New Open Source Search Information Service Available
April 16, 2012
Open source search was not a viable option for the enterprise in 2003 when ArnoldIT started work on the first Enterprise Search Report. Stephen E. Arnold wrote two more editions before he decided that proprietary search solutions were becoming “look alikes.” In the ArnoldIT 2011 study, The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, Stephen E Arnold and his editorial team decided not to cover open source search solutions because the sector was moving rapidly and no large players had emerged. Now almost a year after the New Landscape of Enterprise Search, the pace of innovation has increased significantly and there are some significant commercial open source search ventures in the US and elsewhere.
The ArnoldIT editorial team, which consists of librarians and technologists, recommended that we begin the task of identifying important articles to determine if there were sufficient mass to warrant a Beyond Search type of publication focused on open source search. We concluded that there was an increasing flow of information about open source search. Therefore, we want to share this information with others who have an interest in what is shaping up to be a disruptive force in information retrieval.
We want to help document that there is a new approach to enterprise search. The solutions involve the cloud, toolkits, and ready-to-run services available with a mouse click. The vendors pushing forward range from companies which have an established profile in the business community; for instance, IBM and Lucid Imagination. There are some open source search solutions which are not widely known in certain organizations; Xapian and Summa Summix come to mind. In between there are dozens of open source search, content processing, and hybrid services.
ArnoldIT recently completed a study of open source search option. After finishing our research for a client, we decided to move forward on a new information service. OpenSearchNews.com will discuss big data search solutions, including Amazon’s CloudSearch service, Basho Riak, and Constellio. If you are not familiar with these solutions and have an interest in search, you will want to check out OpenSearchNews.com.
The new microsite, now publicly available, publishes Monday through Friday and provides critical commentary, information about products, and highlights additional sources about open source search. The information service will report about the companies, trends, and products which offer an alternative to the seven figure solutions from proprietary enterprise search solutions. The approach of the service will be similar to that taken by researchers who want information that provides essential facts and links to high-value sources of information. The service will provide up-to-date news and analysis about the dynamic market for open source search and will publish Monday to Friday at www.opensearchnews.com. Additional information about the new information service is available on the site’s About page. Keep in mind that we don’t do “real” news. We have more in common with researchers and analysts than those who work for organizations embracing the tenets of Mr. Murdoch.
Recent stories include:
- Enterprise Adoption of Solr Lucene Rises
- In the Future, Enterprise Search Will Be a Service
- Lucid Works 2.0 Attracts Enterprise Suitors
Emily Aldridge, the editor of the publication, is an MLS and expert searcher who demonstrated exceptional capabilities in tracking down information about products and projects with names like Hounder, Oxyus, and Piscator.
Emily Aldridge, editor of the new information service, said:
“Open source search has become a fast-growing segment of the enterprise search and big data markets. The number of companies competing in this segment is growing. Large commercial enterprises are embracing open source and providing useful software to anyone who wants to use it. Two good examples are the contributions of Lucid Imagination and LinkedIn. The Danish government has supported an open source search initiative which provides search features for libraries looking to provide a patron with a single search box for a range of content in different collections.”
The information service will cover cloud solutions, open source search appliances, and mention commercial services which have open source software under the glossy exteriors of products and services from Amazon and IBM. We will also cover related subjects such as proprietary cloud search services. Comments will be accepted, and like other ArnoldIT information services we hope to combine useful information with some pointed observations.
Like Beyond Search, we will roll out new features and functions over time. We plan to use Google’s AdSense to help offset the cost of producing the service. If you want to learn more about the publication, contact us at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Don C. Anderson, Senior Engineer, ArnoldIT, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Kontagent Ksuite Enhanced
April 15, 2012
The Kontagent Blog recently reported on their new enhanced suite of their social/mobile analytics platform in the post “Kontagent’s New Ksuite DataMine Changes Social/Mobile Analytics Game for App Developers.”
According to the article, the enhanced kSuite platform, now includes a data mining option that equips data analysts with unlimited query powers to help social gaming and mobile app developers better engage and monetize users. As one of the only app analytics solutions available on the cloud that allows for big data exploration. It also allows more flexibility and power than ever before.
Jeff Tseng, Kontagent Co-Founder and CEO said:
“Until now, data mining in our market has been largely unaffordable. You had to build or license expensive proprietary software, buy the servers, load the data, and hire engineers to maintain the database. With the kSuite DataMine solution, we are literally changing the game as well as dramatically reducing costs by providing a turnkey, 100% hosted solution with no customer overhead whatsoever.”
As technological progression moves towards apps rather than individual products, Kontagent’s DataMine is certainly a game changer.
Jasmine Ashton, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
English Majors Rejoice: WolframAlpha Does Willy
April 11, 2012
I know that quite a few search engine optimization wizards, most MBAs, and probably two thirds of the attorneys love William Shakespeare. From the wonderful days in those teen years all the way through English 410 at a top-notch school like the University of Phoenix. Willy’s passion is that which passes show to the glass of fashion, text mining. Ah, analytics, how use doth breed a habit in a man.
Well, not the entire corpus of Shakespeare. “Rape of Lucrece” warrants a “WolframAlpha doesn’t understand your query.” So for my own part, it was Greek to me.
Navigate to “To Computer or Not to Compute—WolframAlpha Analyzes Shakespeare’s Plays.” I thought immediately about Vivisimo’s academic vertical search demonstrations. These were great fun, but I am not sure that academic subjects hit the Instagram jack pot. The service may be useful to those trying for figure out which character was Desdemona’s mother’s maid, and I think the service helps educate some graduate students into the virtues of doing close reading by scanning outputs from a set of algorithms little understood. Here’s the passage in the write up I noted:
Entering a play into Wolfram|Alpha, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, brings up basic information, such as number of acts, scenes, and characters. It also provides more in-depth info like longest word, most frequent words, number of words and sentences, and more. It’s also easy to find more specific information about a particular act or scene with queries like “What is the longest word in King Lear?”, “What is the average sentence length of Macbeth?”, and “How many unique words are there in Twelfth Night?”.
Literature teachers will face essays in which words fly up. What is below is a numerical recipes. And close reading? We have heard the chimes at midnight.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Woopra Educates Users about Web Analytics
April 11, 2012
We paid attention in statistics class. The quality of the data and the questions one frames are key to making any analytics exercise work. Punching buttons and generating pretty charts and graphs are not too helpful if the underlying data and the questions are off base, incorrect, or training wheels for a hassled MBA.
Quora recently posed the question “Web Analytics: Most companies don’t use the full potential of their Web Analytics tools. What do you think?” and received eight answers.The most thought provoking response came from Natalie Issa, the Marketing Director of the web analytics company Woopra.
According to Issa, there are four key points one should keep in mind when tackling the web analytics challenge. These are: Google analytics, marketing vs. developers, large companies vs. small, and educating users.
When discussing the importance of educating users, Issa writes:
“Web analytics services need to invest and devote resources to educating users. The company I work for, Woopra, is tackling this head on by hiring individuals whose job it is to teach and create learning materials for our users to make sure they have all the support they need (if this sounds like your kind of job, feel free to message me :)). We’re also seeing more and more marketing firms and consultants helping small and medium size businesses with their web analytics needs.”
Does this mean that customers are making decisions without an appropriate understanding of what the math behind the system actually delivers? Our view: training wheels on analytics can produce some interesting consequences.
The reality is that analytics will not solve problems reliably unless the users understand the data and frame the correct question. Statistics 101. It is not the training; it is the fact that people want a silver bullet, not mental effort. Just our view, of course. Marketers have a different goal, and it is not education, is it?
Jasmine Ashton, April 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lucid Imagination Lands Government Big Data Deal
April 9, 2012
Give me an “L,” give me a “U,” give me a…well if I ask you to yell out all those letters on the computer screen, people might begin to think you’re a few bytes short of a complete memory drive. The reason for my cheering, though, was inspired by MarketWatch’s article on “Intelligent Software Solutions Partners With Lucid Imagination to Tackle Government Big Data Challenges.”
Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS) and Lucid Imagination have entered into a two-year joint business development deal, where both companies will create big data search and analysis solutions. The government has been having trouble with processing “teraquads” of structured and unstructured data. The article said:
“ ‘Our relationship with Lucid gets us to a higher level of proficiency on this technology by putting experts on our team to work jointly with us to build tailored solutions for our customers,’ said Wes Caldwell, chief architect, Global Enterprise Solutions Division, Intelligent Software Solutions. ‘We are in the business of providing software solutions for our customers that allow them to mine, manage and analyze large amounts of data and to derive critical knowledge from that data. The promise of harnessing big data to deliver actionable intelligence from an often diverse and vast amount of data is quickly becoming a requirement for many of our customers. By leveraging Lucid Imagination’s enterprise open source search platform, we can deliver better value to our customer base. This partnership is a key component to that strategy and further strengthens our position in that area.’”
The main force behind the joint venture is Lucid Imagination’s open source enterprise search technology that allows companies to build their own search products. ISS will add Lucid’s people to their team and together they will deliver training and support services for their government clientele. Lucid Imagination is proving to the world how powerful and useful open source software can be. Is this the start of a new trend or will it pass by quickly?
By the way, “teraquads” sounds big.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Open Source Analytics Information Service Now Available
April 9, 2012
ArnoldIT has rolled out The Trend Point information service. Published Monday through Friday, the information services focuses on the intersection of open source software and next-generation analytics. The approach will be for the editors and researchers to identify high-value source documents and then encapsulate these documents into easily-digested articles and stories. In addition, critical commentary, supplementary links, and important facts from the source document are provided. Unlike a news aggregation service run by automated agents, librarians and researchers use the ArnoldIT Overflight tools to track companies, concepts, and products. The combination of human-intermediated research with Overflight provide an executive or business professional with a quick, easy, and free way to keep track of important developments in open source analytics. There is no charge for the service.
Stories include:
- White House Orders Big Data Solutions
- Public and Private Sectors Combine for Big Savings
- Analytic Revolution Looks Different from 90s Dotcom Boom
According to the publisher, Stephen E Arnold:
We believe that commercial abstracting and indexing services have become untenable for the busy professional. We have combined traditional indexing, literature reviews, and critical commentary which help reduce the time required to pinpoint the meaningful information in this exploding open source analytics field.
Our business model is to provide high value information without a fee. Individuals, law firms, and private equity firms wanting additional information about the people, companies, and products we cover are free to contact us. Like other professional services’ firms, we rely on motivated individuals with an information need to tap into our full-scale, in-depth research.
What sets TheTrendPoint and other ArnoldIT.com information services apart is that its approach is similar to that used by commercial information services such as Medline and Disclosure, two information services designed to make reference services more useful.
At this time, TheTrendPoint.com is designed to complement the finding services which ArnoldIT.com publishes. ArnoldIT.com is one of the leading sources of information on subjects ranging from search and content processing to next-generation intelligence systems.
New content is added to the service Monday to Friday. For more information about the service, contact the publisher at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Kenneth Toth, April 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Exclusive Interview: David B. Camarata, IKANOW
April 9, 2012
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
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
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