Lynch of Autonomy Fires Back at HP
December 19, 2012
In writing off $8.8 billion of last year’s $11.1 billion purchase of Autonomy, Hewlett-Packard has leveled some serious accusations against the formerly independent British software company. Autonomy’s founder, Mike Lynch, speaks up and reviews British accounting rules for the HP management team in a pair of recent articles: in the Guardian’s piece, “Hewlett-Packards Autonomy Claims Inconceivable, says Mike Lynch,” and in “Autonomy Founder: Hewlett-Packard Having Trouble with Math” at Mercury News.
HP claims that a whopping $5 million of its write-off is due to “accounting improprieties” by Autonomy’s management team. These articles explain that at least some of the problems might be due to the different sets of accounting rules proscribed on each side of the Atlantic, and each article covers a few of the details. Mercury News’ Anjuli Davies writes:
“Accounting rule setters have been working on plans for a decade for common global accounting rules so regulators and investors can compare company accounts, but until that task is complete, there are competing standards that can produce different results for companies doing broadly the same thing.
The International Accounting Standards Board has devised International Financial Reporting Standards, used in more than 100 countries, and the basis for Autonomy’s accounts prior to HP’s acquisition.
But many U.S. companies such as HP use U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which can differ from IFRS, notably in respect of software revenue recognition.”
So, is it just a big misunderstanding? Lynch doesn’t seem to think so; The Guardian’s Juliette Garside quotes him declaring:
“[HP has] had to do a very big writedown and they tried to blame it on the accounting but obviously something else is going on. People realise I’m certainly not going to be used as HP’s scapegoat when it’s got itself in a mess.”
Is Lynch speaking out of defensiveness or appropriate righteous indignation? Without a lot more details, it is hard to say. What is clear is that Lynch is not the sort to sit by while someone attempts to tarnish his, and his associates’, good names.
Cynthia Murrell, December 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Coveo and Sitecore Combine
December 19, 2012
MarketWire hosts a very interesting announcement: “Coveo and Sitecore Offer a More Personalized, Relevant Approach to Enterprise Search.” It sounds a lot like what you would get if you combined Endeca and Vivisimo. The press release tells us:
“Coveo integrates seamlessly with Sitecore’s Customer Engagement Platform to provide the extensibility and scalability to enable more personalized website searches. Coveo accomplishes this by enabling unified information access from an unlimited number of disparate data sources, directly within an organization’s website, as well as UI configurability and other advanced search and navigation functionalities. . . . Using Coveo and Sitecore to power customer self-service sites enables customers to solve even complex challenges online, reducing customer support costs and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.”
Coveo taps into meta-data to bring contextually-relevant, faceted search to Sitecore’s platform. The companies are renewing the partnership after successfully pursuing a number of joint projects. Sitecore’s Amar Patel praised Coveo’s ability to deliver relevance; J.P. Provencal of Coveo admires Sitecore’s passion for innovation.
Sitecore combines web content management with customer intelligence in their Customer Engagement Platform. Sitecore serves several big-name companies, like American Express, Microsoft, and Nestle. Established in 2001, the company now maintains offices around the world.
Coveo was founded in 2005 by some members of the team which developed Copernic Desktop Search. The company serves organizations large, medium, and small with solutions that aim to be agile and easy to use yet scalable, fast, and efficient.
Cynthia Murrell, December 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
EasyAsk Teams Up With Consulting Firm to Extend Fusion Beads
December 19, 2012
Explore Consulting recently published, “EasyAsk Partners with Explore Consulting to Help Fusion Beads – a NetSuite e-Commerce Site- to Improve Search and Navigation,” a news release announcing a new partnership offering e-retail customers an improved shopping experience.
According to the article, EasyAsk, a provider of natural language solutions technology, and Explore Consulting have partnered to deliver natural language e-commerce solutions to retailers using the NetSuite e-commerce platform. This platform ensures that all page content is search friendly and maintains centralized data.
The article states:
“After selecting NetSuite as a new e-commerce platform, Fusion Beads turned to Explore Consulting and EasyAsk because they wanted to make it easier for their customers to navigate the wide range of products offered through their website – more than 50,000 items. Not only does Fusion Beads offer a lot of products, but they also catalog a tremendous amount of product and project data to ensure their customers are getting what they need. With the EasyAsk solution, Fusion Beads can now configure down to the item level the product attributes that should be used for search and navigation from over 600 custom item fields they currently use.”
This new partnership allows Fusion Beads and other companies the ability to maintain website information automatically with improved search and navigation.
Jasmine Ashton, December 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
EA Is Just One Step Towards the Path of Enterprise Zen
December 18, 2012
EA, a revamped source promises to make sense of the enterprise. According to Toolbox’s article “EA to Empower the Wisdom of Seeing the Whole, the Power of Enterprise Knowledge and the Art of Enterprise Collaboration”, corporations have reason to pay attention to enterprise architecture. . Ironically, the article portrays enterprise architecture as a means of reaching a higher power source on an almost spiritual level of organizational empowerment, aka Enterprise Zen, but fails to mention other important factors such as the need for wisdom in choosing partners and integrators.
Some of the points, though phrased in an entertaining proverbial way, are widespread by definition and more business sense than validation:
“Wisdom comes from seeing the whole where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. However, in an organization, most people can only touch the tree without seeing the forest. Knowledge is power; EA does not only enable everyone to see the whole but also enable everyone to know the parts via enterprise knowledge management. Collaboration is more art than science. It is in every organization strategic planning goal and it is also a difficult goal to achieve.”
Enterprise architecture is one cog in the wheel of getting enterprise information out there. Using a reliable technology like Intrafind, that is backed up with a team of solution providers can provide the initial steps necessary to help you make the best of your EA investment and reach true Enterprise Zen.
Jennifer Shockley, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Using Solutions to Make Big Data Meaningful Proves to be a Competitive Advantage
December 18, 2012
While some say that big data will hurt small businesses while elevating larger enterprises to the top, we now see a different opinion emerging. The CEO of Intuit, Brad Smith believes that consumers and small businesses will benefit from the big data revolution. Read Write published the article “Intuit CEO: Big Data Can Be ‘The Great Equalizer’” on the subject that delves into more detail.
Smith’s opinions are informed by a recent study, “The New Data Democracy: How Big Data Will Revolutionize The Lives Of Small Businesses and Consumers,” which was conducted by Emergent Research. This study blends a mix of research and forecasting. The article alludes that forecasting might be more closely described as “wishful thinking.”
Steve King, partner at Emergent Research conducted the research in the study and told Read Write:
‘Big data is definitely going to kill some small businesses. Small businesses that don’t get with this will be severely disadvantaged, ‘especially firms reliant on location or opaque pricing. They’re going to get hammered. On the other hand, small companies that do manage to take advantage of big data will have an advantage compared to other small businesses, and be better positioned to compete with big businesses.’
Having the tools in place to utilize big data in meaningful ways puts a company at a huge advantage in the current market. PolySpot provides a solution in this arena that many companies look to for disseminating enriched data ready for analysts to use in churning out insights.
Megan Feil, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ApacheCon 2013 Not to be Missed
December 18, 2012
The 25th edition of ApacheCon North America will take place in late February of 2013. The conference exhibits and celebrates the work of the Apache Software Foundation. The conference’s theme will be, “Open Source Community Leadership Drives Enterprise-Grade Innovation.”
Read more about the program offerings of the conference in the Global Newswire piece, “ApacheCon North America Announces ‘Open Source Community Leadership Drives Enterprise-Grade Innovation.’”
The press release says:
“The 25th edition of the ASF’s popular conference and community series will take place 24 February-2 March 2013 at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower in Portland, Oregon, with the following agenda:
24-25 February: pre-conference trainings, BarCamp, and Hackathon activities
26-28 February: main conference + expo, evening events, BOFs, and MeetUps
1-2 March: post-conference sprints, workshops, and team building events”
ApacheCon is not to be missed by those who understand the importance of open source software and its effects on the rest of the technology industry. The importance of open source cannot be understated. Open source components are the building blocks of the next generation of technologies. Also, companies like LucidWorks make open source immediately beneficial to the masses through intuitive out-of-the-boxes solutions.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
InetSoft Ranked as a Leading BI Provider
December 18, 2012
A recent announcement from InetSoft Technology states that the company performed well in the findings of Gleanster’s new customer-review based research report on Agile Business Intelligence. We learn in the article “InetSoft Rates as a Leading Provider of Business Intelligence Solutions” on PRWeb that the report introduces the “agile BI” concept, gives reasons to implement it, and explains how organizations are maximizing investments. The report then gave ratings based on customer review; InetSoft ranked in the top ten across four consumer-based categories and was deemed a leading agile BI provider.
The article shares:
“‘Gleanster’s report is a terrific resource for organizations evaluating BI solutions with an eye towards improving agility and self-service,’ offered Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft Technology. ‘These are two areas that have seen vast improvements thanks to the new breed of BI vendors that InetSoft is among. It is particularly gratifying to score so high in the customer review driven rankings across the board and especially in terms of ease-of-use, which is a primary product design goal for us and is so key to successful BI application deployments.’”
The full report is available for free download at http://www.gleanster.com/reports/reports/agile-business-intelligence.
Not much for us to add on this one. Is this a pay to play rating? We have not decided what we think. If you know, let us know via the comments section of the blog.
Andrea Hayden, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
HP Autonomy and SEO
December 18, 2012
Online Media Daily recently reported on the use of Autonomy’s Optimost Campaign platform by Omnicom’s search division, Resolution Media, in the article, “Resolution Media Gains Autonomy, May Extend New Search Platform to All Omnicom Clients.”
According to the article, Hewlett Packard and Omnicom have been working together for years and in February 2009 Omnicom took over HP’s marketing efforts. Since Autonomy was acquired by HP last year, the company is incorporating its SEM campaign with the Optimost platform. This technology has been found to improve cost per clicks and conversion rates.
The article states:
“A case study with Braun Corp. earlier this year documented improved SEM returns, based on Autonomy’s search platform. The campaign generated a 42% increase in conversions, 64% decrease in year-over-year cost-per-acquisition, and 17% decrease in year-over-year cost-per-click. Other Autonomy customers include Avis, Discover Financial, Hilton Hotels, Macy’s and Target.
HP’s Software business includes two units: Autonomy and the legacy HP software business. Autonomy, which HP acquired in October 2011, focuses on supporting a product suite, rather than marketing services. Rivals IBM and Adobe support clients through software and Web-based products, but also a full suite of services.”
Interesting approach from the struggling HP which seems to be moving from its comfort zone into some new territories. How will the HP way match up with the SEO way?
Jasmine Ashton, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Another Partnership Locked in for Tableau
December 18, 2012
The press release published on CTOLabs announces the partnership between Karmaspehere and Tableau. The release entitled, “Karmasphere and Tableau Partner to Deliver Rich, End-to-End Big Data Analytics Solution,” posits a current era of transition into a new world of big data analytics.
The selling point and the feat these two companies have accomplished by working together is the self-service ability without any IT involvement. The analytics workflow includes data ingestion, exploration, analysis, reporting and visualization – all without reliance on IT.
Chief Executive Gail Ennis is quoted by the release:
“It is time to bridge the gap between Big Data Analytics and BI. Tableau is the world’s fastest growing BI company with industry-standard reporting and visualization capabilities. Customers who live in this BI world will now be able to access the power of Hadoop through Karmasphere, and get their Big Data analytics delivered seamlessly through Tableau.”
What is more important that Karmasphere customers can now access Hadoop and Tableau customers can now access big data analytics through that platform? Well, this partnership is one of Tableau’s many recent partnership announcements. We are not counting, but they certainly seem to have friends in the right places.
Megan Feil, December 18, 2012
Sponsored by Arnold IT.com, developer of Augmentext
Hybrid Cloud with Cloning Capability May Not Bode Well for Cloud Platform Developers
December 17, 2012
The introduction of hybrid technology comes as no surprise, but one has to wonder how current developers will feel about being cloned in the future. TechCrunch’s article “CloudVelocity Launches With $5M from Mayfield to Bring the Hybrid Cloud to the Enterprise” discusses the introduction of a hybrid cloud and its growing potential, along with its cloud cloning ability.
This new technology could save companies a bundle off initial investments, but smart platform designers may take precautions against cloning in the future. One has to wonder what preparations have already been made, if any. Investors want to be certain the risk of this approach is worth the effort.
“One Hybrid Cloud platform, aims to extend the enterprise data center to the public cloud, by enabling multi-tier applications to run without modification in the cloud and access services that reside in the enterprise data center. In a nutshell, the startup allows enterprises to get the benefits of private clouds in the public cloud. Users can discover, blueprint, clone, and migrate applications between data centers and public clouds. Currently, CloudVelocity supports full server, networking, security and storage integration with AWS but plans to integrate other public clouds.”
The excitement around startups and cloud solutions is great but corporations are reluctant to take chances with sensitive data. Those enterprises seeking stability in the growing hybrid cloud universe may find some assurance in relying on a mature, capable enterprise provider. Intrafind offers consultative solutions and reliable cloud solutions with secure access.
Jennifer Shockley, December 17, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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