Conference Spam or Conference Prime Rib
January 21, 2009
I winnowed email over the weekend. I noticed what seemed to be an increasing amount of conference spam. I don’t want to name the offending conference organizers, but I think that traditional conference organizers must be feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. For example, I just learned that one conference outfit that asked me to give a talk wants me to pay several hundred dollars to publish my presentation. I ignored the request. Another outfit sent me a list of 10 reasons to attend a mobile conference in Barcelona. Hey, Barcelona is a great city, but in today’s economic environment, I am not buying my own ticket to Spain so I can learn about mobile phones. I can read some Web log posts and interact with people on this Web log. Another outfit has told me that I can learn about the future of enterprise search. Sorry. Enterprise search doesn’t have much of a future. The most successful companies are providing systems that mesh with work processes and deliver actionable intelligence or some other buzzword just not “enterprise search”. The recent pull out from the IDG Apple conference sent shock waves through the conference world. If Apple jumps to the CES 2010 show, what happens to Macworld? What about information conferences that try to cover multiple disciplines in the unruly world of digital data? Those puppies confuse the attendees and anger the exhibitors. What’s network attached storage have to do with eDiscovery and licensing news from Factiva? Answer: not much from an exhibitors’ point of view I opine.
There are some promising new conferences coming along. I am not including the “in crowd” meet ups that occur routinely in the San Jose – San Francisco corridor. The go to search meeting for 2009 seems to be the Infonortics’ Boston meeting. You can find information about that program here. I have a vested interest in this conference for three reasons:
- I roll out the findings from my most recent analyses of Google’s patent documents and technical papers. The period from April 2008 to the present has been Google’s most productive. Few know about Google’s broader technology thrusts outside of the Googleplex.
- I fund and oversee the Evvie Award. Named in honor of one of the leading online innovators, Ev Brenner, the award recognizes the best presentation developed for the conference. The judging panel’s criterion is to answer the question “Would Ev have liked the presentation?” The people making the value judgment typically include Sue Feldman (IDC), Liz Liddy (Syracuse University), and David Evans (Justsystems), among others. The recipient receives a modest cash honorarium and an equally modest trophy. The value is peer recognition at this important conference.
- I learn from speakers who “do” search and content processing. I don’t endure presentations from the exhibitors or the best friends of the conference organizer.
Infonortics, unlike some of the near-death and deadly dull conferences, limits the number of attendees. Register early or find yourself waiting for next year.
Stephen Arnold, January 21, 2009
Kazeon Chops eDiscovery Prices
January 21, 2009
You know that the white shoe world of legal eagles is preparing for a tough year when eDiscovery outfits cut their prices. Lawyers once spent like mad in the name of due diligence and maybe a little thought about billing. The clients would pay and pay and pay. After all, who wants to wear an orange jumpsuit on the TV news or be immortalized on a Web site marching off to court? Law firm customers — sorry, clients, a more upscale word — are pushing back. Big companies are taking some of the work back inside the company’s walls. The outputs go to law firms who will keeps costs within certain parameters (a fancy word to describe a budget). How do I know these changes are underway? Easy. I got a briefing from an eDiscovery vendor last week and that outfit told me that it was making headway against high end eDiscovery vendors. The issue was cost. Price seemed to be this company’s strategic weapon. Today (January 20, 2009) I read in Byte and Switch here that “Kazeon Cuts Costs of Entry Level eDiscovery”. Paul Travis reports that a company can jump into eDiscovery for as little as $10,000. Keep in mind that a perpetual license still costs $80,000 a year. For me, the most important comment in the article was:
…There are more than 100 e-discovery vendors and that more are expected to enter the market this year. The result has been customer confusion and “led to a customer demand for clarity around e-discovery products, and for full integration around the e-discovery workflow process.
With the LegalTech trade show looming, I expect more cost cutting announcements. I am assuming that the show takes place. Rumor has it that one Gartner content management show has been postponed (a big word for shut down). Cost is on a number of professionals’ radar and the pricing for eDiscovery systems will be one indicator of the robustness of the content processing services sector.
Stephen Arnold, January 21, 2009
IBM Lotus Notes: In the Cloud but Can I Find Emails
January 20, 2009
IBM’s Lotus Notes has been splashed across my trusty feedreader today (January 19, 2009). IBM is either kicking its Lotus Notes’s sales activity up a notch or the original Ray Ozzie program is undergoing a rebirth. The search function for Lotus Notes has been interesting. At Ziff Communications, we were early adopters of Lotus Notes. In the 1980s it was tough for me to locate a specific email. Last time I tried to locate emails and attachments in a Notes repository, the job was still tough two decades later. There were some specialized searching tools such as Grapevine. I am not sure if this system from Grapevine Technologies is still in business. Today, I can fire index Notes repositories with third party tools. These work pretty well until I have to dig out a Notes archive, figure out what is what, and then go through the indexing and searching fire drill.
Now Lotus Notes is going to the cloud. You can read the story in the Industry Standard here. According to Lincoln Spector, LotusLive provides a signal for the future of this “platform”. Mr. Spector writes in “IBM Shoots for the Cloud with LotusLive but Notes Pricing Is a Mystery”:
After a year of public beta under the name BlueHouse, LotusLive was officially announced Monday at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando. Users can sign up and start using two LotusLive services, Meetings and Events. Meetings integrates audio and video conferencing and costs $48 to $99 per month depending on the number of participants, or 25 cents per minute. Events is intended to help users manage and host an online conference. In addition to the actual conferencing, it also handles registration and other chores. Meetings costs $99 per month or 30 cents per minute per guest.
Like an infomercial, I am going to say, “Wait. There’s more.” IBM and SAP have teamed to make a “smarter workforce”, according to eWeek. Clint Boulton’s “IBM, SAP Ally on Alloy for Enterprise Collaboration here.” The new Alloy product combines Lotus Notes and SAP’s Business Suite. Now when two elephants with appetites for seven figure license deals team up, the result is going to be fascinating to watch.
The question that I had after reading these announcements was, “Okay, will I be able to search for a particular email and attachment in a way that is a marked improvement over the default string matching?” As the volume of email goes up, finding and managing email is particularly important.
There are third party tools from Wave Software here and Coveo who provide solutions. I can turn to Exalead, ISYS Search Software, and several other vendors for solutions as well.
But IBM is moving to the cloud with Lotus Notes, and I am not convinced that either IBM’s or SAP’s search and retrieval system is there yet. Announcements are fine, but when I need to locate an email, I want a low latency system that works. I don’t want to pay more money.
If anyone knows what I am missing with regard to findability, please, contribute a comment in the appropriate section of this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, January 20, 2009
Autonomy and Xerox in Tie Up
January 20, 2009
Big news in the world of content processing and search: Xerox and Autonomy have struck a deal. According to this news story on Forbes.com “Xerox DocuShare Enters into OEM Agreement with Autonomy”, “The new license will allow Xerox to integrate Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) technology into its DocuShare enterprise content management (ECM) platform.” Docushare is a content management system. The IDOL server will be integrated into the existing Docushare accounts worldwide.
David Smith, Xerox VP, said:
Content management technologies and services that help organizations save money, better manage content and improve efficiencies are essential in today’s business climate… The integration of Autonomy’s IDOL Server takes DocuShare’s ability to meet the needs of our global customer base to the next level.
Information about Docushare is here. Information about Autonomy IDOL is here. The content management sector has been hit by Microsoft’s SharePoint push. Other CMS vendors have beefed up their search and content processing services to withstand the “good enough” system available at competitive rates from Microsoft and its resellers. For example, Interwoven has a deal with Vivisimo.
The challenge for Xerox will be to hold on to its existing customers. The opportunity for Autonomy is to make upsells for other Autonomy functionality. If this deal works, perhaps Xerox will step forward and acquire Autonomy. The vendor has more than 16,000 licensees and a number of lucrative deals. Xerox has dabbled in search and content processing for many years. In fact, Microsoft licensed some of the Xerox search and content processing technology as part of Microsoft’s purchase of Powerset in 2008.
My question is, “What does Xerox know about Xerox PARC technology that prevents Xerox from using its own technology in the Docushare product?” This begs another question, “Does Microsoft know that Xerox has sidestepped Xerox PARC technology for the Autonomy IDOL system?”
Autonomy has a strong business in litigation support. I wonder if Xerox Litigation Services will avail itself of the Autonomy technology to address some of the shortcomings in the Xerox eDiscovery offerings. I don’t have any color for the financial terms of the deal. If I get some substantive information, I will post it.
Stephen Arnold, January 20, 2009
Semantico CEO Interviewed
January 19, 2009
Richard Padley is an engaging information, content and search wizard. I visited with his technical team at the Semantico exhibit at the Online London show. Unlike the US search conferences, the team working on the London show for Incisive does a much better job of attracting interesting speakers and exhibitors. Semantico works with organizations producing content. Mr. Padley helps these organizations make better use of staff time and prepare content so that it can be quickly and economically repurposed. I followed up with him in early January 2009 and managed to convince him to participate in a Search Wizards Speak interview. You can find the full text of that interview here.
One of the intriguing comments, Mr. Padley made was:
Because of the sort of company we are, it’s less about technology invention for us than about adaptation and selection. Open source is very important to us, for instance, and we’re strong believers in using the best tool for the job. In the past 18 months we’ve started using the Mark Logic database to build the publishing platforms we deliver – which is a very innovative platform. It allows us to put different kinds of content together and query them in ways that allow publishers to build new kinds of products, while still respecting the different sizes and shapes that content comes in. ‘Content in context’ is a phase I hate, but it does provide a way of getting a handle on this for the layman: it’s about providing small snippets of contextualized information within the workflow. Say you’re a vet – we can build a platform that can integrate reference information about veterinary medicine with available drugs and your own patient records, and so on.
What’s interesting is that MarkLogic has carved out an interesting niche providing a flexible, robust data management system. Now an ecosystem is beginning to form around that MarkLogic platform. Search, while a key function in Semantico’s arsenal, is secondary to solving information problems. As companies like Microsoft chase the search dream with questionable technologies that are getting long in the tooth, Semantico is helping create a new approach to content processing. Note: you can read the interview with Mark Logic’s top executive here.
You can get more information about Semantico here.
Stephen Arnold, January 19, 2009
Google’s Knol Milestone
January 18, 2009
Everyone in the drainage ditch in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, thinks Knol is a Wikipedia clone. This addled goose begs to differ. This addled goose thinks Knol is a way for the Google to obtain “knowledge” about topics and the experts who contribute to a Knol (a unit of knowledge). Sure, Knol can be used like Wikipedia, but the addled goose thinks the Knol is more, much, much more.
At any rate, the Google announced on January 16, 2008, after the goose tucked its head under its wing for the week that there are now 100,000 Knols. What this goose found interesting was the headline: “100,000th Knol Published.” I love that word “published”. Google emphasizes that it is not a publisher, but it is interesting to me how the word turns up. You can read the story here.
The blog post contains some interesting insights into Knol; for example, people from 197 countries visit Knol “on an average day.” The interface is available in eight languages. Visitors are editing Knols.
Now how long will it take Knol to reach one million entries?
Stephen Arnold, January 18, 2009
Cognition Technologies: Gospels Demo Available
January 18, 2009
Cognition Technologies has put up a new demo that allows users to search the Gospels of the Bible. The system has processed the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You can find the demo from the Cognition Technologies’ home page at http://www.cognition.com or here.
The company selected this corpus to showcase Cognition Technologies’ ability to deal with metaphorical language. The natural language processing system permits queries by words, phrases, and questions. The company said:
We have worked very hard to show companies interested in semantically-enabling their technologies that Cognition’s technology understands language and concept nuance.
Biblical texts are difficult to parse and tag. Keep this in mind when you look at the demo. The easiest content to process is tidy, scientific, technical, and medical content chock full of jargon. Texts like the Gospels are stuffed with fuzziness, concepts, and metaphors.
For more information about the Cognition Technologies’ system, you can explore the firm’s Web site or you can read an analysis in the Gilbane Group’s study “Beyond Search” here.
Stephen Arnold, January 18, 2009
Exalead Profile Now Available
January 14, 2009
The Enterprise Search Report is no more. Thank goodness. A good idea in 2003 when work on the first edition began, the tome became an antique. I wrote the first three editions. I don’t know who did the fourth. With the coming of the new year, the rights to the information in the Enterprise Search Reports, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions, came back to me. I will be creating profiles based on my research into more than 50 vendors. At its peak the ESR only contained 30 profiles.
The first profile in the new, free Beyond Search Report series–an analysis of Exalead–is now available on the ArnoldIT.com Web site here. It runs about 11 pages and includes information about Exalead’s search system. I have enough information for a supplement about Exalead’s newest technology, and I will try to get that posted in the next couple of weeks as well.
I will work through my files and publish a profile every week or two. I have not worked out the full publication schedule yet, but I will get that done once I become more familiar with the new format.
There is no charge for these analyses. If you find an error, or if there is something in a profile with which you don’t agree–use the comments section of this Web log to provide your ideas and facts. I try to deliver a zero error document, but I have been writing about companies for a long time. Changes occur frequently, so you may find some variance between what’s in my free report and what the company’s sales rep tells you tomorrow.
The new logo. The Beyond Search goose is a proud mommy. Tess, however, was annoyed. She wanted a canine to identify these free reports.
Keep in mind that some of the information I have about vendors will not appear in the profiles. If you want more information about a vendor, you can write me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com and ask for a price quote for a more detailed report. I try to track down pricing and patent information, for example, but I don’t put this information in these free profiles. I want to be helpful, but I don’t want to end up as a Wal*Mart greeter. I have to sell some proprietary reports to survive.
Part of my method is to give the vendor an opportunity to comment on my analyses. These profiles are objective, so a vendor may not agree with some of my points. That’s okay. I just don’t want to be sued by 20 somethings who take umbrage at a 65 year old’s view of a search or content processing company. What vendors say and what the software does are two very different things in my opinion.
The combination of the interviews in the Search Wizards Speak series plus this Web log plus the Beyond Search profiles with a nifty new logo makes it easy for a person interested in enterprise search to get smart without spending $1,000 or more for a report that is outdated the minute it becomes available.
Stephen Arnold, January 14, 2009
Yet Another Magic Quadrant. Sigh.
January 13, 2009
The notion of a magic quadrant originated with the Boston Consulting Group. The original notion was to depict products in a strategic concept. In the 1970s, BCG caught Booz, Allen & Hamilton (the pre break up version of this blue chip firm) was in a tizzy because the BCG people had a secret weapon that left our consultants looking out of touch. The secret weapon depicted an X and Y axis. The X axis showed market share and the Y axis the growth rate of the business. The idea was to group a firm’s products, technologies, people, or whatever the BCG consultant needed to categorize as a cash cow (complete with a cow picture), stars, dogs, and problems or questions. The client could see what to “milk” and what to shut down. The BCG team would analyze further but the BCG matrix was a good business use of stuff that every calculus student learns in the second day of class. BCG, like other blue chip firms, crunches numbers until those numbers howl for mercy. The analysis sits underneath the matrix. The brilliance of the BCG approach is that it allowed BCG to explain a strategy without having to show slide after slide of analysis; for example:
- Dog–Low market share, low market growth. Example: Search utilities like Outside In
- Cash cows–High market shares, low market growth. Example: IBM OmniFind
- Stars-High market share, high market growth. Example: Google Search Appliance
- Problems or question marks–Low market share, high market growth.Microsoft Live.com search.
Others jumped on the bandwagon. I don’t recall the Booz, Allen & Hamilton buzzword for its strategic map. I have a copy around here somewhere. My recollection is that the McKinsey version of the BCG matrix was that McKinsey had six cells, not four. I always thought of the children created from the BCG quadrant as the BCG matrix. Sloppy thinking, I know. But BCG’s Bruce Henderson was identified to me as the “evil genius” who put Booz, Allen and other blue chip consulting firms behind the eight ball for a period in the 1970s.
When I started paying attention to search and retrieval, an uninformed senior executive whom I am loath to identify, gave me a copy of a Gartner report with a “magic quadrant.” I remember thinking that the Gartner approach did not make much use of the type of analysis cranked out by the blue chip firms. Remember that the MBAs and assorted whiz kids manipulated hard data such as sales by region, product margin, legal costs, research and development expenditures, and the like as the foundation on which the BCG matrix stood. Not the Gartner analysis. My recollection is vivid. The data seemed soft. I was thinking that whoever generated a soft matrix at Booz, Allen or one of the other blue chip firms where I have labored as a rental would have met with considerable push back.
Applying the BCG matrix to a business sector known for project failures, cost overruns, user dissatisfaction, and marketing baloney was likely to create some vendors with noses out of joint. The pure numerics of the BCG matrix focused on a single company or an industry sector and had data behind it. One’s nose could be out of joint, but the data are the data. Subjective analyses are just that, subjective and inherently impressionistic. Sales data are sales data. One can argue about how the data were collected, but the numbers are what they are.
Imagine my surprise when I read the Forbes.com article “Auto0nomy Positioned in Top Players Quadrant in Radicati Group Magic Quadrant” here. I have no quibble with Autonomy being listed as a leading vendor. What struck me was that the Radicati Group seemed to have borrowed heavily from the Gartner magic quadrant, itself a borrowing from the original BCG matrix.
My thought was, “I wonder if Radicati is hooked up with Gartner?” In my opinion, we have a mini-boomlet in azure chipped consultants recycling ideas. In my opinion, I think these derivatives of the original BCG matrix should:
- State the data on which the rankings or recommendations were based
- Provide hard data, not impressions
- Offer links to fungible data.
Perhaps Beyond Search should cook up a multi-celled, hypercube and populate it with rankings of the more than 300 vendors in the search and content processing space? Perhaps Beyond Search should ignore the market realities and plug in little known systems as vendors who are poised to trample the giants like Autonomy and Google? I don’t think this type of exercise is much more than a publicity and marketing play.
A similar situation is evident in Gartner’s use of the Burton Group’s notion of a “superplatform” recast as a “megavendor”. See here.
Edith Wharton, the American novelist, said as I recall, “True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” To revivify the flagging search and content processing sector, originality is needed. And quickly in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, January 13, 2009
Search Goes Down, Google Turns on the Juice
January 8, 2009
I saw several Web log posts and major media (dead tree outfits) articles about the decline in Web travel searches. A representative story is “Internet Travel Searches Drop 42 Percent” here. UK journalistic endeavors amuse me no end. Honk. Honk. Laura Dixon wrote:
Internet searches for flights were down over 40 per cent in the week after Christmas according to Hitwise, a division of Experian. Traffic to travel Web sites for the same period – up to the week ending January 3 – was also down 16 per cent.
Interesting but not the sort of data that makes me flap my wings. The addled goose thinks that a quick visit to Google.com is in order. I wonder if Ms. Dixon has entered this query in the Google search box: SFO LAX. That’s it. Two three letter strings. These abbreviations refer to airports. Here’s what the GOOG displayed for me:
My thought is that if the number of queries is down, what’s the value of appearing as one of the seven featured air ticket sources underneath the structured query insert? In fact, in the last few months, there’s been some shuffling of the featured carriers. Notice too that the Google system automatically converted the airport pair into a query. Set the dates, pick a vendor, and bingo you get a list of options. Pretty handy for mobile phone users too. I wonder if Microsoft will offer this feature on its forthcoming Verizon service.
To me the downturn in flight searches means that the Google will turn on the juice to get more revenue from advertisers who must get traffic. That’s a more interesting angle for the addled goose to consider. But I live in rural Kentucky and am not affiliated with an oh-so-excellent dead tree publication. There you go.
Stephen Arnold, January 8, 2009
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