Blekko Gets a Makeover
January 19, 2012
According to the Search Engine Watch article “Blekko Gets New User Interface and Ramps Up Auto-Slashing,” Blekko has undergone a massive upgrade. This major upgrade increases their automatic slashtags and they will now cover over 500 content categories. In addition the company will debut a new User Interface (UI). Blekko designed slashtags to provide users with relevant and quality results.
Mike Markson, co-founder and VP of Marketing stated:
Blekko “believes you’re better off as a user not searching the entire internet, but the top sites, because that’s where the quality content resides.
The new UI gives the interface a cleaner look while still providing customers with easy to use and attractive features. One new notable slashtag worth mentioning is /monte. The article uses an interesting comparison “Results using /monte are like a blind taste test. Type in any query – one column is a result from Google, one from Bing, and one from Blekko.” Users can save time by easily scan the lists, weed out the junk, and find what they want. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to “great customer service with a smile.” Yandex has a stake in Blekko and we believe that these two services pose a significant threat to Google in Web search.
April Holmes, January 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SAP HANA Spreads Its Wings
January 19, 2012
We learn more about SAP HANA from PR Newswire’s “SAP HANA™ Opens Up to Wider Industry and Partner Adoption.” Leading software vendors are tapping the speed and power of SAP HANA, a storage and data management system, for both existing products and for new applications. The press release boasts:
SAP also showcased the latest customers to experience the power of SAP HANA across industries, giving them instant access to massive amounts of information and the ability to make real-time decisions, in the process achieving breakthrough performance improvement by factors of thousands, even tens of thousands, compared to existing systems in their landscapes.
The article lists the vendors and describes how SAP HANA will help each. The companies represent fields from telecom to business visualization to healthcare. Examples include UFIDA, TIBCO, Tableau Software, and T-Mobile.
SAP serves up business management software to organizations of all sizes around the world, allowing workers to collaborate efficiently and to gain an edge on the competition. The company, founded back in 1972, is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. Will HANA triumph in the fierce storage and data management wars? Uptake, according to our research, has been plugging along.
Cynthia Murrell, January 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search: Cruising on the Concordia
January 19, 2012
I keep my eyes peeled for useful management examples. Whilst recovering from a minor hitch in the goose liver, I watched the drama of the Concordia cruise ship unfold. The horrific event reminded me of several enterprise search deployments I had analyzed. I was not the “captain” of these enterprise search voyages. I was able to do some post-crash analysis.
To get the basics of the event, you will want to familiarize yourself with the write up in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, “Concordia Disaster: Should a Captain Go Down with His Ship?” In my opinion, the key passage in the Daily Telegraph’s story was:
…leadership entails an obligation to be courageous – morally, physically or both. It is the price of leadership; it is why leaders are more highly regarded and rewarded than the rest of us. But even subordinates in certain professions have the duty to be brave, as the rest of us do not. A soldier is expected unquestioningly to put himself in the way of bullets as a civilian is not.
(But my favorite news item was Cruise Captain Says He ‘Tripped’ Into Lifeboat, Couldn’t Get Out.”
Not Taking Responsibility
The alleged behavior of the captain shares one similarity with enterprise search implementations that sink. The person running the operation shirks responsibility for the disaster. My view is that ego plays a part. The more important factor may be the person’s character. I have reviewed a failed search implementation and had a difficult time determining who was responsible. The procurement team has the thick linen of committee think under which to hide. The information technology manager often keeps well away from search, a behavior conditioned by knowledge that making information findable is often impossible. The chief financial officer just counts the dissipated dollars. Accountants are not implementers. The person charged with the failure is often a young engineer whom those ultimately responsible deem expendable.
The first similarity is that in big disasters those who are responsible do whatever is needed to avoid responsibility. In enterprise search, there is a ship captain. Pretending that a captain does not exist is one interesting characteristic of today’s organizational life. Think Jerry Yang at Yahoo. Recall Leo Apotheker. You get the idea. What about the search system at your company? The National Archives? Amazon’s online store? There are captains responsible. Unfortunately these captains do not get global news coverage for their behavior.
Show Boating
The crash and sinking was a consequence of show boating. The idea is that doing something fancy is appropriate and within the perimeter of the job description is allowed. In enterprise search, the show boating becomes visible when one or more people make suggestions along these lines:
- We need to deliver answer to users, not laundry lists
- Natural language processing is essential to the success of our search system
- We need a taxonomy and semantic technology to make information accessible
- Our system has to work just like Google.
Each of these is similar to the Concordia’s buzz close to shore. Few of those involved in an enterprise search implementation realize how downright expensive, complicated, and resource intensive these “suggestions” become. Vendors go along to keep the contract. The deployment team is thinking about making search headlines and maybe getting a raise and a promotion. Great idea but when the effort sinks the search project, the result is a disaster.
The second similarity between the Concordia and the ill fated enterprise search system deployment is that getting cute can wreck havoc. Now you may say, “Hey, semantic methods will only help our search system.” Maybe, maybe not. My view is that show boating is one characteristic of doomed enterprise search system. The fix? Just do the basics well, then add some special sauce.
Amazon: Will DynamoDB Electrocute the Big Boys?
January 18, 2012
I want to capture a few business related observations about Amazon’s now public DynamoDB. The blog post by Amazon’s chief technical officer provides a good overview of the home grown NoSQL data management service. Navigate to “Amazon DynamoDB–A Fast and Scalable NoSQL Database Service Designed for Internet Scale Applications.” For a run down of some of the features, point your browser at “Notes About Amazon DynamoDB.” The basic idea is that Amazon has created its own NoSQL database, matched it to the Amazon cloud environment, and packaged it with taxi meter pricing.
Why didn’t Amazon use Hadoop or some other NoSQL, open source, Codd free systems? My hunch is that Amazon sees big money in a ready-to-role, automatic sharding, solid state disc base data management solution. Rolling its own solution gives Amazon control. In fact, Amazon is cranking up the dial on its Controlometer.
The issue that interests me is the business angle of the DynamoDB. Here are several preliminary thoughts.
First, Amazon is getting frisky but slowly. My sources report that work on the DynamoDB system began several years ago. Microsoft picked up wind of the project and was unable to respond. Right now, Amazon’s an engineering magnet, attracting talent from outfits once considered the best in the soggy city. With higher quality engineering horsepower, the dowdy retailer is shifting from a horse and wagon to a far more capable vehicle.
Second, MarkLogic had the idea that it could impinge on Oracle. Well, we know how that turned out with AtomicPR (the content fallout kids), management change, and wild and crazy marketing. Now Amazon is on the path to make life tough for Oracle. Amazon had Oracle as a steady date, but senior year is coming. Amazon may be marrying the DynamoDB, leaving Oracle without a homecoming date. If Amazon pulls off this new hitch up, Amazon may be ready to go for the enterprise gold. I think this is better than a 50-50 deal but I may change my mind.
Third, Amazon has demonstrated the value of a “Google Legacy.” Google plunged forward, diffused its resources, and ended up with its lovely self snared in legal and social thorns. Amazon, on the other hand, has avoided some of the traps into which Google threw itself. In the process itself, Amazon used Android to move its branded hardware forward. There is nothing like a friend who plans on evicting you from your home. Amazon is, once again, going beyond Google.
I have a number of other thoughts, but the goose’s liver needs a rest. Oh, oh, here comes a scowling nurse. Will she rescue the electrocuted big boys of database? I doubt it.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Crowdsourcing a Taxonomy: Useful or Useless?
January 18, 2012
We vote for useless.
However, the TopCoder blog recently shared an article that breaks down Crowdsourcing into four categories and combines real world examples within the defined taxonomy they are offering. The post is called “Why the Taxonomy of Crowdsourcing Can Not Categorize Software Development.”
According to the article, there has been a push to categorize what Crowdsourcing is which can be a good thing. However, the blog found that for software developers like TopCoder this can be very difficult to do.
The article states:
As we read through the aforementioned crowdsourcing.org article, it struck us that a taxonomy such as this would have a very hard time categorizing what TopCoder accomplishes. You may or may not know what we do. Through our global competitive community of more than 321,000 professionals – we don’t often use the term crowd – we create innovative software, algorithms that optimize business and scientific solutions and graphical digital assets. The further we studied the 4 different categories presented by Crowdsourcing.org, the more we realized that TopCoder competitions fit into all four categories presented.
If TopCoder feels this way, we wonder if other companies will find crowdsourcing a taxonomy to be a flop as well. There are useless taxonomies which do little to assist findability. Then there are ANSI standard taxonomies which work just for folks who understand Boolean, take care to formulate search strategies, and enjoy “real” research. Most of the world prefers the “slap in a word” or “take what the service delivers” approach. Sigh.
Jasmine Ashton, January 18, 2012
Protected: How SharePoint Fails as a Social Platform
January 18, 2012
SharePoint: Document Access Versus Storage
January 18, 2012
SharePoint is an information management tool, focused on organization and retrieval. However, the “storage” element of SharePoint is one often critiqued. Is SharePoint the best place to store documents, and if so, which ones? The SharePoint Pro blog takes on this question in, “Access All of Your Content Through SharePoint, Yes. Keep All of it There, No.”
The author states:
All content may be created equal, but it certainly doesn’t exist equally throughout its lifecycle. Some content is business critical, some is purely personal, some is connected to a series of workflows in a process and some is destined to get pushed directly into an archive, some files have a large footprint and some are measured in bytes. And in some cases content can share a number of these attributes all at once. My point is that we need to think about the content we’re putting into SharePoint, as in a number of cases above, it might not actually be the right place to store it.
While the author makes a good point about some documents being more pertinent to workflow than others, sorting documents based on their relevance is a time-killer. With a third-party solution, users do not have to worry about where items are stored in order for them to be accessed by SharePoint or by an accompanying third-party enterprise search. One solution that we like, Fabasoft Mindbreeze, pays particular attention to this topic in its “Winter 2012 Release Notice.”
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise 2012 Winter Release . . .enables all information that is connected to Mindbreeze to be displayed in Microsoft SharePoint . . . In this way not only information contained within Microsoft SharePoint, but also all other information that is available within the respective company, can be consolidated within one “platform.” Mindbreeze, therefore, delivers real additional value to Microsoft SharePoint in the form of an add-on. The Microsoft SharePoint search is replaced by Fabasoft Mindbreeze, with the added value of information pairing, which extends the search to the entire connected company knowledge – all on one page. So-called search-driven dashboards can also be created . . . All information of a page is displayed by Web Parts made available by Mindbreeze. A simple configuration is all that’s needed. The displayed content is always up-to-date and to the point. And after the initial configuration, this takes place automatically and maintenance-free.
With more intuitive and agile third party enterprise solutions being developed, less attention needs to be paid to sorting and organizing. Saving the end-user time equates to saving the organization time and money. Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if its solution might be beneficial to your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PLM is Spreading to Retail
January 18, 2012
Product lifecycle management (PLM) is no longer just for manufacturers. It is spreading to other industries including retail. Even though “PLM: Retail Adoption Slows,” merchandisers are realizing that “PLM can integrate and optimize the activities of merchants, product designers, technical designers, sourcing and suppliers.”
Retail could certainly benefit from specifically targeted PLM software. Those benefits would include:
- Improve product development
- Reduce product cycle times, costs and defects
- Merge product development and product sourcing to shrink the time to go from product concept to product delivery
- Improve coordination between merchants and suppliers
“Analysts were predicting a 30-40 percent annual growth rate of Retail PLM through 2014;” however, the recession hit and the growth is “closer now to a 20 percent annual growth rate through 2014.” Expansion in China and India is more significant than in the U.S. and European markets.
We are curious to see how technology companies like Inforbix curtail their software to the retail industry. We are sure it is just a matter of time. Inforbix revolutionized the way manufacturers search and share product data and we bet they will revolutionize retail in the future as well.
Jennifer Wensink, January 18, 2012
Oracle Faces EnterpriseDB Surge
January 18, 2012
Oracle has ruled the information processing market for years now with fear as the dominating marketing tool. The article, EnterpriseDB Is Giving Oracle a Run For Its Money, on Forbes, explains how that has changed (with Oracle stock prices serving as proof) thanks to a declining economy and EnterpriseDB.
For years now Oracle has been on fire doing the once believed impossible – making money on open source technology. Controlling over fifty percent of the information processing market with their MYSQL Oracle thought they were scot-free. They were until the economy tanked and some smooth talking competition stepped in.
With IT departments’ budgets drastically cut across all industries some creative outside-the-box thinking has been going on. Oracle has kept their customers in line by telling scary stories of what will happen if they switch to another provider. With EnterpriseDB offering the same services as Oracle but at only ten percent of the price, most IT departments are willing to take their chances.
The article speaks of EnterpriseDB’s growth by reporting,
One of the reasons that it’s grown so fast is that EnterpriseDB has lowered customer switching costs. How so? Along with its support of the open source database, PostgreSQL, EnterpriseDB has added features that let customers port the applications they’ve developed for Oracle and other databases over to PostgreSQL.
Oracle might have overcome the open-source hurdle a while back and come out ahead, but we wonder about how they will fare with new competition like EnterpriseDB. Obviously, we are not alone as their stock shares have taken a dramatic hit.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SAP: Lemons from Lemonade for Search Vendors
January 18, 2012
A couple of years ago I did a series of columns about SAP, the German software company which is imbued with the DNA of IBM and the more unpredictable genes of the “let ‘er rip” approach to generating revenues. Change is difficult, and SAP interests to me because the firm’s machinations are the embodiment of the dislocations that old style software vendors face in the cloudy world of Amazon, Google, and even old Big Blue herself, IBM. Keep in mind, one of SAP’s strategic moves was to purchase Sybase.
HANA emerged two years ago as a solution to the woes of organizations struggling with big data, the need to make sense of them, and the complexity which threatens to sink traditional enterprise applications. Consider SAP itself. The company owns Business Objects, once the leader in business analytics. Today I don’t think of Business Objects, which may say more about my awareness than SAP’s marketing. But I hear zero about Inxight Software which performs entity extraction and other text operations and I have heard little or nothing about TREX, SAP’s information retrieval system. I lost track of the SAP investment in Endeca long before SAP’s rival Oracle snagged the 1998 technology to “enhance” its own struggling search solutions.
What is HANA?
According to an SAP friendly blog, SAP describes HANA in this way:
HANA is the foundation and the core of all that we do now and going forward for existing products, new products and entirely new frontiers. We are transforming enterprise software with HANA, and we are transforming our entire product portfolio,” Sikka said in a statement earlier this week announcing that SAP HANA is now generally available worldwide. “But HANA is more than a product,” Sikka continued. “It is a new paradigm, an entirely new way to build applications. It is the basis for our own intellectual renewal internally at SAP—where we rethink how we design, build, deploy, service and sell products—and the basis for our customers’ and partners’ intellectual renewal—where we help customers rethink existing business problems and help them solve entirely new challenges using design-thinking.” (Source: The Top 10 Reasons SAP HANA Is Disrupting Larry Ellison’s Grand Plans]
To me, HANA is a next generation database and it now has to differentiate itself from the XML next generation database from the likes of MarkLogic, from Cloudera, from other NoSQL solutions, and from the new and improved versions of data management systems from IBM, Microsoft, and even Amazon. Big job. Maybe an impossible job?
In December 2011, I snipped the write up “Can SAP be the #2 database vendor by 2015?” I found this passage particularly interesting:
Why doesn’t SAP HANA have deeper market penetration? Put simply it is because SAP wanted it this way. Whilst HANA truly is a general-purpose database, SAP first announced it as an analytics appliance for the 1.0 release. They also priced it really high and didn’t’ offer a discount – list pricing can be as high as €180,000 for a 64GB HANA “unit”, depending on which version you require. And what’s more, SAP sells solutions and HANA is a platform, so the global sales force doesn’t quite know how to sell it in volume – yet. They didn’t want to sell it in volume in any case because they wanted to introduce it slowly to market – building stability, references along the way and avoiding expensive and embarrassing global escalations. So by the end of 2011 we should expect $100-150m of HANA sales, which is 3-5% of SAP’s total revenue. Not particularly significant, right? Well in September they released HANA as being supported for SAP’s Business Warehouse software, which allows large-scale data warehouses. And this is where it gets interesting: there are 17,000 existing BW customers, and HANA would provide business benefit to all of them.
If you are interested in HANA, you can access SAP’s primer about the solution at this link.
In the midst of the HANA hype, Seeking Alpha’s “SAP Is No Longer The Leader It Once Was” stated in December 2011:
The current most promising innovation is SAP HANA, an appliance with columnar in-memory technology enabling fast processing and near real-time analytics. According to SAP, HANA has the potential to become the next-generation system architecture, removing the use of middleware and relational databases. However, the root causes of the downturn appear outside the perimeter of the company transformations: product development, continuous customer complaints, and the 20-year aging ERP that represents the core of the customer base seem to remain unchanged. Agile is probably not enough to address the long-term issues of product development. Most likely, Agile is not the solution to fifteen years of trying to get CRM right, or to making three platform mistakes in three on-demand initiatives (CRM on-demand in 2006, Business byDesign in 2007, and SaaS Enterprise in 2009).
The Seeking Alpha analysis then makes these machine gun like statements:
Is SAP getting it right? Here is a summary of the points to keep in mind to answer this question:
SAP R&D has yet to deliver its first truly successful product since 1992 (it could be HANA overtime)
The core of ERP that holds the customer base is outdated
There seem to be no plans to develop a modern replacement product
Development of a potential new ERP would take years
Sales have declined stepping back by 3 to 4.5 years
SAP’s leadership is questionable
According to Gartner, the revenue from relicensing R/3 to ERP 6.0 is ending
Customers and employees have lost trust
Executives have been leaving
On-demand is not making progress
The customer base is increasingly at risk
Analysts estimate that HANA could produce just 10% of the revenue by 2013.
There is a gap between the buzz and the hard facts.
What does this mean for vendors who hitch their wagons to the SAP “star” as ISYS Search Software did with the announcement “ISYS Wins Software Deal with SAP”? Three points:
- Search vendors are looking at their technology and packaging it in ways to generate incremental revenue. ISYS, it appears, is in the connector game, competing with firms such as EntropySoft
- SAP seems to be lagging further and further behind the NoSQL players who are now facing headwinds despite early market leads. My example is MarkLogic, the XML database outfit
- The broader market seems to be splitting into quite different segments. SAP is going to have difficulty in the IBM and Oracle space, and it is going to have trouble with the open source NoSQL crowd which seems to prefer having Hadoop on its T shirts than HANA.
SAP remains interesting, but it is now in some danger of further marginalization. SAP needs a search system still.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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