Enterprise Search in the Realm of Social Media
December 13, 2011
Enterprise and social media are two emerging trends gaining ground fast in the world of IT, but how do they work together? Not just fads, they have proven their worth and are here to stay, but how can they both be utilized in order to maximize efficiency? SharePoint is an obvious place to start, as it controls a large segment of the market. Rich Blank gives the pros and cons in, “5 Myths about SharePoint as an Enterprise Social Platform.”
When SharePoint 2010 arrived in the marketplace, the platform included new social capabilities to improve productivity and collaboration. However, as the consumer social web exploded, it became clear that the 2010 platform only provided the basic building blocks of social computing. As many organizations are now making social collaboration a priority, it’s important to dispel myths and provide a reality-based understanding of SharePoint 2010 as a social computing platform.
While SharePoint works as an enterprise foundation, its true potential comes through the addition of third party solutions. A solution that we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Fabasoft has taken an interest in social media, and is working to maximize its offerings to compliment social media needs.
Here Michael Hadrian discusses their participation in the Content and Collaboration Summit in London:
’With Folio Cloud, Fabasoft has developed a European Cloud for ECM and B2B collaboration. This enables worldwide connected collaboration and secure data exchange in protected team rooms,’ explained Michael Hadrian, Fabasoft Distribution GmbH managing director. ‘As Premier Sponsor at this established conference, we are looking forward to contributing towards the continued advancement and assertion of business Cloud applications.’ In his presentation, Michael Hadrian presented Fabasoft’s latest inter-company business applications live, showing which concrete business advantages companies can benefit from with Fabasoft Folio Cloud based on customer projects.
While there is not yet a single out-of-the-box solution for organizations needing to merge their enterprise and social media needs, there are good solutions out there. Check out the Mindbreeze suite of offerings to see if it might work for you.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Open Text Social Framework
November 21, 2011
The dips and glides of the enterprise and content processing sectors fascinate me. I noticed that Open Text, based in Waterloo, Ontario, is on track to remain a $1.0 billion company. As I write this, the company’s stock is nosing toward $60 a share. With Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy, Open Text inherits the title of a “billion dollar search and content processing company.”
In the 1990s, I tracked Open Text. As the company evolved into a collection of properties, I shifted to companies which were sticking closer to the “findability” sector. As you probably know, the core of Open Text today sits upon technology which I associate with Dr. Tim Bray. Dr. Bray work at Digital Equipment and worked at the University of Waterloo on the New Oxford English Dictionary project. He founded Open Text Corporation, which commercialized an XML search system which I believe was used in the dictionary. Open Text created a Web index which available as the Open Text Index and then morphed into “Tuxedo,” a Web index no longer available at the link I had on the Open Text Web site. Web search is an expensive proposition, and I understand why a company like Open Text would exit the free Web search service business.
Today’s Open Text owns the SGML search technology, and the company has acquired a number of other search and content processing systems. My view is that Open Text perceived search as a good business in which to compete. With the ready availability of open source search solutions and low cost “good enough” systems, I wonder if the company’s enthusiasm for search and retrieval has dwindled.
Open Text has a number of search technologies. For example, Open Text acquired Information Dimension in 1998. Information Dimensions’ BASIS search system was database management system. My colleague Howard Flank and I used BASIS to build the original Bellcore MARS billing system on the platform shortly after the AT&T breakup was announced. Open Text also acquired Fulcrum, a Microsoft centric search and retrieval system based in Ottawa, Ontario. I remember that one could use Fulcrum to search Siebel Systems content. Hummingbird was acquired by Open Text in 2006. Open Text used the Fulcrum technology in its Hummingbird Search Server product, now a connectivity solution. Open Text also acquired BRS Search (Bibliographic Retrieval Services) in 2001. As you know, BRS was a competitor to Dialog Information Services. BRS was a variant of IBM STAIRS technology, ran on IBM mainframe systems, and could handle sophisticated queries. I recall hearing that BRS technology was used in the Open Text LiveLink product. I think of LiveLink as an early version of SharePoint, blending content, collaboration, and search in a single system.
In 2010, Open Text purchased the Nstein content processing firm, which was based in Montréal, Québec. I think one of my team contacted Nstein to profile them for one of my reports. The firm was too busy. Then in 2009, an Nstein executive scheduled an appointment with me in London, UK, and “forgot” the meeting. Nifty.
Open Text has a basket of technologies to use to solve prospect and client problems. Is the company a model for other search and content processing firms trying to generate top line growth in a tough economic setting?
Since Dr. Bray’s departure, Open Text has been rolling up search and content processing firms. Much of the company’s growth has been fueled by acquisitions and cross selling, not raw innovation. In fact, Open Text has a bewildering array of content management technologies, including PS Software (records management), Gauss (Web content management systems), RedDot (Web content management systems with an embedded Autonomy search functionality), IXOS AG (SAP-centric archiving systems), Captaris (document capture systems which gave Open Text Brainware and ZyLAB functionality), Spicer (file viewing technology), Vizible (an interface company), StreamServe (an enterprise publishing system vendor of direct mail and other collateral), Metastorm (business process software), weComm (mobile device software developer), and Global 360 Holding Corp. (case management solutions).
Spotlight: Mindbreeze on the SharePoint Stage
November 1, 2011
A new feature, mentioned in the Beyond Search story “Software and Smart Content.” We will be taking a close look at some vendors. Some will be off the board; for example, systems which have been acquired and, for all practical purposes, their feature set frozen. I have enlisted Abe Lederman, one of the founders of Verity (now a unit of Autonomy and Hewlett Packard) and now the chief executive of Deep Web Technologies.
Our first company under the spotlight is Mindbreeze, which is a unit of Fabasoft, which is one of the leading, if not the leading, Microsoft partners in Austria. Based in Linz, Mindbreeze offers are remarkably robust search and content processing solution.
The company is a leader in adding functionality to basic search, finding, and indexing tasks in organizations worldwide. In August 2011, CMSWire’s “A Strategic Look at SharePoint: Economics, Information & People” made this point:
SharePoint continues to grow in organizations of all sizes, from document collaboration and intranet publishing, to an increasing focus on business process workflows, internet and extranets. Today, many organizations are now in flight with their 2010 upgrades, replacing other portals and ECM applications, and even embracing social computing all on SharePoint.
The Mindbreeze system, according to Daniel Fallmann, the individual who was the mastermind behind the Mindbreeze technology, “snaps in” to Microsoft SharePoint and addresses many of the challenges that a SharePoint administrator encounters when trying to respond to diverse user needs in search and retrieval. In as little as a few hours, maybe a day, a company struggling to locate information in a SharePoint installation can be finding documents using a friendly, graphical interface.
My recollection of Mindbreeze is that it was a “multi stage” service oriented architecture. For me, this means that system administrators can configure the system from a central administrative console and work through the graphical set up screens to handle content crawling (acquisition), indexing, and querying.
The system supports mobile search and can support “apps,” which are quickly becoming the preferred method of accessing certain types of reports. The idea is that a Mindbreeze user from sales can access the content needed prior to a sales call from a mobile device.
According to Andreas Fritschi, a government official at Canton Thurgau:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise makes our everyday work much easier. This is also an advantage for our citizens. They receive their information much faster. This software can be used by people in all sectors of public administration, from handling enquiries to people in management.
Why is the tight integration with Microsoft SharePoint important? There are three reasons that our work in search and content processing highlights.
First, there are more than 100 million SharePoint installations and most of the Fortune 1000 are using SharePoint to provide employees with content management, collaboration, and specialized search-centric functions such as locating a person with a particular area of knowledge in one’s organization. With Mindbreeze, these functions become easier to use and require no custom coding to implement within a SharePoint environment.
Second, users are demanding answers, not laundry lists. The Mindbreeze approach allows a licensee to set up the system to deliver exactly with a group of users or a single user requires. The tailoring occurs within the Fabasoft and Mindbreeze “composite content environment.” Fabasoft and Mindbreeze deliver easy-to-use configuration tools. Mash ups are a few clicks away.
Third, Mindbreeze makes use of the Fabasoft work flow technology. Information can be moved from Point A to Point B without requiring changing users’ work behaviors. As a result, user satisfaction rises.
You can learn more about Mindbreeze at www.mindbreeze.com. Information about Fabasoft and its technology are at www.fabasoft.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
When Social and Search Meet in the Enterprise
September 8, 2011
Organizations are embracing Microsoft SharePoint as a platform for collaboration and other social online messaging. “If You Must Have In-House Social Tools, Go with SharePoint” is representative of the flood of information about SharePoint’s utility for collaborative activities.
J. Peter Bruzzese said:
he good news, at least from the SharePoint perspective, is that you have a tremendous amount of control over the amount of information people can share. For example, by deploying the User Profile Service Application in a SharePoint server farm, you can deploy My Sites and My Profile options to your users. They can then enter their own profile information, upload images of themselves for a profile picture, create a personal page with a document library (both personal and shared), tag other people’s sites and information, and search for people within the organization based on their profiles. The SharePoint administrator can control the extent to which the sharing occurs. You can adjust the properties in the profile page, turning options on or off and adding new properties if needed. You can turn off the I Like It and Tags & Notes features, and you can even delete tags or notes your corporate policy disapproves of. You can access profile information and make changes if needed. And you don’t have to turn on My Sites or let people create their own blog and so on: It’s not an all-or-nothing situation with these tools (ditto with third-party tools).
The excellent write up does a good job of explaining SharePoint from a high level.
There are three points which one wants to keep in mind:
First, collaborative content puts additional emphasis on managing the content generated by the users of social components within SharePoint. In most cases, short message are not an issue. What is important, however, is capturing as much information about the information as possible. One cannot rely on users to provide context for some comments. Not surprisingly, additional work is needed to ensure that social messages have sufficient context to make the information in a short message meaningful to a person who may be reviewing a number of documents of greater length. To implement this type of feature, a SharePoint licensee will want to have access to systems, methods, and experts familiar with context enhancement, not just key word indexing.
Second, the social content is often free flowing. The engineering for a “plain vanilla” SharePoint is often sufficiently robust to handle typical office documents. However, if a high volume flow of social content is produced within SharePoint, “plain vanilla” implementations may exhibit some slow downs. Again, throwing hardware at a problem may work in certain situations but often additional modifications to SharePoint may be required to deliver the performance users expect. Searching for a social message with a key fact can be frustrating if the system imposes high latency.
Finally, social content is assumed to be a combination of real time back and forth as well as asynchronous. A person may see a posting or a document and then replay an hour or a day later. Adding metadata and servers will not address the challenge of processing social content in a timely manner. Firms with specific expertise in search and content processing can help. The approach to bottleneck issues in indexing, for example, rely on the experience of the engineer, not an FAQ from Microsoft or blog post from a SharePoint specialist.
If you want to optimize your SharePoint system for social content and make that content findable, take a look at the services available from Search Technologies. We have deep experience with the full range of SharePoint search solutions, including Fast Search.
Iain Fletcher, September 8, 2011
Sponsored by Search Technologies
More Than File-Sharing Needed in SharePoint 2010
July 2, 2011
The article “Is SharePoint 2010 Ready For Social Business? Nope” chomps on the meat and potatoes of the competition between leading file-sharing programs. The loser? SharePoint 2010, and it is no big surprise.
A run down of SharePoint 2010s inadequacies seen from a rather narrow angle is the focus of a This Week in Lotus podcast. Expert Luiz Benitez examines the overwhelming challenges Microsoft faces with its SharePoint 2010, focusing on file-sharing as a jumping off point. Mr. Benitez asserts that the much more progressive IBM Connections offers tools that meet the needs of organizations jumping into social computing.
Briefly moving past file-sharing into the other essential components of a successful social business platform Benitez states,
…this is just comparing file sharing. It doesn’t even get to compare head-to-head Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Team places, Profiles/My Sites, Ideation (which SharePoint doesn’t have), and other capabilities that are in Connections but not in SharePoint (microblogging!)
The final nail on SharePoint 2010s “sharing” coffin is that a major consulting company, IDC, ignored this weakness not once, but twice. We must admit we did not know about this alleged IDC shortcoming, but Mr. Benetiz has been more attentive.
Despite SharePoint 2010s popularity as a file-sharing entity, it clearly faces hurdles unlikely to be overcome with the fast-changing pace of social business initiatives demanded in the world marketplace. Microsoft may be able to redeem itself and its insufficient SharePoint with its next release. We think that SharePoint might be late to the sharing snack table.
Catherine Bize, July 2, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
SharePoint Dual Feature Bonanza
September 13, 2010
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has more social and search features, which are intertwined to create an enticing platform for users. This and more is revealed in the Able Blue blog post “The MOSS Show Interview”, which takes you to The MOSS show site’s interview “Enterprise Social (and Search) in SharePoint 2010”.
The two part podcast interview of Matthew McDermott, who is a Microsoft SharePoint expert and MVP, talks about the new improved social features like improved My Sites, Activity Feed, tagging, rating, managed metadata, taxonomies, and folksonomies in SharePoint 2010. Matthew talks about the importance of having a search strategy, and leverage the search applications by making the search actionable and refined.
SharePoint 2010 can help create a knowledge base that benefit over a long period, and can be shared amongst users. Matthew points out, “What makes SharePoint 2010 special is its ability to gather feedback from people participating in the content consumption,” which enhances the value of the content, making it more important to the enterprise. This is enterprise social, which gains more relevance if “made more findable by tagging and using proper metadata.”
Matthew explains that SharePoint 2010 adds great enterprise social capabilities, and facilitates to integrate third party external applications like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter outside the firewall from SharePoint 2010. These social tools can be used to create a business value. The new SharePoint 2010 allows the internal as well as external URLs in the browser to be tagged, and enables the list of all the tagged URLs to collect on a tag profile page.
The managed metadata store of SharePoint 2010, allows people to create a central repository of data through service applications. There is also a feature to make the data translatable into multi-lingual forms, and even deny the use of tags for various reasons. “Activity feed is a feature through which you get your news or tips of the day by just following the tags,” Matthew reports, “and you get the ability to consume content around the organization.” He believes that this helps the employees to connect with each other, nurture cooperation, and makes them productive by improving the culture of the workplace.
The beauty of SharePoint 2010, as per Matthew McDermott is that users can themselves decide upon the governance of the data, and thus get complete control of this powerful enterprise social platform, with highly developed search techniques.
Now, how expensive is it to maintain a proprietary system that requires hands on fiddling to make work as advertised? The answer to this question is not in the movie. Maybe the sequel?
Harleena Singh, September 13, 2010
Freebie
WAND and Layer2 Team for SharePoint Taxonomy Functions
March 19, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Jump-Start Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Knowledge Management Using Pre-Defined Taxonomy Metadata”. The Microsoft Fast road show is wending its way among the Redmond faithful. In its wake, a number of companies see opportunity in the Microsoft demos. But with Microsoft making some tasty offers to incentive those looking for search systems, Microsoft may be doing third-party add-on vendors and Fast ESP consultants a big favor.
The Earth Times’ article said:
In cooperation with WAND, Inc – one of the leading providers of enterprise taxonomies – Layer2 now offers pre-defined Taxonomy Metadata for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, a robust and expanding library of taxonomies covering a wide variety of domains to help jumpstart classification projects. Taxonomy Metadata for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is currently available in 13 languages, e.g. English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
WAND has developed structured multi-lingual vocabularies with related tools and services to power precision search and classification applications. The company asserts that WAND makes search work better. WAND Taxonomies are used in online yellow pages and local search, ad-matching engines, business to business directories, product search, and within enterprise search engines. The firm’s library contains more than 40 domain specific taxonomies. WAND’s taxonomies are available in 13 languages.
Layer 2 GmbH is a specialist for creating custom components and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. Based in Germany, Layer2 offers products and solutions that add additional features to portals based on Microsoft SharePoint technology.
My view is that Microsoft may be creating opportunities at the same time it leaves some SharePoint customers wondering why their systems do not work as expected. If taxonomy management was a priority, Microsoft should have included a system to perform this type of work within the SharePoint package. Third party vendors now have an opportunity to sell a “solution,” but customers may have to go through a learning process and then spend additional money to get the functionality required to make SharePoint more useful.
Perhaps another mixed result from SharePoint? Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2010
Freebie. No one paid me to point out that talking about “taxonomies” is much easier than implementing a high value taxonomy and then enforcing consistent tagging across the processed corpus. I know that the IRS is good at indexing by social security number, so I will report non payment to that agency.
Vivisimo Rivets Social Search Deal
March 10, 2010
Vivisimo and its Velocity Enterprise Search Platform is versatile. I read “Vivisimo Powers Social Search for the Industrial Research Institute” and learned more about the Velocity social search capabilities.
IRI is “a leading research organization representing industrial and service companies that have a common interest in technological innovation and invest billions on research and development annually.” IRI wants to maximize the value of social media for its lead generation activities.
According to the new story:
…Members are able to use the search interface as a single collaboration point, fostering knowledge sharing among users and optimizing information…RI members using Velocity are utilizing a rich set of discovery, personalization and collaboration functionality, empowering them with greater control over their search experience. Rather than just being able to search and find information, users can tag, rate and annotate documents and search terms to optimize future results all aimed at improving collaboration, innovation and productivity.
Approximately 1,000 IRI members will use the new search service.
My definition of social search is more narrow than that presented in the news story. The idea that search is a collaboration tool because a user can add a tag is more in the Microsoft SharePoint approach to information management. If you want more information, point your browser to Vivisimo’s Web site.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. I will report non payment to the social secretary for the White House and if the position is not yet filled, I will report when the new person is on the job and screening invitation lists.
SharePoint Sunday: January 3, 2010 Round Up
January 4, 2010
Herd them SharePoint geese. Yee-hah. The goslings and I love SharePoint almost as much as Exchange. If you are a SharePoint 2010 wrangler, you may find these tips and tricks helpful. If not, click away, partner. The addled goose may trample you with its stampeding goslings who are full as a tick after New Year’s Eve partying.
- Do you know how to get the Search Query API calls to be logged in the search usage analysis reports? If the answer is no, then you will need to mosey over to Trailblazer’s SharePoint Blog. You will find the explanation and a code snippet to get you started. Check out the pre requisites. Omit one, partner, and the method won’t work. Log analysis is too much work for some busy SharePoint administrators in my opinion.
- If you are not aware of the social freight that will be heaped on SharePoint and its supporting servers, you will want to take a look at “Ray Ozzie’s New Social Lab: What It Means For Enterprise 2.0.” Microsoft has been gnawing on social functions for five or more years, but its seems that everything old is new again, including a social lab, big ideas, and more bloat for SharePoint. SharePoint may be getting roostered up.
- We had a client call us last week and talk about enterprise memory and knowledge management. We are not sure what knowledge is, but we poked around and provided some ideas. In the course of our research, we came across Melodika.net’s “Building a Corporate Knowledge Structure with KWizCom’s Wiki Plus.” the idea is that this tool runs within SharePoint and it seems to provide the type of content capture and access functions our caller wanted. You can get more information about KWizCom’s products and services here.
As a final note, one of the Microsoft execs (Chris Liddell) on duty when the $1.23 billion acquisition of Fast Sear ch & Transfer SA took place has skedaddled from Redmond. The fellow is now working at General Motors. I wonder what super acquisitions he will engineer at that fine organization. I think the assets of the Tucker Corporation and Studebaker Corporation may be in play. GM may not want to let those hot properties go up the flume.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 4, 2010
No one paid me to provide this summary of SharePoint search information, darn it. I suppose I need to alert the Joint Fire Science Program because I wrote about such a hot product as SharePoint without taking cash.
Social, Real Time, Content Intelligence
November 29, 2009
I had a long talk this morning about finding useful nuggets from the social content streams. The person with whom I spoke was making a case for tools designed for the intelligence community. My phone pal mentioned JackBe.com, Kapow, and Kroll. None of these outfits is a household word. I pointed to services and software available from NetBase, Radian6, and InsideView.
What came out of this conversation were several broad points of agreement:
First, most search and content processing procurement teams have little or no information about these firms. The horizons of most people working information technology and content processing are neither wide nor far.
Second, none of these companies has a chance of generating significant traction with their current marketing programs. Sure, the companies make sales, but these are hard won and usually anchored in some type of relationship or a serendipitous event.
Third, users need the type of information these firms can deliver. Those same users cannot explain what they need, so the procurement teams fall back into a comfortable and safe bed like a “brand name” search vendor or some fuzzy wuzzy one-size-fits-all solution like the wondrous SharePoint.
We also disagreed on four points:
First, I don’t think these specialist tools will find broad audiences. The person with whom I was discussing these social content software vendors believed that one would be a break out company.
Second, I think Google will add social content “findability” a baby step at a time. One day, I will arise from my goose nest and the Google will simply be “there”. The person at the other end of my phone call sees Google’s days as being numbered. Well, maybe.
Third, I think that social content is a more far reaching change than most publishers and analysts realize. My adversary things that social content is going to become just another type of content. It’s not revolutionary; it’s mundane. Well maybe.
Finally, I think that these systems—despite their fancy Dan marketing lingo—offer functions not included in most search and content processing systems. The person disagreeing with me thinks that companies like Autonomy offer substantially similar services.
In short, how many of these vendors’ products do you know? Not many I wager. So what’s wrong with the coverage of search and content processing by the mavens, pundits, and azure chip consultants? Quite a bit because these folks may know less about these vendors’ systems than how to spoof Google or seem quite informed because of their ability to repeat marketing lingo.
Have a knowledge gap? Better fill it.
Stephen Arnold, November 29, 2009
I want to disclose to the National Intelligence Center that no one paid me to comment on these companies. These outfits are not secret but don’t set the barn on fire with their marketing acumen.
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