Palantir Applies Lipstick, Much Lipstick
February 16, 2012
I had three people send me a link to the Washingtonian article “Killer App.” On the surface, the write up is about search and content processing, predictive analytics, and the value of these next generation solutions. Underneath the surface, I see more of a public relations piece. but that’s just my opinion.
Let me point out that the article was more of a political write up than a technology article. Palantir, in my opinion, has been pounding the pavement, taking journalists to Starbuck’s, and working overtime. The effort is understandable. In 2010 and 2011, Palantir was involved in a dispute with i2 Group, now a unit of IBM, about intellectual property. The case was resolved and the terms of the settlement were not revealed. I know zero about the legal hassles but I did pick up some information that suggested the i2 Group was not pleased with Palantir’s ability to parse Analyst Notebook file types.
I steered clear of the hassle because in the past I have done work for i2 Ltd., the predecessor to the i2 Group. I know that the file structure was a closely held and highly prized chunk of information. At any rate, the dust is now settling, and any company with some common sense would be telling its story to anyone who will listen. Palantir has a large number of smart people and significant funding. Therefore, getting publicity to support marketing is a standard business practice.
Now what’s with the Washingtonian article? First, the Washington is a consumer publication aimed at the affluent, socially aware folks who live in the District, Maryland, and Virginia. The story kicks off with a description of Palantir’s system which can parse disparate information and make sense of items which would be otherwise lost in the flood of data rushing through most organizations today. The article said:
To conduct what became known as Operation Fallen Hero, investigators turned to a little-known Silicon Valley software company called Palantir Technologies. Palantir’s expertise is in finding connections among people, places, and events in large repositories of electronic data. Federal agents had amassed a trove of reporting on the drug cartels, their members, their funding mechanisms and smuggling routes.
Then the leap:
Officials were so impressed with Palantir’s software that seven months later they bought licenses for 1,150 investigators and analysts across the country. The total price, including training, was $7.5 million a year. The government chose not to seek a bid from some of Palantir’s competitors because, officials said, analysts had already tried three products and each “failed to provide the necessary comprehensive solution on missions where our agents risk life and limb.” As far as Washington was concerned, only Palantir would do. Such an endorsement would be remarkable if it were unique. But over the past three years, Palantir, whose Washington office in Tysons Corner is just six miles from the CIA’s headquarters, has become a darling of the US law-enforcement and national-security establishment. Other agencies now use Palantir for some variation on the challenge that bedeviled analysts in Operation Fallen Hero—how to organize and catalog intimidating amounts of data and then find meaningful insights that humans alone usually can’t.
Sounds good. The only issue is that there are a number of companies delivering this type of solution. The competitors range from vendors of SharePoint add ins to In-Q-Tel funded Digital Reasoning to JackBe, a mash up and fusion outfit in Silver Spring, Maryland. Even Google is in the game via its backing of Recorded Future, a company which asserts that it can predict what will happen. There are quite sophisticated services provided by low profile SAIC and SRA International. I would toss in my former employers Halliburton and Booz, Allen & Hamilton, but these firms are not limited to one particular government solution. Bottom line: There are quite a few heavy hitters in this market space. Many of them outpace Palantir’s technology and Palantir’s business methods, in my opinion
In short, Palantir is a relative newcomer in a field of superstar technology companies. In my opinion, the companies providing predictive solutions and data fusion systems are like the NFL Pro Bowl selections. Palantir is a player, and, in my opinion, a firm which operates at a competitive level. However, Palantir is not the quarterback of the winning team.
From my viewpoint in Harrod’s Creek, the Washingtonian writes about Palantir without providing substantive context. In-Q-Tel funds many organizations and has taken heat because many of these firms’ solutions are stand alone systems. Integrations without legal blow back is important. Firms which end up in messy litigation increase security risks; they do not reduce security risks. Short cuts are not unknown in Washington political circles. It is important to work with companies which demonstrate high value behaviors, avoid political and legal mud fights, and deliver value over time.
The Washingtonian article tells an interesting story, but it is a bit like a short story. Reality has been shaped I believe. Palantir is presented out of context, and I think that the article is interesting for three reasons:
- What it asserts about a company which is one of a number of firms providing next generation intelligence solutions
- The magazine itself which presented a story which reminded me of a television late night advertorial
- The political agenda which reveals something about Washington journalism.
In short, an quite good example of 21st century “real” journalism. That lipstick looks good. Does it contain lead?
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Checklist: Before you Escalate a Ticket to Microsoft Support
February 6, 2012
Joel Oleson of SharePoint Joel blog recently published a list of “7 Things You Should Do Before You Escalate to Microsoft Support” when troubleshooting a system issue. Oleson’s in-depth list goes beyond the obvious troubleshooting that Tier 2, Tier 3, and Engineering should do and includes checklist items such as reading up on your service pack and cumulative update level, rebooting, working with the entire team to isolate the issue, and reviewing code. First on the list:
You know one of the first things Microsoft support will want to know is what version and patch level you are at. If you’re way back, they are going to ask you to upgrade. At a minimum you should be on the latest service pack to address the majority of bugs they will point to. Now understanding that there are different tolerances to patching, this will be something you will need to decide. My recommendation is you don’t install a CU unless you need it. Well, when you’re dealing with what you think is a bug, there’s a chance it’s fixed a CU rollup or more recent CU.
Oleson also suggests reaching out to social solution forums, such as Twitter or the Microsoft Newsgroups.
Steps to help prevent long man hours on the phone with tech support while your system is not functioning properly are, of course, welcome. But this checklist sure sounds like a lot of trouble. Depending on your organization, you may not want to devote the time and effort for extensive troubleshooting prior to calling tech-support. We think it would be easier to go with a simple third-party solution like Mindbreeze, cutting down on the costly man hours.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise provides consistent and comprehensive information access to both corporate and Cloud sources. The seamless Cloud solution makes sure you find the right information you need at any time. Check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, February 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
IBM Helps Electrolux Workers Connect
February 3, 2012
IBM makes a social software sale. Did Watson help or is me-too-ism at work? Writer Darryl K. Taft doesn’t say in “Electrolux Taps IBM for Social Software” at eWeek. Looking to bring its workers in 60 countries together for collaboration, appliance maker Electrolux turned to IBM. The new intranet is based on IBM Connections and, not surprisingly, Microsoft SharePoint.
The write-up reports:
Electrolux employees are using IBM Connections microblogging to quickly spread information across the organization, including new-product and customer care ideas, and strategic organizational announcements. In addition, Electrolux employees will also have access to a social-collaboration dashboard. Through integrating IBM Lotus Notes email and IBM Sametime instant messaging, employees will be able to drag an email into a Connections Activity and discuss with colleagues in that specific window.
Besides enabling teamwork, the software cuts down on space-eating email attachments. There is, of course, also a dashboard feature. Whatever did we do before those were invented? We are still waiting for a public demonstration of Watson, not via television post production.
Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Exogenous Complexity 1: Search
January 31, 2012
I am now using the phrase “exogenous complexity” to describe systems, methods, processes, and procedures which are likely to fail due to outside factors. This initial post focuses on indexing, but I will extend the concept to other content centric applications in the future. Disagree with me? Use the comments section of this blog, please.
What is an outside factor?
Let’s think about value adding indexing, content enrichment, or metatagging. The idea is that unstructured text contains entities, facts, bound phrases, and other identifiable entities. A key word search system is mostly blind to the meaning of a number in the form nnn nn nnnn, which in the United States is the pattern for a Social Security Number. There are similar patterns in Federal Express, financial, and other types of sequences. The idea is that a system will recognize these strings and tag them appropriately; for example:
nnn nn nnn Social Security Number
Thus, a query for Social Security Numbers will return a string of digits matching the pattern. The same logic can be applied to certain entities and with the help of a knowledge base, Bayesian numerical recipes, and other techniques such as synonym expansion determine that a query for Obama residence will return White House or a query for the White House will return links to the Obama residence.
One wishes that value added indexing systems were as predictable as a kabuki drama. What vendors of next generation content processing systems participate in is a kabuki which leads to failure two thirds of the time. A tragedy? It depends on whom one asks.
The problem is that companies offering automated solutions to value adding indexing, content enrichment, or metatagging are likely to fail for three reasons:
First, there is the issue of humans who use language in unexpected or what some poets call “fresh” or “metaphoric” methods. English is synthetic in that any string of sounds can be used in quite unexpected ways. Whether it is the use of the name of the fruit “mango” as a code name for software or whether it is the conversion of a noun like information into a verb like informationize which appears in Japanese government English language documents, the automated system may miss the boat. When the boat is missed, continued iterations try to arrive at the correct linkage, but anyone who has used fully automated systems know or who paid attention in math class, the recovery from an initial error can be time consuming and sometimes difficult. Therefore, an automated system—no matter how clever—may find itself fooled by the stream of content flowing through its content processing work flow. The user pays the price because false drops mean more work and suggestions which are not just off the mark, the suggestions are difficult for a human to figure out. You can get the inside dope on why poor suggestions are an issue in Thining, Fast and Slow.
Spam Attack from Info360 and Real Story
January 30, 2012
I am fascinated with the machinations of conference organizers adapting to the iPad era.
I was invited to Info360? The name did not resonate, so I browsed the spam message, a portion of which is included in this blog post.
So what’s an Info360? On the surface, it seems to be mostly about an azure chip (maybe a very pale azure?) consulting firm and a gaggle of jargon. Here’s an example of what’s on tap in June, which the spam assures me is amazing:
- Big data and analytics
- Cloud infrastructure.
- Content management basics, records management, and Web content management (presumably different from “basic” content management and not a subset of content management)
- Data capture
- Enterprise collaboration
- Mobile business
- SharePoint
- Social business
In short, this is an umbrella conferences covering a multitude of topics. The Info360 program is, I believe, the Association of Image and Information Management’s event.
These “one size fit all” conferences contrast with more focused start up showcase events or focused technical events such as the Lucid Imagination Lucene Revolution program.
More and more umbrella conferences are “pay to play” talks. Programs are often little more than product and marketing pitches.
What should a person do who is seeking information about a specific topic in the laundry list in the spam message sent to me? My suggestion is to look for a specialty conference close to home.
Email marketing, at least for me, spam is a turn off. When the spam uses words like “amazing” and “real”, I tune out. I may be taking steps toward a certain blindness by ignoring spam about conferences, so your mileage may differ. Search is not on the program. That’s probably a plus because search is certainly no buzzword like “big data” or “mobile business”, whatever that means.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Spotlight: Streamlining Enterprise 2.0
December 6, 2011
As enterprise runs rampant and adoption continues at break-neck speed, the risk is that solutions are becoming more complicated without becoming more functional. In other words, do we need to return to simplicity in order to regain a positive user experience? Molly Bernhart Walker tackles that question in, “The case for stripped-down Enterprise 2.0 tools.”
“Content management systems live and die by requirements, but sometimes even the longest checklist in an RFP won’t deliver tools that yield real results. There’s a lot to be said for simple Enterprise 2.0 tools, said Tim Young, founder of Socialcast and vice president for social software at VMware. ‘Simple tools are incredibly powerful,’ said Young Nov. 15, during a keynote at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. It’s very difficult to solve a complex problem with a complex tool, he added.”
SharePoint 2010 is notably the most widely adopted enterprise solution, but its many quirks require complimentary solutions to increase functionality. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers an alternative to SharePoint, but also through its Connectors, offers a companion to SharePoint. We like Mindbreeze because of its commitment to simplicity and gracefulness.
“The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.”
Choosing an appropriate enterprise solution is not an easy decision. Remember to keep user experience in mind. Locating a solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, that maintains a dedication to simplicity and usability, will pay off long-term dividends in terms of saved time and frustration. The most complicated solutions are often the most convoluted as well.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 6, 2011
AppRapids: A New Information Service about Enterprise Apps
December 6, 2011
We pride ourselves on the wide variety of information covered “beyond search”. But the field of search technology increasingly morphs into a larger and larger beast. We have decided to focus on apps in a new information service.
That’s why we have created AppRapids. We want to cover the appification of enterprise software solutions. Like SharePointSemantics and Inteltrax, the service is supported by a commercial venture. We are delighted to announce that PolySpot will sponsor AppRapids.
The AppRapids service will cover news, developer information, and business strategies for the exploding world of enterprise applications for search, content processing, and business processes.
This service is run by members of the Beyond Search team. AppRapids’ editor Megan Feil and ArnoldIT editorial coordinator Constance Ard, MLS, utilize the Overflight intelligence system to track important news related to enterprise architecture, search solutions, and apps.
Features of the new service include:
- Open comments section
- Social components such as LinkedIn and Facebook presences
- User-submitted content
- Open source approach so you can locate a source document and reuse the AppRapids’ content with a link back to the micro-site.
As the PRWeb News Release states, Chief Marketing Officer and PolySpot Founder Olivier Lefassy said:
We believe that the type of information generated by ArnoldIT makes it easy to track important innovations and the companies which are helping create the next-generation enterprise frameworks, architectures, and solutions, including open source. PolySpot is active in this arena, and we want to ensure that a continuous flow of information is available to document developments in open source and proprietary solutions.
PolySpot was founded in 2001. The company designs and sells search and information access solutions designed to improve business efficiency in an environment where data volumes are increasing at an exponential rate. PolySpot’s solutions offer universal connectivity, covering all business needs and ensuring that companies can access the data they need, regardless of their structure, format or origin.
For more information about PolySpot’s enterprise solutions, navigate to www.polyspot.com.
PolySpot’s solutions are based on an innovative infrastructure offering both versatility and high performance, enabling companies to make best use of their assets and rationalizing the strategic costs that today’s businesses and organizations face. PolySpot’s solutions have millions of users worldwide, across all business sectors, with customers including Allianz, BNP Paribas, Bureau Veritas, Crédit Agricole, OSEO, Schlumberger, Veolia, Trinity Mirror and Vinci. For more information about PolySpot, point your browser to www.polyspot.com.
The most notable feature of AppRapids is similar to what we do at Beyond Search: stories include analysis of topics that are usually intentionally muddled by the language of marketing experts. The editors welcome comments for stories and any ideas may be submitted to gumdrop1@mail.com. Point your browser to the About Us page for more information on the editorial policy.
The AppRapids’ team will be attending key events, and we will process news releases sent to us at the email in the news service, gumdrop1@mail.com. We are contemplating a meet up in the near future. Watch AppRapids for details.
Megan Feil, December 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Solution to Email Overload? No Email
December 4, 2011
I enjoy France and the French. The country is essentially an engineering outfit with a soft spot for art, a love of intellectual discussion, and a clever approach to thorny problems. Consider email. At Atos, the senior management has found a solution to email overload, the risks of eDiscovery, and the cost of trying to manage unfindable PowerPoint attachments. (My hunch is that the news report missed some of the story, but, hey, that’s okay.
How? Here’s what I learned in “Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy.” Let’s assume ABC News has the facts lined up like Napoleon’s army before it did the Moscow in Autumn thing. Here’s what I learned:
The company says by 2013, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and editing of existing information. Middle managers spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for information, according to the company. Crouch said Atos is evaluating a number of new tools to replace internal email including collaborative and social media tools. Those include the Atos Wiki, which allows all employees to communicate by contributing or modifying online content, and Office Communicator, the company’s online chat system which allows video conferencing, and file and application sharing.
So “zero” does not mean zero. Social interactions are not email. Okay, ABC News, close enough for horseshoes. I assume the cloud, Gmail, and various on premises solutions along the lines of SharePoint and Exchange would not work.
The reality is that email is going to be tough to eliminate even if one calls the outputs “collaboration” with a “social” twist of lemon. No lemonade here, however. Search vendors can rest easy. Atos is a prospect. Symantec, HP, and Recommind can make sales calls confident that non-email digital information must be searched, made findable, and discoverable by avocats which are lawyers no matter what one calls these fine professionals.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2011
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
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.)
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