A Wrinkle in the Government Procurement Envelope
March 3, 2009
Government agencies buy quite a bit of hardware, storage, and systems to deal with digital information. I avoid Washington, DC. I went to grade school there. I fought traffic on I 270 when I worked in the city for a decade after getting booted from a third tier university. I then did the SDF to BWI run on Southwest for five or six years when I was hooked up with a government-centric services firm. I don’t know that much about procurements, but I do know when what looks like a trivial event could signal a larger shift. You can take a look at the ComputerWorld story “DOJ Accuses EMC of Improper Pricing” here. If I were writing the headline, I would have slapped in an “allegedly”. Keep in mind I am reporting second hand news and offering a comment. I am not sure how accurate or how much oomph this DOJ (Department of Justice) matter has. The thrust of the story is that DOJ is sniffing into payments and tie ups. Now most folks in Harrods Creek, Kentucky don’t pay much attention to the nuances of Federal acquisition regulations. Let’s assume that this is little more than a clerical error. But in my opinion this single matter signals a tougher line on how companies that manufacture or create hardware and software deal with the government. Some organizations sell direct to the government and others take the lead and turn it over to partners. The relationships among the manufacturers and the partners and the government is a wonderland of interesting activities. Why is this important? Search vendors operate in different ways and some systems trigger significant hardware acquisitions. With a massive Federal deficit, I wonder, “Is this single alleged action a harbinger of closer scrutiny of some very high profile companies’ business dealings?” My hunch is, “Yep.” Some companies will want to tidy their business processes. When rocks get flipped over, some interesting things can be spotted. One major search vendor does not sell directly to the US government. The vendor deals through partners. Some partners are loved more than others. My thought is that if I were investigating these tie ups, I would prefer to see partners treated in an equitable way with documentation that backs up the compensation, limits, and responsibilities with regard to the US government and the source of the hardware or software. If the system is “informal”, I would dig a little deeper to make sure that US government procurement guidelines were followed to the letter. Just my opinion. I might come out of retirement to do some of the old time procurement fact finding when spring comes.
Stephen Arnold
SharePoint in 2010
March 3, 2009
I have been gathering information about the hook up of SharePoint and Fast Search technology. My take on the announcements at the Fast Forward 2009 conference was that a road map was the underlying message. I wanted to keep track of this item “SharePoint 14 Delayed until 2010” here. Wictor Wilén wrote:
I’m not surprised since the lid has been on for so long and for such a significant server product such as SharePoint it really needs time for a beta phase. The adoption of WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 has really boosted and having a to short period for extensive testing and upgrade preparation would not be appreciated. Now we all can wait for the beta period to start, and hope for a universal change in the number of hours per day, I sure need some more…
My view is that the SharePoint – Fast work will require more time than Microsoft’s target indicates. With the Fast Forward hoo hah, Microsoft was offering some reassurance, a hint about what it will do with its $1.2 billion dollar baby, and dash of the fear – uncertainty – doubt tactics that worked for IBM before it began its shift from hardware to softer lines of business.
Stephen Arnold, March 3, 2009
Mysteries of Online 9: Time
March 3, 2009
Electronic information has an interesting property: time distortion. The distortion has a significant effect on how users of electronic information participate in various knowledge processes. Information carries humans along much as a stream whisks a twig in the direction of the flow. Information, unlike water, moves in multiple directions, often colliding, sometimes reinforcing, and at others in paradoxical ways that leave a knowledge worked dazed, confused, and conflicted. The analogy of information as a tidal wave connotes only a partial truth. Waves come and go. Information flow for many people and systems is constant. Calm is tough to locate.
Vector fields. Source: http://www.theverymany.net/uploaded_images/070110_VectorField_test012_a-789439.jpg
In the good old days of cuneiform tablets, writing down the amount of wheat Eknar owed the king required specific steps. First, you had to have access to suitable clay, water, and a clay kneading specialist. Second, you needed to have a stylus of wood, bone, or maybe the fibula of an enemy removed in a timely manner. Third, you had to have your data ducks in a row. Dallying meant that the clay tablet would harden and make life more miserable than it already was. Once the document was created, the sun or kiln had to cooperate. Once the clay tablet was firm enough to handle without deleting a mark for a specified amount of wheat, the tablet was stacked in a pile inside a hut. Forth, the access the information, the knowledge worker had to locate the correct hut, find the right pile, and then inspect the tablets without breaking one, a potentially bad move if the king had a short temper or needed money for a war or a new wife.
In the scriptorium in the 9th century, information flow wasn’t much better. The clay tablets had been replaced with organic materials like plant matter or for really important documents, the scraped skin of sheep. Keep in mind that other animals were used. Yep, human skin worked too. Again time intensive processes were required to create the material on which a person would copy or scribe information. The cost of the materials made it possible to get patrons to spit out additional money to illustrate or illuminate the pages. Literacy was not widespread in the 9th century and there were a number of incentives to get sufficient person power to convert foul papers to fair copies and then to compendia. Not just anyone could afford a book. Buying a book or similar document did not mean the owner could read. The time required to produce hand copies was somewhat better than the clay tablet method or the chiseled inscriptions or brass castings used by various monarchs.
Yep, I will have it done in 11 months, our special rush service.
With the invention of printing in Europe, the world rediscovered what the Chinese had known for 800, maybe a thousand years. No matter. The time required to create information remained the same. What changed was that once a master set of printing plates had been created. A printer with enough capital to buy paper (cheaper than the skin and more long lasting than untreated plant fiber and less ink hungry than linen based materials) could manufacture multiple copies of a manuscript. The out of work scribes had to find a new future, but the impact of printing was significant. Everyone knows about the benefits of literacy, books, and knowledge. What’s overlooked is that the existence of books altered the time required to move information from point A to point B. Once time barriers fell, distance compressed as well. The world became smaller if one were educated. Ideas migrated. Information moved around and had impact, which I discussed in another Mysteries of Online essay. Revolutions followed after a couple hundred years, but the mindless history classes usually ignore the impact of information on time.
If we flash forward to the telegraph, time accelerated. Information no longer required a horse back ride, walk, or train ride from New York to Baltimore to close a real estate transaction. Once the new fangled electricity fell in love with information, the speed of information increased with each new innovation. In fact, more change in information speed has occurred since the telegraph than in previous human history. The telephone gave birth to the modem. The modem morphed into a wireless USB 727 device along with other gizmos that make possible real time information creation and distribution.
Time Earns Money
I dug out notes I made to myself sometime in the 1982 – 1983 time period. The implications of time and electronic information caught my attention for one reason. I noted that the revenue derived from a database with weekly updates was roughly 30 percent greater than information derived from the same database on a monthly update cycle. So, four updates yielded a $1.30, not $1.00. I wrote down, “Daily updates will generate an equal or greater increase.” I did not believe that the increase was infinite. The rough math I did 25 years ago suggested that with daily updates the database would yield about 1.6 percent more revenue than the same database with a monthly update cycle. In 1982 it was difficult to update a commercial database more than once a day. The cost of data transmission and service charges would gobble up the extra money, leaving none for my bonus.
In the financial information world, speed and churn are mutually reinforcing. New information makes it possible to generate commissions.
Time, therefore, not only accelerated the flow of information. Time could accelerate earnings from online information. Simply by u9pdating a database, the database would generate more money. Update the database less frequently, the database would generate less money. Time had value to the users.
I found this an interesting learning, and I jotted it down in my notebook. Each of the commercial database in which I played a role were designed for daily updates and later multiple updates throughout the day. To this day, the Web log in which this old information appears is updated on a daily basis and several times a week, it is updated multiple times during the day. Each update carries and explicit time stamp. This is not for you, gentle and patient reader. The time stamp is for me. I want to know when I had an idea. Time marks are important as the speed of information increases.
Implications
The implications of my probably third-hand insight included:
- The speed up in dissemination means that information impact is broader, wider, and deeper with each acceleration.
- Going faster translates to value for some users who are willing and eager to pay for speed. The idea is that knowing something (anything) first is an advantage.
- Fast is not enough. Customers addicted to information speed want to know what’s coming. The inclusion of predictive data adds another layer of value to online services.
- Individuals who understand the value of information speed have a difficult time understanding why more online systems and services cannot deliver what is needed; that is, data about what will happen with a probability attached to the prediction. Knowing that something has a 70 chance of taking place is useful in information sensitive contexts.
Let me close with one example of the problem speed presents. The Federal government has a number of specialized information systems for law enforcement and criminal justice professionals. These systems have some powerful, albeit complex, functions. The problem is that when a violation or crime occurs, the law enforcement professionals have to act quickly. The longer the reaction time, the greater the chance that the bad egg will tougher to apprehend increases. Delay is harmful. The systems, however, require that an individual enter a query, retrieve information, process it and then use another two or three systems in order to get the reasonably complete picture of the available information related to the matter under investigation.
The systems have a bottleneck. The human. Law enforcement personnel, on the other hand, have to move quickly. As a result, the fancy online systems operate in one time environment and the law enforcement professionals operate in another. The opportunity to create systems that bring both time universes together is significant. Giving a law enforcement team mobile comms for real time talk is good, but without the same speedy and fluid access to the data in the larger information systems, the time problem becomes a barrier.
Opportunity in online and search, therefore, is significant. Vendors who pitch another fancy search algorithm are missing the train in law enforcement, financial services, competitive intelligence, and medical research. Going fast is no longer a way to add value. Merging different time frameworks is a more interesting area to me.
Stephen Arnold, February 26, 2009
Microsoft Trumps Google, Dismisses Its Enterprise Services
March 2, 2009
Microsoft seems to be returning to its glory days as vanquisher of the weak and destroyer of the newcomers. Phil Wainewright wrote “Microsoft Pumps Cloud, Trumps Google with GSK.” I must admit the GSK threw me. It is the insiders way to refer to Glaxo SmithKline, a pharmaceutical giant. The comment that stuck in my beak was:
Not only that. Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Online Services, was scathing of Google’s efforts to make headway in the enterprise market. “Google we really do not feel is ready for the enterprise,” he said in a call briefing bloggers on the announcement an hour ago. “They’re offering three nines SLA and they’ve missed three of the last six months,” he added, referring to last week’s Gmail outage and earlier incidents. In a sideswipe at Google’s offer of a 15-day credit for last week’s outage, he went on to add that Microsoft maintains its services at four-nines availability, while backing up its three-nines SLA with financial penalties: “We don’t just give service credits, we give hard dollars if we miss an SLA.” [Emphasis added]
My take on this announcement includes these thoughts:
- Looks like each Google announcement will trigger an aggressive response from Microsoft
- Microsoft is sending a signal to Google and probably to any other company that it intends to protect its customer base. Good cheer and happiness may not be part of the response
- Google must have landed a kaisho (open hand strike). Microsoft’s statement (cited above) suggests to me that Google is not an annoyance; Google is a threat.
More from the battle front as reports arrive.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
YAGG Update: PageRank Tweak or Bug
March 2, 2009
If you are mesmerized by things Google, you will want to navigate to Search Engine Roundtable and read “Google March 2009 PageRank Update or Glitch?” here. The article provides links to a couple of posts that identify what may be a potential glitch or goof as in “yet another Google goof” or YAGG. I know the acronym annoys Alex, a potential Googlephile. The article quotes a Googler who uses the phrase “some kind of glitch”, which may be old news if you were bitten by the Gfail issue a few days ago.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Live Search Changes Round Up
March 2, 2009
The consumer search sector is moribund. Google’s dominance of Web search is old news. Also in the old news category are changes at Ask.com and Microsoft’s Live Search. I commented about the Ask.com frames initiative here. You can find a useful round up of what is new and what seems to be in the pipeline for Live Search, Microsoft’s Google killer, here. LiveSide.net includes links and screenshots. Twitter’s usefulness was evident because information about the upgrade seems to have appeared as a tweet before old media like blogs snagged the story. Real time search is the big news, and I think that’s where the Web indexing war is going to shift. My hunch is that Ask.com, Google.com, Live Search, and Yahoo may find themselves in a bit of a bind unless these companies can shift into gear in this sector. Rebranding and pulling “me too” rabbits from the Web search hat won’t hold the audience. I have no opinion about names changes, fonts in blue and green, and other enhancements. Real time search has to be front and center. If it is, I will take a closer look. If it isn’t, I think the Web search giants may find themselves facing another and potentially more serious challenge. How do I know, LiveSide.net itself points out that it will “be paying close attention to the #MVP09 hashtag”. So much for the ageing, Google-style Web search for the hot stuff.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Another YAGG: Picasa Privacy
March 2, 2009
Philipp Lenssen at Googleblogoscoped wrote “Picasa Privacy Oddity” here. If the information is accurate, the Google has another YAGG (yet another Google glitch) to resolve. Mr. Lenssen wrote:
this goes to show that not password-protecting a sign-in locked album’s image URLs themselves is still not as utterly-security-obsessive as could be (which is noteworthy considering Picasa Web Album’s mixed privacy history of the past).
Alex, once a reader, is not too keen of my YAGG coinage or my pointing out the feet of clay that Googzilla may have. Worth watching I suppose.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Potential Trouble for LexisNexis and Westlaw
March 2, 2009
Most online surfers don’t click to Reed Elsevier’s LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters Westlaw. The reason? These commercial services charge money–quite a lot of money–to access legal documents. Executives at both firms can deliver compelling elevator pitches about the added value each company brings to legal documents. In the pre-crash era, legal indexing was a manual process. Then the cost crunch arrived so both outfits are trying to slap software against the thorny problem of making sense of court documents, rulings, and assorted effluvia of America’s legal factories. I may write about how these two quasi US outfits have monopolized for fee legal information about American law for lawyers, government agencies. Both Reed and Thomson then turn around and sell access to these documents to the agencies that created them in the first place. I wonder if the good senator is aware of this aspect of commercial online services’ busness practices?
What’s the trouble? I bet you thought I was going to mention Google. Wrong. Google is on the edge of indexing legal information in a more comprehensive way. But the right now trouble is Senator Joe Lieberman. Wired reported that the good senator wondered by public documents are not available without a charge. You can read the story “Lieberman Asks, Why Are Court Docs Still Behind Paid Firewall?” here. Senator Lieberman’s question may lead to a hearing. The process could, in my opinion, start a chain reaction that further erodes the revenue Reed Elsevier and Thomson Reuters derive from public documents. Somewhere in the chain, the Google will beef up the legal content in its Uncle Sam service here.
At their core, Reed Elsevier and Thomson Reuters are traditional publishing and information companies. As such, their business model is fragile. Within the present financial pressure cooker, the Lieberman question could blow the lid off these two organization’s for fee legal business. If government agencies shift to a service provided by Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, I think these two dead tree outfits will crash to the forest floor.
What the likelihood of this downside scenario. I would put it at better than 60 percent. Have another view? Share it, please. Set the addled goose straight.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
More on Google MashUp Editor’s Demise
March 2, 2009
Sys-Con has some interesting information. It also has one of those annoying embedded video ads that run when the page displays. Before you navigate here, you may want to turn down your sound or get your mouse ready to turn off the intrusive ad. Sys-con is not a consumer television station.
The article that caught my attention was “Google Axes Mashup Editor to Focus on Cloud Infrastructure” here. The trimming of certain Google services has been a popular blog topic in the last month or two. The Sys-Con artcle does a good job of pulling together the mashup editor story. The idea, according to Google, is that Google wants to push the App Engine front and center. The article also pointed out that when Google finishes porting Jaiku to App Engine, the copmany “will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License.”
Google seems to be making an effort to support open source. Simplifying its products and services is even better.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Ask.com Frames in the Picture
March 2, 2009
Frames and iframes are nifty. Over the years, their use has aroused some controversy. At one time, Google took a dim view of iframes. I have had reports that Google itself uses iframes. Other vendors have employed the technology to allow users to visit sites that are not what they seem. You navigate to another site and then discover that you are not where you want to be. Over the years, I have stumbled across patent documents that include variations of the iframe technology. Some uses are for the purpose of tracking user behavior. Others allow a Web site operator to inject content around the user’s intended destination. I lose interest in this type of cleverness, having lost my enthusiasm for tilting at windmills. There are quite a few clever and tricky folks who find ways to warp a naïf’s Internet experience.
Pandia.com, a news service that I like quite a bit, reported on some frame use at Ask.com, the also-participated Web search vendor. Ask.com for me is a good example of what happens when someone who is good at one thing tries to extend that expertise to another domain unrelated to the first. The outcome of this type of master-of-the-universe thinking is a service like Ask.com. It’s not bad; it’s not good. It’s one thing today; it will be another thing tomorrow. I recall a dinner two years ago when an azure chip consultant told me that Ask.com was on the move. I thought, “This fellow is getting paid to advise publishers about online partners?” Now Ask.com is the search engine of NASCAR. I wonder if any of the Ask.com executive team hangs out with Kentucky’s NASCAR fans? I have. I am not sure this demographic is where the action is for search.
Search Engine Roundtable followed up with its February 27, 2009, story, “Ask.com Crosses The Line: Frames Search Results.” This is a useful write up, and it includes a screenshot. For me, the most interesting comment was:
Searchers are not happy about this at WebmasterWorld. Robzilla said, “this annoys me as both a user and a webmaster, and overall just seems a little desperate.” Senior member, skipfactor, accurately points out that the search ads are not framed in.
What’s my take? Behavior that tricks users or actions that are designed to pump up revenue are part of the present culture norms. When it is a banker paying himself / herself a bonus for losing money or an insurance company refusing to honor a claim, I see behavior that makes me uncomfortable in many places. Why should anyone be surprised that online companies caught in a cash crunch would push into such murky areas. As more people use the Internet, there are more opportunities to snooker users.
The Internet is no longer something new, accessible only to scientists, engineers, and researchers. The Internet is like the Kentucky State Fair. As long as you can get on the grounds, you’re good to go. Last time I checked, the Kentucky State Fair was a mirror of the best and worst in the bluegrass state. I think it is useful to alert users of certain methods, but I don’t think most users know or care about Ask.com. Those who do may be quite happy with whatever Ask.com provides.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
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