MC+A Is Again Independent: Search, Discovery, and Engineering Services
December 7, 2016
Beyond Search learned that MC+A has added a turbo-charger to its impressive search, content processing, and content management credentials. The company, based in Chicago, earned a gold star from Google for MC+A’s support and integration services for the now-discontinued Google Search Appliance. After working with the Yippy implementation of Watson Explorer, MC+A retains its search and retrieval capabilities, but expanded its scope. Michael Cizmar, the company’s president told Beyond Search, “Search is incredibly important, but customers require more multi-faceted solutions.” MC+A provides the engineering and technical capabilities to cope with Big Data, disparate content, cloud and mixed-environment platforms, and the type of information processing needed to generate actionable reports. [For more information about Cizmar’s views about search and retrieval, see “An Interview with Michael Cizmar.”
Cizmar added:
We solve organizational problems rooted in the lack of insight and accessibility to data that promotes operational inefficiency. Think of a support rep who has to look through five systems to find an answer for a customer on the phone. We are changing the way these users get to answers by providing them better insights from existing data securely. At a higher level we provide strategy support for executives looking for guidance on organizational change.
Alphabet Google’s decision to withdraw the Google Search Appliance has left more than 60,000 licensees looking for an alternative. Since the début of the GSA in 2002, Google trimmed the product line and did not move the search system to the cloud. Cizmar’s view of the GSA’s 12 year journey reveals that:
The Google Search Appliance was definitely not a failure. The idea that organizations wanted an easy-to-use, reliable Google-style search system was ahead of its time. Current GSA customers need some guidance on planning and recommendations on available options. Our point of view is that it’s not the time to simply swap out one piece of metal for another even if vendors claim “OEM” equivalency. The options available for data processing and search today all provide tremendous capabilities, including cognitive solutions which provide amazing capabilities to assist users beyond the keyword search use case.
Cizmar sees an opportunity to provide GSA customers with guidance on planning and recommendations on available options. MC+A understands the options available for data processing and information access today. The company is deeply involved in solutions which tap “smart software” to deliver actionable information.
Cizmar said:
Keyword search is a commodity at this point, and we helping our customers put search where the user is without breaking an established workflow. Answers, not laundry lists of documents to read, is paramount today. Customers want to solve specific problems; for example, reducing average call time customer support using smart software or adaptive, self service solutions. This is where MC+A’s capabilities deliver value.
MC+A is cloud savvy. The company realized that cloud and hybrid or cloud-on premises solutions were ways to reduce costs and improve system payoff. Cizmar was one of the technologists recognized by Google for innovation in cloud applications of the GSA. MC+A builds on that engineering expertise. Today, MC+A supports Google, Amazon, and other cloud infrastructures.
Cizmar revealed:
Amazon Elastic Cloud Search is probably doing as much business as Google did with the GSA but in a much different way. Many of these cloud-based offerings are generally solving the problem with the deployment complexities that go into standing up Elasticsearch, the open source version of Elastic’s information access system.
MC+A does not offer a one size fits all solution. He said:
The problem still remains of what should go into the cloud, how to get a solution deployed, and how to ensure usability of the cloud-centric system. The cloud offers tremendous capabilities in running and scaling a search cluster. However, with the API consumption model that we have to operate in, getting your data out of other systems into your search clusters remains a challenge. MC+A does not make security an afterthought. Access controls and system integrity have high priority in our solutions.
MC+A takes a business approach to what many engineering firms view as a technical problem. The company’s engineers examine the business use case. Only then does MC+A determine if the cloud is an option. If so, which product or projects capabilities meet the general requirements. After that process, MC+A implements its carefully crafted, standard deployment process.
Cizmar noted:
If you are a customer with all of your data on premises or have a unique edge case, it may not make sense to use a cloud-based system. The search system needs to be near to the content most of the time.
MC+A offers its white-labeled search “Practice in a Box” to former Google partners and other integrators. High-profile specialist vendors like Onix in Ohio are be able to resell our technology backed by the MC+A engineering team.
In 2017, MC+A will roll out a search solution which is, at this time, shrouded in secrecy. This new offering will go “beyond the GSA” and offer expanded information access functionality. To support this new product, MC+A will announce a specialized search practice.
He said:
This international practice will offer depth and breadth in selling and implementing solutions around cognitive search, assist, and analytics with products other than Google throughout the Americas. I see this as beneficial to other Google and non-Google resellers because, it allows other them to utilize our award winning team, our content filters, and a wealth of social proofs on a just in time basis.
For 2017, MC+A offers a range of products and services. Based on the limited information provided by the secrecy-conscious Michael Ciznar, Beyond Search believes that the company will offer implementation and support services for Lucene and Solr, IBM Watson, and Microsoft SharePoint. The SharePoint support will embrace some vendors supplying SharePoint centric like Coveo. Plus, MC+A will continue to offer software to acquire content and perform extract-transform-load functions on premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid configurations.,
MC+A’s approach offers a business-technology approach to information access.
For more information about MC+A, contact sales@mcplusa.com 312-585-6396.
Stephen E Arnold, December 7, 2016
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