OCLC-SkyRiver Dust Up
December 16, 2010
In the excitement of the i2 Ltd. legal action against Palantir, I put the OCLC – SkyRiver legal hassle aside. I was reminded of the library wrestling match when I read “SkyRiver Challenges OCLC as Newest LC Authority Records Node.” I don’t do too much in libraries at this time. But OCLC is a familiar name to me; SkyRiver not so much. The original article about the legal issue appeared in Library Journal in July 29, 2010, “SkyRiver and Innovative Interfaces File Major Antitrust Lawsuit against OCLC.” Libraries are mostly about information access. Search would not have become the core function if it had not been for libraries’ early adoption of online services and their making online access available to patrons. In the days before the wild and wooly Web, libraries were harbingers of the revolution in research.
Legal battles are not unknown in the staid world of research, library services, and traditional indexing and content processing activities. But a fight between a household name and OCLC and a company with which I had modest familiarity is news.
Here’s the key passage from the Library Journal write up:
Bibliographic services company SkyRiver Technology Solutions recently announced that it had become an official node of the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), part of the Library of Congress’s (LC) Program for Cooperative Cataloging. It’s the first private company to provide this service, which was already provided by the nonprofit OCLC—SkyRiver’s much larger competitor in the bibliographic services field—and the British Library. Previously, many institutions have submitted their name authority records via OCLC. But SkyRiver’s new status as a NACO node allows it to provide the service, once exclusive to OCLC in the United States, to its users directly.
For me, this is a poke in the eye for OCLC, an outfit that used me on a couple of project when General K. Wayne Smith was running a very tight operation. I don’t know how management works at OCLC, but I think any action by the Library of Congress is going to trigger some meetings.
SkyRiver sees OCLC as acting in a non-competitive way. Now the Library of Congress has blown a kiss at SkyRiver. Looks like the library landscape, already ravaged by budget bulldozers, may be undergoing another change. I think outline of the mountain range where the work is underway appears to spell out the word “Monopoly.” Nah, probably my imagination.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2010
Freebie
IntelTrax Available
November 9, 2010
The new Web log IntelTrax is now available. The free service from the editors of Beyond Search and ArnoldIT.com covers data fusion. The term “data fusion” refers to systems and methods for processing disparate data and information into actionable intelligence. The phrases “business intelligence”, “knowledge management,” “text mining,” “eDiscovery”, and “data analytics” have become imprecise. Marketers apply these terms to a wide range of companies, products and services.
“No one has a definition for these buzzwords. Yet there are important and exciting developments available,” said Stephen E Arnold, publisher of IntelTrax. “This Web log—edited by Patrick Roland, a professional writer—will describe companies, products, and services that are essential where business and technology intersect. Our research reveals that organizations want information about ‘what’s next’ in information access and management. IntelTrax will help readers cut a path through this dense thicket of activity.”
Like Beyond Search, the Web log will present opinions and commentary. Available immediately are more than 150 articles. These range from a discussion of the i2 Ltd.-Palantir legal matter to commentary about the need for an intelligence framework that works. The About section of the Web log explains the blog’s editorial policies. The publication accepts advertising and if a company wants a sponsored write up, those will be included in the Web log and identified as a placed article.
Arnold continued, “In the last 12 to 18 months, a number of specialized software firms have begun to market services to the general business community. Some of these firms’ technologies were funded by or developed for the US intelligence community or a similar country’s governmental entities. Now these companies are offering commercial versions of their products. These software systems move beyond traditional data mining and map mashups. The companies are shifting information retrieval from guessing words that unlock a results list to a proactive, answer-oriented approach to data and information.”
IntelTrax is updated Monday to Friday with a mix of commentary, original features, and summaries of important reports. In addition, IntelTrax will profile specific companies and products. The information in IntelTrax does not duplicate the information in Beyond Search. The content will be distributed via RSS, and you can sign up for an email each day with that day’s headlines. The service is now indexed by Silobreaker, a content processing company serving both the commercial and intelligence sector.
Comments about IntelTrax may be sent to the editor at inteltrax@ymail.com.
Stuart Schram IV, November 9, 2010
Post sponsored by ArnoldIT.com
Arnold Google Column to Informed Market Intelligence
November 8, 2010
After an 18 month run at KMWorld, change is afoot. Beginning with columns submitted in December 2010, Stephen E Arnold’s Google in the Enterprise column moves to Informed Market Intelligence. The monthly analysis of Google’s enterprise products, services, and strategy will appear in ETM, the independent resource for IT executives. You can access the company’s public ETM Web site at www.globaletm.com. Informed Market Intelligence also publishes hard copy as well and, like Mr. Arnold’s discussion of open source search software, some of his Google analyses will appear in other IMI publications.
What’s happened with Mr. Arnold’s KMWorld column? Beginning in December 2010, Mr. Arnold begins a new monthly column that focuses on the use of semantic technology in the enterprise. On tap for KMWorld will be critical looks at some of the surprising applications of semantic technology from some well know enterprise vendors like Autonomy and Exalead as well as explorations of next generation “understanding systems” from companies like Digital Reasoning and Palantir.
Mr. Arnold also contributes for-fee columns on a monthly basis to Information Today, Information World Review, Online Magazine, and Smart Business Network. You are reading a free blog; the good stuff appears in the for-fee columns. Mr. Arnold told me, “No duplication. The blog does one thing, usually broad topics with help from more than seven contributors. The columns do another—incisive discussion of companies, technologies, and business issues. Each column presents my viewpoint about key issues in digital information.”
Will the 66 year old Mr. Arnold be able to sustain this writing schedule? My view is that he won’t have the stamina. Betcha a dollar.
Ken Toth, November 8, 2010
Sponsored by Stephen E Arnold and ArnoldIT.com.
Vamosa Acquired by T-Systems
October 27, 2010
Update: The goose is easily confused. T-Systems, not T-Mobile, purchased Vamosa. I think that Deutsche Telekom owns both of these companies. I see a similarity between the T-Systems’ Web site and the T-Mobile Web sites. The clue is the weird color and the dotted lines. I also heard from an ever-so-polite person who enjoined me in several emails to point out that T-Mobile(owned by Deutsche Telekom) did not acquire Vamosa. T-Systems (owned by Deutsche Telekom) did not buy Vamosa. Interesting because this sort of input attracts my attention; it does not diminish it. My question, “Why such a consoluted structure made more confusing with logos, color, and branding? ” Worth poking around perhaps?
And here’s an alleged official explanation from a person representing himself as affiliated with Kelso PR:
The problem is that in the UK, T-Systems and T-Mobile are different companies, owned by the same overall company, Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile is a partnership between France Telecom & Deutsche Telekomm [sic], whereas T-Systems is wholly owned by Deutsche Telekom. Indeed, in the UK T-Mobile isn’t called T-Mobile anymore, and is now called “everything everywhere”. We are fine with you describing the purchaser as Deutsche Telekom (the overall owner), or as T-Systems (the actual buyer of Vamosa), but we would prefer if you don’t refer to the purchaser of Vamosa as “T-mobile”, which is a different company altogether. The Vamosa website has the “T-systems” branding running across the top of it. http://www.vamosa.com/ It’s just a simple issue of accuracy of the information. If you have a look here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/corporate-sme/t-systems-acquires-ip-and-trademarks-from-collapsed-vamosa-1.1063831 it should be clear how this is being reported in the UK. As I say, thanks so much for responding to this.
A number of questions are swirling through my mind. Got that?
Short honk: T-Mobile (TSystems) has acquired Vamosa. I think of T-Mobile as a third string player in the US mobile market and a reliable wireless provider in the parts of Europe I visit. I was near the arctic circle a couple of years ago and I got a T-Mobile signal. T-Mobile’s purchase of Vamosa interested me. Vamosa embraced the notion of content governance, but I think of the company has having software that transform content. In addition to connectors, the company’s strength was moving a big chunk of content from one system into a form that another system could use. Instead of a human slogging through sample documents, Vamosa offered software to analyze, normalize, and migrate content. A person at KelsoPR.com sent me a news release that said:
The acquisition supports T-Systems’ strategic focus fuelling growth by enabling collaboration and mobility. “Executives are looking for innovative technologies that help them reduce the complexity of managing multiple e-channels, which they rely on to drive knowledge sharing and customer transactions. An increasing number of critical business processes depend on the implementation of a secure and consistent governance structure that ensures employees, partners and customers have access to reliable content at all times and across all screens,” said Peter Row, Vice President of T-Systems UK Systems Integration who led the acquisition. “By expanding our portfolio to target this business issue we will be offering a unique end to end solution for customers in the marketplace.” The market-leading suite of products previously developed by Vamosa Limited, automatically tags digital content, cleans legacy data and seamlessly migrates content into content management systems. On an ongoing basis the software technology ensures corporate standards are adhered to and auto-fixes any breaches it uncovers.
I had heard that T-Mobile was thrashing around in search, content processing, and information services. Maybe this acquisition adds some credence to those rumors. I am not sure about the Vamosa connectors. As you know, I am watching the i2 Ltd / Palantir legal matter which seems to be about reverse engineering connectors in order to hook into proprietary file stores. Connectors and data transformation are emerging as interesting functions which warrant observation.
Stephen E Arnold, October 27, 2010
Freebie
Recommind Estimated 2010 Revenues: Fact or Fiction?
October 25, 2010
Last week I heard that Recommind disclosed its revenues. The information I saw surfaced on the e-discovery 2.0 blog in “Recommind Publicly Discloses Its Revenue—and It’s Less than You Might Think.” The write up contained some interesting information, but I don’t know if the figures and factoids are spot on. Nevertheless, I did find the information interesting and in line with what my Overflight model spits out for a privately-held company in the search and content processing business.
Smash cut to the death of the fox in the jaws of the search hounds: Recommind’s estimated 2010 revenue is $23 to $28 million. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Most of the companies chugging along in the search and content processing rendering yard generate less revenue. And even with the outfits with great visibility and a strong client list, the need for cash is growing. Endeca accepted an intravenous drip from Intel and SAP Ventures. High flying Palantir sucked on a $90 million money milk shake this summer. And BA-Insight—a vendor of Microsoft SharePoint snap in systems—palmed $6 million.
The challenge with numbers from privately held companies is that the data are difficult to verify. Heck, try and figure out what publicly traded Amazon spends on R&D and makes on its widely publicized Amazon Web Services product line. Impossible task in my opinion. Move those finances into a private company and figuring out what’s what is tough. Google allegedly used some fancy dancing to trim its tax bill and that arabesque is only now being evaluated.
With regard to finances, a top line revenue figure or a growth rate are handy hand holds for the arm chair analyst or the azure chip consultant. In the real world, some financial types are interest in the company’s long term expenditures for R&D, the debt, the structure of deals’ payouts, executive compensation, etc. Without more numerical grit, who really knows. I recall looking at financial data for one high profile search system and learned that a number of debts had been rolled together, refinanced repeatedly, and the burden was little more than an annoying payment. The approach was similar to the person who buys a new vehicle by looking at the monthly payment, not the cost of the debt. In the Enron and Tyco world, these were old tricks. In the BearStearns Lehman Brothers world, magic accounting is what makes MBA men men and MBA women get a zest for living.
There were some factoids in the write up. Here are ones I noted:
- Recommind is placed on a par with Exterro and kCura. Fascinating to me because Exterro and kCura are what I consider next generation systems.
- Recommind is chasing three markets and according to the write up, Recommind’s revenue from the legal sector is “less than many other companies in the space.” No support but I found this an interesting observation.
- Recommind had a lousy 2009. No big surprise there.
I am not so quick to chastise Recommind for the alleged revenue. Compared to some of the search and content processing vendors I track, that $20 million or so looks pretty good compared to $1.5 to $3.0 million. We don’t know the cost structure or the net, but at least Recommind is still in business. It is, therefore, doing something right which is more than I can say for the search vendors listed on my Death Watch list. I recall I tried to visit the company, but it was too busy to make time for the addled goose. I suppose that’s a marketing ploy of sorts. I still want to understand the difference between the Recommind approach and the Autonomy IDOL approach. But now I am pretty busy and will content myself with recycling the Recommind revenue figures. And as for the “smaller than you might think”, I don’t think too much about Recommind or its revenues. I am a busy goose indeed. For more information about Recommends, navigate to www.recommind.com.
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2010
Freebie
Coveo Adds Connectors
October 16, 2010
Coveo has announced new information indexing connectors. Among the new connectors are those for Jive SBS Versions 3.0 to 4.5, support for Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and Microsoft Exchange 2010. Coveo updated its connector for Lotus Notes. In the news release, we learned that Coveo is working with Netezza. Earlier this year we heard that Netezza was hooked into Attivio. Netezza, as you may know, is now part of IBM, a company which has been on a mini-spending spree.
One of the interesting comments in the news story was:
Out of the box, Coveo Information Indexing Connectors seamlessly and securely index enterprise-wide systems and data repositories. Coveo-developed connectors offer superior functionality and integration, including with the native security model of each system. Coveo Connectors feature live monitoring and dynamically index new, deleted and modified documents, ensuring just-in-time access to the timeliest information.
Connectors continue to have a pipeline to our in box. The i2 – Palantir legal matter is about connectors. With the green light turned on for this dust up, connectors are edging from back stage to center stage.
More information about Coveo is available at www.coveo.com.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2010
Freebie
Content Conversion: A Subset of Connectors
October 4, 2010
There is certainly some excitement in the technical backwater of content conversion. I wrote a post for someone’s blog about the legal matter involving i2.co.uk and www.palantir.com. You can do some poking around on this issue or wait until my Information Today column on the subject becomes available.
Over the years, I have had to take content from System A and convert it to a type of content or form of content that System B could process. I wanted to call attention to two outfits who provide these services.
The first is an outfit on Long Island that we used at Ziff Communications lo those many moons ago. The company is called Data Conversion Labs. I visited the firm a couple of times and sat through some demos. The take away for me was these folks can do the System A to System B work quite well. You can read about this company at
The second is an outfit one of my UK clients used. Stilo does the A to B think, and its output worked well as memory serves me. Stilo has added an on demand service, which I thought was quite nifty.
Why do I mention these two companies? I think there is a mid tier consulting firm and a search vendor suggesting that file conversion is some sort of cabal. In fact, file conversion is widely available from lots of people. The suggestion that file conversion is anything other than a widespread service, available from vendors throughout the world is just plain wrong. Marketing is one thing. Ignoring the vendors who perform conversion, code custom filters, and perform transformation on premises, via appliances, or using proprietary methods is one more example of search marketing distortion.
Ah, young people. So eager to become important and hit their numbers.
Stephen E Arnold, October 4, 2010
Freebie
Fancy Math Maybe Not Needed?
October 2, 2010
“Search Data ‘No More Informative’ Than Standard Analysis” seems to challenge the fancy math of outfits like Recorded Future, Palantir, and IBM SPSS. How can fancy math fail to wow the researchers? The VC crowd won’t be amused. Palantir scooped up $90 million and for what?
The article asserts:
Tracking web searches worked the best in predicting how a new video game would sell, Yahoo’s Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman said.
Ah, ha. Yahoo. The purple outfit with the revolving door this week.
The Yahooligans said:
“Given the attention that search-based predictions have received recently, it may seem surprising that search data are, at least in some cases, no more informative than traditional data sources…”
One point that jumped out at me was that using third party tabulations such as a list of top tunes worked better than fancy math.
Palantir has 90 million reasons to prove Yahoo somewhat incorrect. IBM may not care. Recorded Future has the support of the Google and In-Q-Tel. Well, Yahoo may have a better way.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2010
Freebie
Connector Craziness: The Next Search Battleground
September 29, 2010
A reader sent me a link to a blog post from one of the mid tier consulting firms. The article is “Document Filters as a Search Proxy War.” I really don’t have much to say about the write up. So I will pretty much ignore it. I do this with quite a bit of blog content as I flap past 66.
However, I would like to add some information that I think those involved in search and content processing may want to have at their fingertips. I am reasonably familiar with the number of connectors available from Autonomy and Oracle. However, the connector world is not limited to two vendors, nor is it likely that most of those in search of connectors are aware that the outcome of a legal matter could – and I emphasize could – have a significant impact on the market. You can read more about this matter in my Information Today column and in a series of posts I am doing for a new Web log that will be available in mid-October. The announcement of the new Web log will appear in Beyond Search and I believe there will be a news release if I remember to alert one of my goslings to the task.
First, EntropySoft is a vendor that offers document connectors. You can get information about that firm’s offerings at www.entropysoft.net.
Second, there is a major dust up in the document connector world, and it is one that is the subject of my October Information Today column. The issue is an allegation by i2 Ltd., a company based in England. The core of the allegation is that improper actions were used to reverse engineer a document connector by Palantir. Depending on the outcome of this legal matter, there may be some modifications in the connector world. The issue is a connector for file type ANB. I have done work for i2.
Third, there are some open source connector initiatives underway. If you have not explored this side of the connector world you can begin with a Google search, a Black Duck search, or navigate to http://openconnector.org. The open source software movement, particularly in light of the Oracle litigation with Google, may have an impact on open source connectors.
There are also connector vendors in Hungary and India, but I won’t list these. When the mid tier consultants recycle my work, I want them to have something to do.
With the financial vice closing on many keyword search firms, one has to be vigilant for partial or edited information. Hiving off connectors is a way to generate cash from “must have” code widgets. A serious connector business is a relatively large undertaking. That is one reason why certain firms eschew connectors completely; others code their own with varying degrees of success; and most firms turn to third parties for a bundle that handles the most common file types.
The goose may be old, but he makes an effort to identify as many sides of an issue as possible. What we have, therefore, is a potential instability in the shift from basic search to more sophisticated information fusion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2010
Freebie, unlike information from English majors, former journalists, and the azurini of the world
Tibco: Money and Mentos
September 27, 2010
Tibco (founded and directed by MIT- and Harvard-grad Vivek Ranadive) reported strong third quarter earnings. The company also made an interesting acquisition. Tibco purchased OpenSpirit, a maker of software used in oil and gas exploration in September 2010.
The “information bus” upon which Tibco’s fame rests is used as plumbing in a number of high profile industries. These include news, financial services, and government entities.
What’s important about Tibco is that the firm, in my opinion, has been one of the leaders in real time computing and information systems. Tibco’s approach can alert, pass messages, and transform content. With a bit of work, Tibco becomes the equivalent of the nervous system of a client. Many companies assert that their technology delivers a platform. Palantir, for example, is a relative newcomer to the platform pitch. But the reality is that companies like Tibco deliver a deeper, more fundamental architectural approach.
And Tibco makes the efficacy of its architecture easy to understand. How does Tibco communicate the value of its real time architecture? Click here.
For more information about Tibco, what I call a real platform company, navigate to the firm’s Web site at www.tibco.com. When I visited Tibco’s offices a decade ago, I remember see Yahoo News chugging happily away on Tibco’s servers. Yep, Tibco is more than Mentos.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2010
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