Coveo Partners with Etherios on Salesforce Services
July 7, 2015
Professional services firm Etherios is teaming up with Coveo in a joint mission to add even more value to customers’ Salesforce platforms, we learn from “Etherios and Coveo Announce Strategic Alliance” at Yahoo Finance. Etherios is a proud Salesforce Platinum Partner. The press release tells us:
“Coveo connects information from across a company’s IT ecosystem of record and delivers the knowledge that matters to customers and agents in context. Coveo for Salesforce – Communities Edition helps customers solve their own cases by proactively offering case-resolving knowledge suggestions, and Coveo for Salesforce – Service Cloud Edition allows customer support agents to upskill as they engage customers by injecting case-resolving content and experts into the Salesforce UI as they work.
“Etherios provides customers with consulting and implementation services in the areas of Sales, Customer Service, Field Service and IoT [Internet of Things]. … Etherios capabilities span operational strategy, business process, technical design and implementation expertise.”
Founded in 2005, Coveo leverages search technology to boost users’ skills, knowledge, and proficiency while supplying tools for collaboration and self-service. The company maintains offices in the U.S. (SanMateo, CA), the Netherlands, and Quebec.
A division of Digi International, Etherios launched in 2008 specifically to supply cloud-based tools for Salesforce users. They prefer to inhabit the cutting edge, and operate out of Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco.
Cynthia Murrell, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Digestible Content Tool For The Busy Person
July 7, 2015
RSS feeds and Web page readers curate content from select Web sites tailored to suit a users’ needs. While all of the content is gathered in one spot and the headlines are available to read, sometimes the readers return hundreds of articles and users do not have the time to read all of them. True, sometimes users can glen the facts from the headlines and the small blurb included with it, but sometimes it is not enough.
There are apps that gather and summarize a users’ content, but these are usually geared towards a specific industry or an enterprise system. There is a content reader that was designed for the average user, while at the same time it can be programmed to serve the needs of many professionals. The Context Organizer from Content Discovery Inc. is an application that summarizes Web pages and documents in order to pinpoint relevant information. The Content Organizer works via five basic steps:
“1. Get to the point – Speed-up reading by condensing web pages, emails and documents into keywords and summaries presented in context.
- Make a Long Story Short – The Short Summary headlines most important sentences – instant information capsules.
- Accelerate Search – Search the web with relevant keywords. Summarize Google search results for rapid understanding.
- Take Notes – Quickly collect topics and sentences. Send them to WordPad or Word. Share notes – send them by e-mail.
- Visualize – View summaries in context as Mindjet MindManager maps.”
There are three different Context Organizer versions: one that specifically searches the Web, another that searches the Web and Microsoft Products, and the third is a combination of the prior versions plus it includes the Mindjet MindManager. The prices range from $60-$120 with a free twenty-one day trial, which we suggest you start with. Always start with free trial first, because you mind be throwing away money on an item you do not like. With the amount of content available on the Web, any tool that helps organize and summarize it is worth investigating.
Whitney Grace, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Bing Game: Search Has to Be Fun, Fun, Fun
July 6, 2015
Navigate to “Microsoft Put a Pong Game in Its Bing Search Engine.” Yep, when I run a query I definitely want to distract myself with a quick video game session. Doesn’t everyone 70 years old have this compelling need to lose focus and forget why one visited a search engine in the first place. No wonder Bing is just so darned wonderful. Just the other day I was looking for information about the Citadel exploit from 2011, and I ended up playing Pong. Wow, as I recall, the experience was really helpful to my work.
The write up states;
People are discovering that if you search for “pong” on the Bing site, the search results include a playable version of one of the first video games ever made. The game allows the classic digital paddles to be moved up and down with a mouse or keyboard on the PC, or via fingers on touch screen.
Let’s have more distractions to prevent me from experiencing incomplete and irrelevant results to my queries.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2015
What Watson Can Do For Your Department
July 6, 2015
The story of Justin Chen, a Finance Manager, is one of many “Stories by Role” now displayed on IBM. Each character has a different job, such as Liza Hay from Marketing, Donny Cruz from IT and Anisa Mirza from HR. Each job comes with a problem for which Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, has just the solution. Justin, the article relates, is having trouble deciding which payments to follow. Watson provides solutions,
“With IBM® Watson™ Analytics, Justin can ask which customers are least likely to pay, who is most likely to pay and why. He can analyze this information… [and] collect more payments more efficiently… With Watson Analytics, Justin can ask which customers are likely to leave and which are likely to stay and why. He can use the answers for analysis of customer attrition and retention, predict the effect on revenue and determine which customer investments will lead to more profitable growth.”
It seems that the now world-famous Watson has been converted from search to a basket containing any number of IBM software solutions. It isn’t stated in the article, but we can probably assume that the revenue from each solution counts toward Watson’s soon to be reported billions in revenue.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 6, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Lexmark: Brainware, ISYS, and Kofax May Not Be Enough
July 5, 2015
Here I am. Sitting in the misty morn contemplating layoffs in the Louisville-Lexington region. At a Fourth of July party, the founder of a large Kentucky-based business reassured his listeners that there would be almost no layoffs as a result of the Aetna-Humana deal. I yawned.
My mind was not attending to the woes of Humana’s soon to be unemployed thousands. I was considering the news item I had just read on my trusty Blackberry Classic (right, no iPhone for me, gentle reader).
The short item was “Insider Selling: Lexmark International CFO David Reeder Sells 7,283 Shares of Stock (LXK).” Who was doing the selling? The person was David Reeder, the Lexmark chief financial officer. Perhaps Mr. Reeder has to send a child to school or must replace a cracking concrete driveway?
Lexmark beat some analyst estimates in its April 2015 quarterly statement. What’s the big deal?
The write up reports:
Several analysts have recently commented on the stock. Analysts at Goldman Sachs initiated coverage on shares of Lexmark International in a research note on Wednesday, June 17th. They set a “sell” rating and a $34.00 price target on the stock. Analysts at Zacks downgraded shares of Lexmark International from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Wednesday, June 3rd. Analysts at Cross Research upgraded shares of Lexmark International from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $36.00 to $43.00 in a research note on Thursday, May 14th. Analysts at Brean Capital reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Lexmark International in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, analysts at TheStreet upgraded shares of Lexmark International from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, April 28th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. The company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $39.29.
My question is, “Will revenues from the content processing acquisitions ignite Lexmark’s revenues and pump up the profits?” My research suggests that Lexmark may find that making big money from content centric software is no picnic on a warm sunny day.
I am rooting for the printer company, but I am a realist. Some Lexmarkians may want to keep their résumés sparkling and bright. When a CFO sells shares, I pay attention.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2015
An Oddly Mystical, Whimsical Listicle Combining Big Data and Search
July 4, 2015
Some listicles are clearly the work of college students after a tough beer pong tournament. Others seem as if they emanate from beyond Pluto’s orbit. I am not sure where on this spectrum between the addled and extraterrestrial the listicle in “Top 11 Open Source big Data Enterprise Search Software” falls.
Here’s the list for your contemplation. I have added some questions after each company’s name. Consult the original write up for the explanation the inclusion of these systems in the list. I found the write ups without much heft or “wood” to use a Google term.
- Apache Solr. Yep, uses Lucene libraries, right. Performance? Exciting sometimes.
- Apache Lucene Core. Ah, Lego blocks for the engineer with some aspirations for continuous employment.
- Elasticsearch. The leader in search and retrieval. To do big data, there are some other components required. Make sure your programming and engineering expertise are up to the job.
- Sphinx. Okay, workable for structured data. Work required to stuff unstructured content into this system.
- Constellio. Isn’t this a part time project of a consulting firm focused on Canadian government work?
- DataparkSearch Engine. Yikes.
- ApexKB. Okay, a script. For enterprise applications. Big Data? Wow.
- Searchdaimon ES. Useful, speedier than either Lucene or Elasticsearch. Not a big data engine without some extra work. Come to think of it. A lot of work.
- mnoGoSearch. Well, maybe for text.
- Nutch. Old in the tooth. Why not use Lucene?
- Xapian. Very robust. Make certain that you have programming expertise and engineering knowledge. Often ignored which is too bad. But be prepared for some heavy lifting or paying a wizard with a mental fork lift to do the job.
Now which of these systems can do “big data.” In one sense, if you are exceptionally gifted with engineering and programming skills, I suppose any of these can do tricks. As Samuel Johnson allegedly observed to his biographer:
“Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
On the other hand, these programs can be used as a utility within a more robust content processing system which has been purpose built to deal with large flows of structured and unstructured content. But even that takes work.
Anyone want to give Constellio a shot at processing real time Facebook posts? Anyone want to use any of these systems to solve that type of search problem? Show of hands, please?
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2015
Silobreaker Takes Gold and Silver in Online Decathlon
July 4, 2015
Short honk: I have been a fan of the Silobreaker system, which is available for commercial and governmental content processing. I read Network Products Guide “New Products and Service: Winners 10th Annual 2015 IT Awards” recommended solutions league table this morning. Silobreaker, founded by a couple of wizards with military and commercial experience. According to the league table, the Silobreaker content processing and information access system is the top dog for applications centering in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. This means that the system’s multi-lingual capabilities were the best, according to the Network Products Guide’s editors. The company also nailed a silver medal for US focused solutions. You can get more information about Silobreaker at www.silobreaker.com. Sign up. Join the thousands of users who want to work with a winner.
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2015
NewsBot: Autonomy Kinjin from 14 Years Ago Reinvented
July 3, 2015
Short honk: If you want to run a query as you browse, check out NewsBot from Lateral. The system displays “related articles” when you hit a hot key. The system reminded me of Autonomy’s kinjin service from a decade ago. You will need to be into the Chrome browser to use the service. Be sure to turn off your camera and microphone. More information is at https://getnewsbot.com/. Question: Does the user see the relevant articles? Question: Who defines relevance?
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2015
Open Source Boundaries
July 3, 2015
Now here is an interesting metaphor to explain how open source is sustainable. On OpenSource.com, Bryan Behrenshausen posted the article, “Making Collaboration Sustainable” that references the famous scene from Tom Sawyer, where the title character is forced to whitewash a fence by his Aunt Polly. He does not want to do it, but is able to persuade his friends that whitewashing is fun and has them pay him for the privilege.
Jim Whitehurst refers to it as the “Tom Sawyer” model, where organizations treat communities as gullible chumps who will work without proper compensation. It is a type of crowdsourcing, where the organizations benefit from the communities’ resources to further their own goals. Whitehurst continues that this is not a sustainable approach to crowdsourcing. It could even backfire at some point.
He continues to saw open source requires a different mindset, one that has a commitment from its contributors and everyone is equal and must be treated/respected for their efforts.
“Treating internal and external communities as equals, really listening to and understanding their shared goals, and locating ways to genuinely enhance those goals—that’s the key to successfully open sourcing a project. Crowdsourcing takes what it can; it turns people and their ideas into a resource. Open sourcing reciprocates where it can; it channels people and their ideas into a productive community.”
The entire goal of open source is to work with a community that coalesces around shared beliefs and passions. Behrenshausen finishes with that an organization might find themselves totally changed by engaging with an open source community and it could be for the better. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It is, however, concerning for enterprise search solutions.
Whitney Grace, July 3, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Dassault Systemes’ “Single View of the Truth” Problem-Solving Approach
July 3, 2015
The article on Today’s Medical Developments titled Collaborative Design Software uses the online collaborative design video game Minecraft to consider the possibilities for programmers working together in the future. Dassault Systemes’ is in the process of implementing a change to many design engineers working more collaboratively off a master file. The article quotes Monica Menghini, a Dassault executive,
“Our platform of 12 software applications covers 3D modeling (SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, GEOVIA, BIOVIA); simulation (3DVIA, DELMIA, SIMULA); social and collaboration (3DSWYM, 3DXCITE, ENOVIA); and information intelligence (EXALEAD, NETVIBES)… These apps together create the experience. No single point solution can do it – it requires a platform capable of connecting the dots. And that platform includes cloud access and social apps, design, engineering, simulation, manufacturing, optimization, support, marketing, sales and distribution, communication…PLM – all aspects of a business; all aspects of a customer’s experience.”
The point is that Dassault wants to sell customers a dozen products to solve a problem, which seems like an interesting and complicated approach. They believe new opportunities could include more efficient design-building, earlier chances for materials specialists to cut costs by opting for lighter materials, marketing could begin earlier in the process and financial planners would have the ability to follow the progress of a design, allowing for a more transparency on every level of production.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 3, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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