Somat Engineering: Delivering on the Obama Technology Vision
August 24, 2009
I fielded an email from an engaging engineer named Mark Crawford. Most of those who contact me get a shrill honk that means, “The addled goose does not want to talk with you.” Mr. Crawford, an expert in the technology required to make rockets reach orbit and vehicles avoid collisions, said, “One of the top demo companies in San Francisco listened.” I asked, "Was it TechCrunch?" Mr. Crawford said, "I cannot comment on that." So with a SF demo showcase interested, I figured, “Why not get a WebEx myself?”
Quite a surprise. I wrote a dataspace report for IDC in September 2008. No one really cared. I then included dataspace material in my new Google monograph, Google: The Digital Gutenberg. No one cared. I was getting a bit gun shy about this dataspace technology. You can get a reasonable sense of the thinking behind dataspace technology by reading the chapter in Digital Gutenberg which is available without charge from my publisher in the UK. Click here to access this discussion of the concept of dataspaces.
Mr. Crawford’s briefing began, “We looked at how we could create a dataspace that brings together information for a government agency, an organization, or a small group of entrepreneurs. We took a clean sheet of paper and built a system that bridges the gap between what people want to do and the various islands of technology most enterprises use to get their knowledge sharing act together.”
Mr. Crawford, along with his partner Arpan Patel, and some of Somat Engineering’s information technology team, built a system that President Obama himself would love. Said Mr. Crawford, “We continue to talk with our government partners and people like the demo showcase. There seems to be quite a bit of excitement about our dataspace technology.”
I wanted to put screenshots and links in this write up, but when I followed up with Somat Engineering, a 60 person multi-office professional services firm headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, I was told, “Sit tight. You are one of the first to get a glimpse at our dataspace system.”
I challenged Mr. Crawford because Somat designs bridges, roads and other fungible entities. It is not a software company. Mr. Crawford chuckled:
Sure, we work with bridges and smart transportation systems. What we have learned is that engineers in our various offices build bridges among information items. Our dataspace technology was developed to build bridges across the gaps in data. Without our dataspace technology, we could not design the bridges you drive on. Unlike some software companies, our dataspace technology was a solution to a real problem. We did not develop software and then have to hunt for a problem to solve. Without our technology, we could not deliver the award winning engineering Somat puts out each and every day.
Good answer. A real software solution to a real world problem – bridging gaps among and between disparate information. Maybe that is what turned the crank at the analyst’s shop. Refreshing and pragmatic.
However, I did get the okay to provide some highlights for you and one piece of information that may be of considerable interest to my two or three readers who live in the Washington, DC area.
First, the functions:
- Somat has woven together in one seamless system Microsoft and Google functions. Other functions can be snapped to make information sharing and access intuitive and dead simple.
- The service allows a team to create the type of sharing spaces that Lotus has been delivering in a very costly and complicated manner. The Somat approach chops down the cost per user and eliminates the trademarked complexity of the Lotus solutions.
- The system integrates with whatever security methods a licensing organization requires. This means that the informal security of the Active Directory works as well as the most exotic dongle based methods that are popular in some sectors.
The second piece of news is that the public demonstration of this Somat technology will take place in Washington, DC, at the National Press Club on September 23, 2009. I have only basic details at the moment. The program begins at 9 am sharp and ends promptly at 11 am. There will be a presentation by the president of Somat, a demonstration of the dataspace technology, a presentation by long-time open source champion Robert Steele, president of OSS Inc. and a technology review by Adhere Solutions, the US government’s contact point for Google technology. A question and answer session will be held. After my interrogation of Mr. Crawford, he extended an invitation to me to participate in that Q&A session.
Bridging information pathways. The key to Somat’s engineering method.
Somat’s choice of the National Press Club venue was, according to Mr. Crawford:
The logical choice for Somat. As a minority owned engineering and professional services company, we see our dataspace technology as one way to deliver on President Obama’s technical vision. We think that dataspaces can address many of the transparency challenges that the Obama administration is tackling head on. Furthermore, we know from our work on certain government projects, that US agencies can use our dataspace approach to reduce costs and chop out the “wait” time in knowledge centric projects.
Based on what I saw on Friday, August 21, 2009, the San Francisco tech analysts were right on the money. I believe that Somat’s dataspace solution will be one of the contenders in this year’s high profile demo event. My thought is that if you want to deal with integrated information in a way that works, you will want to navigate to the Somat registration link to attend this briefing. If you want to talk to me about my view, drop me an email at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. (The NPC charges for coffee, etc., so there is a nominal fee to deal with this situation.)
Somat has a remarkable technology. It touches upon such important information requirements as access to disparate information, intuitive “no training required” interfaces, and real time intelligence.
For more information about Somat, visit the company’s Web site. The addled goose asserts, “Important technology that bridges the gaps between Google, Microsoft and other information systems.”
Stephen Arnold, August 24, 2009
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