Changes at the Top for Cuadra
May 29, 2012
Information management firm and SydneyPLUS affiliate Cuadra is going through a bit of a shake-up. The company announced that, after thirty-four years, its founders are leaving for new adventures. Company President Dr. Carlos A. Cuadra and CFO Gloria N. Cuadra will be enjoying retirement, while Executive VP Judith Wanger’s next undertaking is still under wraps. Now in charge of Cuadra’s management team is Phil Green, head of The Inmagic division of SydneyPLUS.
The press release states:
“Dr. Cuadra and Ms. Wanger formed Cuadra Associates in 1978 to develop STAR software and a suite of STAR-based knowledge management solutions. STAR, which is used worldwide in archives, libraries, museums, and publishing firms, has earned widespread recognition for excellence.
“Mr. Green has been working with Cuadra staff to ensure a smooth transition. ‘I’ve been impressed with the Cuadra staff, the Cuadra product line, and the plans for the future. We will
move forward with products and services that continue Cuadra’s tradition for quality and integrity,’ he said.”
Cuadra is proud to produce ready-to-use knowledge management tools for archives, museum and photographic collections, market intelligence, library automation, publishing, records management, and vocabulary control. They boast that their STAR is the most flexible and comprehensive system in the field, and in 2003 the company introduced a SaaS version. Cuadra’s headquarters are in Los Angeles, CA; the company also has offices in Silver Spring, MD, and New York, NY.
Cynthia Murrell, May 29, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Manufacturing Made Easy with Well Planned Lifecycle Management
May 29, 2012
The theory of product lifecycle management (PLM) is simple in nature – all aspects of a products design, manufacturing, and longevity are planned and plotted before the idea becomes reality. In actuality, however, things are rarely as simple as they seem. A recent Plant Engineering article, “Manufacturing, By Design”, highlights one companies answer to the problem of how to make PLM work right.
The article accurately summarizes the issue most enterprises face when it comes to PLM:
“When you throw theory or software at an idea like (PLM), solutions come quicker than implementation. In the end, what matters in (PLM) is not the beginning, middle, or end of a manufacturing process, but how those phases of life connect.”
The answer? According to Vice President of North American operations for Fluke Corp., Kristi Mosman:
“’People think it’s an easy process. It’s not. It’s a challenge.’” The challenge for Mosman, and for Fluke’s design and marketing teams, is to combine those phases into a single manufacturing process from bright idea to final shipment.”
Many companies, especially small and midsized ones, avoid PLM all together because of the difficulties which traditionally have been a part of the process. Educating decision makers in the latest cloud-based technologies and solutions as well as how PLM is rapidly changing to be more user-friendly is the goal of Fluke Corporation and others, like Inforbix. Catering to the small business Inforbix offers customized PLM solutions with an emphasis on customer support and training in an effort to reverse the negative image PLM providers have earned over the years.
Catherine Lamsfuss, May 29, 2912
Endeca Gets a Needed Boost from Oracle Big Data Resources
May 29, 2012
InformationWeek’s Cindi Howson recently reported on a recent event that showcased some new products being put out by Oracle and it’s recent acquisition Endeca in the article “Oracle Makes Case For Exalytics, Data Discovery.”
According to the article, last month Oracle showcased recent and upcoming products at its annual analyst conference in San Francisco. Exalytics is one of these products. It is a combination appliance as well as an in memory solution.
Howson says a little about Exalytics:
“The Exalytics appliance can store both Essbase cubes and models from Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) in memory, boosting performance for both planning applications and existing BI apps. Oracle claims an 18X performance boost to existing BI and planning apps. An in-memory summary advisor recommends which data should be stored in-memory, based on usage statistics. I’m waiting to test drive the new release and appliance, but the in-memory summary advisor seems to be a differentiator, particularly if it is self optimizing.”
These new products are sure to be an exciting addition to Oracle’s suite of technology.
Jasmine Ashton, May 29, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
A Semi New Approach to 1970 Timesharing
May 29, 2012
IBM seems to be reversing the old saying, ‘out with the old and in with the new’ according to the article IBM to park mainframes on the cloud. The basis behind their approach plays a familiar song to those that were computer savvy back in the 70’s.
Perhaps this is a new marketing tactic rather than a new system as:
“IBM is also promising to park its System z mainframe servers on the cloud, which is ironic considering the time-sharing, rental base ancient history of System/360 mainframes from the dawn of the computing age. (It’s even funnier if you think of a mainframe, which has had logical partitioning, multi-tenancy, and application frameworks of a sort for more than two decades now, as a kind of private cloud.)”
This diagram provides a visual for what is to come:
According to IBM, they currently have over a million users running applications on the SmartCloud processing 4.5 million transactions per day. They hope to increase that with this new, yet familiar software stack which will include; a basic processor, tape capacity with virtual tape, a disc, flash copy and mirroring services for disks. IBM plans to have their mainframes added to the SmartCloud in the United States and United Kingdom later on in 2012. We thought this was the 1970s approach to time sharing, but according to IBM, it is now it a “new” approach?
Jennifer Shockley, May 29, 2012
Another Soldier in the Web Search Arena
May 29, 2012
There’s another web search revolution, and the driving force behind it… is an 18 year old kid, according to the article 18-Year-Old Aims to Redefine How You Search the Web. You see, the web’s like a country, rich with resources and information. Web search providers are like the group of nations that want to control its resources, distributing them as they see fit.
James Petzke, who is the mastermind behind Less Junk, sees it as:
“Servers and programs are choosing the best sites for humans to look at, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Less Junk searches only the top 5000 sites on the web, based on user votes, taking a radically new approach to the search engine industry. Users have deemed the top 5000, so users know that the results they see weren’t just picked up by a computer, but by actual people.”
Less Junk says their braving the battlefield to give the choice back to the people. The voting process consists of going to their site and entering your website of choice. There is no registration process, thus no restriction on re-entering the same sites. The selective site scales might become unbalanced based on that alone.
The accuracy of the new approach seems questionable. It adds both human and social elements, but the circle is limited. Less Junk’s just another soldier in the web search revolution, and as the web evolves so will web search.
Jennifer Shockley, May 29, 2012
Semantic Key Word Research
May 29, 2012
Keyword research is the time-tested, reliable way to locate information on the Internet and databases. There have been many changes to they way people use keyword research, some of them have stayed around and others have disappeared into the invisible web faster than a spambot hits a web site. The Search Engine Journal has come up with “5 Tips for Conducting Semantic Keyword Research” which believes that users “must recognize the semantic nature of the search engines’ indexing behaviors.”
For those without a dictionary handy, semantics refers to the meaning or interpretation of a word or phrase. When a user types a phrase into a search engine, it uses indexing (akin to browsing through a list of synonyms) to find other pertinent results.
A happy quack to http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
So how do the tips measure up? Tip #1 has users create a list of “level 1” core keywords aka write a list of subject/keywords. This is the first step in any research project and most people will be familiar with it if they have completed elementary school. Pretty basic, but it builds the foundation for an entire project. Tip #2 delves farther by having users expand the first list by finding more supporting keywords that are not necessary tied to the main keyword, but are connected to others on the list. Again another elementary research tip, reach out and expand.
Tip #3 moves us away from the keyword lists and tells users to peruse their results and see what questions they can answer. After the users find what can be answered they make another list detailing their findings (so we didn’t step that far away from lists).
Tip #4 explains to combine tips #1-3, which will allow the users to outline their research and then write an article on the topic. Lastly. Tip #5 is a fare-thee-well, good luck, and write interesting content:
“One final tip for incorporating semantically-related keywords into your website’s content… Building these varied phrases into your web articles should help eliminate the stilted, unpleasant content that results from trying to stuff a single target keyword into your text a certain number of times.
However, it’s still important to focus on using your new keyword lists to write content that’s as appealing to your readers as it is to the search engines. If Google’s recent crackdowns on Web spam are any indication of its future intentions, it’s safe to say that the best long-term strategy is to use semantic keywords to enhance the value of your copy – without letting its optimization eclipse the quality of the information you deliver to your website visitors.”
What have we got here? Are the tips useful? Yes, they are, but they do not bring about new material about keyword searching. As mentioned earlier, these steps are taught as the very basic of elementary research: make a keyword list about your topic, find associated terms, read what you got, then write the report. It is true that many schools and higher education institutes do not teach the basics, thus so-called researchers lack these finite skills. Also people tend to forget the beginner’s steps. Two common mishaps that make articles like this necessary, but the more seasoned researcher will simply intone, “Duh!.”
Whitney Grace, May 29, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Inforbix to Present at Solid Edge University 2012 Technology Showcase
May 29, 2012
Many manufacturing companies are struggling to stay ahead of the data game with the growing amount of product data surfacing in the field. Inforbix Apps provides the necessary tools that address the specific product data tasks that are encountered in manufacturing.
These groundbreaking tools are now being released for public showing. Inforbix will be presenting and demonstrating its cloud-based product data access apps June 11-13 at Solid Edge University 2012 Technology Showcase in Nashville, Tennessee. This will be the first public showing to the Siemens PLM Community. This showcase will allow SolidEdge Partners and other attendees to see Inforbix in action.
Inforbix is a Boston-based software company founded in 2012 that addresses the excess of product data specifically within manufacturing companies. The company develops software solutions and apps to address specific data trends and improve productivity. Inforbix is currently a cloud service and assists customers in finding and sharing product data companywide.
Inforbix CEO Oleg Shilovistsky comments on the upcoming presentation in the recent news release, “Inforbix to Attend Solid Edge University 2012”:
“We are excited to introduce Inforbix to the Siemens community at Solid Edge University 2012. We believe there is a growing affinity among Siemens customers, partners, and Inforbix users. This community has always been among the first to adopt new products that are cost effective and easy to use, and which make their products more competitive. At Solid Edge University 2012, Siemens users will learn more about Inforbix and confirm that Inforbix delivers these benefits. We are pleased to share Inforbix with the Siemens community.”
One-on-one meetings will be available at the showcase to allow customers and partners get detailed answers about how Inforbix is helping manufacturing companies make better use of their product data.
The software is reasonably priced and is now available for demo. Just direct your browser to http://www.inforbix.com/demo. The Beyond Search team is proud to recommend the company and the manufacturing data solutions it provides. As always, we look forward to seeing what is to come from Inforbix.
Andrea Hayden, May 29, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, May 21 to May 25
May 28, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the latest happenings with some of big data’s biggest names.
Our story, “Data Analytics Expert Points to the Crux of Big Data Issues,” looked at the CEO of Revolution Analytics and Digital Reasoning, catching up with their latest moves.
“EMC Provides a Lot of Analytic Good,” shows all the positive ways in which EMC is moving the analytic game ahead.
While, “MicroTech Wins Military Intelligence Contract” shows this up-and-coming firm making a name for itself with defense.
There are a million different directions that analytics are moving in at any given moment, but we’ll be providing snapshots of the scene, just like this, every day. Be sure to tune in.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
May 28, 2012
The Promises and Realities of SharePoint Database Management
May 28, 2012
Robert Schifreen has over 30 years of experience in reporting and implementing online technology with his latest projects focused on SharePoint installation. The positives and negatives of his experience are relayed in his post, “Attack of the BLOBs: Data Behaving Badly.” In this sixth installment of his SharePoint 2010 series, Schifreen analyzes the nuances of SharePoint databases.
Databases are the most important core of any farm as they store valuable content like user data, sites, documents, libraries, lists, calendars, wikis, and more. Schifreen explains some challenges with databases in SharePoint 2010:
You can have as many SQL databases as you like, but Microsoft recommends that you don’t allow any one database to grow larger than 200GB, after which performance apparently starts to degrade. It’s also best not to have individual drive volumes that run into tens of terabytes, because they’re a pain to back up. Microsoft has a solution to the problem of storing large data objects (BLOBs) in SQL databases, which is something called RBS or Remote Blob Storage. Each blob gets stored as a standard file on the file system and its entry in the database is replaced with a pointer to the external file.
He goes on to explain the complex nature of SharePoint architecture and RBS middleware. While a SharePoint deployment can get complicated quickly, it is important to analyze your environment and keep it simple until you need to add more complex features. Schifreen’s article is a good example of that process and may be worth the read. But we also know that a powerful search feature is necessary to navigate and get the most out of your SharePoint investments.
To fill in the search gaps in your SharePoint system, consider a third party application. We like the good reviews for the Fabasoft Mindbreeze suite of solutions. With clear navigation and a self-explanatory interface, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates findability.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
While databases can become convoluted, Mindbreeze can save employees time by connecting them to the right information via a user-friendly interface even with vast amounts of unstructured data. Navigate to http://www.mindbreeze.com/ to read more.
Philip West, May 28, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Can Data Management Costs Be Lowered?
May 28, 2012
For many years product lifecycle management was reserved only for the largest of enterprises because, primarily, the price to set up a PLM platform and maintain it was astronomical. With the advent of cloud based technology, however, PLM solutions are becoming more affordable leading many to question why some providers are still charging so much. The MCAD Café article, “PLM and MySQL – Keeping the Cost of PLM Down”, questions how pricing is set and what can be done to lower it so more businesses can gain access.
As the author explains the problem,
“One of the often-heard complaints about PLM is that the investment need is huge. Partially the blame also falls on the database licensing cost. In order to find out what the database licensing costs look like I tried to read Oracle’s Global Price List and their Software Investment Guide and SQL Server 2012 Licensing Overview – and ended up just getting bewildered…I am pretty sure a IT Manager just ends up getting baffled as well!”
Bewilderment is not a state that anyone wants to find themselves when considering investing thousands of their business’s money in a PLM platform. For that reason we recommend businesses wanting to learn more about PLM solutions and how their business can benefit contact the professionals at Inforbix, a cloud based PLM provider specializing in working with small to midsized businesses in keeping costs down and customer support high. With a dedication to their clients unseen by most providers Inforbix helps companies understand how a PLM platform can help them and how to implement one without breaking the budget.
Catherine Lamsfuss, May 28, 2012
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