High School Management Method: Blame a Customer
June 9, 2021
I noted another allegedly true anecdote. If the information is correct, gentle reader, we have another example of the high school science club management method. Think acne, no date for the prom, and a weird laugh type of science club. Before you get too excited, yes, I was a member of my high school’s science club and I think an officer as well as a proponent of the HSSC approach to social interaction. Proud am I.
“Fastly Claims a Single Customer Responsible for Widespread Internet Outage” asserts:
The company is now claiming the issue stemmed from a bug and one customer’s configuration change. “We experienced a global outage due to an undiscovered software bug that surfaced on June 8 when it was triggered by a valid customer configuration change,” Nick Rockwell, the company’s SVP of engineering and infrastructure wrote in a blog post last night. “This outage was broad and severe, and we’re truly sorry for the impact to our customers and everyone who relies on them.”
Yep, a customer using the Fastly cloud service.
Two observations:
- Unnoticed flaws will be found and noticed, maybe exploited. Fragility and vulnerability are engineered in.
- Customer service is likely to subject the individual to an inbound call loop. Take that, you valued customer.
And what about Amazon’s bulletproof, super redundant, fail over whiz bang system. Oh, it failed for users.
Yep, high school science club thinking says, “We did not do it.” Yeah.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2021
Google: Do What We Say, Ignore What We Do, Just Heel!
June 8, 2021
If this Reddit diagram is on the money, we have a great example of how Google management goes about rule making. The post is called “Google Can’t Pass Its Own Page Speed Test.” The post was online on June 5, 2021, but when Beyond Search posts this short item, that Reddit post may be tough to find. Why? Oh, because.
- There are three grades Dearest Google automatically assigns to those who put content online. There are people who get green badges (just like in middle school). There are people who warrant yellow badges (no, I won’t mention a certain shop selling cloth patches in the shape of pentagons with pointy things), and red badges (red, like the scarlet letter, and you know what that meant in Puritan New England a relatively short time ago).
Notice that these Google sites get the red badge of high school science club mismanagement recognition:
- Google Translate
- Google’s site for its loyal and worshipful developers
- Google’s online store where you can buy tchotchkes
- The Google Cloud which has dreams of crushing the competitors like Amazon and Microsoft into non-coherent photons
- Google Maps which I personally find almost impossible to use due to the effort to convert a map into so much more than a representation of a territory. Perhaps a Google Map is not the territory? Could it be a vessel for advertising?
There are three Google services which get the yellow badge. I find the yellow badge thing very troubling. Here these are:
- YouTube, an outstanding collection of content recommended by a super duper piece of software and a giant hamper for online advertising of Grammarly, chicken sandwiches, insurance, and so much more for the consumers of the world
- Google Trends. This is a service which reveals teeny tiny slice of the continent of data it seems the Alphabet Google thing possesses
- The Google blog. That is a font of wisdom.
Observations:
- Like Google’s other mandates, it appears that those inside the company responsible for Google’s public face either don’t know the guidelines or simply don’t care.
- Like AMP, this is an idea designed to help out Google. Making everyone go faster reduces costs for the Google. Who wants to help Google reduce costs? I sure do.
- Google’s high school science club management methods continue to demonstrate their excellence.
What happens if a non Google Web site doesn’t go fast? You thought you got traffic from Google like the good old days, perhaps rethink that assumption?
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2021
Technical Debt: Paying Down Despite Disaster Waiting in the Wings
June 7, 2021
Some interesting ideas appear in “10 Ways to Prevent and Manage Technical Debt—Tips from Developers.” The listicle is not particularized on a specific application or service. Let me convert a few of the points in the article to the challenges that vendors of information retrieval software have to meet in a successful manner.
I am not tracking innovations in search the way I did when I wrote the first three editions of the Enterprise Search Report many years ago. Search technology, despite the hooting of marketers and “innovators” who don’t know much about the 50 year plus history of finding, search has not made much progress. In fact, if I were still giving talks at search-related events, I would present data showing that “findability” has regressed. Now to the matter at hand.
I am not sure most people understand what technical debt is in general and even fewer apply the concept to search and retrieval. To keep it simple, technical debt is not repairing and servicing your auto. You do just enough to keep the Nash Rambler on the road. Then it dies. You find that parts are tough to find and expensive to get. If you want to do the job “right,” you will find that specialists are on hand to make that hunk of junk gleam. Get out your checkbook and write small. You will be filling in some big numbers. Search is that Nash Rambler but you have a couple of Metropolitans and a junker of a 1951 Nash Ambassador sitting in your data center. You can get stuff from A to B, but each trip becomes more agonizing. Then you have to spend.
Technical debt is the amount you have to spend to get back up and running plus the lost revenue or estimated opportunity cost. These numbers are the cost of the hardware, software, knick knacks, and humans who sort of know what to do.
What about search? Let’s take three of the items identified in the article and consider them in terms of what is often incorrectly described as “enterprise search.” My work over the years has documented the fact that there is no enterprise search. Shocking? Think about it. Employees cannot find the video of that Zoom meeting or the transcript automagically prepared this morning. And that sales presentation with the new pricing? Oh, right, that’s on the VP’s laptop and it won’t connect to the cloud archiving system because the wizard executive has trouble opening a hotel room with the keycard. Like I said, “Wizard.”
Item number 2 in the article is “Embed technical debt management into the company culture.” Ho ho ho. The present state of play is to get something up and running, dump on features, and generate revenue, some revenue, any revenue. In many organizations, the pressure to move the needle trumps any weird ideas to go back and fix the plumbing. How often is the core of Google’s search and retrieval reworked? Yeah, not often and every year the job becomes less and less desirable. The legions of Xooglers who worked on the system are unlikely to return to the digital Disneyland to do this work even for dump trucks filled with Ethereum.
Item number 5 is “Make technical debt a priority in open source culture.” Okay, let’s think about open source search. Have you through about Sphinx recently. What about Xapian? The big dogs are under intense pressure from the real champions of open source like Amazon and everyone’s favorite security company Microsoft. The individuals who do the bulk of the work struggle to make the darned thing work on the latest and greatest platforms and operating systems. The more outfits like Amazon pressure Elastic, the less likely the humans who work on Lucene and Solr will be able to fend off complete commercialization. Hey, there’s always consulting work or a job at IBM, another cheerleader for open source. So priority? Right.
Now item number 6 in the article. It is “Choose a flexible architecture.” What does this mean for search and retrieval. Most search and search centric applications like policeware and intelware are mashups of open source, legacy code left over from another project, and intern-infused scripts. The “architecture” is whatever was easiest and most financially acceptable. Once those initial decisions are made or simply allowed to happen because someone knew someone, the systems are unlikely to change. Fixing up something that sort of works is similar to the stars of VanWives repairing their ageing vehicle while driving in the rain. Ain’t gonna happen.
Net net: Technical debt for most organizations is what will bring down the company. Innovations slows to a crawl and becomes a series of add ons, wrappers, and strapping tape patches. Then boom. A competitor has blown the doors off the incumbent, customers just cancel contracts for enterprise search systems, or the once valued function becomes a feature for a more important application. Technical debt, like a college grad’s student loan, is a stress inducer. Stress can shorten one’s life and kill. The enterprise search market is littered with the corpses of outfits terminated from technical debt denial syndrome.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2021
An Amusing Analysis of Palantir Technologies
June 7, 2021
I find analyses of intelware/policeware companies fascinating. “Palantir DD If You Want to Understand Company and Its History Better” is based on research conducted since November 2020. The write up asserts that Palantir is three “companies”: The government software (what I call intelware/policeware), the adding sales professionals facet of the business, and “their actual like full AI for weaponization and war and defense for the government.”
I must admit my research team has characterized Palantir Technologies in a different way. Palantir has been in business for more than a decade. The company has become publicly traded, and the stock as of June 2, 2021, is trading at about $25 per share. The challenge for companies like Palantir are the same old set of hurdles that other search and content processing firms have to get over without tripping and hitting the cinders with their snoot; namely:
- Generating sustainable and growing revenue streams from a somewhat narrow slide of commercial, financial, and government prospects. Newcomers like DataWalk offer comparable if not better technology at what may be more acceptable price points.
- Balancing the cost of “renting” cloud computer processing centers against the risk of those cloud vendors raising prices and possibly offering the same or substantially the same services at a lower price. Palantir relies on Amazon AWS, and that creates an interesting risk for Palantir’s senior management. To ameliorate the risk of AWS raising prices, buying a Palantir competitor, or just rolling out an Amazon version of the Palantir search and content processing system, Palantir signed a deal with IBM. This deal is for a different slice of the market, but it remains to be seen if this play will pay off in a substantial way.
- Figuring out how to expand the firm’s services’ business without getting into the business of creating customized versions of the Analyst’s Notebook type of product that Palantir offers. Furthermore, exceptional revenues can be generated from consulting, and to keep clients happy, Palantir may find that it has to resell competitors’ products. In short, consulting looks super from one point of view. From another it can derail the original Palantir business model. Money talks, particularly when the company has to payback its investors, invest in new technology, and spend money to generate leads and close.
- The clients have to be happy. Anecdotal evidence exists that some Palantir customers are not in thrill city. I am not going to identify the firms which have stubbed their toes on Palantir’s approach and the system’s value. Some online searching yields helpful insights.
- The company has a history of walking a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The litigation (now sealed) between Palantir and the original i2 Ltd., the company which developed to a large part the current approach to intelware/policeware is usually unknown or just ignored. That’s not helpful. Combine the i2 matter with Palantir’s method of providing its software to analysts in some battle zones reveals helpful nuances about the firm’s methods.
To sum up, the analysis — at least to me — was a hoot.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2021
Don Quixote Lives: Another Assault on Data Silos
June 3, 2021
Keep in mind that in some organizations data silos are necessary: Poaching colleagues (hello, big pharma), government security requirements (yep, the top Beltway bandits too), and common sense (lawyers heading to trial with a judge who has a certain reputation). Data silos are like everywhere. The were a couple of firms which billed themselves as “silo breakers.” How is that working out? The answer to the question resides in an analyst’s “data silo.” There you go.
Security is the biggest reason much-maligned data silos, also known as fragmented data, persist. Google now hopes to change that, we learn from “Google Cloud Launches New Services for a Unified Data Platform” at IT Brief. The company asserts its new solutions mean organizations can now forget about data silos and securely analyze their data in the cloud. We have yet to see detailed evidence for that claim, however. We will continue to keep our sensitive data separated, thank you very much.
Writer Ryan Morris-Reade describes the three new services upon which Google is pinning its cloudy unification hopes:
- Datastream, a new serverless Change Data Capture and replication service. Datastream enables customers to replicate data streams in real-time, from Oracle and MySQL databases to Google Cloud services such as BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage, and Cloud Spanner. This solution allows businesses to power real-time analytics, database replication, and event-driven architectures.
- Analytics Hub, a new capability that allows companies to create, curate, and manage analytics exchanges securely and in real-time. With Analytics Hub, customers can share data and insights, including dynamic dashboards and machine learning models securely inside and outside their organization.
- Dataplex, an intelligent data fabric that provides an integrated analytics experience, bringing the best of Google Cloud and open-source together, to enable users to rapidly curate, secure, integrate, and analyze their data at scale. Automated data quality allows data scientists and analysts to address data consistency across the tools of their choice, to unify and manage data without data movement or duplication. With built-in data intelligence using Google’s best-in-class AI and Machine Learning capabilities, organizations spend less time with infrastructure complexities and more time using data to deliver business outcomes.”
We learn consulting firm Deloitte is helping Google implement these solutions. That company’s global chief commercial officer emphasizes the tools provide “enhanced data experiences” for companies with siloed data by simplifying implementation and management. We are also told that Equifax and Deutsche Bank trust Google Cloud with their data. I guess that is supposed to mean we should, too.
But Google is quite the fan of data silos. Remember “universal search.” Google has separate indexes for news, scholarly information, and other content types. Universal implies breaking down “data silos.” But it is easier to talk about solving the data silo problem than delivering.
And what about Deloitte? This firm was fined about $20 million US because it had data silos which partitioned some partners from the work of the professionals working for Autonomy.
Yep, data silos. Persistent and embarrassing when someone thinks of “universal search” and Deloitte’s internal oversight methods.
Cynthia Murrell, June 03, 2021
Data Federation: Sure, Works Perfectly
June 1, 2021
How easy is it to snag a dozen sets of data, normalize them, parse them, and extract useful index terms, assign classifications, and other useful hooks? “Automated Data Wrangling” provides an answer sharply different from what marketers assert.
A former space explorer, now marooned on a beautiful dying world explains that the marketing assurances of dozens upon dozens of companies are baloney. Here’s a passage I noted:
Most public data is a mess. The knowledge required to clean it up exists. Cloud based computational infrastructure is pretty easily available and cost effective. But currently there seems to be a gap in the open source tooling. We can keep hacking away at it with custom rule-based processes informed by our modest domain expertise, and we’ll make progress, but as the leading researchers in the field point out, this doesn’t scale very well. If these kinds of powerful automated data wrangling tools are only really available for commercial purposes, I’m afraid that the current gap in data accessibility will not only persist, but grow over time. More commercial data producers and consumers will learn how to make use of them, and dedicate financial resources to doing so, knowing that they’ll be reap financial rewards. While folks working in the public interest trying to create universal public goods with public data and open source software will be left behind struggling with messy data forever.
Marketing is just easier than telling the truth about what’s needed in order to generate information which can be processed by a downstream procedure.
Stephen E Arnold, June xx, 2021
And about That Windows 10 Telemetry?
May 28, 2021
The article “How to Disable Telemetry and Data Collection in Windows 10” reveals an important fact. Most Windows telemetry is turned on by default. But the write up does not explain what analyses occur for data on the company’s cloud services or for the Outlook email program. I find this amusing, but Microsoft — despite the SolarWinds and Exchange Server missteps — is perceived as the good outfit among the collection of ethical exemplars of US big technology firms.
I read “Three Years Until We’re in Orwell’s 1984 AI Surveillance Panopticon, Warns Microsoft Boss.” Do the sentiments presented as those allegedly representing the actual factual views of the Microsoft executive Brad Smith reference the Windows 10 telemetry and data collection article mentioned above? Keep in mind that Mr. Smith believed at one time than 1,000 bad actors went after Microsoft and created the minor security lapses which affected a few minor US government agencies and sparked the low profile US law enforcement entities into pre-emptive action on third party computers to help address certain persistent threats.
I chortled when I read this passage:
Brad Smith warns the science fiction of a government knowing where we are at all times, and even what we’re feeling, is becoming reality in parts of the world. Smith says it’s “difficult to catch up” with ever-advancing AI, which was revealed is being used to scan prisoners’ emotions in China.
Now about the Microsoft telemetry and other interesting processes? What about the emotions of a Windows 10 user when the printer does not work after an update? Yeah.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2021
IBM and Watson: A More Focused Journey to Rediscover Relevance and Find More Revenue
May 21, 2021
Nope, this is not an episode of “Star Trek.” Think of “IBM’s CEO Says It’s Leaving Consumer AI Like Facial Recognition to Other Companies, As It Doubles Down on Pitching Watson to Business” as a new version of the 1904 film “Le Voyage à travers l’impossible.” Here’s the idea: A vendor of services, mainframes, and intellectual property like a two nanometer chip concept blasts off to a new world. The mission is:
enterprise AI. Watson will be “learning from small amounts of data” and utilizing natural language processing to answer specific business questions for
customers.”
IBM will continue to embrace Watson. Granted Watson has an interesting track record. The write up states:
IBM shut down its AI tool for drug discovery in 2019 after sluggish sales, and reportedly encountered hesitancy from banks when trying to sell into the financial sector.
Learn from one’s mistakes, my grandmother used to say.
The article points out:
Using natural language processing to understand communications like chat and email, building an AI that is trustworthy and free from bias, and automating business
functions like customer service and IT operations.
With the cloud propelling Watson to the Land of Enchanted Revenues, Big Blue will rely on innovations like Turbonomic and Instana. If you don’t know, Turbonomic is one of the leaders in AIOps. You don’t need to wait for Forrester or Gartner to explain this very advanced concept of Artificial Intelligence Operations. Turbonomic is one of the leaders in this nova like market, and IBM acquired the company. Instana, now swallowed by a Big Blue gulp delivers APM. Okay, I will clue to you in: APM means Application Performance Monitoring. The idea is that when smart software behaves in a stupid way and the cloud centric app won’t work, IBM can help you out. The idea makes sense for the IBM cloud, but I am not sure how some of IBM’s cloud competitors will perceive this change. Thunderstorms perhaps?
When will the revenues be discovered? Yeah, probably in a Rometty (that’s a unit of time used by a former Big Blue pure bred to describe Watson’s earlier pursuit of revenues in Houston, pardner. No tar and feathers from the cancer docs in them there parts, but it was suggested that some of the IBM Watson leave town before sundown. And what about using IBM Watson to discover drugs applicable to the Covid pandemic? (Cough, cough.) Is there a metaphor to describe the bold new direction in which the IBM Watson starship is headed? Yes, there it. Electrification, specifically “at the turn of the last century” electrification.
Will stakeholders wait for 19th century time to mark what has to happen in the zip zip real time world of the 21st century? Sure. Keep in mind the plot of the 1904 film which told the story of a journey through mountains to the sun and ended up under water. Yikes. Underwater! This is not a good word for shareholders and stakeholders to hear in a metaphorical context.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2021
Google Tesla: A New Play for the Final Frontier?
May 14, 2021
I read some real “news provided by Google Cloud”. The story was “Google Cloud and SpaceX’s Starlink to Deliver Secure, Global Connectivity.” The write up said:
Google Cloud and SpaceX today announced a new partnership to deliver data, cloud services, and applications to customers at the network edge, leveraging Starlink’s ability to provide high-speed broadband internet around the world and Google Cloud’s infrastructure. Under this partnership, SpaceX will begin to locate Starlink ground stations within Google data center properties, enabling the secure, low-latency, and reliable delivery of data from more than 1,500 Starlink satellites launched to orbit to-date to locations at the network edge via Google Cloud. Google Cloud’s high-capacity private network will support the delivery of Starlink’s global satellite internet service, bringing businesses and consumers seamless connectivity to the cloud and Internet, and enabling the delivery of critical enterprise applications to virtually any location.
Tweets ensued. Pundits pundited.
Most of the comments focused on the key words the wordsmiths at the GOOG included; for example:
- Edge
- Organizations
- Private network
- Rural
- Seamless connectivity
Google knows what words are popular and elicit clicks. Very terrestrial.
However, the tie up — if it works out and does not get marginalized like Google’s Dodgeball, Orkut, and WebAccelerator efforts — could be something slightly more ambitious than connecting people to persistent advertising.
The deal makes the on-again, off-again lovebirds Google and Tesla the hot couple. The immediate payoff is publicity, usually good for a company’s stock price. The deal also may irritate some of the space-crazed wizards at Amazon, who also offer cloud services. Advertisers may like the idea of global delivery of compelling messages about vacation rentals, chicken sandwiches, and grammar checking software.
I see three different angles.
The first is that the Google – Tesla thing may represent a method for providing a new type of meta-fabric for innovation. If the service works, advertising may be available for those wanting to distribute messages globally to specific individuals who are going to buy something no matter where they are.
Second is that the service will be space-based. That alone provides a marketing and hyperbole edge. Even if the service burns up in the earth’s atmosphere, the deal is a juicy one. Think about those mid tier consultants writing “reports” this weekend. Boom. Consulting opportunities.
Third is that if the visions of the Musk-its (not Muscovites mind you) and the Googlers come to pass, we have a new type of information company in development. If the blended system works, the old AT&T is going to look even more old fashioned than it does at this time.
Net net: Satellites, a Saturday Night Live host, smart advertising, the “cloud” — what’s not to like? Will regulatory authorities buy the terrestrial spin in the Google news release? Probably. In the absence of regulatory controls, the sky’s the limit. Maybe I should say “the solar system” or maybe the “universe” is the limit. Amazon, Microsoft, Apple? Your move.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2021
Who Watches? Mom or a 20-Something?
May 14, 2021
It is undeniable that COVID-19 has forever changed the work environment. In order to guarantee that telecommuting workers were being productive, organizations adopted new ways to monitor their performance. These include software that pushes the boundary between professionalism and Big Brother.
Organization heavily relied on Zoom for business meetings and calls, but that could be a thing of the past if NICE works. CFO Tech New Zealand has the details on the new employee management software: “NICE Rolls Out Agile Workforce Management For Distributed Workforces.”
NICE is a workforce engagement management (WEM) platform designed to virtually connect workforces in one location. Even thought workers can log onto a work network, engage in a Zoom conference call, or share work via the cloud it does not give them one centralized location.
It also does not allow organizations the chance to check in on their employees’ work. Before the pandemic, offices had “swivel chair assistance” or direct communication with workers. Worker engagement is at an all time low, but WEM could fix that. Here some NICE features:
“Gain visibility – understand employee activities and behaviors based on desktop analytics and workforce management (WFM) data from schedules and activities. By leveraging business-based key performance indicators (KPIs), such as average handle time (AHT), productivity and adherence, organizations can now drive team and employee focus. A holistic view of the blended office and workforce also enables better management of performance and skill gaps. Ensure performance – personalize employee coaching to meet and exceed business goals by focusing on direct data that emphasizes knowledge and gaps. This enables supervisors and managers to guide the workforce in the right direction. Share dedicated employee dashboards that provide insights to adjust their performance course. Drive engagement – boost workforce commitment and engagement by creating activities that challenge, motivate and reward employees to achieve results and support teamwork. Reward success by applying points and badges and enable their use for additional time off or related prizes.”
Exactly what does NICE do as part of its business? Does the firm provide specialized services to intelligence agencies, security, and law enforcement? That’s a good question. The answer may put these NICE workforce engagement tools in a different context.
Whitney Grace, May 14, 2021
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