Pre Oracle InQuira: A Leader in Knowledge Assessment?
July 28, 2014
Oracle purchased InQuira in 2011. One of the writers for Beyond Search reminded me that Beyond Search covered the InQuira knowledge assessment marketing ploy in 2009. You can find that original article at http://bit.ly/WYYvF7.
InQuira’s technology is an option in the Oracle RightNow customer support system. RightNow was purchased by Oracle in 2001. For those who are the baseball card collectors of enterprise search, you know that RightNow purchased Q-Go technology to make its customer support system more intuitive, intelligent, and easier to use. (Information about Q-Go is at http://bit.ly/1nvyW8G.)
InQuira’s technology is not cut from a single chunk of Styrofoam. InQuira was formed in 2002 by fusing the Answerfriend, Inc. and Electric Knowledge, Inc. systems. InQuira was positioned as a question answering system. For years, Yahoo relied on InQuira to deliver answers to Yahooligans seeking help with Yahoo’s services. InQuira also provided the plumbing to www.honda.com. InQuira hopped on the natural language processing bandwagon and beat the drum until it layered on “knowledge” as a core functionality. The InQuira technology was packaged as a “semantic processing engine.”
InQuira used its somewhat ponderous technology along with AskJeeves’ type short cuts to improve the performance of its system. The company narrowed its focus from “boil the ocean search” to a niche focus. InQuira wanted to become the go to system for help desk applications.
InQuira’s approach involved vocabularies. These were similar to the “knowledge bases” included with some versions of Convera. InQuira, according to my files, used the phrase “loop of incompetence.” I think the idea was that traditional search systems did not allow a customer support professional to provide an answer that would make customers happy the majority of the time. InQuira before Oracle emphasized that its system would provide answers, not a list of Google style hits.
The InQuira system can be set up to display a page of answers in the form of sentences snipped from relevant documents. The idea is that the InQuira system eliminates the need for a user to review a laundry list of links.
The word lists and knowledge bases require maintenance. Some tasks can be turned over to scripts, but other tasks require the ministrations of a human who is a subject matter expert or a trained indexer. The InQuira concept knowledge bases also requires care and feeding to deliver on point results. I would point out that this type of knowledge care is more expensive than a nursing home for a 90 year old parent. A failure to maintain the knowledge bases usually results in indexing drift and frustrated users. In short, the systems are perceived as not working “like Google.”
Why is this nitty gritty important? InQuira shifted from fancy buzzwords as the sharp end of its marketing spear to the more fuzzy notion of knowledge. The company, beginning in late 2008, put knowledge first and the complex, somewhat baffling technology second. To generate sales leads, InQuira’s marketers hit on the idea of a “knowledge assessment.”
The outcome of the knowledge marketing effort was the sale of the company to Oracle in mid 2011. At the time of the sale, InQuira had an adaptor for Oracle Siebel. Oracle appears to have had a grand plan to acquire key customer support search and retrieval functionality. Armed with technology that was arguably better than the ageing Oracle SES system, Oracle could create a slam dunk solution for customer support applications.
Since the application, many search vendors have realized that some companies were not ready to write a Moby Dick sized check for customer support search. Search vendors adopted the lingo of InQuira and set out to make sales to organizations eager to reduce the cost of customer support and avoid the hefty license fees some vendors levied.
What I find important about InQuira are:
- It is one of the first search engines to be created by fusing two companies that were individually not able to generate sustainable revenue
- InQuira’s tactic to focus on customer support and then add other niche markets brought more discipline to the company’s message than the “one size fits all” that was popular with Autonomy and Fast Search.
- InQuira figured out that search was not a magnetic concept. The company was one of the first to explain its technology, benefits, and approach in terms of a nebulous concept; that is, knowledge. Who knows what knowledge is, but it does seem important, right?
- The outcome of InQuira’s efforts made it possible for stakeholders to sell the company to Oracle. Presumably this exist was a “success” for those who divided up Oracle’s money.
Net net: Shifting search and content processing to knowledge is a marketing tactic. Will it work in 2014 when search means Google? Some search vendors who have sold their soul to venture capitalists in exchange for millions of jump start dollars hope so.
My thought is that knowledge won’t sell information retrieval. Once a company installs a search systems, users can find what they need or not. Fuzzy does not cut it when users refuse to use a system, scream for a Google Search Appliance, or create a work around for a doggy system.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2014
From Search to Sentiment
July 28, 2014
Attivio has placed itself in the news again, this time for scoring a new patent. Virtual-Strategy Magazine declares, “Attivio Awarded Breakthrough Patent for Big Data Sentiment Analysis.” I’m not sure “breakthrough” is completely accurate, but that’s the language of press releases for you. Still, any advance can provide an advantage. The write-up explains that the company:
“… announced it was awarded U.S. Patent No. 8725494 for entity-level sentiment analysis. The patent addresses the market’s need to more accurately analyze, assign and understand customer sentiment within unstructured content where multiple brands and people are referenced and discussed. Most sentiment analysis today is conducted on a broad level to determine, for example, if a review is positive, negative or neutral. The entire entry or document is assigned sentiment uniformly, regardless of whether the feedback contains multiple comments that express a combination of brand and product sentiment.”
I can see how picking up on nuances can lead to a more accurate measurement of market sentiment, though it does seem more like an incremental step than a leap forward. Still, the patent is evidence of Attivio’s continued ascent. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Massachusetts, Attivio maintains offices around the world. The company’s award-winning Active Intelligence Engine integrates structured and unstructured data, facilitating the translation of that data into useful business insights.
Cynthia Murrell, July 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Searchcode Is a Valuable Resource for Developers
July 28, 2014
Here is a useful tool that developers will want to bookmark: searchcode does just what its name suggests—paste in a snippet of code, and it returns real-world examples of its use in context. Great for programming in an unfamiliar language, working to streamline code, or just seeing how other coders have approached a certain function. The site’s About page explains:
“Searchcode is a free source code and documentation search engine. API documentation, code snippets and open source (free software) repositories are indexed and searchable. Most information is presented in such a way that you shouldn’t need to click through, but can if required.”
Searchcode pulls its samples from Github, Bitbucket, Google Code, Codeplex, Sourceforge, and the Fedora Project. There is a way to search using special characters, and users can filter by programming language, repository, or source. The tool is the product of one Sydney-based developer, Ben E. Boyter, and is powered by open-source indexer Sphinx Search. Many, many more technical details about searchcode can be found at Boyter’s blog.
Cynthia Murrell, July 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Snowden Effect on Web Search
July 27, 2014
If you are curious about the alleged impact of intercepts and monitoring on search, you will want to read “Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior.” You may have to pay to access the document. Here’s a passage I noted:
In the U. S., this was the main subset of search terms that were affected. However, internationally there was also a drop in traffic for search terms that were rated as personally sensitive.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2014
Sponsors of Two Content Marketing Plays
July 27, 2014
I saw some general information about allegedly objective analyses of companies in the search and content processing sector.
The first report comes from the Gartner Group. The company has released its “magic quadrant” which maps companies by various allegedly objective methods into leaders, challengers, niche players, and visionaries.
The most recent analysis includes these companies:
Attivio
BA Insight
Coveo
Dassault Exalead
Exorbyte
Expert System
HP Autonomy IDOL
IBM
HIS
Lucid Works
MarkLogic
Mindbreeze
Perceptive ISYS Search
PolySpot
Recommind
Sinequa
There are several companies in the Gartner pool whose inclusion surprises me. For example, Exorbyte is primarily an eCommerce company with a very low profile in the US compared to Endeca or New Zealand based SLI Systems. Expert System is a company based in Italy. This company provides semantic software which I associated with mobile applications. IHS (International Handling Service) provides technical information and a structured search system. MarkLogic is a company with XML data management software that has landed customers in publishing and the US government. With an equally low profile is Mindbreeze, a home brew search system funded by Microsoft-centric Fabasoft. Dassault Exalead, PolySpot, and Sinequa are French companies offering what I call “information infrastructure.” Search is available, but the approach is digital information plumbing.
The IDC report, also allegedly objective, is sponsored by nine companies. These outfits are:
Attivio
Coveo
Earley & Associates
HP Autonomy IDOL
IBM
IHS
Lexalytics
Sinequa
Smartlogic
This collection of companies is also eclectic. For example, Earley & Associates does indexing training, consulting, and does not have a deep suite of enterprise software. IHS (International Handling Services) appears in the IDC report as a knowledge centric company. I think I understand the concept. Technical information in Extensible Markup Language and a mainframe-style search system allow an engineer to locate a specification or some other technical item like the SU 25. Lexalytics is a sentiment analysis company. I do not consider figuring out if a customer email is happy or sad the same as Coveo’s customer support search system. Smartlogic is interesting because the company provides tools that permit unstructured content to be indexed. Some French vendors call this process “fertilization.” I suppose that for purists, indexing might be just as good a word.
What unifies these two lists are the companies that appear in both allegedly objective studies:
Attivio
Coveo
HP
IBM
IHS (International Handling Service)
Sinequa
My hunch is that the five companies appearing in both lists are in full bore, pedal to the metal marketing mode.
Attivio and Coveo have ingested tens of millions in venture funding. At some point, investors want a return on their money. The positioning of these two companies’ technologies as search and the somewhat unclear knowledge quotient capability suggest that implicit endorsement by mid tier consulting firms will produce sales.
The appearance of HP and IBM on each list is not much of a surprise. The fact that Oracle Endeca is not in either report suggests that Oracle has other marketing fish to fry. Also, Elasticsearch, arguably the game changer in search and content processing, is not in either pool may be evidence that Elasticsearch is too busy to pursue “expert” analysts laboring in the search vineyard. On the other hand, Elasticsearch may have its hands full dealing with demands of developers, prospects, and customers.
IHS has not had a high profile in either search or content processing. The fact that International Handling Services appears signals that the company wants to market its mainframe style and XML capable system to a broader market. Sinequa appears comfortable with putting forth its infrastructure system as both search and a knowledge engine.
I have not seen the full reports from either mid tier consulting firm. My initial impression of the companies referenced in the promotional material for these recent studies is that lead generation is the hoped for outcome of inclusion.
Other observations I noted include:
- The need to generate leads and make sales is putting multi-company reports back on the marketing agenda. The revenue from these reports will be welcomed at IDC and Gartner I expect. The vendors who are on the hook for millions in venture funding are hopeful that inclusion in these reports will shake the money trees from Boston to Paris.
- The language used to differentiate and describe the companies referenced in these two studies is unlikely to clarify the differences between similar companies or make clear the similarities. From my point of view, there are few similarities among the companies referenced in the marketing collateral for the IDC and Gartner study.
- The message of the two reports appears to be “these companies are important.” My thought is that because IDC and Gartner assume their brand conveys a halo of excellence, the companies in these reports are, therefore, excellent in some way.
Net net: Enterprise search and content processing has a hurdle to get over: Search means Google. The companies in these reports have to explain why Google is not the de facto choice for enterprise search and then explain how a particular vendor’s search system is better, faster, cheaper, etc.
For me, a marketer or search “expert” can easily stretch search to various buzzwords. For some executives, customer support is not search. Customer support uses search. Sentiment analysis is not search. Sentiment analysis is a signal for marketers or call center managers. Semantics for mobile phones, indexing for SharePoint content, and search for a technical data sheet are quite different from eCommerce, business intelligence, and business process engineering.
A fruit cake is a specific type of cake. Each search and content processing system is distinct and, in my opinion, not easily fused into the calorie rich confection. A collection of systems is a lumber room stuffed with different objects that don’t have another place in a household.
The reports seem to make clear that no one in the mid tier consulting firms or the search companies knows exactly how to position, explain, and verify that content processing is the next big thing. Is it?
Maybe a Google Search Appliance is the safe choice? IBM Watson does recipes, and HP Autonomy connotes high profile corporate disputes.
Elasticsearch, anyone?
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2014
Honk Tracks Search Marketing Memes
July 26, 2014
The Honk page for Beyond Search now tracks information retrieval marketing memes. The information at http://bit.ly/1uqWxfA now includes a discussion of a coinage designed to sell “search” without using the word “search.” Is the approach likely to reverse the fortunes of search vendors who face increasingly intense uphill battles to generate substantive revenue? The Honk “Meme of the Moment” updates will keep you posted.
Stephen E Arnold, July 26, 2014
PetMatch for iOS Finds Furry Friends
July 25, 2014
A new image-based search tool can take some of the research out of adopting a pet. Lifehacker turns our attention to the free iOS app in, “PetMatch Searches for an Adoptable Pet Based on Appearance.” Now, pet lovers who see their perfect pet on the street can take a picture and find local doppelgangers in need of homes. Perhaps this will help lower dog-napping rates. Reporter Dave Greenbaum notes:
“You should never adopt an animal solely based on looks, of course—you should research the personality of the breed you want—but looks are a factor. This app works great for mixed breed dogs when you aren’t sure what kind of dog you are looking at. I like the fact it will look at local adoption agencies to find a match, too. Online services like Petfinder.com help you find local pets to adopt, but you have to know which breed you are looking for first, and searching for mixed breed dogs (common at shelters) is difficult. This app makes it easy to do a reverse image search and do your research based on the results.”
Another point to note is that PetMatch includes a gallery of dog and cat breeds, so if the picture is in your head instead of your phone, you can still search for a look-alike. It’s a clever idea, and an innovative use of image search functionality.
Cynthia Murrell, July 25, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Behind the Faster Place Search at Pinterest
July 23, 2014
One of the engineers over at Pinterest gets into the nitty-gritty of the site’s place search in, “Introducing a Faster Place Search” at the blog Making Pinterest. Last fall, the invitation-only image hoarding site launched Place Pins. Designed with aspiring travelers in mind, the tool allows users to link pictures to a map that indicates where they were taken. Since then, the Place Pins team has continued to tweak the software. Engineer Jon Parise writes:
“We launched Place Pins a little over six months ago, and in that time we’ve been gathering feedback from Pinners and making product updates along the way, such as adding thumbnails of the place image on maps and the ability to filter searches by Place Boards. The newest feature is a faster, smarter search for Web and iOS that makes it easier to add a Place Pin to the map. There are now more than one billion travel Pins on Pinterest, more than 300 unique countries and territories are represented in the system, and more than four million Place Boards have been created by Pinners. Here’s the story of how the Place Pins team built the latest search update.”
See the article for Parise’s breakdown of challenges and how the team addressed them. One example: Users familiar with a single search box weren’t fond of the original two-box configuration—one for subject and one for place. The seemingly simple fix, combining both terms into one box, required the algorithm to break the query into two parts and identify any geographic names that appear. For that adjustment, the engineers turned to open-source geocoder Twofishes for assistance.
The post concludes with a note that more improvements are on the way. The updated place search has been incorporated into the iOS app, with inclusion in the Android app on the way “soon.”
Cynthia Murrell, July 23, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Algolia
July 23, 2014
When you first visit Algolia’s Web site, two things jump out at you. One is this quote:
“Search your database in realtime. Search is a key element of your user experience. To keep your users engaged, search results need to show up instantly and be relevant to them, even when they do typos. Index your database records with our API and get results in milliseconds.”
The second is a counter recording the number of API calls Algolia has handled. The counter adds hundreds of API calls per second. Algolia must be doing something right if they’re answering billions of calls. So what sets Agolia part from other search software companies?
Algolia offers the usual features: database search, search by type, mobile, analytics, linguistics, etc. Agolia does highlight a few features, that while they are standard in other search companies as well, they have taken to a different level than their rivals. Agolia claims to always be up and running with three high-end servers, a low latency routing due to multiple data centers, and top of the line security.
Agolia is a search as a service company with domestic and international clients. Their Web site presents a comprehensive profile of their services and sells them as a reliable search software company.
Whitney Grace, July 23, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Former Autonomy CFO Tosses Legal Flechette at HP
July 22, 2014
I read “Former Autonomy CFO seeks to Block HP-Shareholder Settlement.” You may have to answer some questions to see the document or try to log in to the paywalled Financial Times’ Web site. Yep, that’s the wonky orange newspaper that is a must read in London, but not so much in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky.
The story seems to be straightforward. The former chief financial officer of Autonomy has “filed a legal motion to block” the Hewlett Packard shareholder deal. The idea is that if shareholders agree to let HP off the hook for its acquisition of Autonomy and the fascinating $5 billon write down, then HP will go after Autonomy. The law firm assisting HP will be the same outfit that helped shareholders sue HP for the deal in the first place. Got that?
The Financial Times quoted Mr.Hussein’s legal document about the legal action:
“HP seeks to forever bury from disclosure the real reason for its 2012 write down of Autonomy: HP’s own destruction of Autonomy’s success after the acquisition. And, by the broad bar order it seeks, HP seeks to absolve itself of its own responsibility for its losses.”
The FT did not include the link to the actual filing. You can find it at this link.
The issue, according to the Autonomy CFO’s document is that HP is using the shareholder settlement to bury certain facts about HP’s handling of Autonomy. Autonomy’s argument is that HP fumbled the ball after it conducted due diligence and bought Autonomy.
Autonomy wants HP to provide proof that Autonomy fooled HP, its Board, and its consultants. The idea is that Autonomy allowed these folks to review the financials, the marketing collateral, and other sources of information before deciding to buy Autonomy for $11 billion.
I am no longer surprised by the claims and counter claims. Several observations:
First, search and content processing as business sectors generate a disproportionate amount of thrashing. HP analyzes Autonomy. HP buys Autonomy. HP sues Autonomy. Shareholders sue HP. An individual no longer employed at HP Autonomy sues HP. Etc., etc. Fast Search was the leader in post sale legal maneuvering. Autonomy seems to be following the “fast” track now.
Second, HP bought Autonomy and then said it was tricked. Remember this is not like buying a bagel. Autonomy bought a company with thousands of customers and hundreds of million in revenue. If a bagel is bad, I either demand a different one or walk to another bagel shop.
Third, the acquisition took place three years ago. In that time, the enterprise search sector has been subjected to considerable pressure. Just check out the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant, G00260831. Notice that Elasticsearch (the fastest growing search system) is not in the Gartner analysis. The Gartner enterprise search report appears to mirror the nature of the enterprise search market itself. The HP Autonomy matter AND the preceding Fast Search & Transfer matter have, in my view, contributed to a general malaise for the search and content processing software. The equation in my mind works like this: Buying a search system = Trouble.
Net net: With the parties to the matter allowing their attorneys to put the pedal to the metal, there will be more excitement in the near future. Billing functions at law firms have steamrollers to operate.
Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2014
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