JackBe: Data Fusion
January 17, 2012
Founded in 2002 by brothers Luis and Jacob Derechin, JackBe was originally an AJAX widget company. At the demand of its customers, the company centered its product offering around an enterprise mashup server that supports the user-driven ad-hoc integration of data. The company was cited as a “Next-Gen BI” technology by Forrester Research, Inc. in its March 2011 “Trends 2011 And Beyond: Business Intelligence” report.
JackBe’s real-time business intelligence platform, Presto, allows users to combine data from any enterprise application, as well as data from the cloud to compose apps and dashboards that are publishable to portals, the web, spreadsheets, and mobile devices. The platform is organized around Presto Hub, which provides a single point of sign-on for JackBe’s mashup development editors, governance tools for administrators, and application storefront.
The company’s Presto Enterprise Mashup Server provides service virtualization that solves business problems and allows users and developers secure and consolidated access to disparate data from internal services, external services, and application databases. Presto Mashup Composers and Presto Mashup Connectors feature tools that enable business and technical users to create mashups. JackBe also offers Transparency 2.0, a solution for data feeds and data widgets for state and local government’s citizen-facing websites, and Mashup Sites for SharePoint, an intelligence solution that provides SharePoint 2007/2010 business users with real-time visual web-part-based apps and interactive dashboards.
To help users store, organize, and share mashups and apps, JackBe developed an app store framework in the third iteration of Presto. The apps are portable and can feed data into Excel and run standalone, on dashboards, on mobile devices, or in SharePoint.
Customers include the US Air Force, the US Army, NASA, Elsevier, Random House, Qualcom, GE Energy, and Accenture and illustrate the broad appeal of the platform. Competitors include Zapatec, IBM, and mashup tools provided by online service providers such as Google and Yahoo.
One observation: Our efforts to contact the company have been routinely ignored or pushed to a telemarketer. Your mileage may vary.
Rita Safranek, January 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Urgency of the Cloud for Enterprise
January 10, 2012
It seems that moving IT infrastructure to the cloud is no longer an innovative alternative, but is rather becoming the standard, the norm. IT teams need to embrace the change and shift their thinking away from the football team sized IT staffs of the future. This is not just a general trend, but one that specifically applies to large organizations’ enterprise solutions as well. Rob Lamear focuses on the need to move SharePoint to the cloud in, “Why You NEED SharePoint in the Cloud Now.”
Lamear is referring here to the budget crunch pushing the urgency of the Cloud:
C-levels in every country are no longer telling me that the Cloud is something ‘we are looking at,’ but rather have turned the conversation to ‘We need the Cloud!’ They know they need to slash IT budget dollars and use them in other areas of the business. At best, they use the extra money to innovate and differentiate in the global marketplace. At worst, they need to save to survive.
The question we have to ask is how complicated and costly is the initial move to the cloud. Is there a simpler solution that combines efficient enterprise search with functional, affordable cloud services? We think Fabasoft Mindbreeze might be just that solution.
Read a little more about their cloud services:
The Cloud makes your business mobile; Mindbreeze finds its way in the Cloud. This intelligent search is available as a Cloud service. This means that, if you so desire, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can run without any installation whatsoever – we operate the search engine for you. All the data that you manage in the Cloud is made searchable by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. This makes Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise the center of excellence for your knowledge in the Cloud too.
Implementing Fabasoft Mindbreeze in the cloud alongside your existing SharePoint installation is a switch that improves the efficiency of your search as well as your infrastructure. There’s no configuration and no maintenance. If your organization spent less time and money maintaining your enterprise system, in what other areas could you invest those resources? It is definitely worth consideration, and Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Customer Experience to Take Center Stage in 2012
December 2, 2011
We are post-Thanksgiving—that time of year when the “year in review” articles start emerging and predictions are made for coming trends to meet us in the new year. The world of content management systems is no exception. Marisa Peacock gives us some of her predictions in, “If 2012 Is the Year of Customer Experience, What Will it Bring?”
According to Peacock, customer experience will take center stage in areas such as mobile, social, personalization, and localization to name a few. What does all this mean to us? A need for better content management.
Peacock’s advice:
“Of course, we must wait for 2012 to really understand how and if brands will leverage the customer experience. With only a month left before the new year, companies of all sizes are strongly encouraged to revisit their mobile strategies, customer relationship management tools and social media policies.”
How do you prepare in a smart way, despite what changes the new year may bring? Invest in a smart content management solution, one that can handle information needs on multiple levels. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its suite of offerings.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.”
Mindbreeze can handle mobile, email, enterprise, website search, etc. Their Connectors feature works with SharePoint 2010, if that system is already in place at your organization. Regardless of the size or scope of your organization, information needs continue to grow exponentially. Heed the warnings and manage your information in a way that improves the customer experience. Find a smart solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and you will be able to adapt to changing needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 02, 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).
Mindbreeze Offers Standalone Enterprise Solution
November 14, 2011
CMS Wire follows the latest trends in enterprise CMS in “Forrester Wave Q4 2011: Bye-Bye Enterprise CMS Suites, Content-Centric Apps Are King.” Content needs are becoming more complex and organizations are turning to multiple solutions and away from a single CMS suite.
“The first dynamic that the Forrester report identifies shows that companies are no longer looking to a single enterprise CMS suite to solve all their content needs. There are a number of reasons for this, but looming over them all is the fact that changing content-types and greater use of, and need to manage, unstructured content is pushing many companies to use whatever application suits, from whatever vendors are providing those applications, to solve specific business problems. And then, of course, information workers have to be able to use all these applications.”
Relying on the variety of vendors might not be the solution to the changing enterprise landscape. Instead, choosing an agile and capable vendor like Mindbreeze seamlessly solves all of your business needs on multiple levels: mobile, web, and enterprise. When multiple vendors are utilized, information workers are forced to train on a variety of platforms and applications. Using one flexible solution like Mindbreeze saves valuable training time.
“SharePoint, and in particular the new release, Forrester argues, which provides ‘ECM for the masses’ has forced many vendors to rethink strategies and move towards more content-centric development. As a result, competing vendors have been obliged to move toward specific content sets to differentiate themselves from it. Consequently, the market is now divided into a number of different types of players.”
Instead of being forced into this trend, and choosing different vendors for different content, choose one reliable vendor like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Applications are still content-centric, but in a smart and streamlined way, all underneath the banner of one dependable name.
*Disclaimer – Mindbreeze is currently upgrading their website. Links will be checked and if problems arise they will be updated. Thanks for your patience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 14, 2011
Mindbreeze Named Trendsetting Product
November 11, 2011
KM World lists Fabasoft Mindbreeze as one of its “Trend-Setting Products of 2011.” Microsoft SharePoint’s main claim is that it makes it easier for people to work together. However, we argue that a uniform platform does not guarantee ease, not unless the solution is customized to the organization and the situation. Fabasoft Mindbreeze boasts a highly customized enterprise solution allowing for not only efficient searching, but also “finding” across an organization’s entire system.
“Mindbreeze understands, relates and combines information from all sources and presents intelligent search results. Information can be grouped and is classified. Users can scan the different categories and spot a particular document without having to click through a list of links themselves. The information’s semantic relationship is recognized and depicted, navigation elements and facets are provided as well as a preview of any result in the browser. With Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise you get a 360 degree view of your business, customers, competitors and more.”
Any discuss of an entity’s entire platform would be incomplete without some attention to mobile devices. Fabasoft Mindbreeze not only supports search and retrieval from mobile devices, but also ensures that access rights are continually maintained and updated on these devices as well.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile supports your enterprise to profit from new opportunities to e-mail, collaborate and work with documents from any location. With Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile you can deliver any information to your mobile device’s interface and enhance it with context and classification features. Again, approved security procedures ensure that users can only see information for which they have rights.”
Since search is often carried out under time constraints, an easy and intuitive interface is essential. Explore the features of Fabasoft Mindbreeze to learn how this trend-setting solution can work for you.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 11, 2011
Search Silver Bullets, Elixirs, and Magic Potions: Thinking about Findability in 2012
November 10, 2011
I feel expansive today (November 9, 2011), generous even. My left eye seems to be working at 70 percent capacity. No babies are screaming in the airport waiting area. In fact, I am sitting in a not too sticky seat, enjoying the announcements about keeping pets in their cage and reporting suspicious packages to law enforcement by dialing 250.
I wonder if the mother who left a pink and white plastic bag with a small bunny and box of animal crackers is evil. Much in today’s society is crazy marketing hype and fear mongering.
Whilst thinking about pets in cages and animal crackers which may be laced with rat poison, and plump, fabric bunnies, my thoughts turned to the notion of instant fixes for horribly broken search and content processing systems.
I think it was the association of the failure of societal systems that determined passengers at the gate would allow a pet to run wild or that a stuffed bunny was a threat. My thoughts jumped to the world of search, its crazy marketing pitches, and the satraps who have promoted themselves to “expert in search.” I wanted to capture these ideas, conforming to the precepts of the About section of this free blog. Did I say, “Free.”
A happy quack to http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amcl_astronomical_material02.html for this image of the 21st century azure chip consultant, a self appointed expert in search with a degree in English and a minor in home economics with an emphasis on finger sandwiches.
The Silver Bullets, Garlic Balls, and Eyes of Newts
First, let me list the instant fixes, the silver bullets, the magic potions, the faerie dust, and the alchemy which makes “enterprise search” work today. Fasten your alchemist’s robe, lift your chin, and grab your paper cone. I may rain on your magic potion. Here are 14 magic fixes for a lousy search system. Oh, one more caveat. I am not picking on any one company or approach. The key to this essay is the collection of pixie dust, not a single firm’s blend of baloney, owl feathers, and goat horn.
- Analytics (The kind equations some of us wrangled and struggled with in Statistics 101 or the more complex predictive methods which, if you know how to make the numerical recipes work, will get you a job at Palantir, Recorded Future, SAS, or one of the other purveyors of wisdom based on big data number crunching)
- Cloud (Most companies in the magic elixir business invoke the cloud. Not even Macbeth’s witches do as good a job with the incantation of Hadoop the Loop as Cloudera,but there are many contenders in this pixie concoction. Amazon comes to mind but A9 gives me a headache when I use A9 to locate a book for my trusty e Reeder.)
- Clustering (Which I associate with Clustify and Vivisimo, but Vivisimo has morphed clustering in “information optimization” and gets a happy quack for this leap)
- Connectors (One can search unless one can acquire content. I like the Palantir approach which triggered some push back but I find the morphing of ISYS Search Software a useful touchstone in this potion category)
- Discovery systems (My associative thought process offers up Clearwell Systems and Recommind. I like Recommind, however, because it is so similar to Autonomy’s method and it has been the pivot for the company’s flip flow from law firms to enterprise search and back to eDiscovery in the last 12 or 18 months)
- Federation (I like the approach of Deep Web Technologies and for the record, the company does not position its method as a magical solution, but some federating vendors do so I will mention this concept. Yhink mash up and data fusion too)
- Natural language processing (My candidate for NLP wonder worker is Oracle which acquired InQuira. InQuira is a success story because it was formed from the components of two antecedent search companies, pitched NLP for customer support,and got acquired by Oracle. Happy stakeholders all.)
- Metatagging (Many candidates here. I nominate the Microsoft SharePoint technology as the silver bullet candidate. SharePoint search offers almost flawless implementation of finding a document by virtue of knowing who wrote it, when, and what file type it is. Amazing. A first of sorts because the method has spawned third party solutions from Austria to t he United States.)
- Open source (Hands down I think about IBM. From Content Analytics to the wild and crazy Watson, IBM has open source tattooed over large expanses of its corporate hide. Free? Did I mention free? Think again. IBM did not hit $100 billion in revenue by giving software away.)
- Relationship maps (I have to go with the Inxight Software solution. Not only was the live map an inspiration to every business intelligence and social network analysis vendor it was cool to drag objects around. Now Inxight is part of Business Objects which is part of SAP, which is an interesting company occupied with reinventing itself and ignored TREX, a search engine)
- Semantics (I have to mention Google as the poster child for making software know what content is about. I stand by my praise of Ramanathan Guha’s programmable search engine and the somewhat complementary work of Dr. Alon Halevy, both happy Googlers as far as I know. Did I mention that Google has oodles of semantic methods, but the focus is on selling ads and Pandas, which are somewhat related.)
- Sentiment analysis (the winner in the sentiment analysis sector is up for grabs. In terms of reinventing and repositioning, I want to acknowledge Attensity. But when it comes to making lemonade from lemons, check out Lexalytics (now a unit of Infonics). I like the Newssift case, but that is not included in my free blog posts and information about this modest multi-vehicle accident on the UK information highway is harder and harder to find. Alas.)
- Taxonomies (I am a traditionalist, so I quite like the pioneering work of Access Innovations. But firms run by individuals who are not experts in controlled vocabularies, machine assisted indexing, and ANSI compliance have captured the attention of the azure chip, home economics, and self appointed expert crowd. Access innovations knows its stuff. Some of the boot camp crowd, maybe somewhat less? I read a blog post recently that said librarians are not necessary when one creates an enterprise taxonomy. My how interesting. When we did the ABI/INFORM and Business Dateline controlled vocabularies we used “real” experts and quite a few librarians with experience conceptualizing, developing, refining, and ensuring logical consistency of our word lists. It worked because even the shadow of the original ABI/INFORM still uses some of our term 30 plus years later. There are so many taxonomy vendors, I will not attempt to highlight others. Even Microsoft signed on with Cognition Technologies to beef up its methods.)
- XML (there are Google and MarkLogic again. XML is now a genuine silver bullet. I thought it was a markup language. Well, not any more, pal.)
Mindbreeze: A View from the Top
November 9, 2011
Fabasoft Mindbreeze managing director, Daniel Fallman, gives his insight to KM World in, “Mindbreeze, Managing Director, Daniel Fallmann: View from the Top.”
Using open standards, Mindbreeze offers high-performance enterprise search and digital cognition for all kinds of enterprises. We have developed context-enriching indexing services, which are available without time-consuming set up procedures. Information access without ironclad security is not a solution. Fabasoft Mindbreeze ensures that only authorized users can access the information. Our product was designed from the beginning to be installed quickly in minutes, thus obviating expensive installation processes. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance can be up and running for your users in just a matter of hours.
Fallmann, the Fabasoft Mindbreeze founder, talks about his Austrian start-up on this brief video. He is able to succinctly explain how the Mindbreeze solution assists users with internal and external search.
Saving the user from lengthy installation and clunky customization, Mindbreeze seamlessly integrates onto an existing platform. Semantic recognition enhances search results, providing not only quick but relevant search results. Third-party application data is available to mobile devices through Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile. Standard installations such as Microsoft SharePoint can lack versatility and customization becomes lengthy and difficult.
Evaluate your enterprise needs and see if Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its highly efficient solutions might be the right choice for your organization. In Fallmann’s words, “Make informed decisions.”
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 9, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Implementing with Intent
November 7, 2011
In a blog dedicated to document management news, the haphazard implementation of SharePoint is highlighted. Read the full commentary at, “SharePoint Surge Continues but Strategies Are Lacking.”
A recent survey by AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) has found that less than 50% of SharePoint implementations were subject to a formal business case, and only half of those required a financial justification. As a result, most did not have a management plan as to which of SharePoint’s many features were to be used, and where. Meanwhile, SharePoint deployment is proceeding rapidly, with 22% of respondents reporting it to be in use by 100% of office staff. This adoption rate is set to double by this time next year.
SharePoint is the current enterprise fad, with the adoption rate growing exponentially. However, is the effort even effective or worthwhile if the implementation is done without planning? Customized installation is costly but without customization the platform is virtually useless. Furthermore, a highly customized system can create a steep learning curve for new users.
One solution we found in our research is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. We learned from Mindbreeze:
A corporate-wide information platform maintaining and continuously expanding a well-funded knowledge base needs the greatest possible flexibility. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise links the most common data sources in corporations and organizations by special connectors, establishing the basis for further links to the creative utilization of internal corporate knowledge.
With Mindbreeze, the learning curve for new users is lessened and day-to-day work is more efficient for staff. Customization is automatic and relevant. To get the most out of your SharePoint installation, implement with intent and look into Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 7, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Spotlight: Mindbreeze for Easy Search and Access
November 4, 2011
CMS Wire weighs in on SharePoint 2010 and its viability as an internet site CMS. In, “Is SharePoint 2010 the Right Web CMS for Your Internet Site?” Michal Pisarek makes an argument for the integration of SharePoint 2010 as a broad web content management system.
Although the author argues that SharePoint 2010 has made improvements over the 2007 version, some issues remain.
Of course the breadth of SharePoint’s capabilities can also serve as its downfall. If your organization has specific needs that need deep vertical capabilities than you should be considering the cost of implementing this custom functionality on the SharePoint platform.
If this is the case then you might be better served with a niche solution, rather than the broader set of features that SharePoint offers. A product like Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise makes it easy to really handle adaptive and personalized website content. So your site acts like an information hub that adapts to users’ behavior on your site. Search-driven content as a building block of a next generation web content management functionality. Where SharePoint lags, Mindbreeze bridges the gap with your website, intranet, or mobile applications. Find more details at, “Search & Information Access as easy as 1-2-3.
“Showing search results in your Web site is hard? A new API to learn because your Web site uses a different programming language than available from your search engine vendor? Read on and learn how easy it can be to search-enable your content.”
An explanation of features follows, including personalized, search-driven and contextualized content. This Mindbreeze tutorial demonstrates how easy it is to add Fabasoft Mindbreeze functionality to a site, without much more than basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. We agree that SharePoint 2010 improves usability, but if ultimate efficiency and precision are desired, Mindbreeze is the best solution for search and information access.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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