Prepare for Double Life with Office 365
July 15, 2014
Microsoft is pushing all SharePoint clients toward Office 365 for obvious reasons. In fact, they announced discontinuing certain payment plans last month in an effort to consolidate some services. And while some organizations, particularly smaller ones, are hesitant for the transition, even early adopters are finding it is not completely seamless. The Register covers the story in their article, “Face Up to a Double Life with Hybrid Office 365.”
The author sums up the situation:
“The vision is of businesses using Office 365, running in Microsoft’s Global data centres, for collaborating, conferencing, messaging and calendaring . . . If you are migrating to Office 365 from on-premises you will need to set up a hybrid deployment to get your services migrated to the cloud. Once you have done that you can decommission your on-premises environment. But it often turns out that businesses with Exchange, SharePoint and Lync deployed on-premises will need to keep a small portion of that environment running.”
These are the sorts of hiccups that happen often with large implementations like SharePoint, especially SharePoint. Stephen E. Arnold has made his career out of following and analyzing all things search, including SharePoint. His Web service, ArnoldIT.com, is a one-stop-shop for all things search. Check out his SharePoint feed to stay on top of the latest news, tips, and tricks.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 15, 2014
Pleading with Microsoft to Step Up Mobile Development
March 12, 2014
Mobile computing is not just the latest trend. It is here to stay, and users of all varieties are pleading with major platforms to offer more mobile functionality. SharePoint should be used to hearing the pleas of users in this arena, but Search Content Management offers a well-written request in their article, “Dear Microsoft: Step Up Mobile SharePoint Development.”
The article sums up the issue:
“Microsoft now stands at a crossroads, surrounded on all sides by able competitors and imprisoned somewhat between its behemoth server technology stack, the growing cloud and the critical need to reinvent the face of its applications. Microsoft has been dragged kicking and screaming into the mobile era. Now it needs to update SharePoint development to really embrace the mobile revolution.”
Stephen E. Arnold of ArnoldIT.com is a longtime expert in all things search. He knows that the future is mobile and gives a lot of attention to the growing movement. He has found that while mobile is a “want,” security and functionality are “needs” in the enterprise. So Microsoft’s challenge will be to give equal weight to these areas.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 12, 2014
Fast Redefined: The 2008 Search Acquisition Does a 365
March 9, 2014
Figure skating, anyone? You can do a Salchow jump. The skater has some options. Falling is not one of them. The idea is to leap from one foot to another. The Axel jump tosses is some spinning; for example, a triple Axel is 3.5 revolutions. Want creativity? The skater can flip, bunny hop, and Mazurka.
But the ice has to be right. Skating requires a Zamboni. Search requires information retrieval that works.
One should not confuse a Zamboni with an ageing ice skater.
Fast Search & Transfer has just come back from an extended training period and is ready to perform. The founder may be retired after an unfavorable court decision. The Fast Search Linux and Unix customers have been blown off. But, according to Fortune CNN, Microsoft has made enterprise search better. Give the skater a three for that jump called Office 365.
Navigate to “Can Microsoft Make Enterprise Search Better?” The subtitle is ripe with promise: “Updates to its Office 365 suite show benefits from a 2008 acquisition.” There you go. Technology from the late 1990s, a withdrawal from Web search, a run at unseating Autonomy as the leading provider of enterprise content processing, and allegations of financial wrongdoing and you have a heck of base from which to “make enterprise search better.”
At one time, Fast Search offered an alternative to Google’s Web search system. The senior management of Fast Search decided to cede Web search to Google and pursue dominance in the enterprise search market. Well, how did that work out? The shift from the Web to the enterprise worked for a while, but the costs of customer support, sales, and implementation put the company in a bind. The result was a crash to the ice.
Microsoft bought the sliding Fast Search operation and embarked on a journey to make content in SharePoint findable. The effort was a boom to second tier search vendors who offered SharePoint licensees a search and retrieval system. Most of these vendors are all but unknown outside of the 150 million SharePoint license base. Others have added new jumps to their search routines and have skated to customer support and business intelligence.
Top ECM Tips of 2013
February 27, 2014
Although we are a couple of months into 2014, another “year in review” article is still not a bad idea. These provide a good overview of the best tips and tricks to emerge within a time frame. This particular article focuses on SharePoint and Search Content Management offers it up. Read more in, “The Top Enterprise Content Management System Tips of 2013.”
The article begins:
“With the release of the SharePoint 2013 platform . . . companies are considering migration to the new version for their enterprise content management system, but are also exploring SharePoint Online, the cloud-based version of SharePoint in Office 365. Many want the features available in the on-premises version but also the flexibility of SharePoint in the cloud . . . So it’s no surprise that some of the top ECM tips this year concern how to script in SharePoint 2013, new features in SharePoint 2013 and whether to migrate to on-premises SharePoint or whether to consider SharePoint Online.”
The piece then goes on to list the specific pieces of top learning content that can be found on Search Content Management. SharePoint users and managers might also be interested in the content on ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold, the site’s mastermind, is a longtime leader in search. His frequent commentary on SharePoint highlights not only the shortcoming and flaws within the program, but more importantly how users are overcoming them.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 27, 2014
Box Fills Hole for Mac Users
December 18, 2013
A number of good enterprise solutions are on the market. An organization usually decides between them based on their individual needs. For some, usage of iOS and Mac OS platforms means that SharePoint is not a viable option. CITE World expands on this idea in their article, “How Box is replacing SharePoint and custom software at Scripps Networks.”
The article explains:
“Now, people throughout the company ‘use it for exchanging everything,’ he said. ‘I use it the way I used to use SharePoint.’ Box ended up solving an additional problem for Scripps: Filling a hole that SharePoint left for Mac users. SharePoint isn’t very Mac friendly, Hurst said, which became an issue for the 35 percent of Scripps workers who are on Macs.”
Box is touted as user-friendly and enterprise ready. For those reasons, it may just give SharePoint a run for its money. Add to this the fact that Mac OS and iOS users are on the rise and Box has something that SharePoint can’t offer – agility between operating systems. Stephen E. Arnold of ArnoldIT covers the latest in SharePoint and enterprise search. He has recently and often said that SharePoint may be in trouble, and this type of stiff competition adds to that argument.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Business Intelligence Added
October 14, 2013
SharePoint 2013 has arrived with a bundle of additional add-ons and trinkets, so to speak. However, some may say that these small pieces are in many ways more impressive than SharePoint itself. TechRepublic covers the story in their article, “SharePoint 2013 Adds Better In-memory Analytics.”
“In its quest to never be outdone in the features wars, Microsoft has drifted into the habit of bundling its most impressive new capabilities as peripheral trinkets. But in the case of SharePoint 2013, they’ve set a new record for understatement. Yes, SharePoint 2013 is feature-rich almost to a fault, and yes, most of the new stuff is big-banner game-changing (Social computing! SharePoint-in-the-cloud!). But some of the most powerful items are geeky little widgets that barely get a mention on TechNet, and when it comes to SharePoint 2013, the In-Memory BI Engine tops the list.”
But while the business intelligence add-on might be noteworthy, many are saying that SharePoint 2013 is not. Most organizations still have to customize their way into efficiency, using multiple add-ons to compile a complete solution. Stephen E. Arnold, of ArnoldIT, is a longtime expert in search and a longstanding critic of SharePoint. In a recent article, Arnold finds that the latest version of SharePoint is structurally sound, but relatively ineffective, particularly for its search components. Microsoft continues to innovate, yet seems to keep missing the mark with basic features.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 14, 2013
Dassault Reaches to Australia New Zealand
September 12, 2013
I have lost track of Dassault, a firm which acquired Exalead a few years ago. Exalead dropped off my radar with its cloud approach to 360 degree information access. I do get an annual request for me to listen without compensation to a “briefing” about the Exalead technology. I have severe webinar fatigue, and I have a tough time differentiating the marketing pitches from different search vendors. As I approach 70 years of age, the diagrams strike me as interchangeable. The terminology used reminds me of a cheerleading session. The PowerPoints are little more than placards saying, “Big Data, Analytics, NoSQL, CRM. Go Team.” The only thing missing from the briefings is a band and hard data about strong revenue and profits generated by the company’s must-have products.
Search is repositioning in an effort to avoid marginalization. Most of the go-to customers already have up to five enterprise search systems. My hunch is that most large organizations are unaware of the total number of “findability” and “business intelligence” systems in their organizations.
Vendors, recognizing a saturated market, have had to either sell out (Brainware, Endeca, Exalead, Fast Search & Transfer, ISYS Search, and Vivisimo) or jump from one buzzword to another in a quest for additional venture funding and revenue.
Cheerleading is show business. Image courtesy of the US Department of Defense at http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=44522
I read “Firstservis Partners Dassault Systèmes to Push Big Data App.” The write up said:
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform brings structure, meaning and accessibility to data across the heterogeneous enterprise information cloud and combines the sophisticated search, access and reporting typically associated with databases with the speed, scalability and simplicity of the Web.
More interesting to me is the reason for this jump to Big Data. According to the write up:
“Their decision to re-platform their business on EXALEAD applications was then validated by Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant Report where the brand was named as the most visionary of enterprise search vendors,” he [Firstservis director, Andrew Young] said.
What I find interesting is that an azure chip consulting firm opened the eyes of Dassault to what it could do with Exalead technology. Now Dassault bought Exalead in 2010 for about $160 million. After three years, a third party has guided a scientific company with 11,000 passionate people, 1790,000 customers, 3,500 (3,501 I suppose if I count Firstservis), and “long term strategy” (See http://www.3ds.com/about-3ds/).
With the pundits and poobahs hoarse from repetition of the “Big Data, Analytics, and CRM” cheer, I found the story interesting and indicative of the challenges those with “enterprise search systems” face.
Will the fans show up for the game? Image courtesy of NOAA at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GEOID/GSVS11/images/Longhorn_Stadium_Flippable_Seats.jpg
My hunch is that enterprise search remains a problem. The marketing issue becomes a communication problem. When a company cannot find information, enterprise search is the culprit. Most firms have quite a bit of search experience. Dissatisfaction among users is the norm. So a new positioning is required not just by Dassault but by most of the vendors who used to be in the search business.
Lucene Solr Updates Released
July 12, 2013
The latest Developer Break news update on The H gives a rundown on the most important notes for developers. Read the full story at, “Developer Break: Lucene, Solr, Spring Roo, Node.js, PyQt 5 and more.”
The update begins with a focus on the latest in the world of Apache Lucene Solr:
“Apache’s Lucene search library and Solr search platform have had a bug fix update to version 4.3.1. The Lucene 4.3.1 update includes fixes for a deadlock bug and an optimisation, while Solr’s 4.3.1 update offers many fixes for SolrCloud. Downloads for Lucene and Solr are available from the usual mirrors.”
Value-added solutions that are built upon open source have the benefit of constant updates and improvements due to the frequent update schedule kept by open source solutions. Unlike proprietary solutions, like Microsoft SharePoint for instance, major updates are not rolled out every few years, but rather small, continuous, unobtrusive improvements are the norm. LucidWorks, which uses Apache Lucene and Solr as the basis of its architecture, benefits from the cost effectiveness and scalability that open source brings. Frequent improvements to the architecture mean that users are never lagging behind.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
HP Offers Autonomy Powered Legacy Data Solution
July 9, 2013
What happens when old data meets new technology? The result is not always pretty. Now, reports ITProPortal, “HP Autonomy Launches Legacy Data Cleanup Software for Improved Info Governance.” The software, called Legacy Data Cleanup, is underpinned by Autonomy’s ControlPoint and hauls outdated information into the light where it can be accessed, classified and, if appropriate, safely deleted. The write-up tells us:
“Legacy data is sometimes called ‘dark data,’ as it is effectively wasted space on limited storage, forcing organisations to buy more storage and hindering the modernisation of infrastructure and the transition to the cloud. This data includes obsolete SharePoint sites, old email stores, and a variety of other files that no longer serve any function.
“The Legacy Data Cleanup solution helps businesses identify this unnecessary data and remove it responsibly, leaving an audit trail behind to meet company data retention policies. It can also help with the establishment of a records management system, which offers improved access to and more efficient legal holds on old data.”
The write-up asserts that most organizations have a legacy data problem, though for many the issue has not yet become prominent. It also notes that it is best to address the issue before an eDiscovery demand or a security breach rears its head. True enough; is HP‘s new software the solution?
Cynthia Murrell, July 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Consumerization of Enterprise File Sharing
May 13, 2013
TechCrunch ran a story on a new enterprise file sharing tool, Docurated, which launched at Disrupt NY during Startup Battlefield. “Docurated is an Enterprise Service to Search and Collect the Data You Need From Your Files” tells us that this technology moves beyond the file and folder metaphor and focuses on searching for the documents needed and collecting them.
This new enterprise search tool is poised to compete with the likes of Sharepoint and Autonomy in addition to Google Drive in a way. Interestingly, they have integrative capabilities with Dropbox, another potential competitor. A notable difference that the article points to is that Docurated only crawls content to make it searchable but does not actually host any files.
We looked a little further into the technology on their website and learned the following about their positioning:
“While storage boxes in the cloud have created the ability to amass more files, we still have to find and consume what we need when we need to tell our story. Docurated is your go-to destination for all of your content. No more files or folders. It turns all your documents into useable materials for your content dashboards, presentations, meetings, pitches, etc. in PowerPoint or PDF formats. Docurated provides you with the ability to turn every one of your documents into individual pages that are then presented to you based on relevance to your topic search…”
The branding and utmost focus on the user experience signal that Docurated is looking to make a name for itself through bringing the consumerization of enterprise search around to home plate. We will be on the look out to follow how distruptive this technology turns out to be; Coca-Cola and Netflix are both using it already.
Megan Feil, May 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
