Gartner and Enterprise Video Content Management
October 19, 2014
I read “Panopto Recognized as a “Leader” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management.” I learned that Panopto is a “leader” in the mid tier consulting firm’s league table of enterprise video content management vendors.
According to the write up,
In use at Fortune 500 companies and leading academic institutions worldwide, Panopto is the only video platform that provides organizations with an integrated, off-the-shelf solution for video recording, live streaming, video management, and inside-video search. Within the enterprise, Panopto is being used to improve sales enablement, streamline employee onboarding, scale corporate training, and simplify the delivery of executive communications. Within universities, Panopto is the fastest-growing solution for flipping the classroom, capturing lectures, and streaming campus events.
For many years, I have pointed out that locating information in a large collection of videos remains a dicey proposition. Years ago I explored Exalead’s video search system. It worked, but it imposed hefty computational burdens on system resources. Perhaps that has changed under Dassault’s stewardship? I wonder if the Exalead system could be used to manage an organization’s video? I don’t know, and the company does not appear in the Gartner version of the Boston Consulting Group’s matrix.
Another possible omission is Autonomy’s line up of video management and findability tools. I recall seeing a demonstration of a system with the “powered by IDOL” label. Has Autonomy withdrawn from the field of video play?
In our ongoing investigation of Google technology, we learned that it is easy to use YouTube as a convenient, low cost video management system. But no Google in the BCG inspired matrix.
I don’t know too much about video management, but when I scanned the graphic available from this link, I noticed these companies’ absence?
The inclusion of some products/companies with which I was not familiar was interesting; for example, Perceptive Software (part of Lexmark and owner of ISYS test search). The separate entries and Kulu Valley and Qumu struck me as an anomaly. Qumu, I believe, owns Kulu. Does 1 + 1 = a super leader or is this an oversight or just a failure to update?
Congratulations to Panopto. But in the back of my mind there is a reason why some consultancies lag behind McKinsey, BCG, and the pre-break up Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Mentioning “mid tier” reminds me of IDC’s sale of my content on Amazon without my permission under the “expert” Dave Schubmehl’s name.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2014
MarkLogic: Banging a Drum in Hopes of Drowning Out Open Source NoSQL Reggae Beat
October 3, 2014
I read “MarkLogic Positioned as a Leader in NoSQL Document Databases Report by Independent Research Firm.” The research firm is the mid tier outfit Forrester Research Inc. Forrester creates “wave” reports. These are Forrester’s response to various grid, quadrants, and tables cranked out by Gartner, Ovum, Butler, Kelsey, and a life boat stuffed with consulting firm shakeout survivors. Dated October 2, 2014, the MarkLogic news release will be the first of a half dozen or more issued by companies in this “independent research firm’s” report. The mid tier analyses are crafted so that negatives are swathed in high density, low impact foam like the spray on insulation.
Why not?
Like Heaven’s Gate’s media event, any publicity is good publicity. At least, that’s the public relations mantra. Look at IBM Watson and its BBQ sauce recipe with tamarind. I mention that innovation as frequently as possible.
Well, let me do my part for this report:
The write up asserts:
“MarkLogic offers the most mature and scalable NoSQL document database. Unlike other NoSQL document databases, MarkLogic has been offering a NoSQL solution for more than a decade,” stated Forrester in the report that evaluated select companies against 57 criteria. “MarkLogic has the most comprehensive data management features and functionality to store, process, and access any kind of structured and multi structured data.” Forrester’s evaluation of NoSQL document database vendors scored factors like performance, scalability, integration, security, high availability, workload management and form factor. MarkLogic was cited as a Leader in the evaluation, receiving its highest score in the go-to-market category.
Okay. The news release provides a link so the reader can get a copy of the “independent research firm’s” report. If you want to skip the original document and go to the registration form so you can download the “independent research firm’s” report, navigate to http://bit.ly/1oGQCvf. In my experience, some follow up by the “leader” MarkLogic may take place.
In my view, content marketing covers these “independent” reports. The idea makes clear that attention is required in order to kindle interest in a product or a service. Now MarkLogic is an Extensible Markup Language data management system. The company has been in business since 2003. The firm has ingested more than $70 million in venture funding. The firm has experienced the same type of revolving door for senior management that other ageing starts up experience; for example, Lucid Imagination (now Lucid Works, which I write as Lucid Works. Really?). MarkLogic, in order to meet stakeholders’ expectations, has to find a growth bull, get it in a corral, and covert the animal to high value revenue.
Several observations:
- Proprietary XML systems positioned as NoSQL alternatives have to find a way to convince a prospect that proprietary is a better value than open source. The impact of Hadoop, a variant of Google’s Big Table, is long in the tooth and faces some of its own value challenges.
- Companies like Oracle are providing some of its clients with the comfort of a proprietary system with compatibility with open source technology. Thus, some large companies may be reluctant to dismount one old nag and climb on another. IBM also does some anti open source marketing but that’s another story. For some insights, run a query for Watson on the Beyond Search index.
- The noise surrounding NoSQL is creating some confusion. This means that firms that are neither big or small have to find a way to make their size into a positive. Enter content marketing and reports that present a group of companies in a simplified table.
- Do the “independent” experts use the products included in a variant of the Boston Consulting Group’s matrix? You know: Install, optimize, customize, and utilize with their own brain, fingers, and eyeballs? My hunch is that none of this “real” experience stuff is germane to cranking out an “independent” report. Just my uninformed opinion, you understand.
If a company requires a NoSQL solution, how do those firms select vendors? Based on the research that IDC used to skip Dave Schubmehl to expert status, large companies are more likely to try open source for a new project. Smaller firms often look for brand name software in order to show investors that base technology has a brand name.
Forrester-type firms (Gartner, IDC, Ovum, etc.) generate “independent” reports to inflate the balloon. The French have a delightful verb for this: “se gonfler”. So, nous [MarkLogic] gonflons notre ballon. (If the translation is poor, blame Google, the inventor of Big Table more than a decade ago.)
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2014
Google May Show Pesky German Publishers Its Traffic Power
October 2, 2014
I read “Google Bows to Pressure, Removes News Snippets from German Search Results.” This is a “real” journalism story from the same folks that delivered the Dave Schubmehl sale of my information on Amazon.
Not surprisingly, I interpreted the friskiness of the German legal eagles in a way that is quite different from deal old Computerworld’s.
Computerworld states with its real news authoritarian tone:
In a move to minimize legal risks, Google has stopped showing news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites in search results.
My view is that Google will allow publishers to witness a shift in their referral traffic from Google. Changes in either presentation in a Google page or results list can have an immediate and direct impact on traffic.
In my view, the Google perceives some countries as “not getting it.” What looks like a retreat may not be a signal of Google cowardice. Too bad traffic reports for German media properties are not as popular as Miley Cyrus concert attendance.
If one is not in Google, one may be hard to find or may not exist to some of the digital crowd.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2014
IDC Tweets, IBM, and Content Marketing
September 29, 2014
Some Backstory
In 2012 and 2013, IDC sold my content with my name and Dave Schubmehl’s. These were nifty IDC “official” reports. The only hitch in the git along is that IDC did not trouble itself to issue a contract, get my permission, or tell me what they were doing with research my team prepared. The deal was witnessed by a law librarian, and I have a stack of emails about my research into such open source companies as Attivio, ElasticSearch (one of the disruptors of the enterprise search market), IBM (the subject of the IDC twit storm), Lucid Imagination (now Lucid Works which I write when I feel playful as Lucid works, really?), and eight other companies.
Hit by a twit storm. Rough seas ahead. Image from www.qsl.net.
In 2012, I had the open source research. IDC wanted the open source content to use in a monograph. So in front of a law librarian, IDC’s search “expert” thought the exchange of my information for open source intelligence, money, and stuff to sell was a great idea. (I have a file of email from IDC to me about what IDC wanted, but I never got a contract. But IDC had my research. Ah, those administrative delays.) IDC, however, was organized enough to additions to my company research like an open source industry overview.
In an odd approach to copyright, IDC did not produce a contract but it produced reports about four open source companies. Mr. Schubmehl and IDC just went about producing what were recycled company reports and trying to sell them at $3,500 a whack. Is that value or an example of the culture of narcissism? It may come as a surprise to you, gentle reader, but I sell research for money. I have a business model and it has worked for about 40 years. When an outfit uses the research without issuing a contract, I have to start thinking about such issues as fairness, integrity, copyright, and name surfing. Call me idiosyncratic, but when my name is used without my permission, I wonder how a big and allegedly respected organization can operate like a BearStearns-type senior executive.
Then, the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, a librarian told me that IDC was selling a report with my name and Mr. Schubmehl’s on Amazon. Wow, Amazon, the Wal-Mart for the digital age. The reports, now removed from Amazon’s blue light special shelf cost $3,500. Not bad for eight pages of information based on my year long research investment into the wild and volatile world of open source search and content processing. Surf’s up for Mr. Schubmehl.
Well, IDC after some prodding by my very gentle legal gerbil stopped selling my work. We received a proposal that offered me a pittance for a guarantee that I would not talk or write about this name surfing, unauthorized resale of my information on Amazon, and the flubs of Mr. Schubmehl.
My legal gerbil rejected IDC’s lawyer crafted “deal,” and I am now converting my IDC misadventure into a metaphor for some of the deeper issues associated with “experts” and certain professional services firms. My legal gerbil suggested a significantly higher fee, but, like many of that ilk, the gerbil broke my heart.
Hence, IDC and Mr. Schubmehl’s tweets and twit storm are on my fragile ship’s radar. Let’s review the IBM IDC Schubmehl twit storm on just one day in September 2014. Trigger warning: Do not emulate the IDC Schubmehl method for your content marketing program. One day of tweets only generates a lot of twit.
Now to the Twit Storm Unleashed on September 16, 2014
Using my Overflight system, I monitor IDC tweets. Quite an interesting series of tweets appears on September 16, 2014. Mr. Schubmehl posted 25 tweets about IBM Watson.
Here are three examples of the Watson content content to which his name was attached::
- September 16, 2014.
#WatsonAnalytics uses Watson cognitive technologies to ingest structured data and find relationships – Robin Grosset & Dan Wolfson - September 16, 2014 Combo of cognitive with cloud analytics improves process, analysis and decision making – cognitive will change all mkts
#WatsonAnalytics - September 16, 2014
#WatsonAnalytics will be using a freemium model….first time for IBM…
Obviously there is nothing wrong with a tweet about an IBM product. What’s one more twit emission in a flow of several hundred thousand 144 character text outputs.
There is nothing illegal with two dozen tweets about IBM. What two dozen tweets do is make me laugh and see this content marketing effort as fodder for corporate weirdness.
Also, this IBM twit storm is not on the Miley Cyrus or Lady Gaga scale, but it is notable because it is a one day twit storm quite unlike the Jeopardy journey. Quite a marketing innovation: getting an alleged “expert” to craft 16 “original” tweets in one day and issue seven retweets of tweets from others who are fans of Big Blue. A few Schubmehl tweets on the 16th illustrated diversity; for example, “The FBI’s Facial Recognition System Is Here.” Hmm. The FBI and facial recognition. I wonder why one is interested in this development.
The terms mentioned in these IBM centric tweets on September 16, 2014, reveal the marketing jargon that IBM is using to generate revenue from the game show winning technology. My list of buzzwords from the tweets read like a who’s who of blogosphere and venture oriented yak:
- Automated data cleansing
- Analytics (cloud based)
- Big Data
- Cognitive (system and capabilities)
- Data explorer
- Democratizing
- Freemium
- Natural Language Computing
- Natural Language Query.
From this list of buzzwords my favorites are “cognitive,” “Big Data,” and the number one silly word “Freemium.” Imagine. Freemium from IBM. Imagine.
My Interpretation of the Twit Storm
Let me capture several preliminary observations:
First, the Schubmehl Twitter activity on September 16, 2014 focuses mostly on IBM’s challenged Watson business development effort. The cluster of tweets on the 16th suggest a somewhat ungainly and down-market content marketing play.
Did Mr. Schubmehl wake up on the 16th of September and decide to crank out Watson centric tweets? Did IBM pay IDC and Mr. Schubmehl to do some content marketing like thousands of PR firms do each day? We even have these outfits in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky to flog auto sales, bourbon, and cheesy festivals in Middletown, Kentucky.
Here’s a question: “How many tweets does a McKinsey or Bain type of consulting firm issue on a single day for a single product that seems to be struggling for revenue?” If you know, please, use the comments section of this blog to provide some factoids.
Second, the tweets provide the reader with a list of what seem to be IBM Watson aficionados or employees who have the job of making the shotgun marriage of open source code, legacy Almaden technology, and proprietary scripts into a billion dollar revenue producer soon, very soon, gentle reader. The individuals mentioned in the September 16, 2014, tweets include:
- Steve Gold, Baylor University
- Robin Grosset, Distinguished engineer Watson Analytics.
- Dan Wolfson, IBM Distinguished Engineer
- Bob Picciano, Senior vice president, IBM information and analytics group.
Perhaps Mr. Gold is objective? I ask, “Do the other three IBM wizards looking at the world through IBM tinted spectacles when reading their business objectives for the current fiscal year?” I asked myself, “Should I trust these individuals who presumably are also “experts” in all things related to Watson?” My preliminary answer is, “Not for an objective view of the game show winning Watson.”
Third, what’s the payoff of this twit storm for IBM? Did IBM expect me to focus on the Schubmehl twit storm and convert the information into my idea of a 10 minute stand up comedy routine to deliver at the upcoming intelligence and law enforcement conference in nine days? Is it possible that “doing social media” looks good on a weekly report when an executive does not have juicy revenue numbers to present? The value of the effort strikes me as modest. In fact, viewed as a group, the tweets could be interpreted as a indicator of IBM’s slide into desperation marketing?
What about consulting firms and their ability to pump out high margin revenue?
Outfits like Gerson Lehrman Group have put the squeeze on mid tier consulting firms. The bottom feeders with its middle school teacher and poet contingent are not likely to sell to the IBMs of the world. GLG types companies are also nipping at the low end business of the blue chip outfits like Bain, Boston Consulting, and even McKinsey.
Put GLG can deliver to a client retired professionals from blue chip firms and on point experts. As a result, GLG has made life very, very tough for the mid tier outfits. Why pay $50,000 for an unproven “expert” when you can buy a person with a pedigree for an hour and pay a few hundred bucks when you need a factoid or an opinion? I consider IDC’s move to content marketing indicative of a fundamental shift in the character of a consulting firm’s business. The shift to low level PR work seems out of character for a professionals services with a commitment to intellectual rigor.
Every few days I learn that something called TopSEOs.com generates a list of content marketing leaders. Will IDC appear on this list?
For those who depend on lower- or mid tier consulting firms for professional counsel, how would you answer these questions:
- What is the intellectual substance behind pronouncements? Is there original research underpinning pronouncements and projections, or are the data culled from secondary sources and discussions with paying customers?
- What is the actual relationship between a mid tier consulting firm and the companies discussed in “authoritative” reports? Are these reports and projects inclusions (a fancy word for ads) or are they objective discussions of companies?
- Are the experts presented as “experts” actually experts or are they individuals who want to hit revenue goals while keeping costs as low as possible?
I don’t have definitive answers to these questions. Perhaps one day I can use a natural language query to tap into Big Data and rely on cognitive methods to provide answers.
For now, a one day twit storm is a wonderful example of how not to close deals, build reputations, and stimulate demand for advanced technology offered via a “Freemium” model. What the heck does that mean anyway?
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2014
Hewlett Packard Autonomy: A New 3D Printer Will Not Distract Litigation Scrutiny
September 28, 2014
I read “Hewlett Packard Autonomy Lawsuit Accord Questioned by Judge.” I marked this passage as an indication that HP’s announcement about a new 3D printer is not distracting US District Judge Charles Breyer. The write up states:
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, who earlier held up approval of the settlement over how much lawyers would be paid, Friday told company attorneys he’s concerned the deal would rob investors of the right to sue management over matters unrelated to the purchase.
Also, one big bucks outfit expressed some concern that certain aspects of HP management behavior may need some sunlight. Navigate to “CalPERS Says HP/Autonomy Shareholder Settlement Needs More Work.” I noted this passage in the article:
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer dated Tuesday, CalPERS said the judge should not approve the deal before both sides disclose the amount of fees plaintiff attorneys would recover. As it stands, the proposed civil settlement would leave shareholders “in the dark” about one of its key terms, CalPERS said in the letter.
Now about that 3D printer? “Market Brands HP’s 3D Printing Comments “Worrisome.” As long as a mid tier consultant explains HP’s 3D printer play in this way, HP will have to deal with the buzz about Autonomy:
In the end, HP will target the 3D printer opportunities that align with its technology and overall strategy. And as the company has said but which has been misunderstood by many people, HP will make technology announcements this fall only to make its 3D printers available later.
Does HP have control of its communications or will tweets from an outfit like IDC turn the tide? The September 22, 2014 tweets about HP are similar in the impact to the “In the end” statement above:
Dave Schubmehl @dschubmehl · Sep 22 HP #IDOL and #Vertica power #HPHAVEn to deliver new insights from structured and unstructured information to impact marketing #HPEngage2014 Replied to 0 times
I quite like the zero times.
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2014
NSA Catalog Available
September 27, 2014
Short honk: I you want a copy of National Security Agency 2014 Technology Catalog: Technology Transfer Program, you can download it for now from this link. If found pages 26 to 40 fascinating. Will IDC issue its own version of this document, using its surfing technical demonstrated by Dave Schubmehl with my content? I will keep my eye open.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2014
Google and Customer Support
September 12, 2014
I don’t expect anything from an outfit providing customer support. I don’t expect anything from search vendors with customer support systems. The name of the game is no costs. To eliminate costs, customer support operations have some options.
- Ignore the inquiries. I recall that a member of my family used this method for a large search system. He figured that the time required to handle inquiries would bankrupt the company. Ergo: Hit delete.
- Buy an automated system and let it run. This usually requires paying a vendor to set up the system and “maintain” it. This works a bit like winning on a digital slot machine.
- Try to perform customer support. Move the operation to some lower cost location and deal with the revolving door that leads to 20 to 50 percent turnover.
Many companies use these options in combination.
According to Computerworld (yep, it seems to still be in business unlike other units of IDG’s empire), Google has to shift from option one.
“German Court Requires Google to Stop Ignoring Customer Emails” reports:
Google users who email the address “support-de@google.com” receive an automatic reply notifying the emailer that Google will neither read nor reply due to the large number of requests sent to the address. After that sentence, the automatic reply directs Google users to various online self-help guides and contact forms. This form of communication is incompatible with the German Telemedia Act, which says that companies must provide a way to ensure fast electronic communications with them, the VZBV had argued. The organization described Google’s support address as a black box in which messages disappear into a void. The court agreed with the VZBV and ruled that an automatically generated email does not meet the requirements of the law.
There you go. Google may shift to another option. Perhaps a search engine vendor will land the contract. Will the German court like that approach? I will wait with German pointer like fixation.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2014
Note that IDC is the outfit that sold my content on Amazon without my permission. The “expert” who is surfing on my name is Dave Schubmehl. The German court does not seem to pay much attention to this, however.
IDG Nukes Macworld Magazine
September 11, 2014
I love IDG, the publishing / services company founded by Pat McGovern in 1964. Mr. McGovern spoke to me about joining the company. I was an executive at Ziff Communications Co. He seemed like a nice guy. I recall he had on a plain blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. I think that every time I saw him at a conference or in a snapshot, he had on that attire.
I decided to deflect his interest in me. I did not get happy vibes from him. Bill Ziff, on the other hand, emitted a presence and triggered singing and dancing vibes. So what da ya think? Culture maybe? Integrity radar beep?
IDG owns IDC, an outfit that has used my content over the years. Most recently, one of the IDG/IDC “experts” surfed on my name, selling a heavily modified version of a report I wrote about Attivio. Did I get paid? Nah. Did the expert, Dave Schubmehl, I believe sign a contract with me? Nah.
Does this provide some insight into the pressure on IDG / IDC to make money without thinking too much about the methods? Hmmm.
When I read “IDG Shutters Macworld Magazine, Much of the Editorial Staff Let Go,” I had three thoughts race through my admittedly small mind:
- There will be more cost reducing measures. This is not the dropping of a single shoe. It may signal a semi carrying print titles that is losing its load.
- Too bad for the IDGers who have to look for work elsewhere. Leaving a company that seems to be starting a slim down plan to deal with cost issues is not the blue ribbon it was in the triage years after the crash in 2008. There’s a recovery, right?
- Are there other examples of rising pressure causing interesting business decisions? Surfing on my name by selling a report that puts some sparkle on the Las Vegas dancer’s costume is different from blue chip consulting methods. See this story for some color.
The article points out that the Macworld Web site will not be killed off. Some staff have been sent packing.
Not too surprising.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2014
BA Insight on the Resurrection Trail
September 10, 2014
I read “Artificial Intelligence Is Resurrecting Enterprise Search.” The unstated foundation of this write up is that enterprise search is dead. I am not sure I buy into that assumption. Last time I checked ElasticSearch was thriving with its open source approach. In fact, one “expert” pointed out that the decline in the fortunes of certain Brand Name search systems coincided with the rise in ElasticSearch’s fortunes. Connection? I don’t know, but enterprise search is thriving.
What needs resurrection (either the Phoenix variety or the Henry James’s varieties of mystical experience type) is search vendors whose software does not deliver for licensees. In this category are outfits that have just gone out of business; for example, Convera, Delphes, Entopia, Kartoo, Perfect Search, Siderean Software, and others).
Then there are the vendors with aging technology that have sold out to outfits that pack information retrieval into umbrella applications in order to put hurdles for competitors to scale. If lock in won’t work, then find a way to build a barricade. Outfits with this approach include Dassault, OpenText, Oracle, TeraText (now Leidos), among others.
Also, there are search vendors up to their ears in hock to venture funding firms. With stakeholders wanting some glimmer of a payout, the pressure is mounting. Companies in this leaky canoe include Attivio, BA Insight, Coveo, and Lucid Imagination, among others.
Another group of vendors are what I call long shots. These range from the quirky French search vendors like Antidot to Sinequa. There are some academic spin outs like Funnelback, which is now a commercial operation with its own unique challenges. And there are some other cats and dogs that live from deal to deal.
Finally, there are the giant companies looking for a way to make as much money as possible from the general ennui associated with proprietary search solutions. IBM is pitching Watson and using open source to get the basic findability function up and running. Microsoft is snagging technology from Jabber and bundling in various bits and pieces to deliver on the SharePoint vision of access to information in an organization. This Delve stuff is sort of smart, but until the product ships and provides access to a range of content types, I think Microsoft has a work in progress, not an enterprise solution upon which one can rely. The giant IHS is leveraging acquired technology into a search business, at least in the planners’ spreadsheets. Google offers its Search Appliance, which is one of the most expensive appliance solutions I have encountered. There is one witless mid tier consulting firm that believes a GSA is economical. Okay. And there is the name surfing Schubmehl from IDC who uses other people’s work to build a reputation.
To sum up, ElasticSearch is doing fine. Lots of other vendors are surviving or selling science fiction.
So what?
The “Artificial Intelligence Is Resurrecting Enterprise Search” is a write up from one of the outfits eager to generate big dollars to keep the venture capitalists happy. Hey, don’t take the money, if the recipients can’t generate big bucks.
Anyway, the premise of the write up is that enterprise search is dead and Microsoft’s Delve will give the software sector new life. The only folks who will get new life are the Microsoft savvy developers who can figure out how to set up, customize, optimize, and keep operational a grab back of software.
Microsoft wants to provide a corporate SharePoint user with a single interface to the content needed to perform work. This is a pretty tough problem. SageMaker, now long gone, failed at this effort. Google asserted that its Search Appliance could pull off this trick. Google failed. Dozens of vendors talk about federated search and generally deliver results that are of the “close but no cigar” variety.
Now what’s artificial intelligence got to do with Delve? Well, the system uses personalization and cues to figure out what a business SharePoint user wants and needs. We know how well this works with the predictive services available from Apple, Google, and—Microsoft Phone. Each time I use these services, I remember that they don’t work too well. Yep, Google really knows what I want about one out of a 1,000 queries. The other 999 Google generates laughable outputs.
Microsoft will be in the same rubber raft.
The write up does disagree with my viewpoint. Well, that’s okay because the BA Insight professional who tackles artificial intelligence is going to need more than inputs from Dave Schubmehl who recycles my information without my permission. If this write up is any indication, something has gone wrong somewhere along the line with regard to artificial intelligence, which is, I believe, an oxymoron.
Delve is, according the the write up, now “turning search on its head.” What? I need to find information about a specific topic. How will a SharePoint centric solution know I need that information? Well, that is not a viable scenario. Delve only knows what I have previously done. That’s the beauty of smart personalization. The problem is that my queries bounce from Ebola to silencers for tactical shotguns, from meth lab dispersion in Kentucky to the Muslim Brotherhood connections to certain political figures. Yep, Delve is going to be a really big help, right?
The write up asserts:
Companies need to get smarter about how they structure their information by addressing core foundational data layers. Pay attention to corporate taxonomies and introduce automated processes that add additional metadata where it’s left out from unstructured data sets. Doing this homework will make enterprise search results more relevant and will allow better results when interacting with enterprise data — whether it’s through text, voice or based on social distance. Access to enterprise data through intelligent interfaces is only getting better.
My reaction? My goodness. What the heck does this collection of buzzwords have to do with advanced software methods for information retrieval? Not much. That’s what the write is conveying to me.
Hopefully the investors in BA Insight find more to embrace than I do. If I were an investor, I would demand that my money be spent for more impactful essays, not reminders that Microsoft like IBM thrives on services, certification, and customers who may not know how to determine if software is smart.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2014
Nowcasting: Lots of Behind the Scenes Human Work Necessary
September 10, 2014
Some outfits surf on the work of others. A good example is the Schubmehl-Arnold tie up. Get some color and details here.
Other outfits have plenty of big thinkers and rely on nameless specialists to perform behind the scenes work.
A good example of this approach is revealed in “Predicting the Present with Bayesian Structural Time Series.” The scholarly write up explains a procedure to perform “nowcasting.” The idea is that one can use real time information to help predict other now happenings.
Instead of doing the wild and crazy Palantir/Recorded Future forward predicting, these Googlers focus on the now.
I am okay with whatever outputs predictive systems generate. What’s important about this paper is that the authors document when humans have to get involved in the processes constructed from numerical recipes known to many advanced math and statistics whizzes.
Here are several I noted:
- The modeler has to “choose components for the modeling trend.” No problem, but it is tedious and important work. Get this step wrong and the outputs can be misleading.
- Selecting sampling algorithms, page 6. Get this wrong and the outputs can be misleading.
- Simplify by making assumptions, page 7. “Another strategy one could pursue (but we have not) is to subjectively segment predictors into groups based on how likely the would be to enter the model.”
- Breaking with Bayesian, page 8. “Scaling by “s^2/y”* is a minor violation of the Bayesian paradigm because it means our prior is data determined.”
There are other examples. These range from selecting what outputs from Google Trends and Correlate to use to the sequence of numerical recipes implemented in the model.
My point is that Google is being upfront about the need for considerable manual work in order to make its nowcasting predictive model “work.”
Analytics deployed in organizations depend on similar human behind the scenes work. Get the wrong thresholds, put the procedures in a different order, or use bad judgment about what method to use and guess what?
The outputs are useless. As managers depend on analytics to aid their decision making and planners rely on models to predict the future, it is helpful to keep in mind that an end user may lack the expertise to figure out if the outputs are useful. If useful, how much confidence should a harried MBA put in predictive models.
Just a reminder that ISIS caught some folks by surprise, analytics vendor HP seemed to flub its predictions about Autonomy sales, and the outfits monitoring Ebola seem to be wrestling with underestimations.
Maybe enterprise search vendors can address these issues? I doubt it.
Note: my blog editor will not render mathematical typography. Check the original Google paper on page 8, line 4 for the correct representation.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2014
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