LucidWorks Sees Multiple Solutions for Enterprise Search Future
March 12, 2013
Mark Bennett of LucidWorks recently granted an exclusive interview to Steven E. Arnold, of the influential Beyond Search blog. The focus is on meeting the coming challenges in the trajectory of search in 2013. LucidWorks has always been a major player, and the informative interview is summarized in the Virtual Strategy article, “LucidWorks Addresses Multiple Solutions for the Future of Enterprise Search.”
After discussing the content of the interview, Arnold makes a strong recommendation for LucidWorks amidst its open source competitors:
“Stephen E. Arnold, Managing Director of Arnold Information Technology and publisher of the influential search industry blog Beyond Search, said, ‘In my analysis of open source search, I rated LucidWorks as one of the leading vendors in enterprise search. Other firms with open source components have not yet achieved the technical critical mass of LucidWorks. Proprietary search vendors are integrating open source search technology into their systems in an effort to reduce their technology costs. At this time, LucidWorks is one of the leading vendors of enterprise and Web-centric search.’”
For someone with such experience in the search field, an endorsement from Arnold is a strong one. LucidWorks continues to receive positive press for its cutting edge technology and professional team. For organizations in the market for a value-added open source solution, LucidWorks should get the first look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
A 60 Second Snapshot: Cebit 2013 Search
March 8, 2013
Just got off a wonderful flight from Hannover, Germany. You can check out a 60 second snapshot of the search challenges I addressed in my invited lecture. Click here for the YouTube video. An audio abstract of the talk is available as well. Click here for the MP3.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2013
SEO Pro Suggests Peers Try Ethics
March 8, 2013
Transparency and ethics in the search engine optimization field? Interesting. Writer Pratik Dholakiya at the Search Engine Journal has some advice for his colleagues in, “Let’s Make the SEO Industry Crystal Clear and Ethical in the Year Ahead!”
The article opens with this acknowledgement: in SEO circles, “ethics” and “transparency” have become dirty words, connected to Google‘s highly-resented efforts to impose quality control onto its search results. Dholakiya seems to understand he is swimming against the tide with his fifteen suggestions, most of which focus on ways to embrace, rather than reflexively reject, such principles. For example, he suggests his peers resist the urge to protect secrets from their clients and, instead, involve them in their planning. He may get more traction with entry number two, which attempts to position “ethics” as a question of smart strategy rather than morals.
See the article if you are curious about Dholakiya’s advice. The Panda and Penguin make an appearance, of course, as do radical concepts like building strong relationships and emphasizing the long view over short-term thinking. His conclusions give us a clue about why he feels now is the time to implore his colleagues to change their tune:
“We are entering an age when SEO can’t be considered separate from online marketing in general. Instead, SEO has become an online branding effort with an emphasis on search, requiring many of the general marketing skills that other online marketers take advantage of.
“Unlike, say, PPC [Pay Per Click], we don’t have the option of specializing on a small and specific set of skills. Link building, social media, keyword research, branding, conversions, content production, relationship building, viral marketing, and rich snippets: it’s all a part of SEO. This is the year to let our clients know that we are comprehensive internet marketing experts with the skills to bring them long term success and opportunities!”
So, he suggests that behaving ethically might better serve these consultants in an evolving landscape. What a novel concept.
Cynthia Murrell, March 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Sinequa Making an Impact In Enterprise Information Access
March 8, 2013
Our team at Beyond Search has maintained a continued interest in Sinequa, an enterprise information access firm based in Paris, for many years. This innovative company has made an impact in the information retrieval realm with the primary mission of empowering users. According to ArnoldIT’s newest Search Wizards Speak interview, “Sinequa: An Interview with Luc Manigot” by Beyond Search’s Stephen Arnold, Sinequa is doing this with real-time, intuitive, business-focused access to information.
The company stands out in this competitive field by tackling information in a range of file types, sources, and systems in what the company calls “unified information access.” In the interview, Sinequa Chief Operating Officer Luc Manigot expands on the benefits of the company:
“Today we do think that our solution offers a real advantage over others, and customers stand to gain by replacing other solutions by ours. We have a growing business in replacing legacy search systems from other companies. Siemens, for example, has found that Sinequa provides its employees with information access, not headaches.”
The company serves hundreds of thousands of people in more than 250 organizations with unique search-based applications. We find Sinequa’s problem-solving approach refreshing and strongly encourage you to learn more about the system at http://www.sinequa.com.
Andrea Hayden, March 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google Is Big: Another Breathless Description
March 6, 2013
I read with some fatigue “Return of the Borg: How Twitter Rebuilt Google’s Secret Weapon.” The main idea is that Twitter like Google has some metasoftware which allows wonderfully efficient processing to happen in a really wonderful way. Here’s the snippet which I noted:
These systems span a worldwide network of data centers, responding to billions of online requests with each passing second, and when Wilkes first saw them in action, he felt like Neo as he downs the red pill, leaves the virtual reality of the Matrix, and suddenly lays eyes on the vast network of machinery that actually runs the thing. He was gobsmacked at the size of it all — and this was a man who had spent more than 25 years as a researcher at HP Labs, working to push the boundaries of modern computing. “I’m an old guy. Megabytes were big things,” Wilkes says, in describing the experience. “But when I came to Google, I had to add another three zeros to all my numbers.” Google is a place, he explains, where someone might receive an emergency alert because a system that stores data is down to its last few petabytes of space. In other words, billions of megabytes can flood a fleet of Google machines in a matter of hours.
Yep, a motion picture analogy. Forget old school science fiction. The Googles and Twitters are like the movies.
Yesterday in the discussion which followed my Cebit talk, one of the people in the audience asked, “Isn’t Google too big?”
The question underscores the real concern of some folks. Google defines search and quite a few other online experiences. In Europe, Google is the big dog referrer in some countries. Russia seems to be up for grabs. But in Denmark, France, Germany, and Spain, Google reigns supreme.
Behind the question is a sense at least in the mind of one person at my lecture, that Google is a little too big.
My comment to the questioner was, “Isn’t it a little late to be worrying about Google. Where were you in 1998?”
The audience fell silent, presumably reflecting on the fact that Google has shifted search and retrieval from old fashioned metrics of precision and recall to “good enough” from statistical and advertising methods of determining what one gets from a query.
One of the folks at the session was deep into a study of what “good enough” means. Why not ask Google and replicate a breathless list of astounding technical achievements. That works for Wired. Won’t the method work for those who want to understand the brave old worlds of Google, Twitter, and other modern information systems?
Excellence is good enough when it produces big revenues, convenience, and the doubt about where to go for information. Maybe that’s why Google is headed toward $1,000 a share and “regular” search vendors are struggling to stay afloat? Autonomy’s value heads south. Google surges upwards. I think there is a message there.
Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2013
Exclusive Interview: Mark Bennett of LucidWorks
March 5, 2013
Engineer Mark Bennett says it’s the tools that matter. Beyond Search agrees. Having tools and talking about tools are two very different things.
Mr. Bennett, co-founder of New Idea Engineering, recently brought more than twenty years’ enterprise search experience to LucidWorks, along with knowledge across major commercial search platforms, superior mathematics and physics-related disciplinary training, and a history in the search industry, including an early tenure at Verity, one of the pioneers in enterprise and large-scale information retrieval back in the 1990s.
Mark Bennett of LucidWorks, a member of their core enterprise search engineering team, recently granted an exclusive interview to the Arnold Information Technology Search Wizards Speak series to discuss the trajectory of search in 2013. LucidWorks is the leading developer of search, discovery, and analytics software based on Apache Lucene and Apache Solr technology. The full text of the interview is available at http://goo.gl/eoeuz.
He told Beyond Search:
“In a nutshell: search, analytics, and content processing vendors have to recognize that what is needed to allow developers to use the product is different from what is required to sell the product and deliver software which users embrace,” Bennett said about the immediate future of search products. “The challenge that keeps search specialists engaged is the problem of dealing with outliers—bizarre business requirements that every project seems to unearth. Outliers are the new norm.”
Bennett recalls a talk with a vendor ten years about a particularly tough search problem. Then, the vendor “ticked off a half dozen reasons why it was really very hard to solve and not worth the effort.” Years later, open source people visited the same problem, came up with a similar list, and diligently worked through those items. “LucidWorks, for instance, delivers facets, suggestions, advanced file storage, and high performance without the punishing costs of proprietary solution,” Bennett explained.
Stephen E. Arnold, Managing Director of Arnold Information Technology and publisher of the influential search industry blog Beyond Search, said:
“In my analysis of open source search, I rated LucidWorks as one of the leading vendors in enterprise search. Other firms with open source components have not yet achieved the technical critical mass of LucidWorks. Proprietary search vendors are integrating open source search technology into their systems in an effort to reduce their technology costs. At this time, LucidWorks is one of the leading vendors of enterprise and Web-centric search. Firms like Attivio (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236514#.US9fGzBcgug) and ElasticSearch (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=237410) ElasticSearch are racing to catch up with LucidWorks’ robust technology, engineering and consulting services, and training programs.”
Bennett commented on the differences between LucidWorks and other retrieval solutions companies. “Despite all the comparisons done lately, the target audiences for most open source solutions are very different,” he explained. “If you spin up a copy of Solr you’ve got a very powerful Web user interface, and LucidWorks gives you even more of an administrative user interface. But when you fire up ElasticSearch, you’ve got a REST API.”
Bennett still often works from the Unix command prompt. “But when I watch a Windows or Mac power user for a day, and then watch a Unix command prompt guru—both get a lot of work done. My point is that each is a different type of power user. By the way, I work from the Unix command prompt myself.”
His point is that vendors need to be able to address the user interface preferences. “I do wonder what happens when an ElasticSearch developer hands off an application to a busy information technology person or an operations team to manage. Either those new owners are will need to know the ‘Web command line’ (URL and JSON syntax) extremely well, or if not, an administrative framework will be needed.”
LucidWorks is a step beyond more commercial proprietary search systems, in Bennett’s opinion, because it serves both groups of users. “Our professional services team has experience with many of other search engines. Chances are we’ve worked with many of the pieces before and know how to crack tough problems quickly. If an issue is a first time event, I am confident we can develop a solution.” He added:
“LucidWorks has delivered an open source enterprise search solution which accomplishes two things,” Arnold said. “First, it is an excellent alternative to many proprietary information retrieval systems. Second, the system takes the rough edges off some open source search solutions which add to an organization’s costs, not keeping them within budget allocations.”
Search is not a “one size fits all” solution, Bennett confirmed. “So while some engines drop features that ‘only three percent of people will ever use’, other groups realize that it’s the tools that matter.”
Visit the LucidWorks website at http://www.lucidworks.com.
Donald Anderson, March 5, 2013
Sponsored by Mediscripts, the world leader in prescription solutions for health professionals worldwide
Arnold Lecture Cebit 2013
March 5, 2013
An abbreviated version of Stephen E Arnold’s lecture about enterprise search challenges at the 2013 Cebit Conference is now available. To listen to the eight minute talk, navigate to the audio archive. You can find additional information on the ArnoldIT portal page at www.xenky.com.
Stuart Schram, March 1, 2013
Twittering High Praise For Funnelback
March 3, 2013
We have discussed Funnelback, the Australian enterprise and Web search software, before and noted it as a company making great strides in search. It looks like we are not the only ones noticing Funnelback’s quality products, because Ramsay Healthcare recently implemented it. If you visit @funnelback you will find this tweet:
“Check out @ramsayhealth new #search #engine. Type in “knees” in the search box to see #funnelback‘s awesome search. http://bit.ly/prNn0c “
Ramsay Health Care is a well known medical system in the UK and Australia. They added Funnelback to power its Web site search. Simply visiting the Web site and typing in ”knees” rich search results. Not only are you given search suggestions, but you are also offered Web pages and articles. Think of it as a Google search before it went paid link crazy or the less Wikipedia filled DuckDuckGo.
With the advent of EMRs, healthcare professionals are trying to make all types of information readily available for their clients. A Web site that acts a resource tool as well as an organization information source doubles its usefulness. Search becomes all the more important, because in order to be useful one needs to find information. Other Web sites in any field could benefit from a powerful search tool.
Whitney Grace, March 03, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Dissing Facebook Search: The Cold Water Approach
March 1, 2013
I read “Facebook Gives Examples to Jumpstart Usage of Graph Search, Which It May Have Spent Too Long Building.” The main point is that Facebook fiddled and Rome burned. Now, Rome has to be rebuilt on property another empire owns.
Poor Facebook. The company muffed its IPO. Then Facebook cratered with Timeline. Now all those Xooglers have crafted a search which has to be “jumpstarted” like my first automobile, a 1955 Oldsmobile with no passenger side door.
Here’s the part of the analysis I found interesting:
Are any of those things you’d search for regularly, if ever? Maybe you’d take the occasional sweep through nostalgic content, look at recommendations for a vacation, or go hunting for new distractions. However, there’s little chance you’ll spend nearly as much time Graph Searching as browsing the daily refresh of status updates and photos from your close friends. That’s a little worrisome, especially since it follows a trend. In September 2011, Facebook’s big launch was Timeline. Beautiful, sure. But how often do you dive years back into your profile, or those of friends? Facebook poured tons of resources into the ability to call up historic content. For what? When I visit most people’s profiles, I look at their recent photos, last few posts, and About section. All of these were handled just fine by the old version of the profile. Adding cover images may have been sufficient.
Yep, worrisome for a free service in beta too. And who is pronouncing Facebook search a dead Oldsmobile?
My thoughts:
- Facebook cannot emulate Google’s brute force search. Google is eating some hefty costs, and Facebook wants to avoid a 1996 style financial black hole.
- Facebook knows ads and search are hooked. The Xooglers have explained why head to head ad fights with Google is not such a good idea. Therefore, the Facebook folks are looking for an angle. Notice I did not say, “Found.”
- Facebook has a thinner tightrope to walk than Google. Facebook can do many things with its content and metadata. Figuring out what combination will yield the most money and the fewest hassles will take time.
Skip the criticism. Track the deltas. Facebook may fail. So what? The journey is a free education for those not innovating.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2013
Facebook Graph Search Has Enterprise Implications
February 28, 2013
Facebook Graph Search has been making headlines. However, most of these headlines are in response to the fact that this has been too long in coming. Facebook finally has search. Now that the shock is over, experts are turning to analysis of how the search function works and how it may benefit individuals and organizations. Jamie Yap does just that in her ZDNet article, “Graph Search Capabilities Offer Enterprise Benefits.”
After an introduction to the search service and how it works, the author continues:
“Commenting on the new feature, Jake Wengroff, social technologies analyst at Gleanster, an analyst firm, said Facebook is essentially injecting natural language processing functionality to its search algorithm so results can be delivered more intuitively and naturally. The underlying concept of graph search has potential in the enterprise setting. This functionality has a strong opportunity in the enterprise space and will ‘galvanize’ the social software industry to develop similar search capabilities for various purposes, Wengroff added.”
Some are even predicting that Graph Search could fill in the gaps left by customer relationship management solutions. Marketing is another definite application for this type of search solution. For those who are in the market for a more traditional enterprise search application, LucidWorks cannot be beat. Perfect for making sense of Big Data or making sense of internal documents, LucidWorks stands on its trusted name and the Lucene/Solr open source community.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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