Datameer: Action, Not Talk, about Data Governance
June 5, 2015
A happy quack to Datameer. The company is providing tools to deal with issues related to data quality, compliance, and security. If you Hadoop, Datameer is taking action, not just talking with regard to Hadoop crunching. With “end users” fooling around with analytics, outputs can be exciting. Some Statistics 101 students would be reluctant to turn these “reports” is at the end of the term. For MBAs, point and click analyses are quick and easy. Outputs? Hey, isn’t anything generated by a computer correct?
Navigate to “Datameer Adds Governance Tools for Hadoop Analytics.”
Accordin to the write up:
New data-profiling tools, for example, let companies find and transparently fix issues like dirty, inconsistent or invalid data at any stage in a complex analytics pipeline. Datameer’s capabilities include data profiling, data statistics monitoring, metadata management and impact analysis. Datameer also supports secure data views and multi-stage analytics pipelines, and it provides LDAP/Active Directory integration, role-based access control, permissions and sharing, integration with Apache Sentry 1.4 and column and row anonymization functions.
The source is one of the IDC/IDG properties, so check with Datameer to make certain you are getting the straight scoop.
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2015
Users Hope SharePoint 2016 Eases Integration Woes
June 4, 2015
SharePoint integration is often mentioned as one of the lowest points of user satisfaction for the whole solution. However, to be fair, SharePoint has very drastically moved away from its very simple start. Its original purpose was document sharing, and probably just Office documents at that. Now the platform is expected to handle any type of file constantly emerging in the fast-moving world of content. IT Business Edge takes a good look at the issue in its article, “Why SharePoint 2016 Needs to Address Integration Shortcomings.”
The article begins on a humorous note:
“SharePoint integration must be really hard, judging by this new infographic, “Seven Alcoholic Drinks to Imbibe as Your SharePoint Integration Project Fails.” . . . Why is SharePoint so hard to integrate? There’s the obvious reason, of course: Microsoft’s built it for Microsoft ecosystems with little concern for heterogeneous environments. Still, that’s not the only reason it’s a pain. In fact, SharePoint had integration problems even with other Microsoft solutions, as this 2012 post by an application architect shows.”
There are clearly issues with SharePoint integration, and in light of them, head SharePoint execs are discussing improvements to the 2016 platform. While it will take some time before it is known whether the changes do improve user satisfaction, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com for the latest updates. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and his Web service gives a good deal of attention to SharePoint. In fact, his dedicated SharePoint feed is a good place to start for the latest need-to-know information.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 4, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
SharePoint Grasps for Relevancy in the Realm of Social
June 2, 2015
Ever since the rise of social platforms, SharePoint has attempted to keep up. While many users would say that these attempts were struggled behind the majority of social technology, Microsoft was making an effort to keep their enterprise heading in the social direction. The battle has been long and hard and Redmond Magazine gives the latest update in its article, “Microsoft Looks To Bring Social Back to SharePoint with Office Graph.”
The article describes how Microsoft is more or less stuck between a rock and a hard place in their game of social “keep-up”:
“Not that an enterprise-class team and document collaboration vendor should try to match the capabilities of what are, more often than not, a collection of unsecure, noncompliant, sometimes untested tools . . . But here’s the rub: if you don’t offer end users the tools they want, and make key features available on the mobile devices (and operating systems) they want to use, all of those security, auditing, compliance, and reporting standards will become irrelevant because people won’t use your platform.”
So Microsoft continues to battle for relevancy. Its latest move is Office Graph, and analysts are optimistic that this social layer may finally be a way for Microsoft to deliver on its promise of personalized and intelligent social solutions. To stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the social world of SharePoint, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com, in particular his SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and follower of SharePoint. His reporting offers a succinct insight into the developments that affect productivity and user experience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google’s Corporate Sovereignty Is Not Confined to US
June 1, 2015
The article on The Daily Dot titled The United States of Google reacts to the information that Google now spends more on lobbying than any other company. This may not come as a huge surprise, but it does carry heavy implications about the power and affluence of the country- er, company. This explains a great deal of the tension that Google faces in Europe, where competition is more favorable than monopoly. The article refers to the event in 2010 of Google leaving its partnership with China after controversy over censorship. The article explains,
In one sense, this was a righteous step for Google, demonstrating that they knew how to put its foot down in the face of toxic regimes. But in another sense, it was a scary moment, too. After all, do we really want Google to be more effective than the U.S. itself when it comes to dealing with tyrants?… “Does Google have more direct impact on human rights and freedoms in China than the Obama Administration?”
The article goes on to discuss what “Googlestan” might look like in a very lighthearted yet ominous tone. The ubiquity of Google is at the center of the concern- who can get through a day without relying on some aspect of Google’s services, from Gmail to Chrome to search? By becoming so dependent on a company as individuals, a nation and perhaps even a world, have we created a monster?
Chelsea Kerwin, June 1, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Altiar And dtSearch Combine
May 27, 2015
Sometimes when items are combine they create something even better, such as Oreos and peanut butter, Disney and Marvel, and Netflix and original series. EContentMag alerted us that a new team-up is underway between two well known companies. The press release title says it all, “Altiar Cloud-Based ECM Platform Is Embedding The dtSearch Engine.” Altair is an enterprise content management platform that has been specifically used by Microsoft Azure. The popular dtSearch platform has been searching through terabytes since 1991 and is referred to as a powerful search tool. Embedding dtSearch into the Altiar core will make it a more powerful ECM.
Altiar is a popular ECM and can only be improved by dtSearch:
“A cloud-based service, Altiar includes rapid setup, scalability, and storage. It can accept any type of file, from PowerPoint to streaming video, as well as providing a host of tools and services to create custom content pages, newsletters, personal zones, and the like. The platform lets users not only access content from any connected device, but also manage, share, and track content, including features like email alerts.”
Microsoft is not a main player in the cloud computing and Microsoft Azure is supposed to drive more customers to them. Anything, like this new Altair improving its search will make it more appealing.
Whitney Grace, May 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Welcome YottaSearch
May 26, 2015
There is another game player in the world of enterprise search: Yotta Data Technologies announced their newest product: “Yotta Data Technologies Announces Enterprise Search And Big Data Analytics Platform.” Yotta Data Technologies is known for its affordable and easy to use information management solutions. Yotta has increased its solutions by creating YottaSearch, a data analytics and search platform designed to be a data hub for organizations.
“YottaSearch brings together the most powerful and agile open source technologies available to enable today’s demanding users to easily collect data, search it, analyze it and create rich visualizations in real time. From social media and email for Information Governance and eDiscovery to web and network server logs for Information Technology Operations Analytics (ITOA), YottaSearch™ provides the Big Data Analytics for users to derive information intelligence that may be critical to a project, case, business unit or market.”
YottaSearch uses the popular SaaS model and offers users not only data analytics and search, but also knowledge management, information governance, eDiscovery, and IT operations analytics. Yotta decided to create YottaSearch to earn revenue from the burgeoning big data market, especially the enterprise search end.
The market is worth $1.7 billion, so Yotta has a lot of competition, but if they offer something different and better than their rivals they stand a chance to rise to the top.
Whitney Grace, May 26, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Hadoop Has Accessories
May 25, 2015
ZDNet’s article, “Why Hadoop Is Hard, And How To Make It Easier” alludes that Hadoop was going to disappear at some point. We don’t know about you, but the open source big data platform has a huge support community and hundreds have adopted it, if not thousands of companies, have deployed Hadoop. The article argues otherwise, citing that a recent Gartner survey found that only 26 percent of the corporate world is actively using it.
One of the biggest roadblocks for Hadoop is that it is designed for specialist to tinker with and it is not an enterprise tool. That might change when Microsoft releases its new SQL Server 2016. With the new server, Microsoft will add Polybase that bridges Hadoop to the server. Microsoft is still the most popular OS for enterprise systems and when this upgrade becomes available Hadoop will be a more viable enterprise option.
What is the counterpoint?
“It’s also a counterpoint to the interpretation of Gartner’s survey that says Hadoop is somehow languishing. What’s languishing is the Enterprise’s willingness to invest in a new, premium skill set, and the low productivity involved in working with Hadoop through its motley crew of command-line shells and scripting languages. A good data engine should work behind the scenes and under the covers, not in the spotlight.”
So once more enterprise systems need to be updated, which is comparable to how Hadoop needs to be augmented with add-on features to make it more accessible, such as mature analytics tools, DBMS abstraction layers and Hadoop-as-a-Service cloud offerings.
Whitney Grace, May 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Big Data: The Shrinky Dink Approach
May 21, 2015
I read “To Handle Big Data, Shrink It.” Years ago I did a job for a unit of a blue chip consulting firm. My task was to find a technology which allowed a financial institution to query massive data sets without bringing the computing system to its knees and causing the on-staff programmers to howl with pain.
I located an outfit in what is now someplace near a Prague-like location. The company was CrossZ, and it used a wonky method of compression and a modified version of SQL with a point and click interface. The idea was that a huge chunk of the bank data—for instance, the transactions in the week before mother’s day—to be queried for purchasing-related trends. Think fraud. Think flowers. Think special promotions that increased sales. I have not kept track of the low profile, secretive company. I did think of it when I read the “shrink Big Data story.”
This passage resonated and sparked my memory:
MIT researchers will present a new algorithm that finds the smallest possible approximation of the original matrix that guarantees reliable computations. For a class of problems important in engineering and machine learning, this is a significant improvement over previous techniques. And for all classes of problems, the algorithm finds the approximation as quickly as possible.
The point is that it is now 2015 and a mid 1990s notion seems to be fresh. My hunch is that the approach will be described as novel, innovative, and a solution to the problems Big Data poses.
Perhaps the MIT approach is those things. For me, the basic idea is that Big Data has to be approached in a rational way. Otherwise, how will queries of “Big Data” which has been processed and a stream of new or changed “Big Data” be processed in a way that is affordable, is computable, and is meaningful to a person who has no clue what is “in” the Big Data.
Fractal compression, recursive methods, mereological techniques, and other methods are a good idea. I am delighted with the notion that Big Data has to be made small in order to be more useful to companies with limited budgets and a desire to answer some basic business questions with small data.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2015
Long-term Plans for SharePoint
May 21, 2015
Through all the iterations of SharePoint, it seems that Microsoft has wised up and is finally giving customers more of what they want. The release of SharePoint Server 2016 shows a shift back toward on-premises installations, and yet there will still be functions supported through the cloud. This new hybrid emphasis provides a third pathway through which users are experiencing SharePoint. The CMS Wire article, “3 SharePoint Paths for the Next 10 Years,” covers all the details.
The article begins:
“Microsoft Office 365 has proven to be a major disruption of how companies use SharePoint to meet business requirements. Rumors, fear, uncertainty and doubt proliferate around Microsoft’s plans for SharePoint’s future releases, as well as the support of critical features and functionality companies rely on . . . So, taking into account Office 365, the question is: How will companies be using SharePoint over the next 10 years?”
Stephen E. Arnold of ArnoldIT.com is a leader in SharePoint, with a lifelong career in search. His SharePoint feed is a great resource for users and managers alike, or anyone who needs to keep on top of the latest developments. It may be that the hybrid solution is a way to keep on-premises users happy while they still benefit from the latest cloud functions like Delve and OneDrive.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Open Source Conquers Proprietary Software, Really?
May 19, 2015
Open source is an attractive option for organizations wanting to design their own software as well as saving money of proprietary licenses. ZDNet reports that “It’s An Open Source World-78 Percent of Companies Run Open Source Software”, but the adopters do not manage their open source systems very well. Every year Black Duck Software, an open source software logistics and legal solutions provider, and North Bridge, a seed to growth venture capital firm, run the Future of Open Source Survey. Organizations love open source, but
“Lou Shipley, Black Duck’s CEO, said in a statement, ‘In the results this year, it has become more evident that companies need their management and governance of open source to catch up to their usage. This is critical to reducing potential security, legal, and operational risks while allowing companies to reap the full benefits OSS provides.’”
The widespread adoption is due to people thinking that open source software is easier to scale, has fewer security problems, and much faster to deploy. Organizations, however, do not have a plan to manage open source, an automated code approval process, or have an inventory of open source components. Even worse is that they are unaware of the security vulnerabilities.
It is great that open source is being recognized as a more viable enterprise solution, but nobody knows how to use it.
Whitney Grace, April 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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