The Fragmentation of Content Analytics
October 29, 2012
I am in the midst of finalizing a series of Search Wizards Speak interviews with founders or chief technology officers of some interesting analytics vendors. Add to this work the briefings I have attended in the last two weeks. Toss in a conference which presented a fruit bowl of advanced technologies which read, understand, parse, count, track, analyze, and predict who will do what next.
Wow.
From a distance, the analytics vendors look the same. Up close, each is individual and often not identical. Pick up the wrong shard and a cut finger or worse may result.
A happy quack to www.thegreenlivingexpert.com
Who would have thought that virtually every company engaged in indexing would morph into next-generation, Euler crazed, and Gauss loving number crunchers. If the names Euler and Gauss do not resonate with you, you are in for tough sledding in 2013. Math speak is the name of the game.
The are three very good reasons for repackaging Vivisimo as a big data and analytics player. I choose Vivisimo because I have used it as an example of IBM’s public relations mastery. The company developed a deduplication feature which was and is, I assume, pretty darned good. Then Vivisimo became a federated search system, nosing into territory staked out by Deep Web Technologies. Finally, when IBM bought Vivisimo for about $20 million, the reason was big data and similarly bright, sparkling marketing lingo. I wanted to mention Hewlett Packard’s recent touting of Autonomy as an analytics vendor or Oracle’s push to make Endeca a business analytics giant. But IBM gets the nod. Heck, it is a $100 billion a year outfit. It can define an acquisition any way it wishes. I am okay with that.
Enterprise Search Requires Speed and Security
October 29, 2012
Enterprise search platforms are constantly developing and changing to fit the needs of the enterprise, and a new release from DtSearch is attempting to fill some of those needs. We learn about the update in “DtSearch 7.70 Adds Document Filters, Increased Multi-Level Search” on CMSWire, which states the newest version includes enhanced document filters and APIs for OEMs to assist in data management.
The article tells us more about the benefits of the product:
“The search products’ spider can search local/remote content and static/dynamic web content, and it can reach across public/private sites, including support for log-ins and forms-based authentication. More than a terabyte of text can be covered in a single index, including directories, databases, online data and emails, and an unlimited number of indexes can be created and searched. According to dtSearch, that indexed search time is under a second, even across terabytes.”
While the new version does a great job responding to current issues in the enterprise, we believe security in search should be a priority when updating platforms. For a choice that provides high-performance full text search across various content sources while still focusing on access rights and secure search, we recommend Intrafind’s iFinder for enterprise search solutions.
Andrea Hayden, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Information Delivery Leaders Like PolySpot Light Way for Big Data Software Development
October 29, 2012
The influx of big data in a variety of industries has created a myriad of effects ranging from legal and privacy to business and money. A recent Inc article, “Big Data, Big Money: IT Industry to Increase Spending” discusses the latter. A recent study by research firm Gartner is highlighted in the article. The report said spending will reach $28 billion in 2012 and $34 billion in 2013.
To add to the significance, by 2016, big data technology will account for $232 billion of worldwide IT spending. If it is not already a standardized requirement in information management practices, it is on its way to becoming just that.
We more from the article about this high-growth sector:
While most current spending goes toward adapting traditional software to big data technology, 45% of future spending each year will go to social network analysis and content analytics, the study noted. Gartner also projected that development in “big data functionality” (which can be defined as, essentially, turning big data into something functional) will drive $4.3 billion in software sales in 2012.
An increase in software sales is, of course, a welcome development in the larger scale economy, but it is also good news for improvement in software developments. Leaders in information delivery such as PolySpot are lighting the way for many more to follow.
Megan Feil, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint 2013 Goes Social with Community Templates
October 29, 2012
As users continue to drive demand for social networking features and companies look to increase collaboration among employees, technology is aiming to deliver solutions to fit the need. SharePoint 2013 is no exception as they add social features as well as other smaller configuration improvements to give users more power with a friendlier interface. Jennifer Mason summarizes some of the changes in the coming SharePoint release in her CMSWire.com article, “SharePoint 2013: Intranets with a Side of Social.”
Mason discusses new features including the ability to reuse content across multiple sites, new navigation features, improved search Web part, and changes to design tools. She has this to say about SharePoint’s goal to bring people together with the data they need in a social business context:
The community template provides a way for this type of capability within SharePoint 2013. Community templates have been designed in a way that allows anyone within the organization to join a community and to begin discussions on things relevant to the community. These communities are a great way to share information in a collaborative way, at the same time making intellectual property with the organization available to a larger audience.
Community templates may help bring people together and allow for a new kind of collaboration that previous SharePoint versions simply did not support. While new features are exciting, we also know that out-of-the-box SharePoint tends to have gaps. A complete social business experience also relies on a powerful search feature accessible to all users. One third party application worth looking into is Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their Enterprise Search solution. Mindbreeze connects all company data, including documents, notes, e-mails, calendar entries, contracts, intranet or internet, person- or text-related, and more. In addition, their SharePoint connector allows for a seamless install to complement your existing content management investments.
Philip West, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Motorola Restructuring Proves to be More Complex Than Anticipated
October 29, 2012
The Inquirer recently published a piece that leads us to believe Motorola is a stickier wicket than Google predicted, called “Google Revises Cost of Motorola Mobility Restructuring.”
According to the article, after Google’s initial acquisition of Motorola, the restructuring has proved to be more costly and difficult than initially anticipated. One example of this is the fact that the search giant planned to cut Motorola’s workforce by 20 percent. However, after examining figures for severance charges, the number has been changed to 9 percent.
The article states:
“Motorola was bought for its considerable patent portfolio, with Google hoping that the 16,000 or so patents will help it fend off potential patent lawsuits by other firms like Apple and Microsoft. However Google bought not only 16,000 patents but also a company that was far from being the mobile phone market leader, with financials to match its lacklustre products.
Google said in a statement to Reuters, ‘Motorola has continued to refine its planned restructuring actions and now expects to broaden those actions to include additional geographic regions outside of the US.’”
We are still unsure of Google’s true motivations for buying Motorola. Whether it was patent related or hardware, Google’s next Nexus design should bring some clarity to the issue.
Jasmine Ashton, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Salesforce Expands Marketing Cloud with Social Analytics
October 29, 2012
Social analytics vendors are in the spotlight this week thanks to a big expansion from Salesforce.com. The enterprise cloud computing company is leading the shift to the social enterprise with its Marketing Cloud ecosystem expansion, bringing in twenty social analytics vendors to enable more insights from a single dashboard and help companies make better, faster business decisions. We learn in “Salesforce.com’s Marketing Cloud Adds 20 Social Analytics Vendors” on ZDNet that OEM text analytics company Bitext was included in the signing with the “world’s only integrated social media marketing platform.”
We learn about the platform in the article:
“Essentially, it promises to turn insights into action and connections into customers for life because of the way that brands can engage them using this platform.
With the addition of the services from these social analytics firms, Salesforce said that customers should be able to ‘create a dashboard that delivers a single social snapshot of their company using the analytics that are most valuable to their specific business.’ This includes support for content in 17 languages.”
Bitext will be assist in that anticipated language support, providing multilingual sentiment analysis, which will help companies connect with customers across the world more quickly and efficiently than ever before. The company’s multilingual sentiment analysis solution, which will be integrated into the Marketing Cloud, will help businesses expand globally via social networking.
Andrea Hayden, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: October 19 to October 25
October 29, 2012
This week, the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some interesting stories related to big data’s influence over modern enterprises and higher education.
The article “Text Mining Brings Out the Value on Big Data” explains how companies are turning data volumes into increased profits. Many companies are choosing to automate the process through data analytics and text mining software.
The article states:
“Many companies haven’t begun to benefit from valuable enterprise text data,” said Fiona McNeill, Global Product Marketing Manager for SAS Text Analytics. “Most know that information in-house and in social media must be analyzed to bring value. SAS Text Analytics are being used for patient safety in healthcare, digital content performance in the media industry, early-warning systems and citizen intelligence in government and more. Nobody delivers the depth and breadth of technology for analyzing structured and unstructured data that SAS does.”
“Higher Ed for Big Data” reports on new programs meant to reinvigorate the tech work force and bring young talent to the industry.
According to the write-up:
“Colleges and universities are moving swiftly to create advanced degree programs to help meet what’s expected to be rapidly rising demand among employers for specialists who can manage and analyze big data.
The schools are likely aware of a McKinsey report warning of a mega-shortage of analytical experts that could leave as many as 190,000 positions unfilled by 2018. They’re also responding to appeals from big employers like IBM and SAS Institute that have been lobbying college administrators to set up such programs.
Schools have offered analytics training for years, but the emerging advanced degree programs add instruction in the use of analytic and business intelligence tools to produce useful information from petabytes of data collected from social media sites, sensors, transaction records, mobile applications and other sources.”
PepsiCo is another large company that has recently seen the value of data analytics. “PepsiCo Acquires a Taste for Data Analytics” shares an interview with PepsiCo‘s Global Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Information Solutions Caroline Watteeuw.
Watteeuw explains one of the company’s new products:
“We are betting on what we call SMAC. It is Social, Mobile, Advanced and Immersive Analytics, Cloud. There are a couple of things that are not relevant for PepsiCo but interesting. I call them comeback kids. If you go back 15 years when Xerox was at its peak, it was all about very precise ink-jet printers. Right now, people are trying to use ink-jet printer technology and refocus it on creating organs (researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, for instance, are using modified ink-jet technology to build tissue and organ prototypes). It is absolutely phenomenal. Then there are three dimensional maps. You have 3D TV, gaming and printing. 3D maps will allow you to navigate through different layers of geography to do oil and gas exploration in a very different way.”
For those who are interested in getting the most of their big data, there are a variety of companies out there offering cutting edge solutions. We recommend Digital Reasoning for their long standing reputation as a leader in big data analytics that pushes the envelope.
Jasmine Ashton, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Lexalytics Rolls out Native Phrase Based Sentiment in Spanish
October 28, 2012
I wanted to call attention to Lexalytics push into the Spanish language. In a couple of weeks you will learn about a remarkable technology which does not require “language packs.” I already wrote about the language innovations of Bitext in Madrid, Spain.
The Lexalytics’ approach, according to “Lexalytics Announces Availability of Native Phrase-Based Sentiment in Spanish,” is:
the only company to provide phrase-based sentiment in any language, providing unparalleled opportunities for tuning and customization for any application involving text. All of Lexalytics’ language packs are native to the language, with no translation step, so that all nuances of sentiment are captured directly without confusion from a machine translation step. Lexalytics’ Salience Engine is a market leading text analytics engine, used by industries as varied as social media monitoring, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals to determine the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “tone” that’s implicit in any piece of text. Salience supports a number of different text analytics functions, including Named Entity Recognition, Sentiment Analysis, Categorization/Classification, Summarization, Theme Extraction and more. In other words, if you have text, Salience can tell you what it means.
For more information about Lexalytics, navigate to www.lexalytics.com.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2012
Is HP Autonomy Pursuing the Analytics Leaders?
October 27, 2012
I don’t want to name the leaders in business analytics. The reason is that I am not exactly sure what “analytics” means. I learned this week that IBM Vivisimo is in the race. Add to this outfits like Oracle, SAP, and almost every other blue-chip technology vendor and I have a tough time figuring out what company does what. You, gentle reader, may be more informed on this matter than I. No problem. I am an old goose in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I find the relabeling of companies not known for their math skills when it comes to meeting sales targets now in the Premier Math League amusing.
I do want to note the write up “Shifting Gears, HP Revs Up Analytics Services,” which appeared in that estimable “real” publication Information Management. The key point of the story for me was not the reference to HP as “struggling.” I hopped right over the suggestion that HP had to “reinvent its enterprise direction.” Right. The big item was the reference to HP’s embrace of Vertica and Autonomy. No odd couple this. Both firms embrace broad swaths of data and information management.
One passage which caught my attention. The source I believe is Danila Meirlaen, HP outsourcing division vice president. Herewith the snippet:
[HP’s] changes are reflected in this new service, with heightened analytics capabilities based on Autonomy’s IDOL platform and expertise, Meirlaen says. However, she says that layoffs have not impacted the analytics outsourcing team that has been tapped to take on this new service venture. In addition, many Business Analytics Service members have “industry specific” specialties in areas like finance, risk management and marketing.
I find the notion of outsourcing interesting. I am okay with the Autonomy platform. I think, however, there may be some effort required to apply Autonomy’s analytics with Vertica’s capabilities. The “vertical” angle reminds me of content processing vendors who deploy solutions which snap in to financial services, health care, and other juicy industry segments.
Here’s the prediction from an azure chip consultant, Mukesh Dialani, IDC:
A stronger focus on business analytics backed by an industry specific approach will reap benefits to their overall outsourcing business and BPO business in particular.
Hundreds of companies big and small are likely to work overtime to prevent HP from making a free for all even more crazy.
Stephen E Arnold, October 27, 2012
IBM and Other IT Vendors Enter Enterprise Social Software Arena
October 26, 2012
When deciding on enterprise social software, companies have the option between pure-play products from specialists or social software capabilities integrated into existing products from traditional vendors.The article “Enterprise Social Software Magic Quadrant: Pure Play Vs. IT Vendors” on Search Unified Communications reports on the enterprise social software Magic Quadrant report, which tells us that traditional IT vendors are bundling their own enterprise social technologies with existing products and services to compete in “their own markets.”
The article informs us of the big competitors and plans for the future of social software:
“Vendors like IBM and Microsoft will better integrate social applications for specific end-user activities, including content creation, task management and data collection and reporting, said lead author of the social software Magic Quadrant Nikos Drakos, Ph.D., research director of collaboration and social software for Gartner.”
IBM’s PureData System is designed to analyze big data in the cloud and deliver “actionable insights” to the enterprise. The result is a cost-efficient and speedy option in enterprise social software. Intrafind is among the first certified application providers to be certified on this new family of expert integrated systems. We think the IBM Pure and Intrafind partnership is a veritable enterprise search option.
Andrea Hayden, October 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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