European Tech Prowess Underappreciated
January 28, 2014
For some reason, a lot of people seem to overlook Europe’s many technology success stories. Tech.eu sets the record straight in, “Really, so the Only European Tech Companies You Know Are Skype and Spotify? Here’s Another 120 for You.” The paucity of search- and content-processing start-ups listed in the article, though, makes us wonder; it seems those companies are being doubly overlooked.
When one of Tech.eu’s posts made it to Hacker News, editor Robin Wauters noticed that several commenters cast uninformed aspersions upon Europe’s tech-company prowess with comments like, “seriously, does Europe have any tech companies other than Skype and maybe Spotify? I can’t name any others lol.”
Wauters writes:
“It was amusing at first, because there are of course many more, and perhaps this person was simply trolling. Besides, many in Silicon Valley and other places around the world are well aware that there are plenty of excellent and fast-growing tech companies coming out of Europe. Being able to name but two is a testament of one’s stupidity, at best.”
Gee, tell us how you really feel. As the title suggests, Wauters lists 120 companies by name, but emphasizes this is far from a comprehensive list. He presents them by category: entertainment, business solutions, e-commerce, latest trends, and miscellaneous. It is in this last section that we find the few search and data analysis companies Wauters chose to include:
“- Perhaps you’ve used travel search site Skyscanner (Scotland) to research and/or book a trip? The company is growing fast, and recently raised funding from Sequoia Capital at a $800 million valuation.
– Scientists and researchers are known to frequent ResearchGate (Germany) and Mendeley (UK).”
Has Google become so dominant that informed analysts look away from search and data-processing for evidence of Europe’s tech vibrance? Perhaps Tech.eu would do well to check their own assumptions.
Cynthia Murrell, January 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Forcing a SharePoint Solution
January 28, 2014
Many companies initially adopted SharePoint as a collaborative way to share data, but as SharePoint stretches to include additional features, these same companies are looking to the platform to provide multiple solutions. And while the “one application fits all” approach might be tempting, it is also riddled with complications. Read more in the CMS Wire article, “A Square Peg in Round Holes: Using SharePoint for Multiple Solutions.”
The article says:
“A good business case isn’t enough to make for a solid and powerful SharePoint implementation. To realize the value, it will be important for your organization to embrace the changes required for success. I’d like to highlight some of the potential areas of concern I’ve seen in my work on SharePoint implementations with various organizations and show some ways to get past roadblocks or find detours to help you get to your final destination.”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and has followed the SharePoint ups and downs for many years on his service, ArnoldIT.com. He finds that SharePoint does well when they keep the main thing (enterprise management) front and center. But when they veer from their main directive, things get a bit dicey.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Asknet.ru: A Semantic Search Engine
January 27, 2014
We learned about a new semantic search engine. A public demonstration is available at http://www.asknet.ru/EN/index.htm. Some chatter about the system appeared on LinkedIn. Like many of the next-generation search systems, there were some questions and comments from the “experts” who participate in the LinkedIn search discussions.
According to the Web site:
AskNet search technology is its main product and the focus of the commercial licensing and development. The search engine combines the speed of an index with the functionality of linguistic analysis. The AskNet search engine reverses the search result process. Traditionally, search engines provide links to large numbers of documents that contain reviews. They leave the users to hunt their answers in thousands of pages and millions of words. AskNet`s linguistic analysis makes it possible to provide meaningful answers to searches as quickly as traditional search engines. No linking required!
One LinkedIn expert pointed out:
AskNet Search ( online service asknet.ru) is the demo version. Not all algorithms are implemented for asknet.ru. All of them are implemented in the enterprise search engine. AskNet Search realized metasearch functions using snippets from Google. These text snippets are not whole sentences. Therefore, the quality of linguistic search AskNet Search could be better, when it used sentences for search, rather than a snippets from Google.
We suggest running some test queries and determining if the system delivers useful results. Keep in mind that a technology demonstration is usually set up to make it easy to get a “feel” for the basics of a system.
With regard to semantics and analytics, the supporters of today’s hottest technologies often are like supporters of the Liverpool football team. The coach is usually wrong and one or two players are terrible. The team concept, however, is one to support to the death. Rational? Nah. Part of today’s standard operating procedure? You bet.
My view is:
- Many vendors are recycling old algorithms with a Project Runway touch up. The basic design, however, is recognizable as a cute little red carpet number. Innovation is a bow or a tuck.
- Some so-called experts (folks I describe as poobahs, azure chip consultants, of people with a dog in the fight) see their clients’ products as truly wonderful innovations. The notion that a researcher in 1980 hit upon a method and created a product based on that method is of little or no consequence. Who cares what Julius Caesar said after the battle of Alesia. Ancient history.
- Prospects may not be looking for a better search solution. Prospects may be looking for a system that is less of a problem than the incumbent solution. Therefore, the procurement team is trying to keep their paycheck, not revolutionize information retrieval.
- Many systems work only if the user knows what he or she is looking for. Predictive search (go with the search history and the norm for a cluster) is good enough. Who has time to do deep dive research in today’s rush-rush-rush business climate.
The buzzword blizzard makes it difficult to figure out what system delivers what. I know I am easily confused, and my hunch is that others may face the same hurdle. Will Sochi feature a confusion jump involving leaps of faith over search vendor claims?
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2014
Velocity is the Neglected V
January 27, 2014
Isn’t this three V thing getting a bit long in the tooth? Ah, well, the convention serves as a vehicle for an emphasis on speed in Gigaom‘s piece, “Big Data and the Missing ‘V’.” Writer Alain Vandenborne notes that two of Big Data’s famous three V’s, volume and variety, have received a lot of attention, but insists that the third, velocity, is just as important to an organization’s success.
He writes:
“Velocity is what differentiates big data from traditional business intelligence (BI) practices. It enables real-time decisions and actions, whereas traditional BI generally only covers volume and variety. In a traditional data warehouse, data is typically collected and analyzed at the end of the day, and then made available the following morning, at the start of business. This creates issues, as a lot can happen since the last transaction—continued customer activity, supply chain issues, product faults, etc.—and companies can’t afford to wait for this data to become available.”
He has a point, and backs it up with some examples. One is feedback posted on social media—one negative comment left unaddressed overnight can grow into a firestorm of negative press before start-of-business the next day. Another good illustration involves the capacity for financial institutions to flag a potentially fraudulent charge and stop it mid-transaction.
Yes, customers have come to expect promptness on a scale like never before, and many businesses that can’t deliver will find themselves falling behind, no matter how much, or how many types of, data they can process (comparatively) slowly. The article suggests companies with a need for speed turn to cloud services like AWS and SAP Hana.
I wonder: Have companies overcome their hesitation to store data on third-party servers? Are we at the point where businesses will have no choice if they want to prosper?
Cynthia Murrell, January 27, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Startup Aviate Acquired by Yahoo for Homescreen Improvements
January 27, 2014
The article titled Yahoo Announced That It Has Acquired “Intelligent Homescreen” Startup Aviate on TechCrunch delves into Marissa Mayer’s opening words at the Consumer Electronics Show, where the Yahoo CEO was a keynote speaker. Mayer promises that Yahoo’s intention is to make homescreens “smarter and more personalized.” Her comments are outline in a Yahoo blog post where Aviate’s work in auto-categorizing apps to bring the relevant ones to the surface. “By using signals to understand your context – WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, Time, etc – Aviate automatically surfaces information at the moment it’s useful.” The article mentioned that the Aviate team will most likely join Yahoo.
The article also states:
“Note that Aviate is an Android product, and the blog post says Yahoo plans to make it “a central part of our Android-based experiences in 2014 (and beyond)” — not, it seems, on iOS. When it was independent, Aviate did tell us that it had iOS plans, but I’m guessing its capabilities would be significantly limited.”
The service could be the new clippy or the adaptive menu system that Microsoft uses. By that I mean it could be sometimes helpful, possibly annoying. The article did mention that Yahoo intends to make Aviate a “central” aspect of their plans for their work with Android in the future.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 27, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Taxonomy Round-Up Includes Variety of Taxonomy Discussions
January 27, 2014
The article on Synaptica Central titled End of 2013 Round Up of Taxonomy Blogs, Part 1 is exactly what it sounds like, an end of the year look at taxonomy in terms of articles, blog posts, videos and more gathered from such diverse areas of the internet as Pinterest, Twitter, StackExchange and Youtube, “Taxonomy as it relates to Drupal,” and posts on augmenting a taxonomy.
The author explains:
“It’s that time of year, folks, when it seems like everyone is publishing some kind of year end list or “round up” of the years news highlights, blogsand blog posts, photos, videos, and more. So why not do the same here at Synaptica? To keep things manageable, listed here are some 2013 blogs and blog entries, culled from almost a thousand, that address taxonomy in one way or another.”
Overall the article presents an interesting list of important taxonomy blog entries. Many touch on Bloom, such as the article How to Use Pinterest with Bloom’s Taxonomy Infographic and Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Need for Higher Order Thinking. Another helpful highlight is Twitter Aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy for Your Students. Whether you are looking for guidance in implementing or augmenting one, or just interested in a dialogue on the subject, this list is certainly a perfect starting point and should direct you toward discussions and communities galore.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 27, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint eDiscovery for Content Management
January 27, 2014
Many case-based operations can be simplified by e-discovery tools, which are now built in to the SharePoint 2013 suite. SearchContentManagement explains how in their article, “Using SharePoint E-Discovery for Enterprise Content Management.”
The article begins:
“With any Microsoft release, part of the challenge is getting a handle on its tools — not just how they work but also the best way to use them. SharePoint e-discovery functionality in SharePoint 2013 provides specific enterprise content management advantages — but only if you think about your usage scenarios up front.”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and the man behind ArnoldIT.com. He often covers SharePoint in his information service, as he follows the trends of enterprise search and content management. He research makes it clear that while SharePoint still has the lion’s share of the market, customers are constantly looking for increased functionality. It seems that is what SharePoint is trying to give them as they work to expand their customer base, and keep their existing one.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 27, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Business Intelligence: A Functional Barrier
January 26, 2014
Walls.
I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. (Robert Frost, Mending Wall)
A reader sent me a link to an item that appeared in Phi Beta Iota. You can find the graphic at http://bit.ly/1d3H3Q4. The original document appeared on 2010 at http://bit.ly/1fnOB2Y. I thought again of walls.
In late 2014, O1Business published a short item that provides more back up for the apparent slow down in some business intelligence markets. You can find that original article at http://bit.ly/1aAgA27. My take on the 01Business story by Marie Jung appeared in December 2013 at http://bit.ly/19VUqH9.
I don’t have a dog in the fight, a cranky neighbor, or a ground swell. There is a LinkedIn thread that contains an assertion that search and content processing are heading toward a cornucopia of sales, revenue, and bliss.
Several observations:
- IBM, despite its $1 billion bet on Watson, essentially a business intelligence system, is struggling to hit its financial targets. IBM, however, is confident that it will make Watson into a multi-billion dollar a year business and much more quickly than Autonomy labored to get close to $1 billion in revenue.
- HP Autonomy is motivated to generate a return on its purchase of IDOL, the Digital Reasoning Engine, and other meaning-based computing technology.
- Palantir, Recorded Future, and other cutting-edge intelligence software vendors are working very hard to generate a return for their stakeholders.
- Incumbents like SAP Business Objects, Oracle, and SAS are ramping up their marketing activities.
Promising companies may find themselves out-gunned in terms of industry clout and marketing revenue. Are we entering a time when there are too few customers and too many purveyors.
So what?
I think the future of consultants and financial professionals who are brokering deals for companies in the business intelligence or “intelligence” sector may be able to sell their consulting and advisory services.
However, I am not confident that most of the companies with software in this “business intelligence” category can generate robust organic growth. Furthermore, I am somewhat skeptical that the claims of vendors making the rounds on the conference circuit can provide hard facts that provide cash-strapped, somewhat cautious prospects that “value” will result from certain types of smart software.
As the diagram prepared by Stephen Few makes clear there is a barrier in business intelligence. The problem in France may be an early warning that the economic malaise exists. Like the passengers on a cruise ship with a mysterious disease, there is not much those affected can do. The vessel has to return to port, disinfect, and start over.
I anticipate considerable acrobatics from business intelligence vendors as they labor to generate organic revenues, differentiate themselves from a legion of me-too providers, and return a payout to their stakeholders.
The recent news assertions that fancy data analysis does not deliver results. I saw one report that used the word “useless.” See http://bit.ly/1n1HjHN)
Strong words, which—obviously—may be incorrect.
Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2014
The Future of Business Intelligence
January 26, 2014
In the article titled Business Intelligence Usage Evolving Subtly on Smart Data Collective it is made apparent that new developments in business intelligence and analytics are still growing. The article assumes that the 2013 trend in cloud computing popularity will continue into 2014.
Looking further ahead, the article states:
“There could soon be a whole new BI paradigm, in which many affordable analysis processes are created at once, rather than devoting the whole budget to one effort. Enterprise Apps Today explained that this is another natural role for the cloud, with good projects surviving and poor options falling by the wayside, all without the effort or funding that would be necessary to accomplish the same on-site.”
The article cites a MarketsandMarkets survey that concluded that BI would be found useful in many sectors. More specifically, “the source indicated that the technology will grow at a rate of 8.3 percent through 2018.” That would mean a value of $20.8 billion in 2018, up from the current worth of $13.9 billion. However, others are less optimistic, believing the slow evolution of business intelligence may be too snail-like, since business intelligence is currently meeting sales resistance in France, as we reported in the article Business Intelligence: Free Pressure for Fee Solutions. Perhaps subtle is not enough?
Chelsea Kerwin, January 26, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Chocolate Toothpaste and Search
January 25, 2014
The ArnoldIT Overflight snagged this headline on January 16, 2014: ‘Chocolate Toothpaste’ Prevents Tooth Decay. Unusual news can be entertaining. Then on January 24, 2014, I spotted this headline: P&G’s Chocolate Toothpaste: Innovation or Desperation? The source of this story was not a secondary information source. The Innovation or Desperation item appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Here’s the quote to note:
The line, which P&G (PG) promises to start selling soon, comprises three flavors: “Mint Chocolate Trek,” “Lime Spearmint Zest,” and “Vanilla Mint Spark.” Here’s how the Crest marketing team describes the new paste: “It’s a whole new world of deliciousness for toothbrushes everywhere.”
The hook for me was not “chocolate toothpaste prevents tooth decay.” This assertion reminds me of marketers who assert that a particular search system delivers value or understands human discourse. The problem is that the association of “chocolate AND tooth decay” is easier for me to grasp than “chocolate PREVENTS tooth decay.”
With search, value is difficult to connect to search. Search costs money, generates more work because documents have to be opened and read, or creates a willingness among busy users to assume that a search result is a correct result.
The Businessweek story connects “innovation” and “desperation.” Marketers have hit upon a product innovation that will make some influencers go for the chocolate toothpaste.
Search and content processing vendors have been following this path for many years. Not only is the uptake of new jargon standard operating procedure for search vendors, the consultants and experts working in search are turbochargers of constant exploration of ways to make search have sizzle. Search is analytics, taxonomy, knowledge, Big Data, etc.
I recall that in one of my university’s required classes, one professor insisted that ancient people cleaned their teeth with twigs. I also know that search methods from the years before “smart software” worked as well.
Progress in search and retrieval, like the chocolate toothpaste innovation, are not “innovation and desperation.” The juxtaposition of attributes is another indicator that the disconnect between expectations and reality is a characteristic of business today.
Will chocolate toothpaste work better than “regular” toothpaste? Will the new search system work better than “regular” search systems? Under specific test conditions, it is possible to “prove” efficacy. But in the real world, toothpaste like search has a baseline of performance. Wordsmithing, odd juxtapositions, and cleverness cannot be confused with Daliesque novelty.
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2014
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