Yandex Expands to Storage
April 13, 2012
Yandex is getting frisky or ??????.
Yandex, the leading Russian search engine responsible for 63 percent of search traffic in Russia in, has launched a beta version of a free service that allows users to store their files online, according to the Taume.com article “Yandex Launches Free Storage Service.”
The service, known as Yandex.Disk, allows web users to access their stored files from any internet-enabled device and upload up to 10 GB of files in any format be it documents, photos, music, or videos. Yandex.Disk also automatically saves all attachments to the emails in their Yandex.Mail account which has additional storage space for this purpose.
The article states:
“Yandex.Disk supports synchronization between multiple devices, for example, a text file saved on a home computer can be opened and edited on a laptop at work. Yandex.Disk is accessible via a web interface, as well as via Windows or Mac OS GUI client. Owners of iOS- or Android-based smartphones can also use the service via the Yandex.Mail app.”
Could this be the beginning of a tech Cold War? If Yandex continues integrating its products outside the U.S. and becomes the default search engine for Google rivals such as Apple the American search giant may have finally met its match. What happens if Yandex gets the idea of Amazonizing itself?
Jasmine Ashton, April 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon CloudSearch Demo Available
April 13, 2012
Search Technologies, a search and content processing consulting firm, has a public demonstration of the new Amazon CloudSearch system. The corpus for the demo is Wikipedia. You can check out the demonstration at this link. I ran a query for one of my favorite math guys “Euler”, and this is the result the system displayed. I noticed a latency of about three seconds, but your mileage may vary. With the announcement of the Amazon CloudSearch service, clicking and testing were probably keeping the AWS infrastructure busy.
Several features have been tapped by the Search Technologies’ engineers:
- Facets or hot link to Article Type, Category, and Most Recent Author are display
- The snippet averages about 70 words
- The Categories have a slight highlight.
For more information about Amazon CloudSearch, you can start with Amazon’s own information pages.
For information about Search Technologies, navigate to www.searchtechnologies.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon CloudSearch
April 12, 2012
Well, some of the folks working to bolt a search and retrieval system into “big data”, mobile apps, and cloud vendors’ systems are trying to figure out what to do about Jeff Bezos. The head of Amazon has taken time from his space flight activities to disrupt the world of cloud-based search and retrieval.
The announcements were handled in Amazon’s typical mode. Those who were privy to the new service, which is based on A9 with what looks like some open source goodness inside, had to keep quite. Then Amazon published a chunk of Web pages about the service. You can find most of the basics in this CloudSearch documentation collection.
There are two general interest type blog posts. You may want to check out Dr. Werner Vogels’ “Expanding the Cloud—Introducing Amazon CloudSearch” and the AWS Blog story “Amazon CloudSearch—Start Searching in One Hour for Less Than $100 / Month.”
The system is the “old” A9 search service which received some early life support from Udi Manber, now a Googler. But the features and functions referenced in the documentation suggest that additional work has been done to make facets, snippets, highlighting, and graphic features take advantage of some open source goodness. However, Amazon takes some care to make sure that the provider of the open source goodness is tough to grab. The best example of this method is Amazon’s handling of the Android operating system for the Kindle Fire. Beneath the sluggish interface of the Kindle Fire beats the heart of Android 2.x. Even the Amazon app store runs certain apps, not all of them. The approach works and keeps many of Amazon’s secrets from turning up in Gawker or trendy Silicon Valley blogs. Amazon secrecy is not quite Apple grade, but Amazon is familiar with the orchard.
According to Expanding the Cloud – Introducing Amazon CloudSearch:
Developers set up a Search Domain — a set of resources in AWS that will serve as the home for one collection of data. Developers then access their domain through two HTTP-based endpoints: a document upload endpoint and a query endpoint. As developers send documents to the upload endpoint they are quickly incorporated into the searchable index and become searchable.
Developers can upload data either through the AWS console, from the command-line tools, or by sending their own HTTP POST requests to the upload endpoint.
There are three features that make it easy to configure and customize the search results to meet exactly the needs of the application.
Filtering: Conceptually, this is using a match in a document field to restrict the match set. For example, if documents have a “color” field, you can filter the matches for the color “red”.
Ranking: Search has at least two major phases: matching and ranking. The query specifies which documents match, generating a match set. After that, scores are computed (or direct sort criterion is applied) for each of the matching documents to rank them best to worst. Amazon CloudSearch provides the ability to have customized ranking functions to fine tune the search results.
Faceting: Faceting allows you to categorize your search results into refinements on which the user can further search. For example, a user might search for ‘umbrellas’, and facets allow you to group the results by price, such as $0-$10, $10-$20, $20-$40, etc. Amazon CloudSearch also allows for result counts to be included in facets, so that each refinement has a count of the number of documents in that group. The example could then be: $0-$10 (4 items), $10-$20 (123 items), $20-$40 (57 items), etc.
For more information on the different configuration possibilities visit the Amazon CloudSearch detail page.
Automatic Scaling: Amazon CloudSearch is itself built on AWS, which enables it to handle scale.
Okay, automatic. This sounds like the standard line from every cloud vendor with knowledge of sharding, distributed computing, and work allocation. We noted that the system supports Boolean logic and math operations. That’s good news and long overdue from Amazon.
Our take on Amazon CloudSearch is that Amazon has introduced a service which will allow developers to get out of the business of figuring out how to bolt a third party search solution to their Amazon content. For organizations looking for a silver bullet to kill the on premises search systems, Amazon has taken a quick step into the search disco.
Will Amazon’s CloudSearch become a viable alternative for on premises search? Will Amazon’s new service put additional pressure on the big enterprise companies like Hewlett Packard and Oracle. Both of these outfits have spent big money buying ageing findability solutions. What about Microsoft with its ubiquitous search solutions included with SharePoint? What happens to mid tier vendors like Lexmark Isys or start ups like DataStax and its Enterprise 2.0 service?
We don’t know. What we do know is that Amazon, unlike Google and Facebook, has found a way to enter a service space without looking much like a head on competitor to any other company. Google has not moved too far from its on premises Google Search Appliance. Facebook continues to dither when it comes to full-on search. Amazon’s challenge will be getting its costs under control and finding a way to placate the Wall Street MBAs. Search on Amazon is, in our opinion, a service which is in dire need of improvement.
Perhaps the CloudSearch will impact the way Amazon.com’s book search works? I am still struggling to find a way to NOT out books which are not yet available. I find the method of coping with titles on the iPad 3 Kindle reading app almost unusable.
Can Amazon do better? Yes. Will CloudSearch be that important leap forward? I don’t know. But I am watching, and I have a hunch that other search vendors, partners, and integrators are checking out this most recent blast from Bezos Land.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Desktop Search Moves to the Cloud
April 12, 2012
Tech Crunch’s Colleen Taylor recently reported on a new app called Found, that lets you find and access your documents whether they are on your computer or online, in the article “Found Makes Searching for Files Anywhere Super Simple (and Really Sick).”
According to the article, the San Francisco based app aims to organize the mess of documents that are relevant to our work and personal lives. Found currently plugs into Gmail, Google Documents, and Dropbox and the company says that it will be adding additional integrations in the near future.
Taylor states:
“Once you install it on your computer, looking for things in Found quickly becomes second nature — and you quickly start to wonder about how much time you wasted searching for things before you had it. Of course, the real key will be seeing how snappy the Found app is once more people are using it after the public launch later this spring — nowadays, an app is only as good as it can scale. But at the moment, Found is looking very like a very promising tool for the those of us who are a bit less organized with our files than we’d like to be.”
While the app won’t be released to the public until mid-May, you can see how Found works via an embedded video in Taylor’s article. The notion of a cloud service indexing content on a local machine may give some users pause. We prefer to use behind-the-firewall solutions. Even cloud back ups are solutions which don’t address the issues we face.
Jasmine Ashton, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
MapR Expands Hadoop Connectors
April 4, 2012
This MapR move signals more options for Hadoop users. Talkin’ Cloud reports, “MapR Announces Broad Data Connection Options for Hadoop.” Writer Brian Taylor specifies:
The data connections, according to the press release, enable a ‘wide range of data ingress and egress alternatives for customers,’ including direct file-based access using standard tools; direct database connectivity; Hadoop-specific connectors via Sqoop, Flume and Hive; and access to popular data warehouses and applications using custom connectors.
Sqoop, Flume, and Hive are all open source projects at Apache; the first two are still in incubation.
MapR is getting a hand on this project from tech providers Pentaho and Talend, who will supply direct integration with MapR Distribution. In addition, Tableau Software is helping to promote the new data connection options.
Co-founded by Xoogler M.C. Srivas, MapR has built on the work of developers behind the open source Hadoop, making it “more reliable, more affordable, more manageable and significantly easier to use.” MapR boasts that its innovations help its customers get the most out of the big data phenomenon.
Watch for our forthcoming open source analytics blog. Roll out is April 9, 2012.
Cynthia Murrell, March 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon Web Services Explained
April 2, 2012
You can make the Amazon cloud work for you if you attend to the type of information we found here; Digg presents “Cracking the Cloud: an Amazon Web Services Primer.” The article notes:
It’s safe to say that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become synonymous with cloud computing; it’s the platform on which some of the Internet’s most popular sites and services are built. But just as cloud computing is used as a simplistic catchall term for a variety of online services, the same can be said for AWS—there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than you might think.
Writer Matthew Braga goes on to elaborate in detail on the workings of AWS. He defines and explains Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), Elastic Load Balance (ELB), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), and Simple Storage Service (S3). Braga emphasizes that these are just the core components, and that there are many other features of AWS that he doesn’t have space to cover here. What he does describe, though, is quite useful information for the tech reader.
Cynthia Murrell, April 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Basho Upgrades Some Services
March 29, 2012
Basho is in the search business. We monitor the company’s Riak Search product. today we notice that the company has rolled out an “all new” Riak CS. The “CS” refers to cloud storage. We are generally suspicious of categorical affirmatives in general. In this particular announcement, Basho asserts “at any scale.” You can read the somewhat art history inspired announcement at this Basho link.
The company asserts:
Riak CS is a multi-tenant, distributed, S3-compatible cloud storage platform that enables enterprises and service providers to launch public or private cloud services. Built on top of Riak, the world’s most advanced distributed database, Riak CS provides horizontal scale, extreme durability and low operational overhead in a distributed object storage system.
This is a buzzword fiesta. We assume that one finds content within the categorical affirmative charged system using the company’s Riak Search system.
We are monitoring developments. Notice we did not insert “all” because that is a logical impossibility for an addled goose. Art history majors engaging in PR puffery are not as restrained perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, March 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne Merge
March 22, 2012
Partners merge as Google goes its own direction in the enterprise. “Top Google and Salesforce Partners Merge, Form Global Cloud Co. Cloud Sherpas,” announces The Wall Street Journal. Valuable Google partner Cloud Sherpas is joining forces with Salesforce top partner GlobalOne Group. The new company will use the colorful Cloud Sherpas moniker. Details of the deal have not been released.
The CEO of the new Cloud Sherpas has reason to believe his company will be successful. The article reports:
“Many vendors claim to sell software that runs in the cloud, but Google and Salesforce have become two of the most significant cloud software platforms for all sizes of businesses, according to David Northington, the former chief executive of GlobalOne who is now chief executive of the combined company.
“Also, traditional IT services companies accustomed to offering expensive software that runs inside corporate walls and may take months or years to deploy are still catching up to the demand for cloud skills, he said, and that should give Cloud Sherpas and its customers a head start.”
Taking to the cloud can provide definite advantages; it can reduce costs and provide finer control over technology. However, because the field is changing so rapidly, businesses look to providers to double as cloudy advisers. With the experience behind both Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne, Northington believes his newly blended company is well positioned to provide such guidance.
No employees were axed in the merger. The new company will retain its 177 workers from GlobalOne and the 84 from the original CloudSherpas. In fact, they are actively hiring. Not only that, but the company anticipates acquiring more businesses and raising more money in the near future.
Now, that’s the way to set your sights sky high.
Stephen E. Arnold, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PR Push for Azaleos and Fast Search
March 14, 2012
My email overflowed this morning with descriptions of Azaleos, its expertise in Microsofty stuff, and Fast Search. I am on the ball with regard to Fast Search, its legal back story, and the issues associated with getting the system to deliver useful results to users on time and on budget. You will find the Azaleos blog quite interesting. I noted no recent postings about Fast Search. For some current information about the search system, you may want to check out this Beyond Search write up. I ran a query using the Azaleos search system and got three hits about Fast Search. The coverage of search suggests that Azaleos may be succumbing to a communications expert’s inputs about how to sell search services.
What was new was the statement in MSPmentor’s “Azaleos Cloud Gets Microsoft Fast Search Server 2010”. How does a Microsoft partner “get” Fast Search? I don’t know. Maybe pay a fee? Here’s the passage I noted:
…the company’s Managed Enterprise Search solution addresses a different need. It gives enterprises the ability to remotely design, configure, monitor and manage FAST Search Server 2010. According to Azaleos, the development is big news for its customers because the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 can perform searches in “an interactive and visual format,” in addition to the basic search functions that the Microsoft SharePoint Server provides. The FAST Search Server is a high-visibility solution, which brings its own set of complex issues to the table for enterprise IT departments. But Azaleos claims its Managed Enterprise Search solution eliminates the challenges associated with high visibility applications and can keep the FAST Search Server available and running at top speed.
My thoughts after reading this included:
- There is an implicit assumption that Microsoft’s cloud search will be Fast centric. My own view of this is that the assumption may be out of kilter. The reasons include performance, extensibility, and customization. Fast Search can be turned into a capable performer, but the “cloud” angle implies a certain standardization of features. So of Fast Search’s vast capabilities what will the core service do? Keywords, clustering, linguistic analysis, entity extraction, sentiment analysis, relationship mapping, etc. My point is that customers may want all of these functions and that suggests the Fast Search from Azaleos may be very different from the Fast Search marketing collateral’s assertions.
- Can Azaleos maintain an “interactive and visual format” when the content throughput increases. The challenge of keeping indexes fresh equates to resources. Resources, in my experience, cost money. The fix may be to gate how much data are processed in order to keep the fees acceptable to customers. Price spikes are not encouraging to some licensees in my experience.
- The assertion of “available and running at top speed” is an interesting one. My thought was, “Relative to what?” Are we comparing a small corpus with weekly index refreshes or are we talking about 100 million documents refreshed in near real time? I am not sure Fast in an on premises installation with original Fast engineers babysitting the hugely complex system with often unexpected dependencies can be a challenge to keep perking along at optimum performance levels.
I want to watch how this business unfolds. After all, a PR blitz which puts several stories in front of me signals some real enthusiasm on the part of the Azaleos stakeholders.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Discounts in the Cloud from Amazon
March 11, 2012
Orchard Street discounts arrive in the cloud.
We say Amazon is both exploiting Microsoft Azure weaknesses and responding to customer complaints; ZDNet reports, “Amazon drops cloud prices worldwide (again).” Exactly where reductions will be seen depend on region and type of cloudy instance. Clients using Elastic Compute Cloud, Elastic Map Reduce, its relational database service RDS, and ElastiCache benefitted right away.
The attention gives Amazon a chance to highlight its usability by companies great and small. The write up notes:
Despite the company namedropping Foursquare and Samsung as its two prime examples of the model customer, it goes to show that Amazon’s cloud services are not just for the startup, the avid developer, and the bank on the corner. Big names use it, and rely on it, and Amazon is keen to stress how valuable its service is compared to its Microsoft competitor.
Reducing cloud prices has become a habit for Amazon; this is the nineteenth time in six years. At least they’re flexible. All this cutting keeps pressure on primary competitor Microsoft. We think it also has to do with appeasing unhappy customers. We understand, though, why the company wouldn’t emphasize that detail.
One outcome of Amazon’s price cutting is that its margins may come under increased pressure. Amazon is going for the throat in a number of business sectors. The problem is that the tactics can be expensive. Maybe Amazon can make up the costs with volume?
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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