MarkLogic Adds Big Data to Its Line Up
April 7, 2012
MarkLogic Corporation has specialized in XML databases for years, but now they have turned their attention to Big Data. Marketwatch.com reports in, “Big Data Takes Center Stage at MarkLogic World 2012” that on May 1-3, 2012 in the Ronald Regan Building in our nation’s capital, Big Data leaders and MarkLogic experts will be gathered in one place. The conference presents an excellent opportunity to meet and network with the experts, but it is also a chance to learn about industry trends, new ideas, and tips/techniques. We noted:
MarkLogic World 2012 will be keynoted by retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011. Mullen will discuss “The Intersection of National Security and the Global Economy.” In his keynote, Mullen will talk about the challenges he faced while serving as the top military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense through two administrations. Mullen will also discuss the challenges facing America, looking at economic growth, infrastructure, education, and foreign and military policy.
Other nig names are three leading research analysts: Matt Aslett, research manager, 451 Research; Mark Beyer, research vice president, Gartner; and Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst, Forrester, who will give a rundown on major trends in Big Data at their panel. An award ceremony will also be held to honor leaders and innovators in the field. Conferences are always the best tools, outside of LinkedIn and other professional social networking web sites, to connect with potential collaborators and get ideas for future projects. However, these conferences surprised us—is it a marketing or technological reconfiguration of our favorite XQuery system with proprietary extensions?
The defense flavor is interesting. With the US budget gripping the scissors for some defense spending, is MarkLogic aware of a funding windfall in this sector? With the harsh actions taken toward inappropriate General Services Administration spending, the US government market may face as much turmoil as commercial sectors like book, magazine, and newspaper funding.
Is the notion of big data the next golden goose. The farm yard is getting crowded. The number of azure chip consultants on the program is interesting as well. With MarkLogic a leader in XML, enterprise search, and big data, the company seems to be poised to grow rapidly. We’re looking for hard data about gross sales, margins, and market share in the company’s core markets.
Whitney Grace, April 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010
April 6, 2012
SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010 now has an online extranet sandbox to allow users to test drive the product before purchase. PR Web gives the full report as posted in Virtual Strategy Magazine, “SharePoint Solutions Creates Online Evaluation Sandbox for SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010.”
“Developed by SharePoint Solutions, SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 (ExCM) provides the easy SharePoint extranet collaboration and simplified SharePoint extranet administration that SharePoint 2010 is missing in the out-of-the-box product. From its award-winning 2007 release, ExCM has established itself as the industry leader in powerful, effective SharePoint extranet deployment and management. This latest version adds substantially greater functionality and is simple and intuitive to use. Because EXCM integrates right into SharePoint 2010, all of its features are accessible from within SharePoint itself, so there is no proprietary interface or separate program to learn.”
Third party solutions that interface with SharePoint are a necessity for organizations that need to increase the functionality of their SharePoint deployment without committing huge resources to a customization project. However, a cutting edge solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze may be a smarter long-term solution for organizations seeking an intuitive, scalable, and mobile enterprise search interface. Functioning stand-alone or as a compliment to an existing SharePoint installation, Mindbreeze is ahead of the competition in mobile searching and the Cloud.
“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.”
SharePoint needs a little help in realizing its full potential, and while many add-on solutions are on the market, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Autonomy Selected by Mimas for Search Project
April 6, 2012
Computing.co.uk recently reported on a new search-related project that Autonomy has been selected for in the article, “Mimas Selects Autonomy to Streamline Academic Search.”
According to the article, Mimas, a provider of information resources for researchers in the United Kingdom, has been approached to improve the functionality of the JISC Collection’s digital book service. JISC’s historic books collection contains contains the full text or page images of more than 300,000 books published in Britain before 1800 alone.
Mimas sought out Autonomy’s IDOL software because they plan to use semantic linking software to save both time and money on the project.
Vic Lyte, head of technology services at Mimas stated:
“We did an in-depth analysis of the available technologies. We looked at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft but none could conceptualize like the Autonomy IDOL software. It would take around four and a half minutes for a paid researcher to search for a specific journal but with the IDOL software this is cut by a third.”
It looks like despite last year’s acquisition by Microsoft, Autonomy is still in the search game. Competitors are not out of the woods yet.
Jasmine Ashton, April 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint Increases Efficiency and Leads to Restructuring
April 5, 2012
Christian Buckley often covers SharePoint and enterprise from the perspective of a business analyst. In, “Increased Productivity Means Focusing on Adoption,” on AIIM, Buckley draws an analogy between the increased productivity in the manufacturing sector, and subsequent failure to increase demand, and the same scenario unfolding in the IT world.
Buckley sums up the argument:
“Just as our economy moved from an agricultural to an industrial market, and from industrial to an information-based marketing, within the world of the Information Worker this increase in productivity is allowing organizations to move from a hardware-centric view (where IT pulls cables, stands up servers, maintains those servers) to a business intelligence and decision support view. Where are the business opportunities today? And where does SharePoint fit? There is a gap between productivity increases and resource utilization decreases, and here are three business impacts that I believe will become more visible: 1) Repurposed roles 2) Increased reliance on services 3) Focus on user adoption.”
So how does SharePoint fit in and how can enterprise solutions in general respond? Smart third-party solutions are one way to increase efficiency all the more. A solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze can provide an organization with an intuitive interface and intelligence search results. Working as a stand-alone solution or as a compliment to SharePoint, Mindbreeze can free information workers from enterprise customization and maintenance leaving them time to focus on business analyst functions.
“Our information pairing technology makes you unbeatable. Information pairing brings enterprise information and information in the Cloud together. This gives you an overall image of a company’s knowledge. This is the basis for your competitive advantage. In this way you can act quickly, reliably, dynamically and profitably in all business matters.”
Buckley argues that business analyst numbers will grow as the maintenance functions of IT workers continue to decline. Organizations can begin to focus on complimenting smart business decisions with smart technology decisions, instead of spinning wheels in an attempt to keep on-site servers and solutions running. Sounds like a good trade-off.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Attivio Identifies a “Not Right”
April 5, 2012
Attivio Claims “Something Is Not Right” In Unified Information Access
Turn back to your yesteryears and take a cue from Attivio’s blog that uses famous children’s literature character, Madeline, to explain the problem with hard evidence vs. gut instinct: “ ‘Something Is Not Right’—Don’t Ignore Your Gut When Analyzing Information.” The author Mike Urbonas uses Miss Clavel, Madeline’s caregiver, famous line about trusting her instincts when something is wrong with her charge. Urbonas relates that in hospitals, healthcare professionals are worried about notifying doctors when they sense something is wrong with their cardiac patients because they not have hard data. If they had gone with their gut, more patients would have survived.
We totally agree with Urbonas when he leads into a unified information access argument:
“What I find very exciting is that unified information access (UIA) is playing a vital role in empowering managers and leaders to connect those dots between data and other silos of information to realize those critical new insights. UIA integrates, joins and presents all related information — structured data and unstructured content to complete the informational picture and significantly expand what organizations “know” to determine with confidence whether “Something is not right.”
This creative metaphor breaks up the monotony of most IT articles, but our favorite is Ikanow’s open source approach to analytics. Our concern is that as systems get improved “training wheels”, the rider may not recognize a risky situation.
Whitney Grace, April 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Datameer Has a New Analytics Toy
April 5, 2012
According to Marketwatch.com, Datameer, Inc, a provider of Apache built end user analytics solutions, announced the release Datameer 1.4 in “Datameer Releases a Major New Version of Analytics Platform. Datameer 1.4” improves functionality in data management, user and data security, and expanded support for data source adaptors, Hadoop, Cloudera, and IBM. We learned:
The new features in Datameer 1.4 demonstrate that Datameer is committed to delivering what customers want with an emphasis on quality and ease of use,” stated David Cornell, Software Development Manager at SophosLabs. “We are particularly excited to see support for partitioning which will dramatically enhance report generation performance.
Datameer 1.4 was released to meet the growing demands of the company’s clients. As the only Apache Hadoop analytics solution, Datameer builds solutions to aid businesses in linear scalability and cost-effectiveness to analyze/, integrate, and visualize structured and unstructured data. Datameer is a company that relies on open source software and is working hard to make a name for themselves in the business world.
The hook for this new release may be performance. Speed, more than fancy analytics, is becoming more important.
Whitney Grace, April 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Approach SharePoint as a Business Analyst
April 4, 2012
The SharePoint Expert Blog features Christian Buckley and his take on how most organizations would benefit from viewing SharePoint through the lens of a business analyst. In, “The Role of a Business Analyst in SharePoint,” Buckley states that organizations rarely approach their SharePoint installation with the same level of intentionality as their other ventures.
“In presentations on migration and planning best practices for SharePoint, I often remark that every new SharePoint project begins as a Business Analyst activity. What is the role of the Business Analyst, and how does it fit into a successful SharePoint strategy? While there are different kinds of Business Analysts . . . the core functions of this role remain fairly consistent . . . Now extend this understanding to how you staff your SharePoint deployment. Experience has shown that few organizations properly staff their administration team, much less provide the SharePoint team with a dedicated — or even a part-time — Business Analyst resource. SharePoint is generally grossly understaffed.”
Buckley goes on to state that many would overestimate SharePoint’s ease of use:
“I would venture that a lack of understanding of key business processes, and the gaps between what SharePoint provides out-of-the-box and what it is capable of doing is at the heart of most end user adoption issues.”
So in order to get more functionality out of SharePoint, more staffing and attention should be devoted. If not, as Buckley said, “what it (SharePoint) is capable of doing” will never be discovered. But perhaps there is a third option, a third-party option like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Intuitive and ready to use out-of-the-box, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can supplement an existing SharePoint installation, or completely replace it. The suite of solutions engineering by Fabasoft address the issues of today, including mobility, efficiency, information pairing, and the Cloud.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
MapR Expands Hadoop Connectors
April 4, 2012
This MapR move signals more options for Hadoop users. Talkin’ Cloud reports, “MapR Announces Broad Data Connection Options for Hadoop.” Writer Brian Taylor specifies:
The data connections, according to the press release, enable a ‘wide range of data ingress and egress alternatives for customers,’ including direct file-based access using standard tools; direct database connectivity; Hadoop-specific connectors via Sqoop, Flume and Hive; and access to popular data warehouses and applications using custom connectors.
Sqoop, Flume, and Hive are all open source projects at Apache; the first two are still in incubation.
MapR is getting a hand on this project from tech providers Pentaho and Talend, who will supply direct integration with MapR Distribution. In addition, Tableau Software is helping to promote the new data connection options.
Co-founded by Xoogler M.C. Srivas, MapR has built on the work of developers behind the open source Hadoop, making it “more reliable, more affordable, more manageable and significantly easier to use.” MapR boasts that its innovations help its customers get the most out of the big data phenomenon.
Watch for our forthcoming open source analytics blog. Roll out is April 9, 2012.
Cynthia Murrell, March 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint 2010 Apple iPad Capability
April 3, 2012
SharePoint Server 2010 allows users to begin using Apple iPad devices to retrieve business intelligence content. Certain restrictions apply, but the functionality is introduced. The details are provided in, “Extra! Extra! Apple iPad Users Can Now View SharePoint Business Intelligence Content.”
“For SharePoint business intelligence users, CU 2011-12 for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is particularly exciting because it opens the door for people to get business intelligence content on Apple iPad devices. People can now view PerformancePoint reports and scorecards and Excel Services reports on iPad devices running the iOS 5 Safari browser. We just published an article on TechNet that provides more details about which kinds of reports and scorecards will and won’t work on your iPad, how to configure business intelligence content to display with best results, and how to navigate content on your iPad.”
As technology changes, becoming increasingly more mobile, there is no doubt that large infrastructures will have to catch up. However, it seems that SharePoint is a bit late to the mobile game. Third party solutions, like those from Fabasoft Mindbreeze, have entire solutions and connectors devoted to streamlining mobile capability.
Read more about Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile:
“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.”
If your organization is moving more and more toward mobility, and SharePoint is having a hard time keeping up, consider adding a smart third-party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Mindbreeze can compliment an existing infrastructure or stand on its own.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Digital Reasoning and Semantic Research Tie Up
April 2, 2012
Digital Reasoning and Semantic Research today announced that they have integrated Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys big data analytics solution with Semantica data fusion and analysis software.
The integrated solution combines unstructured text analytics at scale has been combined with visualization. In addition, the tie up provides licensees with analytical workflow tools to deliver a unique solution for automatically understanding people, places, and hidden relationships in big data.
The ability to manipulate information with these tools facilitates the understanding of content without an analyst’s manually reading. Information from social networks, supply-chain networks, terrorist networks, financial networks, and government networks, among others, can yield new insights . Navigate to http://www.digitalreasoning.com/SemSynDemo to check out a video of some of the features and functions available.
Tim Estes, founder and CEO of Digital Reasoning, told us:
There is no other solution that provides massively scalable unstructured data analytics with auto-populating of visualizations and workflows tailored for the Intelligence Community. The solution we are delivering together has the ability to address key big data analytics challenges in the enterprise and government markets alike.
For more information about Digital Reasoning, point your browser at www.digitalreasoning.com. The firm provides automated understanding for Big Data. “Automated understanding” analyzes unstructured and structured data to reveal the hidden and potentially valuable relationships between people and organization in space and time. Digital Reasoning’s flagship product, Synthesys uncovers insights and accelerates the time to actionable intelligence.
Semantic Research (www.semanticresearch.com) is redefining the way users visualize, interact with, and understand data and information within the Department of Defense, Intelligence and Law Enforcement communities.
This looks like a promising tie up.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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