MetaVis: Another SharePoint Helper
October 19, 2010
SharePoint, SharePoint, my kingdom for a working SharePoint. Apologies to Little Willie. Last week I was surrounded by various shifty types for three days. Those law enforcement and intelligence conferences are darned interesting. I never know who is like to burst out with a SharePoint solution and who will dig into the exotica of Linux.
I did learn that one happy intelligence outfit outside the US was making SharePoint work like a humming Singer sewing machine. The trick, I think I understood, was to use a product from MetaVis. I had heard of the company and its taxonomy solution, but I did not know too much about it. With a word of encouragement from a government official, I did some checking.
The basics are:
MetaVis Technologies is a Microsoft Gold Certified ISV that develops packaged software solutions to help organize SharePoint environments for improved search, findability and e-discovery. MetaVis takes the complexity out of designing, deploying and managing content within SharePoint by offering reusable taxonomies, metadata management and migration software and services. The benefit is an organized SharePoint environment that is easily understood and well documented. The company believes that taxonomy management within SharePoint should not be complicated to implement and use. MetaVis products are based on intuitive, graphical interfaces that are easy to use and easy to install. Drag and drop features allow information architects to design SharePoint metadata models and reuse them saving valuable time and resources. As a result, MetaVis products improve search optimization, consistency, content migration, and workflows across corporate SharePoint sites.
The idea is that Microsoft’s native SharePoint is not the tiara that a corporate princess is likely to wear to a shareholde4r meeting. To fix that highly visible problem, a third party solution is required.
The company’s newest product is a “cloud classifier”:
The new product allows SharePoint 2010 users to tag and classify multiple items directly from the SharePoint user interface. By integrating directly into the SharePoint Web Interface, Cloud Classifier appears seamlessly in the SharePoint ribbon… SharePoint 2010 provides tagging and classification technology but is limited to individual items…MetaVis Cloud Classifier allows users to select multiple documents from SharePoint sites, libraries, lists or search results and classify in bulk. Users can also create templates to help classify content for specific projects or activities further simplifying the process. By making classification easy for the user, content becomes more findable and accessible.
The company offers word lists, taxonomy and classification tools, and glue code to make SharePoint work. The company offers some videos that make clear the features and functions of the firm’s different software solutions. You can access these at this MetaVis location.
There is little doubt that SharePoint supports a thriving ecosystem. Now what about Alfresco?
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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Lawson Like Google
October 19, 2010
I wanted to use an exclamation point at the end of the headline. But, nah. Lawson is a publicly traded company and it wants Web traffic. The company refers to Google in this passage:
Acts like Google™ search for ERP to find data fast
Search engine software from Lawson is here. Lawson M3 Enterprise Search acts like a Google™ search for your ERP business applications. Conduct business searches using this integrated, intuitive, simple-to-use enterprise search application. You gain access to relevant Lawson and non-Lawson structured and unstructured data securely, and in seconds. There’s no need to know where the data lives, because Lawson Enterprise Search makes it easy to find.Search Appliance to Work Smarter, not Harder
With Lawson Enterprise Search in place, you don’t have to spend hours, days, or weeks to navigate mountains of menus or forms, run reports, and conduct database queries. The enterprise search application enhances your Lawson user experience by getting you to the data you need securely and quickly. As a result, you gain time to focus on more strategic and value-added tasks.
Why does Lawson act like Google. The company is a Google partner.
Sample search screen. Copyright Lawson 2010.
What’s interesting to me is that I am not running into as many happy Google Search Appliance customers as I did in the period between 2006 and 2008.
What’s interesting to me is that GSA and some of the non-map enterprise editions are difficult to make jump through flaming hoops. When a dog gets singed, a call to Google for emergency vet service does not work particularly well.
Lawson apparently is a happy camper with Google’s technology for handling stru8ctured and unstructured data of the type that riddles enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Lawson’s eight page write up emphasizes that its M3 system can transform data into information. The white paper/brochure “Lawson Enterprise Search for M3” makes for interesting reading. There is a companion white paper/brochure “Lawson Enterprise Search – Lawson M3 Now with Google Like User Friendly Search and Full Lawson M3 Compatibility” you may want to snag.
I don’t have an opinion, but I find the “like Google” phrase great for getting traffic. My hunch is that one may want to be a Google partner before tossing this phrase into one’s Web content.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2010
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IBM vs Google: A Better Filter?
October 19, 2010
Last week in Washington, DC – a dismal place, indeed – a person asked me, “Have you read “IBM’s New Search Engine Filters Results Better than Google”? My response, “Nope.”
The story appeared on Fool.com. The story concerns a new analytics based search engine. The school involved in testing the engine is North Carolina State University, which has a killer math program. (I used to do some work for mereology and rough set expert, Dr. Zbigniew Michalewicz’s NuTech Solutions.)
The system, according to the write up:
works like Google or Yahoo! but allows users the options to refine the search further with different adjustment parameters and filters. With analytics tool in use, the search becomes much more intelligent than merely searching for key words.
Okay, but the write up is pretty darned lean. IBM is using open source search solutions. The analytics stuff has been around for decades and has had many names and pushes. The one I like to use as a touchstone is WebFountain. Each of these systems is supposed to deliver answers.
In addition, IBM owns SPSS, Cognos, and other properties that perform analytics of different types. In short, for a consulting company, IBM seems to be promoting different collections of technology when revenues dip or when a particular sector starts to boom. In case you had not noticed, the world of analytics is getting lots of misinformed coverage. One good example is the attention lavished on Recorded Future. This blog post allows me to answer the person who posed the question to me last week, “Yep, and I don’t care.”
IBM is a consulting engineering firm. The puffery about innovation and mainframes is interesting but the outfit would be gasping unless it had the high margin services business to hawk. IBM may not be a blue chip consulting firm, but it does quality as an azurini, which has allowed it to hit $100 billion.
Mover and shaker in search analytics. Not quite in my opinion. Stick with i2, Megaputer, or a hot new start up like Digital Reasoning. You can also fall back on what we learned in college: SPSS or SAS.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2010
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Yahoo Is Tired, Miserable
October 19, 2010
That’s one way to characterize the outfit that blew off Microsoft and $45 billion. I was thinking of a different word, but I am not a professional newspaper info thing. Point your browser at “Yahoo Used to Be a Giant. Now It’s Down to Its Last Hurrah”, please. Note this passage:
Will somebody please put Yahoo, the fading internet star, out of its misery?
They shoot horses, don’t they? I quite like the reference to “fruity” as well. Sweet. Tangy. Not salty.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2010
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Another View of IBM and Its Harmony Play
October 18, 2010
My head is spinning. Geese cannot understand the intricacies of Java in the big proprietary software companies. I think you will find the angle of attack in “IBM Abandons Harmony for Java Unity with Oracle” interesting. My take is that the write up finds IBM leaning toward Google in the Java dust up. Here’s a passage that caught my attention:
Harmony became untenable when Oracle sued Google. That was what convinced IBM that Oracle would never ever loosen its grip on the TCKs[compatibility test kits] – and may be an assessment of Oracle’s chances of winning – but between times without its backing Java development would drift or stagnate more than it already has.
Smart, strategic move? Tactical twitch? The goose will have to wait for the combatants to engage in a knock down drag out in slow motion via the US legal process. Should be exciting. Uncertainty is a definite plus when innovation seems to be in short supply.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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Microsoft and Google in the Library Stacks
October 18, 2010
You can read the original or stuff the url into Google Translate. Either way, Microsoft has Google in the library stacks looking for a missing deal. The library? Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). The missing deal? Microsoft seems to have put the Google search solution in a glass case and tossed the key into a dark corner. “Microsoft meilleur défenseur du Libre que Google pour les livres?” reported:
the agreement with Microsoft is not without consequence. Discussions are held between the BNF and Google to digitize the National Fund, with support from the Senate . But “since Google requires its exclusive partner libraries indexing, having signed an agreement with Microsoft that makes it so logically impossible now for the BNF to sign a partnership with Google to scan, except that it consents to back to one of the most important strategy. “
The problem is that Google wants exclusives. Microsoft offered a different deal. Now Google has to face the reality of Microsoft snatching a victory from Google’s fingers and putting Google in the rare book room.
How will this play out? Microsoft is likely to use this strategy to put the spotlight on Google’s terms for scanning and indexing. My view is that Microsoft should have continued its effort to compete with Google Books and implemented this spotlight tactic years ago. Now I think it is too late.
The comments to the article are interesting as well. Microsoft may have a trampoline to use to bounce on in this market sector.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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MediaBriefing and Semantics
October 18, 2010
At a recent conference, a person mentioned the site, www.mediabriefing.com. I took a look at it and found its coverage on point. I am not too interested in the media sector, preferring to track the foibles and follies of search and content processing system vendors.
What did catch my attention was “New Site — and Semantic Technologies — May Help The Publishing Industry Sail To The New Media World.” The story reported:
Here’s where the semantic part comes in at TheMediaBriefing.com: It uses core aspects of idio’s semantic web technology to find, classify, tag, and index these sources to deliver to readers in the media industry what TheMediaBriefing.com says are very accurate matches to their information needs. Brown’s background in blogging, and searching and curating various sources of news pertaining to the media, led him to the conclusion that getting hold of and coalescing the data you really needed often involved following a big trail that combined everything from news sites to social media to non-traditional outlets that his peers didn’t always themselves think to go to.
I don’t have much detail about the semantic system in use, but I think the idea is a good one. If the write up is on the money, the notion of a news operation relying on semantic technology is an interesting use case.
Several observations:
- Big dog publishers like LexisNexis have been ankle deep in semantic technology and other content technologies for many years. The problem is that the financial situation at some big dogs is challenging. Semantic technology may not be the tow truck needed to drag the companies back from the brink.
- Semantic technology, as I have suggested, works best as plumbing. Will publishers and readers realize that semantic technology is behind the new site. My hunch is that some may; others will not.
- Publishing as an industry is experimenting with new partners and different business models. The good news is that some of the partners are tech savvy. The bad news is that some of the business models don’t generate the margins that the old business models did. Semantic technology may not be able to change the bad news into good news quickly enough.
Check out the links in this article. Interesting stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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Google and Its Alleged SSD Innovations
October 18, 2010
I have shifted my attention from Google to Facebook. Nevertheless, my full scale Overflight continues to spit out information from open sources about Google. (This Overflight link shows a handful of features in the commercial version.) I wanted to capture what may be old news to my two or three readers in this blog post. As I shift from the uninteresting world of brute force indexing to more easily manipulated world of social search, some technical innovations at Google remain interesting in a general way.
You will need to navigate to the USPTO, click Search, and then download these documents. I am not providing explicit links to the source documents due to the “free” nature of the blog.
The subject is the usefulness of solid state storage devices as a speed up and cost down method of dealing with the need to fetch and write data. Solid state devices or SSDs are a mixed blessing. There are some performance and failure benefits, but there is also flakiness, particularly with certain vendors’ products.
One example of an SSD for scale. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MicroSD.jpg
Google has been looking for many years – probably as early as 2003 – at ways to get around the hassle of spinning disc failures, heat generation, and size. As silicon fabs push to smaller traces, the cost and availability of SSDs becomes increasingly attractive.
My Overflight system lit up with a series of patent applications that featured inputs from a Googler by the name of Albert T. Borchers, more easily findable as “Al Borchers.” Don’t get too revved up looking for information. He like other post Alta Vista hires, is not a high profile type of guy in the Facebook sense of the word. With some poking around you can find some info like this bio at a conference site:
Al Borchers joined Google in 2004 in the Platforms group, developing system software for Google’s servers. In the last few years he has been working on high performance storage devices. He received a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University of Minnesota in 1996, and has worked in industry for many years developing Unix and Linux device drivers and system software.
ZyLAB Steps Up US eDiscovery Efforts
October 18, 2010
The health and pharmaceutical industry rely on stars to make otherwise similar services more relevant to a particular vertical market or niche. ZyLAB has implemented a similar chess move. Blogger and author Mary Mack has left one eDiscovery firm to join ZyLAB’s US team. “Mary Mack Leaves Fios, Joins ZyLAB” reported:
Mary Mack, longtime corporate technology counsel to e-discovery company Fios and author of its featured blog, Sound Evidence, is leaving that company to join another e-discovery company, ZyLAB, as enterprise technology counsel and part of the leadership team charged with developing its North American business.
My hunch is that other eDiscovery companies are going to have to add to their starting line up. A blogger, however, is a special creature. Congratulations to ZyLAB. I await moves from others in this branch of search and content processing.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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IBM: A Yahoo Acquisition Emulator
October 17, 2010
In the pre-Semel days, Yahoo bought companies. Yahoo then allowed the companies to operate in silos. Bad move. Is IBM emulating this Yahoo tactic? I don’t know for sure but IBM has been buying aggressively in the data and analytics space. With Cognos and SPSS, what’s missing?
“IBM Acquires PSS, Bolsters Information Management Portfolio” reveals that the next puzzle piece may be information governance. As I wrote in my Information World Review column, everyone likes governance but not too many folks like to be governed. Obviously IBM has a different view.
For me, the most interesting passage in the ZDNet write up was:
The PSS portfolio will be added into IBM’s Information Lifecycle Management product line, part of IBM’s software unit. Information lifecycle management refers to the assessment of content, archiving, imaging and recordkeeping as well as analytics.
The article has a spectacular graphic that covers the waterfront from the anchor of an “atlas map”, whatever that means.
With $100 billion in revenue, if IBM can deliver governance via its “atlas map” pivot point, who am I to doubt? I just keep thinking about Yahoo’s approach to acquisitions. Not even UIMA can make these many different companies’ moving parts mesh smoothly without spending a lot of money. Maybe that is the point?
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2010
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