Prepare in Advance for SharePoint 15
May 18, 2012
Much like the discussion that flowed before the release of SharePoint 2010, the same voices are now chattering about the impending release of SharePoint 15, likely launched in the first quarter of 2013. Many experts are already weighing in on how to best prepare your enterprise for the move. David Roe of CMS Wire talks with Chris McNulty of Quest Software in, “SharePoint 15: 8 Things to Help You Prepare.”
Everything, McNulty said, is about planning; you can’t just jump into SharePoint 15. But you couldn’t just jump into SharePoint 2010, or 2007 or 2003, for that matter. So just like the last time, Quest is advising companies to plan any future deployments, even if many companies appear to have had their head in the sand when that lesson was being given out the first time.
Chris McNulty goes on to suggest eight major categories of preparation: optimized environment, consolidate content, data externalization, governance plan, enterprise content management, be social, custom coding, and cloud strategy. While each of those categories comprises a good bit of advice, we think that they could extend to any number of enterprise offerings, and many organizations are looking beyond SharePoint.
Consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze. This smart third-party enterprise solution can stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Furthermore, Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers Connectors that work to seamlessly integrate all electronic data.
As the optimum search and information access solution, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates the comprehensive incorporation of all electronic data repositories. Data sources and storage systems are connected to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise via Fabasoft Mindbreeze Connectors. The standard product scope includes Connectors for the most common data sources. Additional Connectors are available to purchase as required.
While many will still consider SharePoint as the flagship of the enterprise market, many organizations are eager for more agile, intuitive solutions that update more frequently than the typical three-year Microsoft cycle. These organizations would do well to consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their suite of solutions.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint 2015 Highly Anticipated
May 14, 2012
If you are a follower of Microsoft and its products, you are used to the inherent mystery and anticipation that accompanies its often belabored and long-suffering releases of major software. Kurt Mackie updates on the latest information on upcoming releases in, “Office and SharePoint ’15’ Expected in Early 2013.”
Veteran Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley unearthed a few clues about Microsoft’s product roadmap for this year and the next. Last week, Foley pointed to two Microsoft charts, reportedly given to partners, that show approximately when we might see certain Microsoft on-premises products and cloud-based services emerge. The documents are a bit dated, originating from Dec. 22, 2011, and lack details about the arrival of Windows 8 and Windows Server 8. However, Microsoft did confirm to Foley that charts were given to partners and show ‘forward-looking information.’
The article goes on to predict that Exchange, Microsoft Office, and SharePoint, all in their “15” versions, are expected for general availability early 2013. We cannot help but wonder why there is so much pageantry surrounding Microsoft major releases. For a company with so much pull in the general technology world, it seems smaller more frequent updates would keep them more relevant as the competition grows stiffer.
One third-party solution keeping the competition tight for Microsoft in enterprise search is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Mindbreeze is particularly efficient at updating their offerings without major releases that disrupt workflow. Visit the Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise page to note the changes made available in the quarterly releases over the last couple of years. Updates to the Cloud enterprise offering are even more frequent and more subtle.
It seems to us that at a certain point a ship does get too big to turn. This may be where Microsoft is heading, with software offerings so overwhelming that implementers at the local level have to plan months in advance just for an update. For a software solution that is current, intuitive, and less disruptive, consider a smart third-party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
GSX Streamlines SharePoint Monitoring
May 1, 2012
Every SharePoint developer knows that a SharePoint infrastructure requires a lot of love and attention. Monitoring is essential to heading off major problems. GSX Solutions is now offering an automated way to monitor enterprise environments. Market Watch gives a full report in, “GSX Assures Around-the-Clock Performance for Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint.”
GSX Solutions, the global leader in proactive, consolidated monitoring and reporting of enterprise collaboration environments, including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and Lotus Notes, today announced its latest release of GSX Monitor & Analyzer assures around-the-clock availability and performance for Exchange 2010 and SharePoint. The new release provides pinpoint alerts that enable Exchange and SharePoint administrators to head off emerging issues before they impact the business and dramatically reduce user complaints.
Claiming that the service can alert you to your emerging enterprise issues before they impact the line of business, GSX definitely has a market. Such monitoring can save a SharePoint team a lot of costly time and energy in manual monitoring. We think an addition of a third-party enterprise solution may also help ensure that problems do not occur in the first place.
The suite of solutions offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze lead the pack in terms of interoperability and ease of use. They function on their own or in addition to an existing SharePoint installation. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is an intuitive, efficient enterprise alternative, that has been proven to save users time and improve user satisfaction.
Be well informed – quickly and accurately. The data often lies distributed across numerous sources. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise gains each employee two weeks per through focused finding of data (IDC Studies). An invaluable competitive advantage in business as well as providing employee satisfaction.
It is important to have a lot of tools at your disposal when overseeing a large SharePoint installation. But as hotly anticipated as SharePoint 2013 may be, we believe that the wave of the future will be smart, agile third party solutions such as the ones created by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Be sure to check out all that they have to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 1, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Lifecycle of SharePoint
April 25, 2012
Bjorn Furuknap is a longstanding SharePoint blogger and expert. His piece, “Could SharePoint 2013 be SharePoint 2012?” is not notable so much for its predictions as it is for its explanation of the SharePoint lifecycle of development. Furuknap’s hypothesis, which he ultimately refutes, is that the projected release of SharePoint 2013 could in fact be a SharePoint 2012 release, flouting the traditional three-year cycle.
He explains:
I know the cycle at Microsoft says it should be three years between a major Office release, but with the state of completion of Windows 8, and with the new Metro interface making an appearance, perhaps Microsoft aims to get Office 15 out as soon as possible, maybe even in 2012. It wouldn’t make any sense to leave SharePoint behind then. Microsoft would want the Office client suite to take advantage of the latest and greatest, and that leads me to believe that if Office comes out named 2012, then SharePoint will be so too.
From this we see that the Microsoft web is tightly woven with many interconnecting parts. With Furuknap’s article a bit dated, we are now more certain that SharePoint 2013 will indeed be SharePoint 2013, even if released in 2012. But what is interesting is the tight lid that Microsoft keeps, rigidly scheduling updates even when other competing technologies have passed them by.
Take Fabasoft Mindbreeze for instance. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a third-party vendor offering a suite of solutions including Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Standing alone or working in tandem with an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Mindbreeze works hard to meet the intuitive needs of its users. Updates are released quarterly for on-site installations, the latest edition being Spring 2012. Updates are even more frequent for Cloud users.
If third party vendors are responding to customers’ needs quickly, releasing updates to keep pace with competing and complimentary technologies, we think Microsoft could make it a point to do the same thing. In the meantime, explore the offerings by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if they can provide the efficiency and flexibility your organization needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search: A Haunting Phrase Evokes the Ghosts of Failed Search Past
March 1, 2015
I read a practical explication about setting up SharePoint search to facilitate people search. I am okay with the approach in “More SharePoint 2013 Search Tips for Power Users.” The publisher is one focused on generating received wisdom or hoped for truths. That’s okay.
I did note one important and telling phrase. Here is is:
So how can this knowledge be used to create a real business solution?
When I read this sentence, several thoughts flitted through my mind. Here they are:
- Is this opposed to an unreal business solution.
- Are search solutions chimera?
- 3. Are search solutions false, fake, ersatz?
Am I unduly sensitive to a single statement? No. The phrase strikes at the core of search challenges, not just sticky wickets of the SharePoint variety.
Search allows individuals to “find” something in theory. The reality is that what search outputs for a user crafty enough to use the right term, phrase, or hot link is often wildly off the mark.
The fix is to layer additional controls on top of a child’s wagon, not a vehicle designed to carry the weight of today’s information access requirements.
Result? Search is an endless disappointment to users. How does one find a person in an organization who can and will answer a question? More than search is required in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, March 1, 2015
Beyond Intranet Search
October 28, 2014
Apparently, there is a difference between search and knowledge management; I guess you learn something new every day. CMS Wire asks, “Intranet Search: Where Documents Go to Die or KM Enabler?” Writer Jed Cawthorne uses Coveo’s platform to illustrate ways a company can go beyond the “baked in” search functionality in an intranet content management system. He writes:
“You don’t need to stick with the ‘built in solution’ if search is important to your KM / Enterprise Information Management strategies. There are alternatives beyond the ever more standard SharePoint (even though building FAST technology into core SharePoint 2013 has improved it) or the really big (and expensive) heavy hitters like HP’s IDOL platform.
“With the growing rate at which our mountains of internal content grow ever bigger, search capabilities are a fundamental element of an intranet, and of the broader digital workplace. If you want to apply long tail principles to mountains of social content, such as discussion forums, news feeds and updates, a search engine with concept search capabilities would be a good idea, unless you have a work force which is truly at one with tagging absolutely everything with appropriate and valuable metadata … (what, you work in the Library of the Jedi Temple? Cool!).”
Cawthorne spoke to Coveo’s Diane Berry about her company’s knowledge management options. She emphasizes broad content-source connectivity, metadata enrichment through text analytics (for companies lacking Jedi librarians), and building taxonomies through entity extraction. A user-interface based on users’ needs is also key, she notes, and mobile interfaces are a part of that. So is making it easy to adjust search and analysis parameters. See the write-up for more details and some screenshots that illustrate these points.
Cynthia Murrell, October 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
BA Insight New Hire Likes His Job
September 17, 2014
Navigate to “My BA Insight Enterprise Search Adventure Begins.” The enthusiasm, confidence, and Super Bowl winning attitude rips off my screen. With new executive and venture funding, BA Insight seems to be a go to solution. But is the company too closely allied with Microsoft and the aging SharePoint product? Will the forthcoming Delve (a variation on the vision for Fast Search & Transfer revealed during a talk at CERN in 2007) put pressure on the SharePoint centric outfits? I just don’t know.
Here’s the passage I find interesting. I did not have one of the goslings “fix up” the capitalization errors or add links.
As I’ve been ramping up I’ve been learning a lot about their products and solutions. BA Insight use to be known as the connector company. The BA Insight Longitude Connectors can connect Microsoft SharePoint to more than 30 enterprise systems for information access and cross-platform search. They have so many connectors that allow SharePoint 2013, 2010, FAST and previous versions of SharePoint connect to a huge variety of backend systems. Here are a few examples: Documentum, eRooms, Websphere, Hummingbird, LiveLink, SAP, Siebel, Notes, Autonomy, FileNet, Connections, Opentext, SalesForce, Netdocs, SQL, Docushare, and a bunch of different legal systems… I heard they recently setup a connector for Jive and are open to building a connector for companies that need one to other systems not listed. Even with all of that, I find they don’t want to be known as simply a connector company since they really have a platform for enterprise search. The autoclassify stuff is brilliant. It helps set properties on your content based on your managed metadata and with a set of rules for both content already in SharePoint and for the content that will stay in these other systems. You really need to have good metadata so you can drill down and filter your search results quickly and easily and that’s where their rich search UI comes in providing search parts that give you the ability to drill in without needing to know boolean search. At that point it’s the smart previews that save you time. On top of the Office Web Apps in SharePoint 2013, you get previews for PDF, ZIP, and a huge variety of other formats including the old office formats that you’d otherwise miss including to all of those systems I mentioned. There’s even more, but I think this is a good start for understanding a few of the top products. As an example they’ve been doing some really innovative work on hybrid search and real federation where the results are in one stream.
My question is, “Why would anyone use SharePoint when BA Insight can fill the bill as “enterprise search experts”? I think Fast Search had a good sense of what it had to do to address the limitations of its technology. The question is, “Will Microsoft want partners to siphon off revenue from the mother ship?”
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2014
Microsoft Deepens Yammer Assimilation
June 12, 2014
With its purchase of Yammer two years ago, Microsoft made a public statement that they were increasing social integration within its SharePoint platform. Now, two years into the process, integration has deepened through SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Read all about it in the CRN article, “Microsoft Deepens Yammer Integration With SharePoint Online, OneDrive For Business.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft, which bundled Yammer with Office 365 last November, has taken another big step toward integrating the social networking technology with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a new feature called Document Conversations, which adds Yammer conversations to more than 30 different file types, including Office documents, images and videos.”
Stephen E. Arnold has covered SharePoint for many years on his information service, ArnoldIT.com. He found that many users wanted better social integration before the release of SharePoint 2013, so with the announcement of Yammer’s purchase, users were looking forward to seeing the social aspect of SharePoint move forward. Arnold provides good coverage on his SharePoint feed and SharePoint users and managers can look there for the latest news, tips, and tricks.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 12, 2014
Ravn Amps Up Its Search Prowess
May 9, 2014
I read “RAVN Systems Revolutionises COWI’s SharePoint 2013 Search.” I learned several things. First, COWI means “a leading international consulting group with 50 remote locations.”
Next, RAVN delivers some performance assertions; for example:
In representative tests across their estate COWI have achieved a 57% reduction in indexing time of remote content, over 90% reduction in bandwidth usage during indexing and 70% reduction in time to preview compared with opening content. They have also estimated a saving of 12 physical servers.
Unfortunately there were no data about life before RAVN, the system’s throughput, etc. But the assertion is interesting.
Finally, the article states:
“RAVN Connect revolutionises SharePoint Search in distributed environments”.
I have heard this before from Fulcrum Technologies decades ago. I assume this time the nail in SharePoint’s findability coffin is hammered tight. No word from the legions of other SharePoint indexing systems, however.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2014
Perceptive Search 10.3 Now Available
April 11, 2014
According to the marketing, the system from the 1980s formally known as ISYS Search is now up to date. Digital Journal shares, “Perceptive Software Launches Version 10.3 for Perceptive Enterprise and Workgroup Search.” New connector options and high-definition viewing are among the updated features for both the Enterprise and Workgroup platforms. The press release also tells us:
“Fidelity options for content rendering in Perceptive Search 10.3 allow administrators to set the appropriate level of fidelity for displaying search results. Options include several levels of standard text, standard XHTML and high-definition HTML5 that produce near-perfect paginated renditions.
“The addition of a document thumbnail preview provides Perceptive Enterprise Search 10.3 users additional confidence that they are selecting the right search results. With a glance at the first page of search results, users can often determine if the files meet the desired criteria. This instant visual confirmation of the search results further accelerates user productivity.”
That thumbnail view is a helpful touch. The search systems‘ updated connectors can access content in Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint 2013, Microsoft Exchange 2013, and Symantec Enterprise Vault 10.
Founded as Genesis Software in 1988, Perceptive Software offers a range of process- and content-management solutions. Perceptive serves clients in a wide range of industries, and was acquired by Lexmark in 2010. The company is headquartered in Shawnee, Kansas and, according to their About page, is currently hiring.
Cynthia Murrell, April 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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