Business Process Heightened to Maximum Efficiency with PolySpot Solutions
December 14, 2012
Making a decision in a business can be done in a variety of ways. More often than not, decision-makers look to data to assist them now that there are solutions available to enable such a process. Smart Business reports on “How to Use Big Data to Make Better Business Decisions” in their recent article.
The article discusses what types of decision are made most successfully using big data:
In general, data-driven decision making works better at an operational or tactical level since there are relatively fewer risks involved. In fact, when aided by technology, data makes it easy to automate rudimentary tasks and decisions. For example, it’s hard to imagine how Amazon or Wal-Mart would fare if they relied on managers’ instincts to replenish stock levels, when a computer can synthesize inventory changes and sales trends and place orders automatically.
When the determination to make decisions using data is made, the only remaining variable is the technological solutions that will need to be in place for data access to happen efficiently and effectively. PolySpot solutions are above par in this department, for example. However, companies must research for themselves which one will suit their needs best.
Megan Feil, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
New Idea Engineering Joins LucidWorks Team
December 14, 2012
After a successful sixteen year career providing professional consulting for roadmapping and best practices in all aspects of search, New Idea Engineering has become part of the LucidWorks team, effective December 1, 2012. The New Idea Engineering blog focuses on engaging readers with all aspects of the enterprise search world.
Read the founders’ remarks to his followers as to why the company has decided to join forces with LucidWorks in, “Why LucidWorks? And Why Now?”
They conclude:
“A few years back, Lucid Imagination was started to provide that support, along with training and an easy to use interface that lets business owners – not just developers – use Solr search. We’ve called them “the RedHat of Open Source Search”. Now, Lucid Imagination has become LucidWorks, and it is set to be the best way to search web, file, and database content, with extreme control, and of course with big data. A few months ago we spoke with Lucid CEO Paul Doscher about upping our contract with them, and about where they were going, and it just made sense to us at that time to join a bigger team.”
LucidWorks is a great team to join, a company that will continue to have something important to say about the enterprise search landscape for many years to come. New Idea Engineering is no doubt another way that LucidWorks is strengthening all they have to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IBM Asks Britain to Discover Full Potential of Crime Analysis Software
December 14, 2012
England and Wales residents are soon to elect local cop chiefs, and IBM is already trying to help the new force with a little advice regarding predictive model tech. According to the article “IBM Begs Britain’s New Top Cops: C’mon, Set Up Pre-Crime Units” on The Register, UK already uses IBM’s SPSS statistics module and 12 analyst notebook, but apparently not to the full potential of the software. Instead of crime prevention, the software is being used for “beancounting” and basic statistical analysis.
The article comments on the potential of the predictive content:
“IBM believe British forces should hit the beat on crime prevention by employing content analysis and predictive modeling using unstructured data – something that comprises 95 per cent of the data police handle in the form of video, written statements, crime reports, media, Tweets – along with the structured stuff. Also, police should be able to draw on data from sources outside of day-to-day policing – groups involved in housing and education.”
The article states that in joining forces with US police, one specific cooperating department has reduced crime by 30 percent by predicting where a crime would happen.
Seems like IBM is a big motion picture fan. First, we note Watson is eerily similar to 2001’s smart computer HAL. Now Minority Report is moving the company toward PreCrime if this report is accurate. Next up: Disney’s Episode VII of Star Wars? We will be waiting with our popcorn.
Andrea Hayden, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
FirstRain Performinator Delivers Data Directly to CRM Systems
December 14, 2012
We were steered toward a handy product review recently of news aggregator FirstRain and were impressed with the product details and abilities we learned about. In the feature article titled “FirstRain Launches the Performinator” on FreePint, we are informed of the product’s ability to find, filter, and deliver business-relevant Web content. The latest version includes FirstTweets, which is a selection and delivery of relevant and timely Tweets to your organization.
The article tells us more about FirstRain’s flexible deployment options:
“Instead of handing out yet another login on another website, FirstRain delivers content via portal integration. For example, the FirstRain Performinator makes it possible for users to add FirstRain dynamically-updated company profiles and news directly into their CRM systems. Alternatively, users can display the latest breaking market or sector intelligence in their shared enterprise workspaces, such as SharePoint. Finally, FirstRain is optimised for delivery over iPad, iPhone and Android devices, and easily enables users to share this content across their numerous portals and mobile devices.”
We believe this product may potentially help users reduce information overload and increase productivity in the onslaught of data in the business world. This type of targeted, actionable customer intelligence should be a model for others in the industry.
Andrea Hayden, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Momentary Attention Placed on Connotate in the Search Software Market
December 14, 2012
One search and content processing software vendor seems to be picking up steam based on the news release, “Connotate Reports Expansion into New Markets and Applications in Third Quarter 2012.” Privately-held, ventured backed software firm Connotate is moving in a growth-oriented direction. They have announced new partnerships with both Systech, a leading business intelligence services provider, and Crowdsource, Amazon Mechanical Turk Partner.
Connotate has directed attention to itself by announcing a significant increase in bookings and partner signings in the third quarter 2012. Growth is demand for its solutions by a variety of use cases has also helped in making Connotate’s case for positive growth.
The article quotes Ryan Mulholland, president of Connotate:
“We anticipate continued expansion into new markets and applications as the focus of Big Data turns outward to the vast untapped potential of the Web. Our technology platform was built to ensure optimal results and timely data. As a full-service solution, our ability to offer CAPTCHA and throttling as well as follow-the-sun support is unparalleled in the industry – and customers are reaping the rewards of this approach.”
Connotate seems to be headed in a good direction, but we wonder about their competition. Are other search and content processing vendors following the same path? This may be a crowded market sector.
Megan Feil, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Get Beyond the Latest Enterprise Buzzword with Feature Rich Solutions
December 13, 2012
Today’s successful company buzzword is agility, but one does not see cheap prints mimicking the word plastered on office walls around the globe. It would be unnecessary because according to The Enterprise Architect’s article“Enterprise Agile: Extending the Agile Process Outside Development” agility takes teamwork to an entirely new level, without the use of pictures.
There may not be an i in teamwork, but there is in agility. Individual departments continue to work separately while working together for a common goal, ROI:
“Solutions need to be fit in an existing ecosystem: the definition of done needs to include compliance and multiple teams working towards a common goal. Agility is only possible when the whole organization adopts the mindset: in an agile enterprise the marketing and sales side of the organization is balanced with product development. In an agile enterprise the entire business is organized in a way that it can respond quickly to changes in the market. All departments are fully integrated with the overall value stream, there is end-to-end agility.”
Companies need results in order to generate ROI, so agility is a great way to respond to the buzz of big data and enterprise solutions. Smart corporations know that the latest trendy buzzword will not provide results. They have to get beyond the buzz to reliable, feature rich search solutions with a provider like Intrafind… the other ‘I’ in agility.
Jennifer Shockley, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Solutions Deliver Information Access Rather than Marketed Language
December 13, 2012
Terms that have become ubiquitous in recent years such as big data and business intelligence are actually traceable back to the mid 1900s. Smart Data Collective reports some useful facts and background on the two terms and discusses the popularity of each today in the article, “Is Big Data the New Term for Business Intelligence.”
Most interesting is the chart with data on popularity of the two terms as search queries. Business intelligence has been steadily used since 2006 (the earliest date on the chart) but big data has skyrocketed to its level in the last year. Before 2011 it only remained slightly more utilized as a search term than business analytics.
We learned:
So everybody, even those not using Hadoop etc, started using [big data] in conjunction with whatever was new in the industry. This meant that the definition of “big data” quickly became another industry squabbling match that has generated liters of ink (and nostalgia: The Google Books Ngram Viewer seems to show the term was first used in the 1930s and that the term was clearly used in roughly the same sense as today even in 1969: “”Datamec has made some headway outside the field of big data processors”).
There are solutions from innovative companies such as PolySpot that focus purely on information delivery within the enterprise rather than marketing and language delivery.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Cisco Closes Knowledge Gap with LucidWorks
December 13, 2012
When Cisco needed a new internal solution for corporate communications, they turned to open source search solutions. However, they needed an expert consultation to get them started, and turn the open source foundation into a working solution designed for their customized needs. They turned to LucidWorks. The full case study details are provided in, “Closing the Knowledge Gap: A Case Study – How Cisco Unlocks Communications.”
After a discussion of the consulting process, and LucidWorks’ customized solution created specifically for Cisco, the author concludes:
“When content finds you, it brings the exercise of search and knowledge management full circle. While topics you are working on are indexed and understood by the search system, the same thing is happening at the same time with others, across your organization. The content becomes the connection between people working on similar projects. By building on the power of Lucene/Solr search, Cisco has transformed content from a passive, accumulating archive to a dynamic network of people and information.”
LucidWorks’ out-of-the-box solutions are ready to go, and often just the right solution for smaller organizations that can’t quite afford the same intense consultation process that Cisco chose. LucidWorks Search is a highly secure, scalable, development platform. LucidWorks Big Data is designed to handle even the most demanding content environments, specializing in high volume.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Users Will Discover Built-in Search Is More Than Icing On Cake
December 13, 2012
After Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, which took place over the summer in Toronto, more information has been released in regards to SharePoint 2013. In fact, Search Technologies has published an article on “Search For SharePoint” that includes the major bullet points of SharePoint 2013’s search functions and capabilities. The article follows the flow of documents, providing an idea of the process from crawling all the way to search functionality provided to users.
The driving force behind this latest version of SharePoint is the FAST search technology that Microsoft acquired back in 2008. Additions from Bing and other search companies have been added into the software in order to offer clients a comprehensive solution; that also means customization is available for companies with specific needs.
As for the process, once crawling – or capturing metadata – occurs, the content processing known as the indexing pipeline takes place:
“In SharePoint 2012, this resembles the FAST pipeline and looks to have retained important features. The content processing component also writes information to a “link database”. This information can be subsequently used by the analysis processing component to calculate link popularity statistics and provide relevancy weighting possibilities. Anchor text within links can also contribute to page content for ranking purposes.”
The analytics processing that happens next in the sequence of events allows for additional context to be woven into the indexing process. The final step after indexing lies in an often overlooked aspect of enterprise search: query processing. This component improves search with attention to precision, recall and relevancy.
Now that SharePoint 2013 includes a top-tier enterprise search infrastructure, competitors do not have as much room in the conversation on search. Companies are lining up to implement SharePoint everyday, and with that software in the bag they also get to discover the magic of FAST technologies. Search is not just the cherry on top for SharePoint, it encapsulates the entire sundae.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
HP Moves Printing Into Next Generation
December 13, 2012
Who does not like to hear that offices can increase productivity, decrease costs and improve efficiency? HP is making all three even easier with new technologies discussed in their news release, “HP Unveils New Printing Innovations That Digitize the Office; Help Reduce Costs.” For the enterprise, the most exciting aspect is that data access will be simplified.
Take the HP flow MFPs, for example. This can be integrated with content management solutions from software vendor Autonomy, an HP Company. It could be done either on-site or through the cloud.
We also learned about another notable new innovation:
“The HP Flow CM Professional brings enterprise-class content management to growing businesses, with security features that also support leading banks, legal firms and stock exchanges. The cloud-based offering increases collaboration and productivity by easily capturing, indexing, storing, searching and retrieving documents through a unique user-friendly interface designed with the customer in mind.”
New printers also be added in to their arsenal of offerings geared to shake up productivity. We just wonder if we’ve hit the time where snapping in IDOL will become a job like changing a toner cartridge. Only time will tell.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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