is for visitors not always easy to find the desired information. Integrating Mindbreeze InSite, we are offering our visitors a convenience feature to quickly and easily find the desired information. Addition be easier for us Mindbreeze InSite work. Messages to the top topics automatically, appears seeking based,’ explains Ing Markus Klaus Eder, editor monitor.
Monitor.at is a good example of a major Web site that has incorporated a powerful search solution for improved site experience. Increasing Web traffic and retaining site visitors is increasingly becoming a major avenue for business success as a Web site is often the first customer interaction with a business. The power of semantic search in addition to relevant content is necessary for gaining and retaining an audience. A powerful search system that can make connections among vast amounts of data can also help deliver a better search experience for the user. InSite is capable of searching a wide variety of specific documents, including PDFs, Excel sheets, and Word documents, as well as searching social media sites and Web sites. Consider the free-trial to see if the Mindbreeze solution works for you.
Philip West, November 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google and Its Preserving the Lumber Room Contents
November 14, 2012
I don’t know if this write up is accurate. Navigate to “Privacy Issue: Google Docs Seems to Not Delete but Only Hide Documents When the Trash Is Emptied.” The main point of the write up is that content which a user may have wanted to make go away has not gone away. In database deletions, a similar issue exists until the database is spiffed up to make the space hogging deletions go the way of the dodo. Even then, it is possible to roll back a database or just restore it to a previous state. So what’s gone may not be gone.
Here’s a passage I noted:
The good thing is that Google Docs is still in Beta and things can change until it goes into release mode. But chances are higher that something will happen when we bring our privacy concerns to the attention of Google and also to the attention of all others that are offering to us either free or paid services on the Web. It is our responsibility. Let us choose wisely what and what not we are using as the the core of our personal information infrastructure.
I admire optimism. What surprises me is that someone finds this non deletion anything other than standard operating procedure. The original Norton’s Utilities removed those pesky “?”s so that deleted files were suddenly not deleted. Magic.
If I had the energy, I would ask questions about the deployment of link analysis and intercept tools across deleted data. But, I am 68 and it is late in the afternoon. I assume that nothing untoward will be done with deleted user data. The world is just getting better with each passing day. Oh, I have to limp to the TV. More information about the email buzz and consequences concerning a certain former government official, a writer who can do more pushups than I can, and a wild and crazy family in Florida. Now that’s a state I admire with or without email shenanigans.
Stephen E Arnold, November 14, 2012
New KnowledgeLake Capture Features Announced
November 14, 2012
KnowledgeLake, Inc., headquartered in St. Louis, develops document imaging related products and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint. In the press release, “KnowledgeLake Continues to Advance the Capabilities of Capture Solution for Microsoft SharePoint,” some new KnowledgeLake capabilities are announced. The author states:
Tightly integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, KnowledgeLake Capture enables end users to easily scan and index documents and store them in the appropriate SharePoint repository. A few of the new developments added to the robust solution include the ability to scan and index documents faster, scan multiple batches at a time, added language support and advances to prioritization functionality.
This is also added about Capture capabilities:
Capture’s sophisticated Batch Processing and Monitoring, allow for multiple documents of many different types to be scanned, viewed and indexed efficiently.
It seems like KnowledgeLake is making a few strides in SharePoint solution development. But when it comes to extending SharePoint capabilities, you may want to consider industry leaders, like Mindbreeze, that provide more than just SharePoint tailored services and have already been offering robust document indexing capabilities. Fabasoft Mindbreeze provides comprehensive access to business knowledge for everyone on the team and is backed by a customer focused support team that shares your purpose. The Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Connectors facilitate comprehensive incorporation of all your electronic data repositories.
Philip West, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Monitor in Austria Adds Mindbreeze InSite for Improved Web Site Search
November 13, 2012
monitor.at is Austria’s IT guide for small and medium sized businesses, whether looking to stay in the loop on IT happenings or advance their business with more efficient and effective usage of information technology. The company recently added a new feature to their Web site: Mindbreeze InSite. Details of monitor.at’s usage of InSite can be read in, “monitor.at uses Mindbreeze InSite.” The new feature is explained:
With just one search inquiry website visitors receive all relevant information from the site, clearly structured using search tabs. Results can be further refined using facets so that the right information can be found in a matter of seconds.
The content of the page ‘Top-Themen’ (top topics) as well as the associated overview pages are automatically created by InSite – without any manual effort by the web editors. This service is enabled by Mindbreeze’s information pairing technology.
In addition, pre-defined search queries set the parameters for the content. This means that Mindbreeze is constantly checking contents and updates the landing pages automatically. A powerful Web site search can help drive traffic to your site and increase the number of revisits to your pages. InSite is a fast and intuitive search feature that is powered by information pairing technology. And with no install required, the self-service solution can save you time and resources.
Philip West, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Concept Searching Announces Product Compliance with Office 365
November 12, 2012
Concept Searching was founded in 2002 and provides conceptual metadata generation, auto-classification, and powerful taxonomy management from the desktop to the enterprise software. The company recently announced their conceptClassifier product is now available for all Office 365 products. Details of the announcement can be read in, “conceptClassifier for SharePoint Available for Microsoft Office 365.” The announcement is explained:
Prior to this announcement, Office 365 clients have only ever had the ability to tag and classify content to the term store manually, which is at best inconsistent and rarely occurs at all. This has been the biggest barrier to enterprise account adoption. This has in part been due to a number of inherent technical issues that had to be overcome to deploy the solution, including real time synchronization with the term store, a key feature Concept Searching was first to market with for SharePoint 2010.
Martin Garland, President of Concept Searching, adds that this makes Microsoft Office 365 truly enterprise ready. If you are looking for an enterprise search platform with SharePoint connectors, you may want to consider a company that has already been offering and improving on Microsoft and SharePoint capabilities. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers optimum search and information access capabilities with a full suite of connectors, including SharePoint and Exchange as well as IBM Lotus, RSS/Atom, and more.
Philip West, November 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
TEMIS on Project ROBUST
November 12, 2012
Europe’s ROBUST project seeks to help online business communities with several issues, including large-scale data management and analysis. Now, TEMIS’ Tagline says the project has received positive feedback from scientists and potential clients in “Project ROBUST: Combining Scientific Excellence and Industry Relevance in EU Research Project.” TEMIS is developing infrastructure it says will bring the benefits of ROBUST’s findings to the rest of the world.
ROBUST, which stands for “Risk and Opportunity management of huge-scale BUSiness communiTy cooperation,” emerged as a response to the growing importance of online business communities. The onslaught of participants and posts has grown faster than the tools to manage them. Besides addressing that pressing issue, EU researchers also wondered which factors in these communities boost participation and engagement. The organization tapped experts from companies large and small, as well as some academics, to discover answers. The article tells us:
“As diverse as these challenges are, so are the solutions that start to take shape in the ROBUST project: IT Innovation progresses with an application allowing to model and monitor the various risks a community owner might be facing (experts leaving or exchanges becoming unproductive), Polecat is working on visual metaphors to provide a quick insight into the health of a community while the University of Koblenz is investigating whether and how patterns of agreement and disagreement among participants correlate with their observed participation.”
We agree that this project represents an important step forward. Now, though, we wonder: will European support catch up with companies wrapping more value-adds around basic text processing?
Cynthia Murrell, November 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Exclusive Interview: Chris Westphal, Visual Analytics
November 12, 2012
With the hype surrounding analytics, I have difficulty separating the wheat from the Wheaties when it comes to companies offering next-generation . Since the election, some individuals have been positioned as superstars of analytics. (The full text of my interview with Mr. Westphal appears in the ArnoldIT Search Wizards Speak series at this link.)
I am not comfortable with political predictions nor the notion of superstars. I did some checking and got solid referrals to Chris Westphal, one of the founders of Visual Analytics. The company has a solid client base in the world where analytics are essential to security and risk mitigation.
Mr. Westphal was gracious with his time, and I was able to speak with him in Washington, DC and then continue our discussion via email. In the course of my conversations with Mr. Westphal, he provided a different perspective on the fast-growing analytics sector.
His company, Visual Analytics or VAI is a privately-held company based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area providing proactive analytical, decision support, and information sharing solutions in commercial and government marketplaces throughout the world for investigating money laundering, financial crimes, narcotics, terrorism, border security, embezzlement, and fraud.
He told me that his firm’s approach and its success are a result of focusing on client problems, not imposing a textbook solution on a situation. He said:
We are problem driven. One of the most important areas we have found that separates us from much of our competition is the ability to deliver actual “analytics” to our end-user clients. It is not simply running a query looking for a specific value or graphically showing the contents of a spreadsheet. Our approach is to exploit the patterns and behaviors that are hidden with in the structures and volumes of the data we are processing. Our system effectively taps multiple, disparate sources to deliver one of the industry’s only federated data access platforms. We continue to focus on how to create algorithms (in a generic fashion), that can detect temporal sequences repeating activities, commonality, high-velocity connections, pathways, and complex aggregations.
One of the keys to Visual Analytics success is the company’s distinction between analytics and monitoring. Mr. Westphal pointed out:
The world is full of very good data management systems. There are databases, crawlers, indexers, etc. Our approach is to provide a layer on top of these existing sources and provide “interface-compliant-queries” to pull out relevant content. In about 90 percent of our engagements, we take advantage of the existing infrastructure with little to no impact on the client’s information technology processes, networks, or hardware footprint. If special processing is required, we tune the data management application to best meet the structure of the data so it can be processed/queried to maximize the analytical results. One other discussion is to differentiate “analytics” from “monitoring.” Much of our capability is to expose new patterns and trends, define the parameters, and verify data structures, content, and other key factors. Once we’ve locked in on a valuable pattern, we can continue to look for the pattern or it can be recoded into another system/approach (e.g., like is typically done with inline transactional systems) for real-time detection. The hard-issue is detecting the pattern in the first place.
The technical approach of Visual Analytics relies on open source and proprietary systems and methods. Mr. Westphal noted:
We have a very robust data connection framework consisting of different methods for different purposes. The core “connectors” are for relational databases and are based on standard database connector protocols. Our system also has drivers to other platforms such as information retrieval systems, various enterprise systems, plus the ability to create custom web services to expand, where necessary, to handle new sources or systems (including proprietary formats – assuming there is a Web-service interface available. We also have Apache Lucene built into our application at the data-layer so it can crawl and index content as needed. We try to make options available along with guidance about each approach. We offer a collection of methods to deliver the right-content for meeting a wide range of client needs. We always reference “contextual analytics” which basically means providing the actual content or pointers to content for any data entity – regardless of where it resides.
The full text of the interview is available at http://goo.gl/2y6T8. After my discussions with Mr. Westphal I remain convinced that the notion of next generation analytics is more rich and mature than some applications of next generation analytics.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2012
IntelTrax Summary: November 2 to November 8
November 12, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some excellent article summaries regarding big data’s growing impact on the globalized workplace.
“Big Data Talent Pool Grows” explains how job seekers are embracing the big data analytics profession due to the fact that it welcomes new talent.
The article states:
“The just-released InformationWeek 2012 State of IT Staffing Survey reveals that 40% of those who cite big data and analytics as a top hiring priority say they’ll increase staffing in these areas by 11% or more during the next two years. At the same time, 53% of these companies say it will be hard to find big-data-savvy analytics experts. Respondents expect to try a mix of retraining of existing people, hiring of new employees and contracting of consultants and temporary employees to fill the gap.
Practitioners, vendors, and educators we spoke to for our Big Data IT Staffing report offer seven tips for finding the right talent.”
The article, “The Healthcare Analytics Trickle Down” shows how the pairing of healthcare and data analytics is starting to pay off for many companies and its starting to trickle down.
The article states:
“If you’re old enough to remember the Reagan administration, you remember the politically charged expression “trickle-down economics,” which referred to the theory that if you provide benefits and incentives to businesses and the wealthy, those benefits would trickle down to wage earners at lower socioeconomic levels.
In some ways, big data analytics is like trickle-down economics. Only the biggest healthcare providers with the deepest pockets can afford the kind of analytics platforms required to get useful intelligence from tens of thousands of patient records. But in theory, those benefits will trickle down to smaller providers that either don’t have the financial support or the large patient populations to do this type of data crunching on their own.”
We all knew that big data was something worth investing in, but save the world? that seems to be a little bit much. “50 Ways Big Data Can Save the World” showcases the new startup Bidgely, which aims to turn every appliance in your home into a data scientist, providing you with real time results on your energy usage.
The article states:
“Utilities worldwide are installing smart meters on homes and businesses, which means there could be as much as 50 terabytes of energy data that can emerge from a million or so homes in a year. The problem has been that there haven’t been very many ways to make good use of all this data to benefit the average consumer. But a startup called Bidgely, which raised a series A round from Khosla Ventures, says it has created algorithms that can dig into real-time smart meter energy-consumption data, can reduce consumers’ home energy use by between 4 percent to 12 percent, and can also deliver other beneficial home services to consumers.”
Whether you are looking to utilize big data to protect the environment, save lives, or boost business for your company, there are solutions available that can be very beneficial. Thanks to companies like Digital Reasoning, this technology is more affordable, accessible and customizable than ever.
Jasmine Ashton, November 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Mindbreeze InSite Announces Screen Reader Accessibility Feature
November 9, 2012
Mindbreeze InSite recently announced added capabilities and features to the search system to make it more accessible for people with disabilities. In the announcement, “Mindbreeze InSite Search Accessible,” Fabasoft highlights that they are working to make all products more accessible in parallel, rather than making long-term promises and working on each product successively. The new accessibility features are explained:
Use the functionality of your screen reader to find the entry field with the label “Search”. If your screen reader has shortcuts for landmarks, you can enter the region “Search” and focus the search field by pressing the TAB key. Enter the search term here and start the search by pressing the ENTER key. If the search is successful, an accessible results list is displayed. The focus is initially set on the title ‘Search Results.’
Steps for navigating search results and resuming a search after an error message using a screen reader are also included in the article. Mindbreeze InSite seems to really understand how to add features and capabilities to increase not only search, but also information access for users. With intuitive search facets and increased access capabilities, Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite can really boost a user’s Web site experience.
Philip West, November 9, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
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