Study of Enterprise Search
March 12, 2011
Research vendors, magazines owned by consulting firms, and dozens of “experts” just keep explaining why search is an issue. I find these reports fascinating because each purports to explain what enterprise search is, provide profiles to six, 12 or in this case more than 30 vendors’ products. The information involves opinion, surveys, and rehashes of previous reports. I am old enough (66) and jaded from more than three decades of laboring in the online vineyards to view these reports with a curious frame of mind and amusement.
You can get a synopsis of a longer report in the Information Week story “Go Rogue with Enterprise Search.” What? “Go Rogue?” Before I read the four part article I wondered how a key function like finding an electronic document or other information object is “rogue.” My understanding of rogue is “a deceitful or unreliable scoundrel” or the Australian horror film about tourists who are pursued by a giant crocodile.
Source: Graph Jam, where consultants often get their graphs. http://graphjam.memebase.com/upcoming/page/2531/
Search or finding needed information is too important to be slapped with the “rogue” moniker. But that is my opinion, and you may well find that “rogue” is the perfect description for what enterprise search has become in today’s marketing-centric world. Like other enterprise applications, the software system may be difficult to put under a simple, clear explanation of what happens upon installation.
Please, read the Information Week story and sign up for the full report.
Here’s my view of three key points in the write up.
First, here’s a factoid that I don’t understand.
Despite more than a decade of product development aimed at helping companies find information across their networks, a paltry 22% of the 433 business technology professionals polled in InformationWeek Analytics’ Search 2011 survey have purchased the technology. That’s down from 24% in our 2008 survey.
Nadella Ascends, Search Fuzzy
February 16, 2011
The Microsoft Search Head Gets a Big Promotion after 19 years of service in the Online Services Division.
“Microsoft announced today that Satya Nadella has been promoted, gaining the title ‘President of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business.’” He is moving up to “oversee the overall strategy, engineering, marketing and product development for Microsoft’s server, tools and cloud platform efforts.”
In his previous position with Online Services, Nadella oversaw several Microsoft breakthroughs such as the release of Bing, new releases of MSN, and the assimilation of Yahoo! across Bing and adCenter.
Nadella’s seeming success with Bing has given him the opportunity to oversee Microsoft’s new venture into cloud computing, the subject of their latest major ad campaign. The “cloud” is being widely marketed to consumers, and Nadella’s promotion signals that Microsoft is looking for Bing –style success in their drive to push cloud computing software and services forward.
What’s this mean for search at Microsoft? We think the home grown search system in SharePoint is probably going to be killed. The future, bright as it will be, depends on Fast Search & Transfer’s ageing technology. How will search look from Mr. Nadella’s lofty perch? Probably not too important is our guess.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 16, 2011
Freebie
Exclusive Interview: Brian Pinkerton
December 15, 2010
Introduction
At a recent conference, there was much buzz about consulting firms’ opinions about enterprise search. I spoke with several people who expressed surprise at the “rankings”. For example, one high-profile firm pronounced Vivisimo as the top vendor in enterprise search. Vivisimo positions itself as an “information optimization” company. I am not sure what that means, but it is clear that “enterprise search” is not the company’s main focus. Nevertheless, Vivisimo is number one.
Okay, but Vivisimo started life a company with on-the-fly clustering. Then Vivisimo morphed into a vendor of federated search. Next Vivisimo dabbled in government contracts. After an executive shake up and an infusion of venture capital, Vivisimo emerged as an “information optimization” company. The phrase is as confusing as Google’s “contextual discovery.”
What are these marketers talking about? The answer is making sales and no-calorie marketing jargon. The consulting firms know a sales opportunity exists when user satisfaction with enterprise search is chugging along in the 50 to 70 percent range. Yes, most users of an enterprise “findability” system are unhappy. Procurement teams are, therefore, busy because most companies are looking for a search silver bullet.
To cater to those looking for a quick, simple way to solve an enterprise information access problem, consultants and advisors offer impressionistic write ups. Madison Avenue works fine when selling toothpaste. Apply that method to the very tough problem of information retrieval, and you end up with confusion, rising costs, and unhappy users.
Let me give you another example that surfaced in my conversations with vendors in London at the December International Online Conference. I learned that one consulting firm named Endeca as the top dog in enterprise search. I am okay with that assertion as long as there are some data to back up the claim. When I hear the name “Endeca”, I think of eCommerce as the core strength. The system can be applied to other information problems, but when I recall Endeca’s patent applications, I think about eCommerce, not discovery and data fusion.
Perhaps some search firms are more adept at social engineering than software engineering? Are some search advisors doing Madison Avenue-type thinking, not engineering analyses?
I don’t have any quibble with consulting firms who peg Autonomy as Number One. The revenue alone makes the difference between Autonomy and other information access vendors evident. Last time I saw Andrew Kanter, the chief operating officer for the vendor of meaning-based computing solutions, I asked him, “When will Autonomy break the $1.0 billion in revenue barrier?” He told and an audience of about 175 people that Autonomy “was only $900 million.” Yep, $900 million, which is orders of magnitude greater than most of the 300 vendors whose information retrieval technology I track. IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle do not provide search revenue detail in the financial reports. So on revenue Autonomy has a valid claim to the Number One position in enterprise search.
Consulting Firms Want to Sell Work, Not Expose Warts
Consulting firms—particularly those confined to the mid-tier below the McKinseys, the Bains and the Booz Allens and above the independent experts—have to feed their firms’ revenue hunger. Consulting is an expensive business because full time employees have to be kept billable. Making sales, therefore, is more important than objectivity in my experience.
What mid tier consulting firm sales professional wants to irritate an IBM, Google, Microsoft, or Oracle? Big companies, therefore, are often graded on the curve. Is it not easier to rubber stamp search systems from these Big Four vendors? Get along, go along is perhaps the motto in certain situations.
One consequence of the pressure to make sales is that consulting firms have to back certain horses. The idea is to focus on commercial vendors who are likely to have an appetite for buying and paying for the services of the consulting firm.
Somewhat surprisingly, most of the consulting firms’ search analyses fumble the ball when it comes to open source search; namely, Lucene/Solr, FLAX, Tesuji, and others. The fact is that organizations like Cisco Systems, eHarmony, LinkedIn, MTV, and Twitter, among others are relying on open source “findability” solutions, in particular Lucene/Solr. Open source search is now a viable option for many organizations, and the deprecation of Lucene/Solr is surprising to me.
The bottom-line is that most search vendor league tables are suspect. Unfortunately, these league tables are viewed fact.
On December 10, 2010, I wanted to get an open source technology to talk about open source search and how that option is perceived by marketing organizations masquerading as independent analysts.
The Interview
I spoke with Dr. Brian Pinkerton, one of Lucid Imagination’s vice president of product development. Brian has has a Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering and started his work career as a senior software engineer at NeXT. He then developed WebCrawler, the Web’s first comprehensive search engine.
Brian Pinkerton, VP Product Development, Lucid Imagination
Since then he was Technical Architect at AOL (which acquired WebCrawler), VP of Engineering and Chief Scientist at Excite, Principal Architect at A9, Director of Search at Technorati and co-founder/President of Minimal Loop, whose technology was acquired by Scout Labs and where Brian was VP of Engineering.
Today (December 15, 2010) Lucid Imagination is announcing the general availability of its Lucid Works enterprise product, which is available for free download. the product is described as a search solution development platform built on open source Apache Lucene/Solr.
The full text of my interview with Brian appears below:
Several consulting firms have issued analyses of the enterprise search market. I noted that open source search in general and Lucid Imagination in particular were not highlighted as top candidates for the enterprise. Why is open source search put on the bench?
Economics, primarily. Because customers spend huge amounts of money on commercial packages, a small industry has grown up to support and encourage such decisions. This process is naturally set up to ignore disruptive technologies, especially ones that are price-disruptive. The consulting firms don’t work for free: getting prominent placement in a report usually costs money. Who’s paying that fee for open source? Another important reason is the market: developers, not IT managers, are the main adopters of open source solutions, while IT execs are the main consumers of the fancy reports.
Large organizations rely on consultants’ reports. In your opinion are these reports accurate?
It’s hard to comment on these reports because the methods are not always transparent. These consultants spend a lot of time talking to vendors and customers, and draw some conclusions based on that. Many of them have been at it for a while, and they survive by providing useful insights. One useful thing to note, though, is that their conclusions are biased by those they talk to and their target audience: the IT exec. If you’re one of those, I’m sure you like the reports. If you’re a developer, you might not.
How is Lucid Imagination productizing open source search?
We have released a product, LucidWorks Enterprise, that extends Lucene/Solr with features commonly needed by commercial customers. We focus on is providing technology that will make open source Lucene/Solr more accessible to more people. For instance, user interfaces that simplify getting started, or APIs that are specifically targeted to the way enterprises build and integrate applications today.
For example, we extend Solr with RESTful interfaces for configuration; that provides developers with the ability to integrate it more easily. We also simplify functions that could be built from open source, but are more convenient to take as ready-made features. Finally, we add features that 99.9% of software developers probably can’t create easily from scratch, such as our Click Scoring framework, which boosts search results selected most often by users.
Furthermore, open source projects are really good at broad innovation, transparency, and easy access. But the communities around open source projects are not support organizations, so many vendors help companies adopting open source with timely expert support. That’s another one of the things we do at Lucid.
What steps have you taken to ensure the stability of the open source search product you offer?
We take the latest, most stable innovations from the open source development tree (known as ‘trunk’) and provide rigorous integration testing, as well as regular, stable releases driven by customer opportunities. We follow strict software engineering principles and use a quality-driven release process to build LucidWorks Enterprise. And we provide maintenance fixes and releases for our product in timely fashion to customers.
Proprietary search vendors emphasize that their approach ensures that licensees get timely bug fixes and updates. Is this a valid statement? What does Lucid Imagination provide a customer who wants timely bug fixes and updates?
I think both open-source vendors and commercial software suppliers provide timely bug fixes and updates. On the open-source side, it’s an interesting challenge because some bugs are fixed nearly instantly by the open source community, but they are not packaged in a way that a production customer can easily consume. Production customers want bug-fix-only branches of the the software, not bug fixes accompanied by the latest feature innovations that happened to be committed at the same time. We insulate our customers from the open-source volatility by releasing stable, bug-fix-only branches for our production customers.
Search technology has fragmented into a mind numbing number of implementations such as an appliance, cloud or hosted search, on premises search, and combinations of methods. How does Lucid Imagination’s search product fit into this fragmented solutions landscape?
LucidWorks Enterprise is a product that spans the range from software appliance to developer toolkit. Customers new to search can deploy it in a turnkey fashion, while more sophisticated customers can dive under the hood and build a complex application around it. A key secret to great search is how well it fits the business it is meant to serve — in fact, this is true of any application, particularly custom built apps. We believe that anyone who needs better than ‘adequate’ search results will want to build their search solution, and we created LucidWorks Enterprise to provide the best, lowest cost, most scalable platform for building that search solution.
Microsoft SharePoint provides a search solution. Microsoft offers the Fast technology for a more robust solution. What does Lucid Imagination provide to a SharePoint licensee wanting an enhanced search solution?
We will release a robust SharePoint solution in the first two quarters of 2011 and provide anyone to use LucidWorks Enterprise to search their SharePoint data alongside data from other common sources. One of the open questions about the new SharePoint solution is how long Microsoft will support Fast’s integration with anything but SharePoint.
Many search vendors offer faceted search; that is, the system generates hot links to related or supporting content. What is Lucid Imagination’s approach to faceted search?
Both LucidWorks Enterprise and Solr provide faceting support on every query that enables users to refine their results. Faceting is most obviously useful in eCommerce, though a wide variety of applications also take advantage of the feature. LucidWorks Enterprise and Solr support efficient and scalable faceting on any field, providing human-readable labels and accurate facet counts for the top facets. One of the important considerations for large collections is the degree to which faceting works in a distributed configuration. In LucidWorks Enterprise and Solr, faceting is supported seamlessly in distributed situations, offering the full performance at scale.
Would you describe a customer support use case for Lucid Imagination search? What are some common themes?
Because we have a diverse base of customers, we see a wide range of search applications. One common theme is relevance tuning: for instance, customers who need help tying certain results to certain queries, or just better optimizing the algorithms built with Solr & Lucene to deliver the right results. Another common theme, and one that I personally enjoy helping customers with, is performance. We had one customer who replaced a commercial search engine with Solr, reducing their median query response time from 30 seconds to about four seconds without our help. We then helped them reduce that by another factor of eight, to a median query response time of under half a second.
With open source search gaining acceptance within large companies like Cisco and high demand Web applications like Twitter, why are the consulting firms giving open source and Lucid so little attention?
One reason is that it’s coming up really, really fast — and they may not see it coming. Also, open source adoption is often driven by a broad, diffuse population of developers. The developers don’t generally put much stock in what the analysts say, if they’re even aware of the reports to begin with. And on the flip side, the analysts are paying attention to their own customers, CIOs and vendor salespeople, who may not know how the work is really getting done.
What do you suggest a procurement team do to evaluate fully an open source search solution such as the one Lucid Imagination offers?
I think they need to make sure their company is comfortable with creating their own applications; it’s not a passive technology, but one that can be actively used to drive competitive advantage. In looking at vendors, find one that can offer a solution that grows as their needs and skills grow: from something simple in the beginning to something fully customizable as they become more sophisticated consumers. And most importantly, they should look for a company with the depth and expertise to provide training, support, and consulting to help them harness the full scope of search innovation. Finally, they should do the math compared to what they might pay for a comparable implementation with a commercial enterprise search vendor. In many cases, they’re already spending many times what it would cost them to buy an open source-based solution. Sometimes they’ll pay more just for the annual maintenance — excluding consulting and license fees — than for a complete subscription for LucidWorks Enterprise.
In several of the recent analyses of enterprise search systems I have reviewed, I learned about such companies as Sinequa, Fabasoft and Expert System, both examples of firms that have zero profile in many organizations. In your opinion, why are these types of search vendors given so much attention in the search market?
I can imagine that the marketing guys at such organizations are always happy to talk to industry analysts. I spend my time mainly talking to customers and developers.
How can one get more information about Lucid Imagination and its open source enterprise search solution?
Our Web site www.lucidimagination.com is full of information about our product, LucidWorks Enterprise, and other information about the open source technologies, Lucene and Solr. We also have case studies that show how customers are building applications and products with Solr, Lucene, and LucidWorks Enterprise. And I always recommend downloading our product, now available free to developers, and taking it for a spin.
ArnoldIT Comment
My view about consulting firms’ analyses of search and content processing vendors has evolved over the last two years. The economic impact has put pressure on most of the companies that sell technical advice. Since the 2008 financial storm roiled commercial waters, certain advisory firms have shifted from independent analyses to what generates revenue for the consulting firms.
Many of the consulting firms’ reports are white papers or marketing material. The problem is that search is a particularly difficult technical field. Selecting a search system is often a difficult challenge for a procurement team. There are numerous, complex factors to consider.
Consulting firms offer “advice” about what system or systems is the “best” at a particular function. The problem is that writing about search is different from implementing search. It is easier to describe what a search vendor asserts in a demo. It is harder to take that solution and solve a real-world problem in a Microsoft SharePoint environment or in a setting where numerous mission critical applications operate in a stand alone manner.
If you are looking for a search solution, you will need to develop a “tight spec” and then investigate the options that match specific requirements. Few organizations have the time or resources to test multiple systems before making a decision about what search system to license.
The need for information about search creates an opportunity for independent firms to provide information, often at a hefty fee. In my experience, selecting a search system requires an approach close to the one that Martin White and I set forth in our 2009 book Successful Enterprise Search Management, published by Galatea in the UK.
We suggest that procurement teams become familiar with the available literature about search. Then a methodical process of assessment and evaluation can be followed. The short cut often leads to the all-too-common complaints about a search system. Users cannot locate needed information and user satisfaction plummets.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2010
Sponsored
Anti Search in 2011
November 1, 2010
In a recent meeting, several of the participants were charged with disinformation from the azurini.
You know. Azurini, the consultants.
Some of these were English majors, others former print journalists, and some unemployed search engine optimization experts smoked by Google Instant.
But mostly the azurini emphasize that their core competency is search, content management, or information governance (whatever the heck that means). In a month or so, there will be a flood of trend write ups. When the Roman god looks to his left and right, the signal for prognostication flashes through the fabric covered cube farms.
To get ahead of the azurini, the addled goose wants to identify the trends in anti search for 2011. Yep, anti search. Remember that in a Searcher article several years ago, I asserted that search was dead. No one believed me, of course. Instead of digging into the problems that ranged from hostile users to the financial meltdown of some high profile enterprise search vendors, search was the big deal.
And why not? No one can do a lick of work today unless that person can locate a document or “find” something to jump start activity. In a restaurant, people talk less and commune with their mobile devices. Search is on a par with food, a situation that Maslow would find interesting.
The idea for this write up emerged from a meeting a couple of weeks ago. The attendees were trying to figure out how to enhance an existing enterprise search system in order to improve the productivity of the business. The goal was admirable, but the company was struggling to generate revenues and reduce costs.The talk was about search but the subtext was survival.
The needs for the next generation search system included:
- A great user experience
- An iPad app to deliver needed information
- Seamless access to Web and Intranet information
- Google-like performance
- Improved indexing and metatagging
- Access to database content and unstructured information like email.
Iron Mountain Magnetic Again?
September 26, 2010
Iron Mountain is an unusual company. The firm’s business is built on moving paper from a file cabinet to a secure location. Put those documents in a box and store them in a cave, an “iron mountain”. From paper, the company moved to digital content and entered the digital archiving business. Along the way, the firm snapped up Purple Yogi (now known as Stratify). Purple Yogi was an early “automated classification” and search system for content. The Purple Yogi folks had an interesting approach, but like many of the early “automatic” systems, humans were needed. As a result, dealing with “big data” was not the system’s core competency. Purple Yogi morphed into Stratify and focused on the legal market where the content domains were bounded and billable human labor was part of the business model. Iron Mountain acquired Stratify (né Purple Yogi) in 2007 as I recall. then in a somewhat surprise move to the goose, Iron Mountain acquire Mimosa Systems, another document processing outfit. According to the Iron Mountain news release:
The deal provides Iron Mountain with an integrated archive for email, SharePoint data and files, and gives the company an on-premises archiving option to complement its existing cloud-based archives. The ability to archive and manage data both onsite, inside the customer’s firewall, and remotely in the cloud makes Iron Mountain a one-stop shop for data capture, archiving and management. It also provides the company’s customers with greater flexibility and choice for managing their information. Additionally, the company can now capture and manage a broader range of enterprise information from so-called “edge-of-the-network” devices like desktop PCs and laptops as well as from company repositories like email stores, SharePoint servers and file systems. Many larger businesses still prefer to keep this data on their premises today. Finally, the acquisition allows Iron Mountain to extract intelligence from the information it manages both on-premises and in the cloud, advancing the company’s larger strategy to help enterprises lower the costs and risks associated with storing and managing information.
The search and content processing company has quite a few players. My experience is that most of today’s search wizards wearing their azurini T shirts and selling their advice to search-challenged procurement teams don’t know much about Purple Yogi or Mimosa.
The reason is that specialist firms deliver narrow solutions to segments of the market too small or esoteric to trigger a reading on the English majors’ Geiger counters.
Upon reading “Are Iron Mountain Shares Ready to Climb?”, I asked, “What’s the PR push all about?” The link to the story is likely to go dead because the source is Barron’s, a Murdoch property so you may have to pay to see the info when you read this post.
The reason for the “excitement” about Iron Mountain is that Iron Mountain’s share price has not exactly set the “recession is over” world on fire. Nevertheless, Warren Buffet likes the stock and that’s enough for Barron’s. Toss in the promise that Iron Mountain will win big in the cloud computing space, and you have a PR opportunity.
Barron’s notes that Iron Mountain has some challenges. These include management policies, a revenue base built on paper documents, and lots of competition.
My view is different. I think Iron Mountain is a company that can generate a hefty return with a shift in management focus and a rebuild of its core technical approach. I think that buying companies like Stratify and Mimosa do not solve problems; they create more problems. Without a more robust technical vision, Iron Mountain is not likely to have the magnetic pull that savvy folks like Warren Buffet require. Therefore, if Mr. Buffet wants to make a killing, he is going to have to make slow, methodical changes that first affect management and then technology. Without these shifts, Iron Mountain is going to have some difficulty dealing with the Amazon-type or Rackspace-type of approach. A Yahoo or Google style approach to next generation technology will be tough to make work. How patient is Mr. Buffet?
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2010
Freebie
Search Industry Spot Changing: Risks and Rewards
September 20, 2010
I want to pick up a theme that has not been discussed from our angle in Harrod’s Creek. Marketers can change the language in news releases, on company blogs, and in PowerPoint pitches with a few keystrokes. For many companies, this is the preferred way to shift from one-size-fits-all search solutions described as a platform or framework into a product vendor. I don’t want to identify any specific companies, but you will be able to recognize them as these firms load up on Google AdWords, do pay-to-play presentations at traditional conferences, and output information about the new products. To see how this works, just turn off Google Instant and run the query “enterprise search”, “customer support”, or “business intelligence.” You can get some interesting clues from this exercise.
Source: http://jason-thomas.tumblr.com/
Enterprise search, as a discipline, is now undergoing the type of transformation that hit suppliers to the US auto industry last year. There is consolidation, outright failure , and downsizing for survival. The auto industry needs suppliers to make cars. But when people don’t buy the US auto makers products, dominoes fall over.
What are the options available to a company with a brand based on the notion of “enterprise search” and wild generalizations such as “all your information at your fingertips”? As it turns out, the options are essentially those of the auto suppliers to the US auto industry:
- The company can close its doors. A good example is Convera.
- The search vendor can sell out, ideally at a very high price. A good example is Fast Search & Transfer SA.
- The search vendor can focus on a specific solution; for example, indexing FAQs and other information for customer support. A good example is Open Text.
- The vendor can dissolve back into an organization and emerge with a new spin on the technology. An example is Google and its Google Search Appliance.
- The search vendor can just go quiet and chase work as a certified integrator to a giant outfit like Microsoft. Good examples are the firms who make “snap ins” for Microsoft SharePoint.
- The search vendor can grab a market’s catchphrase like “business intelligence” and say me too. The search vendor can morph into open source and go for a giant infusion of venture funding. An example is Palantir.
Now there is nothing wrong with any of these approaches. I have worked on some projects and used many of the tactics identified above as rivets in an analysis.
What I learned is that saying enterprise search technology is now a solution has an upside and downside. I want to capture my thoughts about each before they slip away from me. My motivation is the acceleration in repositioning that I have noticed in the last two weeks. Search vendors are kicking into overdrive with some interesting moves, which we will document here. We are thinking about creating a separate news service to deal with some of the non-search aspects of what we think is a key point in the evolution of search, content processing and information retrieval.
The Upside of Repositioning One-Size-Fits-All-Search
Let me run down the facets of this view point.
First, repositioning—as I said above—is easy. No major changes have to be made except for the MBA-style and Madison Avenue type explanation of what the company is doing. I see more and more focused messages. A vendor explains that a solution can deliver an on point solution to a big problem. A good example are the search vendors who are processing blogs and other social content for “meaning” that illuminates how a product or service is perceived. This is existing technology trimmed and focused on a specific body of content, specific outputs from specific inputs, and reports that a non-specialist can understand. No big surprise that search vendors are in the repositioning game as they try to pick up the scent of revenues like my neighbor’s hunting dog.
Azurini Lock In Analysis Baffles the Goose
August 3, 2010
I know, I know. Consulting firms have to be “real” and “objective” and “mavenesque.” I accept that. But the write up “Burton Group: Avoid Office 2010 Lock-In, Stick with Office 2007” wowed me. Microsoft buys lots of consulting, research, and advice. As a result, those who want to get jobs with the Redmond fun lovers often find a way to put a honey colored light on almost any product, service, or initiative. How many raves did I read about Vista? How many times have I heard about the wonders of MSN, now Live something? How many times have I heard experts explain the impact of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, its search strategy, its social strategy, its cloud strategy, and other strategies. The addled goose sure does not generate $70 billion a year in revenue and Microsoft does. So, guess who is really smart? Time’s up. Microsoft.
But a consulting firm criticizing Microsoft albeit somewhat indirectly? That is amazing, and it means to me that maybe the fondness Microsoft once felt for Burton has faded. Maybe Burton no longer loves Microsoft? Maybe there are other forces in play? Who knows.
What is clear is that Burton suggests an organization that embraces Office 2010 may be a candidate for lock in. Lock in means that a vendor calls the shots, not the client. The only way to get free is to break out. In fact, that’s one of the appeals of open source software. An organization using open source software believes it has more freedom than when chained to a giant SharePoint installation, an even bigger Microsoft Exchange construct, and the 40 other servers that Microsoft has on offer.
My view is that Microsoft is not the only enterprise software vendor looking to get shelf space and then become a monoculture in a client organization. Does IBM seek to monopolize hardware, software, and services? In my experience, you better understand the way Big Blue operates before your local IBM vice president gets a temporary office down the hall from your company’s president. Same with the Google.
So what strikes me as interesting is not the lock in angle. That’s old news. The criticism of a big outfit like Microsoft has caught my attention. Is one of the azurini changing colors?
Stephen E Arnold, August 3, 2010
Freebie
Apptus Theca
June 24, 2010
Quite a few search and content processing companies describe themselves as “leading”. The headline “Europe’s Leading Search Technology Company Apptus, Offers a Safe Passage for All Users of Fast on Linux and Unix to Apptus’ Search Platform Theca” caught my attention. The byline was Stockholm, which is definitely a technology center. Microsoft has a large presence. The content management company EPiServer and the smart content processing vendor Silobreaker have roots in the Stockholms skärgård. Microsoft has a significant presence as well. Apptus lit up my radar on one of my visits to Scandinavia. The company was positioned to me as an eCommerce integrator focusing on directory implementations and retail.
The news item, reported on Yahoo so it may become a 404 in a heartbeat, made several interesting points.
First, the news release informed me that Apptus is “Europe’s leading search technology company.” A bit deeper in the news release was this qualifier, “Europe’s leading developer of search and content enrichment services for online directories.” This statement matched my understanding of the the company’s focus. Too bad the headline says one thing which I did not believe and the first paragraph said another thing which seemed to match what I knew about the company. Ah, 20-somethings. Such a delight are they.
Second, Microsoft’s dumping the Linux/Unix Fast Search & Transfer ESP has spawned a competitor. Although the news release does not tell me, I heard that Apptus is using open source search technology and going after the orphaned Fast ESP Linux/Unix users. This makes sense, and the idea that an outfit with expertise in search implementation, tuning, and integration is a good one in my opinion.
Third, Apptus is one of the higher profile outfits taking advantage of Microsoft’s decision to expand its business and give open source search a boost. Keep in mind that Apptus has customers in 18 countries and counts among its clients Yell.com and World Color Press (formerly Quebecor), among others.
In my opinion, what I see happening is a fracturing of an already mixed up and fluid segment of the software industry. I assume that my two or three readers will disagree, but here’s my working hypothesis:
- Microsoft’s dumping of Fast Linux/Unix is giving additional impetus to Lucene/Solr. Vendors of proprietary search and content processing solutions may find that Microsoft has unwittingly created an unexpected consequence. It is too soon to tell if Microsoft knows about what I can call the “Apptus effect”. I will have to sit back and watch.
- SharePoint centric search vendors may find the open source search providers capturing more customers. SharePoint centric vendors, therefore, may face some tough choices; for example, put resources into fighting the Apptus-style plays, focus only on SharePoint and abandon the Linux/Unix market, or go all in and support Microsoft and Linux/Unix.
- The search and content processing vendors who want to offer platforms will have to step up their marketing. Microsoft and Google are platform companies, and it will be increasingly difficult to get attention for very good, but less well known options.
- Specialty search vendors will be forced to focus even more sharply on point solutions. This means that crazy marketing lingo aside, some companies will have to pick a sector like customer support and, in the words of Project Runway’s Tim Gunn, “make it work”. The days of morphing from business intelligence, semantics, eDiscovery, and appliances may meet with greater skepticism. Customers with problems will want a best of breed solution and the Heinz 57 varieties creature may be a turn off.
- Cloud search solutions may become more desirable. I had a conversation yesterday and pointed out that SAS Teragram offered a cloud solution before the cloud had become the buzzword du jour. Companies like Blossom.com have proved to me that hosted search works like a champ and shaves money and time off search and retrieval.
To sum up, the Apptus announcements strikes me as a big deal. Aside from my stumbling over the Apptus news release headline, there’s a message in the Apptus news item. Who is listening? Search vendors facing financial pressure may want to perk up their ears.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24,2010
Freebie
Exalead Acquired by Dassault
June 11, 2010
I have done some work for Exalead over the last five years, and I have gone down in history as one of the few people from Kentucky to talk my way into the Exalead offices in Paris without an appointment. L’horreur. I had a bucket of KY Fry in my hand and was guzzling a Coca Lite.
Out of that exciting moment in American courtesy, I met François Bourdoncle, a former AltaVista.com wizard. He watched in horror as I gobbled a crispy leg and asked him about the origins of Exalead, his work with then-Googler Louis Monier, and his vision for 64 bit computing. I wrote up some of the information in the first edition of the Enterprise Search Report, a publication now shaped into a quasi-New Age Cliff’s Notes for the under 30 crowd. I followed up with M. Bourdoncle in February 2008, and published that interview as part of the ArnoldIT.com Search Wizards Speak series. The last time I was in Paris, I dropped by the Exalead offices and had a nice chat. I even made a video. Several Exaleaders took me to dinner, pointing out that McDo was not an option. Rats.
So what’s with the sale of Exalead to Dassault Systèmes?
The azure chip crowd has weighed in, and I will ignore those observations. There is some spectacular baloney being converted into expensive consulting burgers, and I will leave you and them to your intellectual picnic.
Here’s my take:
Differentiator
There are lots of outfits asserting that their search and content processing system will work wonders. I don’t want to list these companies, but you can find them by navigating either to Google.com or Exalead.com/search and running a query for enterprise search. The problem is that most of these outfits come with what I call an “interesting history.” Examples range from natural language processing companies that have been created from the ashes of not-so-successful search vendors to Frankenstein companies created with “no cash mergers.” I know. Wild, right. Other companies have on going investigations snapping like cocker spaniels at their heels. A few are giant roll ups, in effect, 21st century Ling Temco Vought clones. A few are delivering solid value for specific applications. I can cite examples in XML search, eDiscovery, and enhancements for the Google constructs. (Okay, I will mention my son’s company, Adhere Solutions, a leader in this Google space.)
The point for me is that Exalead combined a number of working functions into a platform. The platform delivers search enabled applications; that is, the licensee has an information problem and doesn’t know how to cope with costs, data flows, and the need for continuous index updating. The Exalead technology makes it easy to suck in information and give different users access to the information they need to do their job. For some Exalead customers, the solution allows people to track packages and shipments. For other licensees, the Exalead technology sucks in information and generates reports in the form of restaurant reviews or competitive profiles. The terminology is less important than solving the problem.
That’s a key differentiator.
Technology
Google and Exalead were two outfits able to learn from the mistakes at AltaVista.com. Early on I learned that the founder of Exalead could have become a Googler. The reason Exalead exists is that M. Bourdoncle wanted to build a French company in France without the wackiness that goes along with tackling this mission in the US of A. Americans don’t fully understand the French, and I can’t do much more than remind you, gentle reader, that French waiters behave a certain way because of the “approach” many Americans make to the task of getting a jambon sandwich and a bottle of water.
I understood that M. Bourdoncle wanted to do the job his way, and he focused on coding for a 64 bit world when there were few 64 bit processors in the paws of enterprise information technology departments. He tackled a number of tough technical problems in order to make possible high performance, low cost scaling, and mostly painless tailoring of the system to information problems, not just search. Sure, search is part of the DNA, but Exalead has connectors, text to voice, image recognition, etc. And, happily, Exalead’s approach plays well with other enterprise systems. Exalead can add value with less engineering hassles than some of the firm’s competitors can. Implementation can be done in days or weeks, and sometimes months, not years like some vendors require.
So the plumbing is good.
That’s a high value asset.
BA-Insight: New Angle on Lead Generation
March 13, 2010
The Microsoft Fast search road show was in New York this week. I stayed in rural Kentucky watching the acid run off trickle into my goose pond. I took time out from this strenuous activity to read “BA-Insight Announces New Direct Access to Free Information and Resources for SharePoint Search and Fast.”
BA-Insight develops software, including Longitude which “helps people find an analyze relevant information across the entire enterprise independently of format or location.” The firm’s Web site has been revamped and features “an enhanced support portal and new free resource library specially designed for enterprise evaluating SharePoint or Fast Search or engaging in SharePoint or Fast Search deployments, including Fast ESP.”
I took a look at the site. The splash page is below, but you will see different graphics because the rectangular area features a slide show of information.
Source: http://www.ba-insight.net/Pages/Home.aspx
You can download white papers, get inks to videos, and access the company’s Web logs. One of the documents is the Microsoft Enterprise Search 2010 Roadmap. When I clicked on that link, I saw another link and the icon labeled premium shown below.
In order to access that document, I was given an option to fill in a form with my name, title, organization, phone, email, and interests. The angle seems to be that to get this document, one must go through a vendor like BA-Insight.
One of the goslings filled in the form and the road map is a single page that explains Microsoft’s five search technologies and lists the capabilities, repository indexing, and manageability features of each product. Interesting stuff.
Here’s one snippet of the roadmap, which is more of a table than a map in my opinion:
Interesting stuff. Particularly with regard to scaling, I wonder if organizations will have the appetite for this type of hardware footprint on site. Will enterprise Fast ESP work from the cloud? © Microsoft 2010.
Several questions:
- Will more search vendors shift into education or missionary marketing mode to move their systems?
- In today’s financial climate, will the portal approach supplant the more traditional features-benefit type of marketing that characterizes some search vendors’ Web sites?
- Has the complexity of the product offering broken the back of the adage “KISS” for business oriented communications?
I will watch to see if other vendors embrace the educational portal approach to sales and lead generation. The addled goose just makes information available via a blog, assuming that content with an edge will generate inquiries. Perhaps once again I am wrong?
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Because of the references to Microsoft and its five search options, I will report non payment to the Department of Defense, an organization with an interest in Microsoft’s technology.
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