X1 Discovery and NW3C Offer Social Discovery Class
December 13, 2012
We’ve made a discovery regarding eDiscovery. The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) has teamed up with X1 Discovery to offer some social media eDiscovery training. So far, their “X1SD Class List” is quite short, with one low-profile event scheduled to be held in Dec 2012 in New York City. The class description reads:
“This course provides ‘hands-on’ training designed specifically to address the needs of social media investigators. Participants will develop the practical skills, insights, and knowledge necessary to successfully gather data from Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedln in a manner and form conducive to an investigation, whether that investigation is civil or criminal in nature.
“X1 Social Discovery Training will:
- Familiarize students with Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln;
- Teach Students how to use X1 Discovery to address social media content and information:
- Teach Students how to collect and authenticate information relevant to their investigations;
- Teach Students how to prepare reports; and
- Provide the students with practical exercises to enhance their skills.”
A central resource for state and local agencies fighting economic and high-tech crime, NW3C began in 1978 as the Leviticus Project, and was originally devoted to a specific multi-state investigation. In 1991, its mission was expanded to providing training, maintaining databases, and providing analytical services to agencies in all 50 states. Renamed the following year, the Center has vastly expanded its membership throughout the U.S. and into fifteen other countries.
Not surprisingly, X1 Discovery focuses on eDiscovery, with a current emphasis on social media and cloud-based data. The company designs its eDiscovery and enterprise search solutions specifically for IT and legal professionals. Originally founded by Idealab in 2011, X1 is based in Pasadena, California.
Cynthia Murrell, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Data Drives Business Decisions with Enterprise Search
December 12, 2012
Big data is making the transition from a catchy trend to a serious power in the business world. A flurry of acquisitions involving big data and enterprise search systems are proving that value is being added to big data. According to recent article “Structuring the Unstructured: Why Big Data is Suddenly Interested in Enterprise Search” on CMSWire, this can be attributed to the inclusion of unstructured data (hard-to-predict human content,) into big data analyses, and companies are becoming more and more interested in creating actionable insights from this data set.
The article continues to explain the need to obtain value from unstructured data:
“It is the hands-on application of processes, pragmatism and checksums that produce the most value from unstructured data. A focus on transparency of process creates confidence in data provenance and enables actionable intelligence from unstructured data. That combination of technology and process is what is driving recent acquisitions and what can drive your business to make better, more accurate decisions based on your unstructured big data.”
The whole point of making structured and unstructured data available is so that the right information can drive business decisions. Intrafind makes finding the right data at the right time a bit easier in the age of big data. The company’s software and enterprise search solutions can help you target necessary information from the big data madness and also provide the consultancy services to help you decide what to do with that information.
Andrea Hayden, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Solutions Tap Into Information from All Enterprise Applications
December 12, 2012
Will big data be big news in 2013? Smart Data Collective thinks so; popularity in the press in addition to promising research on its impact means there will be no slowing down. Their recently published article, “The Big Deal in Big Data is a Big Opportunity,” shows that big data was not the top priority for many businesses.
IT, analytics, collaboration and mobile were all ranked of high importance by businesses in the study by Ventana Research.
The article describes several findings:
Our research into business technology innovation finds that lack of resources is the largest barrier (51%), and having IT expend significant quantities of time and resources on big data without a strong business context is a recipe for failure. Thankfully for many organizations, planning approaches for technology such as specialized DBMS (45%), in-memory databases (40%), data warehouse appliances (37%) and Hadoop (36%) requires a solid business case to move to full evaluation and deployment mode.
We do not have information on wording used in the research, but obviously IT, analytics and mobile are all inherently connected to big data. Companies have been focused on big data after all. Those who have not, should concentrate on corralling information from all enterprise applications into a network that can extract and deliver meaningful insights out of it, such as solutions from PolySpot.
Megan Feil, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Lucene Revolution Headed for San Diego
December 12, 2012
The fourth installation of the open source search conference Lucene Revolution is headed to San Diego in 2013. LucidWorks continues to be the primary sponsor of the event. The call for speakers is still open and details are included in the full announcement, “Lucene Revolution 2013 to be held in San Diego.”
The release begins:
“Lucene Revolution 2013 will take place at The Westin San Diego on April 29 – May 2, 2013. Many of the brightest minds in open source search will convene at this 4th annual Lucene Revolution to discuss topics and trends driving the next generation of search. The conference will be preceded by two days of Apache Lucene, Solr and Big Data training. The call for speakers opens on November 12, 2012.”
The program will focus on Lucene and Solr training as well as tackling the issue of Big Data in the enterprise. Open source software has a key role to play in these discussions, make sure you are a part of this networking opportunity for developers and end-users alike. Register, or find more details about the event, at LuceneRevolution.org.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Acronym with an Added Buzz Word is Bound to Sell
December 12, 2012
Everyone wants in on big data; there is no question about the popularity and ubiquity of this catchall. PC Advisor UK realizes this, but they also tell us about something new in their recent article, “Big Data Leading to New Breed of Service Provider.”
Data as a service (DaaS) providers have been around for years. The concept is nothing new; Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters have been doing it for years. However, they were not attached to the buzz phrase of big data. EMC released a report recently, “Big Data as a Service: A Market and Technology Perspective,” that shows startups for the BDaaS markets should have no problem getting funding.
The article reveals who is looking for a piece of the pie:
“-EMC is pushing its integrated stack– Greenplum HD an enterprise-ready Hadoop platform, and Isilon NAS for Hadoop-to Big Data platform providers looking to take on big Hadoop jobs for clients. (Would that be BD/PaaS?)
-Opera Solutions has grown from 10 data scientists in 2004 to 220 today. The company offers firms in the Global 250 and large governmental organizations a semi-turnkey Big Data solution set aimed at analytics and insights.”
Trend Micro and LexisNexis Risk Solutions are also contenders. It would not be surprising if all four walked away with some funding; the demand is simply projected to be that great.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ElasticSearch Scores Ten Million in Funding
December 12, 2012
ElasticSearch has secured some hefty new financing for its analytics engine and other projects, we learn from the post, “Elasticsearch Big Data Search Startup Pulls in $10M Funding” at the TrustedInsight blog. With this $10 million in series A funding, Elasticsearch will have to work fast to outrun the one-man-band reputation the firm has earned since the days of Compass search.
The press release specifies:
“In addition to [primary investor] Benchmark, other investors in the round include Rod Johnson, the creator of the Spring Framework and co-founder of SpringSource, and Data Collective. Elasticsearch said it will use this initial round of funding to help build out the organization in all functional areas and expand into key geographic regions to support the adoption of Elasticsearch. The open-source search and analytics software emerged in the last six months as one of the more popular open-source projects in the big data market and is already being used by thousands of companies all over the world, the company said.”
Shay Banon, founder of the Compass open source search project, decided that the software really needed a complete overhaul; the ElasticSearch software, which Banon says he sees as “Compass 3.0,” is the result. Both projects are built on Apache Lucene.
ElasticSearch (the company) was formed this year by Banon and folks from Apache. It offers resources for users of the ElasticSearch solution with training, consultancy services, and support subscription plans. Naturally, they emphasize their unique expertise on the subject. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Toshiba Stingy with Laptop Service Manuals
December 12, 2012
We’ve noted an interesting stance by Toshiba, a company on track to become the new Sharp or Sony. The Australian blog Future Proof complains about “Toshiba Laptop Service Manuals and the Sorry State of Copyright Law.” It seems that Future Proof blogger Tim proudly maintains a section wherein he freely shares as many laptop service manuals as he can get his hands on. Toshiba, though, has now told him to keep his virtual mitts off their copyrighted material. Tim is unhappy about the move.
The piece shares Toshiba’s reasons for issuing the cease-and-desist, then refutes each in turn. Safety? You’ve got to be kidding me, says Tim. Proprietary information? Well, other manufacturers do not share Toshiba’s concern, so how secret can this stuff be? Manuals are only for authorized service providers, Toshiba insists. Tim can’t argue with the truth of that one, but considers is unreasonably restrictive. The manuals are copyrighted, they say. Well, yes, that’s rather the issue, isn’t it? The post opines:
“As the original author of their laptop repair manuals, Toshiba owns the copyright on them and has the legal right to control their dissemination. They have not followed in the footsteps of other companies and made the decision to disseminate them to the public for open use. They are, in fact, tightly limiting access to their manuals only to their authorised repairers, and as such locking its customers out from information they could use to service or repair their laptops on their own.”
I have a certain amount of sympathy for a company that may be trying to protect its authorized service providers. However, since other players in the field, like Dell, HP, and Lenovo are more willing to allow open access to their information, Toshiba looks like the outlier here. Will pressure from consumers stirred up by Future Proof make any difference?
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
eDiscovery Market Quandrant Analyzes Top eDiscovery Solutions
December 12, 2012
Market Watch recently reported on a competitive analysis for the market of eDiscovery solutions in the news release, “The Radicati Group Releases eDiscovery Market Quadrant 2012.”
According to the article, the eDiscovery Market quadrant provides a competitive analysis of the eDiscovery market by ranking solutions based on a four quadrant system breaking them into categories of: “Mature Players,” “Specialists,” “Trail Blazers,” and “Top Players”. Each solutions ranking is based on features, functionality, and market share.
When describing the field of eDiscovery, the article states:
“eDiscovery solutions enable organizations to identify, preserve, collect, process, review, analyze, and produce enterprise data. The eDiscovery process enables businesses to satisfy their corporate compliance, retention records, internal investigation, and legal discovery requirements. Data can be collected from various corporate repositories and can include: email, text documents, images, databases, audio files, web sites, computer applications, and more.”
We are not sure what a market quadrant is, nor what a Radici is. But this sure sounds impressive. Not quite at the Nate Silver “predictive analytics” level of visibility but certainly a step forward.
Jasmine Ashton, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Autonomy: The Canny Farmer Dell Does Not Buy a Pig in a Poke
December 11, 2012
Information about Hewlett Packard’s amazing judgment continues to surface. I just read “Dell Founder ‘Turned Down Autonomy’.” I assume the write up is accurate. If so, the key point is that a sales type was “shopping.” Autonomy. According to the article: [Michael Dell] “rejected the British software firm because it was “overwhelmingly obvious” that it was overpriced.”
The “overwhelming obvious” caught my attention. But here is the important bit:
His comments raise fresh questions over HP’s decision to pay $10bn (£6.3bn) for Autonomy last year – a 59pc premium to its market value at the time – and its subsequent claim that it only overpaid because the British company had cooked its books.
Oracle thought Autonomy was too expensive. Dell thought it was too expensive. HP thought that the price was right. What aspect of Autonomy’s financials looked so juicy to HP and so unappetizing to two other companies?
My hunch is that Autonomy prepared one set of numbers and a presentation. Dell and Oracle did not buy the pitch or the numbers. HP decided the pitch and the numbers were okay.
Was Autonomy’s sales rep creating different deal books for each company? I doubt that happened but I suppose it could have put in the extra work. A more practical view is that HP did its analysis and made a decision. Now HP wants to get out of its deal.
The question, “Why was HP unable to see what Dell and Oracle saw straight away?” Obviously no Swedish Nobel prize winner was involved.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2012
The Journey Through Enterprise Search Benefits from a Reliable Roadmap
December 11, 2012
The KM World 2012 Enterprise Search Conference brought to light some interesting tips for success in the enterprise. It also provided an opportunity for Martin White, the Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd to promote the release of his new book, ‘Enterprise Search’, from which key points were made during the discussion for the future of enterprise search.
According to KMWorld’s conference review “12 Tips for Enterprise Search Success”, White outlined twelve critical success factors during the conference that will not only affect enterprise search now, but will continue to affect it in the future:
*Invest in a search support team.
*Get the best out of the current investment in search.
*Enterprise search is an approach and not a technology
*Set search within an information management context
*Content quality is essential for quality search
*Understand user requirements and monitor user satisfaction
*Search then browse then alert then search then alert.
*Provide location-independent search
*Undertake intelligent log analysis.*Search is a dialogue
*Procure value not functionality.
*Search is a journey
Enterprise search is indeed a journey… and for a pleasant trip one should always acquire a reliable road map in order to prevent getting lost or stuck in a detour. These 12 tips are a good place to vet enterprise solutions, partners, and approaches. Combining a dedicated, reliable vendor such as Intrafind can be a key component to blending these tips into a complete solution that excels in execution and gets companies where they want to go.
Jennifer Shockley, December 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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