Perfecting Web Site Semantics
August 6, 2012
Web site search is most often frustrating, and at its worst, a detriment to customers and commerce. Fabasoft Mindbreeze, a company heralded for its advances in enterprise search, is bringing its semantic specialization to the world of Web site search with Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite. Daniel Fallmann, Fabasoft Mindbreeze CEO, highlights the features of the new product in his blog entry, “4 Points for Perfect Website Semantics.”
Fallmann lays out the problem:
The problem: Standard search machines, in particular the one provided by CMS, are unproductive and don’t consider the website’s sophisticated structure. The best example: enter the search term ‘product’ and the search delivers no results, even though product is its own category on the site. Even if the search produces a result for another term, there’s nothing more than a ‘relatively un-motivating list of links,’ not really much help to a website visitor.
Using semantics in the search means that the Web site is being understood, not just keyword searched. Automatic indexing preserves the existing site structure, while providing hassle-free search for the customer. In addition, InSite benefits the Web site developer, in that he/she can see how users are navigating the site and which elements are most often searched.
The attractive “behind-the-scenes” functioning of Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite means that customers benefit from the intuitive, semantic search without the distraction of a clunky search layer. Satisfy your customers and your developers by exploring InSite today.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 6, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Customers Value Effective Web Site Search
August 2, 2012
A successful Web site search is essential in today’s market. Customers expect a pleasant appearance, intuitive interface, and effective search in public facing Web sites. Those features can all be added with the least amount of effort by choosing Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite. Fabasoft Mindbreeze has long been a leader in enterprise search, but the newer InSite product enables customers to access effective search, outside your organization’s enterprise.
Registration is easy and includes a free 28 day trial. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite will crawl your site and complete an index of your content.
Read what one customer, Dr. Manfred Weiss of Computerwelt, is saying:
We want to stand out from the crowd with a top internet presence. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite is part of this strategy. Our readers value the service of a perfect search. Regardless of which of our portals the information is on, Mindbreeze finds it. Since the search function is operated as a Cloud service, we save time and money.
Do not worry about installation or configuration. Complete your registration now and let Fabasoft Mindbreeze do the work for you. Organizing your enterprise is no longer enough, set yourself apart from the pack by presenting an efficient search on your public facing Web site with Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 2, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Google Chases Amazon Into the Cloud
July 31, 2012
Is an atmospheric price war coming between Amazon and Google? Could be; Wired Cloudline reports, “Google Builds Out Cloud Platform with Partner Program.” Amazon has been working hard to build up its off-site platform, particularly with its attractive partner network. Now Google aims to provide some competition. Writer Mike Barton reveals:
“Google is now looking to get its cloud platform out there in the ‘channel’ with its partner program. ‘As a business, we know you spend a lot of valuable time thinking about IT solutions. We think it’s important to provide you with the best options for your business, which is why we are thrilled to introduce the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program,’ Eric Morse, Head of Sales and Business Development for Google Cloud Platform, wrote in a blog post. ‘This program provides our partners with the tools, training and resources they need to successfully address your business’ IT needs.'”
As with Amazon, two types of partner are specified under Google’s program. Service partners supply developers with consulting and implementation services for the various Google Cloud Platform products. Technology partners furnish tools that integrate with Google’s platform or use one of Google’s services as a foundation for their products. Navigate here to see a list of Google’s cloudy partners.
Cynthia Murrell, July 31, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, July 23 to July 27
July 30, 2012
The growing availability of cloud based and open source analytics and the resulting beefed-up security demands surrounding such easily accessible software are the topics pervasive in this week’s posts on Inteltrax. As usual the nature and existence of ‘big data’ was discussed and the post, “Big Data is Analytics for Dummies”, accurately gets to the heart of the matter using text from the Tech Week Europe article as evidence.
“The author is probably spot-on with his analysis of the ‘big data’ hype invading industries around the world. Being right doesn’t change the fact that thanks to open source and cloud technologies more companies than ever before now have access to analytics. If the sage analysts need to dumb down their definitions then so be it. Thankfully, there are analytics providers committed to the industries and companies previously not invited into the analytics club.”
All that talk of openness among comrades came to a point with the announcement that Datameer was offering their analytics free of charge to academics mired in the muck of unstructured data. As the post, “Datameer Offers Free License to Academic Researchers”, quotes Market Watch,
“Academic researchers are particularly challenged by the massive amounts of data needed for their research. Collecting and analyzing data requires enormous computational effort and has typically been slow and tedious, often requiring a computer science background. Datameer offers an end-user focused tool that enables researchers themselves to integrate large quantities of data, do complex analysis in a familiar spreadsheet-like interface, and then visualize their results to easily understand, communicate and share their findings.”
Open and free are great especially in the world of costly analytics but both come with a price – heightened security risks. Inteltrax author Catherine Lamsfuss tackled security concerns with the post, “Security Top Concern for Cloud Based Software”. Live Mint compared cloud breaches to a door lock – it’s not a question of if the door will be broken down, but when. The article summarizes the state of security surrounding today’s cloud.
“These security issues should be at the forefront of companies’ decision making process when it comes to choosing a cloud based analytics provider. All cloud based software is protected to some degree but if protecting sensitive information is important than a thorough investigation into a provider’s security background is due.”
Whether one’s company is struggling with finding affordable cloud based analytics, applying open-source to existing systems or trying to strengthen security Digital Reasoning is a solid analytics provider more than capable of helping. With an extensive relationship with the intelligence community they understand the need for security but also are realistic about budgets, especially those of small and midsized businesses.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
July 30, 2012
Microsoft Embraces Cloud in Google Battle Move
July 25, 2012
It appears Microsoft is putting much focus on the cloud with the upcoming release of Office 2013 in an attempt to stay competitive with Google Apps.
The battle is highlighted in the article on ComputerWorld, “Microsoft Office 2013 Fires Shot at Google’s Enterprise Push.” Analysts say the move to the cloud is necessary for Microsoft to keep up with the search giant in the world of cloud-based office apps. Microsoft’s release preview included the cloud up front with multi-device tools and touch screen capabilities backing up the presentation.
We learn in the article:
“According to a May report from research firm Gartner, Google is far outpacing Microsoft in the cloud business. Compared with Microsoft, Google is winning one-third to one-half of new, paid-for, cloud-based office system seats, the analyst firm reported.
‘Google’s call to action is appealing to organizations generally not pleased with their current situation,” Gartner noted. “Primarily, the disaffected are moving to Google Apps, legitimizing that choice, and helping Google grow its base and defy all the early predictions of Google’s defeat’”
A full preview is available at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en. Our opinion? We think neither company seems particularly concerned about search. How does one find a document amidst tens of thousands? Dropping buzzwords around does not make either company more navigationally easy to use, nor does it completely satisfy information-hungry users.
Andrea Hayden, July 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Reasons for Amazon Cloud Service Shut Down Explored
July 24, 2012
Cloud computing may be affordable and energy efficient, but it is not without fail despite the efforts of marketing language might try to present it as otherwise. The recent Amazon EC2 Outage received some attention by Dmitriy Samovskiy in his article, “Applying 5 Whys to Amazon EC2 Outage.” He describes the reasons behind the service disruption which occurred on Friday June 29, 2012.
Using a deductive dialogue inquiring why this outage occurred, the author eventually states the following:
“The EC2 and EBS APIs are implemented on multi-Availability Zone replicated datastores. These datastores are used to store metadata for resources such as instances, volumes, and snapshots. To protect against datastore corruption, currently when the primary copy loses power, the system automatically flips to a read-only mode in the other Availability Zones until power is restored to the affected Availability Zone or until we determine it is safe to promote another copy to primary.”
Heavily immersed in a world of cloud computing, we have essentially replaced the local crash with an “out there” crash. Cloud computing is the future, but that does not mean we do not see room for critique as the feeling of helplessness creeps upon us when a crash occurs out there in the cloud.
Megan Feil, July 24, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
Cloud Data Protection Offerings for eDiscovery
July 24, 2012
I would have thought that eDiscovery vendors would have stayed away from cloud based storage due to cybercriminals vamping up their attacks, but if you can make the cloud secure enough to protect client data it could work. MarketWatch reports “Lighthouse eDiscovery Deploys Riverbed Whitewater to Improve Cloud-Based Data Protection.” Lighthouse eDiscovey has selected Riverbed Technology and their Whitewater cloud storage gateway to replace its very old tape-based backup disaster recovery system. The change will allow Lighthouse to improve their eDiscovery practices, securely accelerate backup, and recovery options to the public data for better data protection.
As I guessed Lighthouse was a little weary of the cloud, until they could verify its security:
“`While cloud storage was an attractive option for us due to its immediate availability, Riverbed was a critical component of making disaster recovery in the cloud a reality. We were able to configure the Whitewater gateway in about an hour without having to replace our existing backup tool, Symantec Backup Exec,’ said Marc Larkin, System Administrator at Lighthouse. ‘Our data protection strategy is much more reliable than with tape and our backups feel local!’”
Secure data protection is one the most important aspects when researching eDiscovery and litigation support software. If data are not protected and backed-up, clients rights could be violated and evidence could possibly be lost. The fancy math and predictive outputs may be for nought, if the source is compromised.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Amazon Creates A Stir on Twitter and in the Blogosphere
July 23, 2012
Benjamin Coe spent a recent Friday night dealing with the AWS outage. Based on the article he wrote on his blog entitled “My Friday Night with AWS,” it seems he may have spent quite a bit of time on Twitter checking the pulse of AWS users as well.
He chalked up his experience as a testament to the infrastructure of Attachments.me. However, those on the twittersphere either complained about how awful AWS is or they complained about how no one builds appropriately redundant infrastructure. His thoughts are that redundancy comes with a cost.
He states:
“The only way to ensure close to 100% up time is replicating your entire infrastructure. Ultimately it’s a trade off. Are the risks associated with parts of a system not having redundancy offset by reduced infrastructure costs and complexity? It’s obvious that Pinterest, Instagram, Heroku, and many other sites (cough, attachments.me), had parts of their sites that were not redundant. I can almost guarantee that in many cases this was a conscious choice. From my perspective, a lack of total redundancy can sometimes be an acceptable risk if approached responsibly.”
We have to hand it to cloud technologies to keep things exciting. No local data? no problem. Uptime, reliability, and great communication are characteristics of some of the new cloud services. The problem is, “Which service? and when?”
Megan Feil, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
One Vision of the Future of Enterprise Architecture
July 22, 2012
SYS-Con Media recently published an article detailing the impact of Cloud, big data analytics and mobility on enterprise architecture in the article “The New Enterprise Reference Architecture.”
For those who do not already know, the term Enterprise Architecture refers to the process of moving business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.
This article is based on the assumption that a lot has changed over the past couple of years regarding the ways that enterprises chart their enterprise architecture. It provides readers with a diagram of “the new enterprise reference architecture” along with accompanying text providing a detailed explanation of the role of each layer.
When discussing the enterprise search layer, the article states:
“While the data virtualization layer provides a common layer to access all the disparate data sources, we still needed robust searching capabilities on top of it and hence this layer is important. Some of the attributes of this layer are :
- Keyword based search
- Auto Correction
- Thesaurus expansion
- Relevance Ranking
This layer works closely with the context aware content layer. Products like Microsoft FAST Search Engine, Google Search Engine will fall under this category.”
While the new enterprise architecture is more complex than the old one, it also is filled with more possibilities. Our only question is what happened to enterprise search as a platform?
Jasmine Ashton, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
With 40 Million in the Bank Meraki to Expand
July 17, 2012
Josh Constine of Tech Crunch recently reported on wireless provider Meraki’s plans for expansion in the article “Meraki Plans to Conquer Enterprise Wi-Fi, Hire Like Crazy With $40 M in New Funding.”
According to the article, Meraki, a retailer of wireless LAN devices, security appliances, and the cloud architecture software, is using the $40 million that it has raised from investors and debt financing to keep a cash cushion, pay for its new headquarters, and aggressively hire in sales so it can break away from competitors.
Constine writes:
“A source close to the company says Meraki was spending around $65 million a year, and Q2 2012 saw the company rake in over $20 million — more than it was shooting for. The $40 million cushion will protect it in case expenditures rise for supporting its 20,000 customer networks or if it wants to rapidly pursue a new market as it competes with dedicated companies like like Aerohive and giants like Cisco.”
Our own Stephen Arnold, wrote about Meraki back in 2010 in one of his for fee columns “Google Broadband: Is There an Enterprise Angle?” At that point, the company was an unknown start-up that had received interest from Google.
After discussing the pros and cons of Google investing in Meraki and offering high-speed wireless connectivity with bundled applications at a competitive price, Arnold concludes:
“Another likely impact is that telecommunications companies, network equipment vendors and enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and their partners will have to respond. Increased competition is often a benefit, setting off even more innovation. Bottom line: Google, Kansas, may only be the tip of a large, virtual iceberg floating in the cloud drifting toward the enterprise.”
Fast forward two years and it appears that Meraki is preparing for the very competition that Arnold predicted. Funny how things come full circle.
Jasmine Ashton, July 17, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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