Will Infosys Become the De Facto Expert on Fast ESP?
April 24, 2010
I read “Who’s Buying Microsoft’s Outsourcing Excuses?” and interpreted the write up in the context of my interest in search and content processing. As you know, Microsoft purchased Fast Search & Transfer, dumped the Linux/Unix business, and positioned Fast ESP as the solution to search challenges in SharePoint. Good idea, but the implementation is complex, even for those familiar with search and retrieval system set up. The main point in the write up, in my opinion, appeared in this passage:
Here’s a part of an Infosys press release announcing the deal that is especially telling: “This agreement provides Infosys with a unique opportunity to partner with Microsoft IT and gain deep and early expertise in the implementation and management of the latest Microsoft technologies, and thus enhancing Infosys capabilities to help other customers leverage Microsoft’s innovation and adopt these technologies.” Translation: The $100 million deal with Microsoft will help Infosys land even more outsourcing jobs at the expense of U.S. workers. Talk about adding insult to injury — and Infosys is hardly hurting.
Quite a few companies exist to handle implementation challenges of Microsoft Fast ESP. Will this deal put Infosys in the catbird seat? If Infosys does get insight others do not, the search integration companies (which I won’t name to keep the legal eagles at bay) may find that their core business faces a significant challenge. Microsoft is in an ideal position to bundle advanced search with almost any other Microsoft sale. When the customers can’t get these systems to work as hoped, Infosys may be the first port of call. Result? Lots of pain for the specialists who depend on customers to hire an expert in search remediation. Why hire those outside the tent? Go for those who are on the inside and used by Microsoft itself.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2010
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Search Progress or Stalled on the Information Superhighway?
April 24, 2010
Many professionals think search has improved, but we question whether that improvement has added features or complications. CMSWire recently reported in their article, “How Search Has Improved in SharePoint 2010” that search has continued to evolve. The author highlighted the levels of involvement in various search features. However, if search has improved, perhaps three different “flavors” of search introduce an element of confusion for the user? It is difficult to ascertain which to use under what circumstances and how much each “flavor” costs. The differentiation among the search systems can be confusing. The family of products model is interesting, but if we are using that as our metaphor, which product goes to the expensive university and which goes to trade school? The Beyond Search Take: Read the write up and make up your own mind.
Melody K. Smith, April 24, 2010
Post was not sponsored.
Endeca Pursues Search Engine Optimization
April 24, 2010
Text search is, in my opinion, losing its oomph. Endeca, long a favorite for eCommerce, is now taking steps to help licensees with their search engine optimization tasks. The idea is to help eCommerce licensees drive sales and raise their Web presence. Endeca has introduced a new feature to their platform – search engine optimization. You will want to read “Endeca Enhances SEO Capabilities with Key Partnerships” and get the full story directly from the company. Endeca is offering services that help a licensee improve its SEO. Is this a new feature or a shift of focus for Endeca? Partnering with consultants is an interesting move. Endeca’s “guided navigation” seems to perform this task automatically. Perhaps not?
Melody K. Smith, April 24, 2010
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Coveo Surges Forward
April 23, 2010
The Coveo team has surged forward in search, according the story “Coveo Announce Une Augmentation de 55% des Revenus de License au 1er Trimestre de 2010; Conclut 24 Nouvelle Transactions.” (There’s an English version of the news release at Intelligent Enterprise as well.) If you don’t read French, this translates as significant growth and two dozen new deals in 12 weeks. Beyond Search thinks that is pretty darned good in today’s economic climate. Other highlights from the story include:
- The release of Version 6.1 of the firm’s Enterprise Search Platform with a raft of new features such as an Outlook integrated sidebar, a floating desktop search bar, and complete desktop email indexing. (You can get the full details at www.coveo.com).
- Deals with Trading Technologies, Netezza, Hewitt, Royal Mail Group, and Allina Hospitals among others
- A 97 percent reduction in time taken to find expertise across a top engineering firm and a two week ROI for a Fortune 100 financial services company
I moderated for Fierce Content Management, the publishing company, a Webinar with Louis Tetu, one of the investors in Coveo, Bill Cavendish (GEICO), and Coveo’s Executive Vice President (Richard Tessier). The company’s approach to enterprise information struck me as focused on chopping the “wait” out of the installation and delivering information that helps employees do their jobs. The “search” function meshes with work processes, so employees can click on a link, fire a query from a mobile device, or use a customized interface. After the Fierce Webinar, I spoke briefly with the firm’s founder Laurent Simoneau. He pointed out that Coveo’s architecture and “smart” software make it possible to get real payoff from search, not big engineering and consulting bills. My recollection is that Laurent Simoneau said, “We focus on making search work the way users want in their specific situation. This seems to be working quite well for us.”
With 55 percent growth in 12 weeks. I am inclined to agree.
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2010
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Osalt Provides Open Source Alternatives
April 23, 2010
Looking for open source software? You will want to take a gander at Osalt.com, a search and directory service for open source software.
Open source gives you the transparency to view all source code and access to a large dedicated community of users, and best of all, it is free but you may want to have an open source savvy engineer on tap.
There are many methods to finding open source alternatives for popular applications; provides a guide to finding them all in one location. Some of the latest applications added to their guide include Qtpfsgui – a tool for tone mapping HDR, Thinking Rock – a GTD (getting things done) application that is a way to organize and implement tasks; and FrostWire – an alternative peer-to-peer file sharing service on the Gnutella network that is modeled after LimeWire. There are many more useful open source resources here, check it out.
The Beyond Search Take?
Having a comprehensive list of software categories in one location, is very useful.
Melody K. Smith, April 23, 2010
Post was not sponsored.
LTU LookThatUp iPhone Image App Available
April 23, 2010
LTU Technologies, a company dealing in image recognition and search technology, just released an visual search application for the iPhone called LookThatUp. The mobile app lets users take a picture and submit it for identification and information. The app coordinates with a database of more than two million items including a variety of content like paintings from large museums, movie posters, DVD/CD covers and more. To get even more snazzy, the app allows sharing to Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail, and offers an online bookmarking service for those lookups. It’s all part of LTU APIs that allow developers to include image recognition functionality in mobile applications. While this sounds pretty peppy, it’s not brand new. An app called kooaba was doing basic image recognition in 2008 and just released version 2.2.1 earlier this month. Search as an app on a device seems to be an emerging niche.
Jessica Bratcher, April 23, 2010
ATT Offers a Clue to Where Search is Going
April 23, 2010
If you haven’t read Stephen E Arnold’s “The Seven Forms of Mass Media” post on his Beyond Search site, it would be worth your time. It gives some hint at as to the next big social media hole to fill.
With today’s darlings, Facebook and Twitter, generating an overload of personal data and Google and Bing producing hundreds of thousands of ‘hits’ for most queries, how can search be more relevant to the device we all use most… our smart phone?
This week, AT&T’s first quarter report to Wall Street showed the fewest number of subscribers under contracts in two years. And with the premise that it will loose it’s iPhone exclusivity at some time in the near future, where does it look for the one thing that drives increasing value…growth?
According to AT&T’s finance guy, Rick Lindner, “Wireless for anyone is not going the way it was five or ten years ago. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities to grow in wireless.” Lindner told the Wall Street Journal that “AT&T will look for acquisitions in fields that would support its focus on mobile data.” BINGO!
As Arnold noted, “The challenge that is kicked to the side of the information highway is, “How does one find needed information in this seventh mass media (mobile)?” Says a reader, not very well in my experience. In fact, finding and accessing information is clumsy for textual information.
With all of the mobile companies scrambling for growth in a marketplace that has seen its well of opportunity become more full, the next thing is the big thing. Bet on search… instant and directed search of data that returns desired results in the first few hits.
The one item everyone has in hand at all times is his smart phone… and it is most often, the first used for instant results. But this ‘seventh media’ mandates conciseness and pinpoint information or it becomes the burden instead of the benefactor.
Social media advances have given us the feeling of need because it has shown the gratification of ‘instant.’ With no office or home computer or no time to pause, reflect and refine, instant and concise is the next god. No doubt about it.
Jerry Constantino, April 23, 2010
Post was not sponsored.
Quintura Releases New Site Search Version
April 23, 2010
Quintura Inc. has released a new version of its Quintura Site Search, a hosted Web site search, statistics, and advertising solution for online content publishers. The search program is interactive and integrated into your site, and it indexes your pages to create a weighted keyword cloud of search results. The service includes search statistics and options to display banner ads and links in search results, including your own. The update includes a new control panel for setting up a site search and customizing the appearance of the results in the cloud tag. The key advantages are that it is easily accessible, eye-catching, and works as an interactive widget to encourage page counts. It’s free, too, so if you’d like to add a site search to your web site that’s not Google’s, you might give Qunitura a chance. You can see an example of their “minicloud” on their Web site at http://www.quintura.com.
Jessica W. Bratcher, April 23, 2010
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Oxford Flexes Its Reference Muscles
April 22, 2010
I go to a gym every couple of days when I am in town. So happens that that a number of semi pro wrestlers go to the gym. Big people. Tattoos. Muscles. I an old wimp and I graciously give up my place when one of these steroid stallions trots to the workout station I favor. Academics have muscles, but I think that my image of a muscular academic and one from Oxford University at that is of a milder, more gentle giant.
The Oxford muscle builders have turned their attention to creating online bibliographies. I think, based on reading the write up “Oxford University Press Launches the Anti-Google” that these will be variants of the old Goldentree bibliographies or the type of reference book Constance Winchell cranked out.
Here’s a synopsis of the product:
The OBO [Oxford Bibliographies Online] tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library’s own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.
Sounds good but there may be some challenges:
First, these hand crafted bibliographies are expensive to create and keep current. The rush of enthusiasm for a project of this type gets some bibliographies out the door. However, the ongoing costs are likely to be an issue because libraries may not have the agility to buy this online service. Oxford University has the money, but once the reality of the costs sink in, my hunch is that push back from the finance person will be coming in 12 months.
Second, revenue. The spreadsheet fever makes the project look pretty tasty. Oxford will find itself dancing with some big outfits in the commercial database world. My view is that Oxford will have to find a partner quickly because, let’s face it, universities are not exactly the top guns in the marketing arena.
Third, the anti Google thing is cute but irrelevant. The Google is muddling along with probes into different market sectors. The Google is in the “good enough” game and that’s where Google’s search and reference services will aim. Google may end up with some academic wonder products but that will be exhaust from the Google revenue machine. Red herring to even mention Google.
Fourth, users want to click and get the full text. When I am doing research, I know how to do the primary and secondary research drill. The problem is that time and resources force me to use my own tools like the Overflight system. But for some tiny percentage of folks looking up information online Bing, Google, and Yahoo will pretty good. To dig into the next level, libraries have Ebsco products. Those who need more are going to be Oxford level researchers, and I am not sure a product aimed for this tiny slice of online users can generate enough revenue to exist without subsidies. Will Oxford fund the rowing team or the bibliographies? Time will tell.
In short, interesting but a bit of anachronism in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 22, 2010
No one paid for this post.
The Jahia Bundle
April 22, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Jahia.com. The company bills itself as a vendor of “Web content integration software.” What interested me was Jahia’s inclusion of search in its enterprise Intranet suite. This system includes content and document management functions and the Jahia “united content hub”. The idea is that an organization gets a method for organization various types of content regardless of its source.
Content and document management are not of particular interest to me. The suite’s search function looks interesting. According to the company, the system delivers such features as:
- Advanced search
- Faceted search
- Dynamic navigation.
One additional feature is the firm’s use of Lucene/Solr open source technology. The Jahia approach makes extending the system possible. Results sets can be customized. A variety of filtering methods are available. The company said:
Supporting open standards always has always been one of the core mission statements for the Jahia software. So it made a lot of sense to implement the OpenSearch API. OpenSearch can be used either from a federated search or in order to facilitate access to the local search index. In the former case, Jahia can simultaneously request several distant and OpenSearch compliant indexes from the same user query and display a multi-source aggregated view of the results. In the latter scenario Jahia displays its own local search index through the OpenSearch API. End users can then, for example query their intranet directly from within the search form present in their browser, without first having to access this Web site.
System administrators can use the Jahia result sets in another third-party federated search hub.
The firm’s pricing ranges from about $7,500 per year for cloud-based service delivered via Amazon’s Web services to on premises license fees that are in the $27,000 per connector. (A connector allows the Jahia system to access content in another system.)
To sum up, Jahia is important for two reasons.
First, the system uses open source search technology. Second, the search function is embedded in a broader suite of products.
Stephen E Arnold, April 22, 2010
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