IT Managers Need Enterprise Architecture Applications for Future Goals
October 24, 2012
A helpful article for IT department managers concerning practical approaches to to evolving IT needs was recently posted on SandHill. “Enterprise IT Architecture: Goals, Trends and Perspectives” shares tips for time and resource weary managers on investigating and designing new technologies within their company. The article states that more focus should be put on future requirements and a long-term strategy involving multi-year objectives and activity planning should be implemented.
The article elaborates on the development of prospective strategic IT goals:
“Enterprise architecture is designed to lead IT activities according to the greater needs of the company and provide opportunities for innovation within a business strategy. IT goals are then aimed at either achievement of business goals or allowing a company to pursue something new.
[…]To aid the formulation of a strategic plan, IT managers find it helpful to adopt an enterprise architecture framework to define, organize and structure technology and application and staffing requirements in support of a company’s strategic goals.”
It is necessary to these IT managers to find a balance between meeting today’s immediate requirements while still making time to develop innovative projects for the future. Finding the right enterprise search application that allows organizations to embrace strong architecture and combine it with findability and functionality is a wise and cost effective method. Companies like Intrafind that specialize in effective information retrieval can assist in this process.
Andrea Hayden, October 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Delivering Information Must Precede Presenting it in a Pretty Way
October 24, 2012
We have heard it before and CITE World will tell us again: mobile is the platform of the future. Mobile business intelligence vendor Roambi directed the conversation towards the new platform everyone wants a piece of in the article, “Roambi Lets You Visualize Enterprise Data On Your iPhone or iPad.”
The Roambi app is integrated with Roambi Analytics back-end. This allows for data to be drawn from existing sources and turns it into engaging and very useful visualizations on mobile devices. There are even ten different views possible to see enterprise data appear in.
We learned more about the app:
The functionality here is impressive: Roambi doesn’t just put a new coat of paint on your enterprise data—it fully commits to the mobile experience, with each visualization easily controlled by screen gestures like double-taps and swipes. Part of that laudable functionality comes from listening to customers: company reps say that enterprise buyers wanted access to their data anywhere. That’s why Roambi downloads data directly to your device. Even without an internet connection, you still have access to your latest reports.
If there is a gem of mobile business intelligence out there, it may be Roambi. However, in order to deal with the cross usage of mobile with traditional devices so that no data is left behind, another solution must be in place. We are talking about something in the vein of PolySpot solutions, they deliver information across multiple devices in a secure manner.
Megan Feil, October 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tips for Tweaking a Site for Mobile Search Optimization
October 24, 2012
Smart phones now outsell PCs and 86 percent of adults (and even a higher percentage among business professionals) own a mobile phone, according to recent findings from the Pew Research Center. In light of the mobile-centered trends, Tom Pick discusses how it relates to big data and the B2B world in his article, “Mobile SEO: How to Search Optimize Mobile Websites.” Pick shares some tips for increasing mobile SEO, starting with basic on-page updates:
As with traditional websites, follow basic on-page optimization best practices on mobile sites: use keywords in your mobile site content, headings, keyword links, image alt tags, and of course, page meta titles. But keep meta titles short: absolutely no more than 65 characters (including spaces), and preferably 45 or less (the display limit in the Safari browser).
Social and mobile go together, so include popular social sharing buttons (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email) on your mobile web pages to make them easy to share.
It may seem obvious, but make sure your corporate website and mobile website link to each other.
Pick also suggests linking your mobile site to popular sites like Google Maps, Yelp, Foursquare, and Facebook Places. One way to boost your site’s mobile experience is to add a powerful search system, like InSite. Mindbreeze’s InSite solution gives a custom searching experience unique to the user with the added benefit of mobile capabilities.
Philip West, October 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Video Tour of PolySpot Administration Console
October 24, 2012
Polyspot has posted a YouTube video that serves as a whirlwind tour of their “PolySpot Administration Console / Brand New Version: 6.0.” The two minute video succinctly demonstrates that this console is another useful reference for information mavens.
The Administration Console is one of four consoles included in PolySpot’s Information At Work platform, designed to serve all departments of their clients’ organizations. The product page elaborates:
“All PolySpot search applications are based on PolySpot Information At Work, a shared deployment platform for all types of search application, including cross-functional search applications, business intelligence applications and business-specific and decision-making applications. . . . Although a standard database is highly versatile, it does not provide high-quality search performance. Similarly, while an index provides unrivalled search performance, it is not sufficiently versatile in terms of data enrichment and updating capabilities. PolySpot Information At Work is an innovative solution that combines the best of both worlds: the performance of an index (PolySpot SearchMart) and the versatility of a semi-structured database (PolySpot InfoWarehouse).”
PolySpot focuses on boosting business efficiency with single-point access to a wealth of structured and unstructured data. the company taps into the wonders of open source software, basing its infrastructure on Apache’s Lucene Solr. Founded in 2001, PolySpot makes its home in Paris, France.
Cynthia Murrell, October 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Digital Reasoning Hits High Note with Opera Solutions
October 23, 2012
We just learned that Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys® system now integrates with Opera Solutions’ Signal Hub™ Technology. For those struggling with big data challenges, the center stage role of Digital Reasoning brings new agility to organizations.
Digital Reasoning™, one of the leaders in unstructured data analytics at scale, revealed a partnership with Opera Solutions. The Opera Solutions’ firm is one of the leading global big data science companies. This integration will expand Opera Solutions’ Signal Hub technology to include unstructured text analytics from Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys, providing a comprehensive Big Data solution for innovative enterprises.
Rob Metcalf, President and COO for Digital Reasoning, told ArnoldIT:
We are excited to make this important announcement at the Strata Conference in the heart of New York’s Financial District. Opera Solutions’ predictive analytics capabilities are a perfect complement with Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys, and together we look forward to unlocking valuable insights for customers in the financial industry and beyond.
According to Opera Solutions, the Digital Reasoning Synthesys technology provides advanced methods of extracting critical insights from email, research, Web content, and other unstructured data sources.
Laks Srinivasan, General Manager, Global Markets for Opera Solutions, told me:
When combined with the machine-learning science in our Signal Hub technologies, we can deliver directed actions to frontline decision makers focused on managing financial risk.
ArnoldIT’s analysis of Signal Hub technologies revealed that the system can extract critical signals from flows of big data. Opera Solutions’ technology is deployed at major organizations spanning industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail, and transportation. These organizations rely on Signal Hubs to optimize their supply chain, gain unique marketing insights, and stay ahead of financial risk with knowledge from both internal systems and external, unstructured sources.
Readers of Beyond Search know that Synthesys was developed in close conjunction with critical Big Data analytics challenges over the past decade. In 2012, Digital Reasoning gained momentum in financial services, healthcare, and legal markets, where automated understanding of unstructured data is a necessity.
Synthesys is a platform for making sense of unstructured data. Modeled after the human understanding process, Synthesys reads, resolves and reasons across hundreds of millions of documents to automatically understand and isolate critical information such as risks, opportunities and anomalies. Having solved problems for US intelligence agencies for the past decade, Synthesys is now delivering Automated Understanding for big data challenges in finance, healthcare and legal markets. Digital Reasoning is based outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York. For more information, visit http://www.digitalreasoning.com/.
Stephen E Arnold, October 23, 2012
CIOs Can Harness Company Intelligence with Proper Search Applications
October 23, 2012
An innovative list of CIO strategies regarding industry-specific issues was recently discussed in the article “Ten Strategic CIO Priorities for 2013” on ZDNet. The article was inspired by a list created by Bob Evans, senior vice-president of communications for Oracle Corp. Instead of a typical listing of hardware products and software applications, Evans’ strategy areas are meaningful and actionable.
Evans’ ideas include: “Unleash Your Company’s Intelligence: Create the Enterprise-Wide Opportunity Chain” and “Transform Big Data into Big Insights, Big Vision, and Big Opportunity.”
The article’s author comments on the list of priorities:
“Instead of a litany telling people how to spend money, this collection describes the goals and issues that help a CIO drive value in today’s world. For many CIO’s, these points represent the future path forward; when I talk with innovative CIOs — the best and most forward thinking — it’s obvious the issues are exciting because they hold the key to really helping drive benefit to the company.”
For CIOs who want to deliver results and unleash their company’s intelligence as advised by the Oracle guru, these priorities can be met through Intrafind’s search applications. To create the enterprise-wide opportunity chain, effective information retrieval from unstructured and structured enterprise data is needed. Intrafind provides the products and consultancy services that will transform strategy into results.
Andrea Hayden, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Insights Roll in for Enterprises Using PolySpot Technologies that Deliver Information
October 23, 2012
Despite Big Data currently holding a secure place as a necessity for ROI in the enterprise world, there will always be skeptics about whether or not the workforce and technology are up to the challenge of extracting insights from such a mammoth. The latest soundbite of apprehension comes from ZDNet‘s recent article “Big Data’s Enterprise-readiness.”
The article stresses that software developers in the Big Data realm offer user interfaces designed for non-developers. These repositories show off the high level of investment that has gone into these solutions.
The article tells us:
One thing Big Data has on its side is a more flexible and agile approach to schema, allowing it to be defined at query/analysis time, thus removing some of the complexity and bureaucracy in curating the data. But the tooling for managing unstructured data is relatively immature, and data specialists in the enterprise are not conceptually accustomed to it. The long term potential for Big Data here is good, as it should shorten innovation cycles. But in the near term things just aren’t that actionable yet.
It is clear that we were reading a perspective that associates an intuitive user experience with a lack of enterprise-readiness. This way of thinking has no place in the current market where an efficient and easy to use interface equates to increased productivity. Let the insights roll in with big data solutions from companies such as PolySpot that deliver information to employees across the enterprise in this manner.
Megan Feil, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Concept Searching Set to Sponsor SharePoint City Party at 2012 Conference
October 23, 2012
Concept Searching, a provider of enterprise-grade software products that aim to deliver conceptual metadata generation, auto-classification, and taxonomy management from the desktop, is sponsoring the ‘SharePoint City’ Party, to be hosted by Axceler exclusively for attendees at the SharePoint 2012 Conference, on November 14th in Las Vegas. Concept Searching provides basic enterprise-search capabilities, and this is explained about their additional product:
Going beyond a technology solution, Concept Searching’s Smart Content Framework™ for information governance is a toolset based on conceptClassifier for SharePoint that provides the enterprise infrastructure framework to mitigate risk, automate processes, manage information, protect privacy, and address compliance issues. The result is one set of technologies, running natively in SharePoint, which improves search, provides an enterprise metadata repository, automates records management, ensures compliance, protects and secures data, and facilitates migration.
If you plan to attend the conference, the party held at Tryst Nightclub may be worth checking out. A link to register for the party is provided in the article. If you’re weighing enterprise search applications for your existing SharePoint investments, you may also want to look up Mindbreeze. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise gains each employee two weeks per year through focused finding of data, a competitive business advantage and added bonus to employee satisfaction. In addition, their suite of solutions includes mobile and Web site search, a variety of connectors, and certified security.
Philip West, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Google and Publishers Settle Long Standing Lawsuit
October 23, 2012
The Mac Observer recently reported on a long standing lawsuit between Google and book publishers in the article, “Google Settles with American Publishers Over Scanned Books.”
According to the article, Google’s plan to scan all of the books in the world has been met with much objection from authors, publishers, and other groups. The issue being that Google has scanned more than 20 million books and made them searchable without gaining permission from anyone. However, publishers have now reached an agreement with the search giant which allows them to have some control over which books are being scanned.
The article states:
“‘We are pleased that this settlement addresses the issues that led to the litigation,’ Tom Allen, president and CEO of the publishers group, said in a statement. ‘It shows that digital services can provide innovative means to discover content while still respecting the rights of copyright-holders.’
The deal not only gives publishers the power to decide which books are included in the project, it also limits users to reading 20 percent of the digitized books online with an option to purchase the entire book on Google Play, the company’s online Android store.”
Our only question is this: after suing for nearly a decade, why settle now?
Jasmine Ashton, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Benefits of Open Source
October 23, 2012
The Harvard Business Review recently reported on the value of open source technology in the article “Open Sourcing May Be Worth the Risk.”
According to the article, the author’s company made a decision in early 2012 to open source one of their products after hearing about the recent success of other companies that had made similar moves.
The intention for going open source was to improve the overall quality of their product:
“Successful open-source projects get rigorously reviewed and improved by thousands of community members. We have about 25 software developers and quality assurance professionals at Mobify, but we’re no match for the all the software developers in the world who might make use of our platform. Each of them is a potential tester of or contributor to the project.
These potential contributors aren’t all in Silicon Valley. Open sourcing your work can be an effective way to reach huge global markets, like India, Brazil, and China. I’ve worked with programmers in these markets, and we wanted to help them develop local solutions to local problems. Developers in other parts of the world may not have a culture of paying for software or simply can’t afford it. We also saw an opportunity to recruit developers in these countries to help with the translation of the code base and related documents.”
While open sourcing a product can be intimidating, it can also quickly and efficiently work out bugs that could not be done internally. Not only is open sourcing a great idea for the company but it also brings better solutions into the market.
Jasmine Ashton, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
