The 2011 Search Trends from Forrester
September 12, 2011
The wave which was supposed to be a tsunami seemed to become one of the lapping ripples that my goose pond enjoys. Slap, slap, slap. No roar, crash, thunder. Just slap, slap, slap. Boring.
Bill Ives’ Portals and KM blog examines a new report in “Forrester on Enterprise Search Trends.” The report was, as the title suggests, put out by Forrester and examines “six key trends to watch” in enterprise search. We monitor the trends in enterprise search here at the goose pond in Harrod’s Creek, and we take an interest in what the poobahs, pundits, wizards, and unemployed English majors generate in their “real” reports.
The six “trends” examined in the report strike us as similar to vanilla wafer cookies. You decide because we are biased toward our own work in this unusual enterprise software sector. Each of the Forrester trends seems to us to be an extension of existing directions. For example, “search managers will initiate business conversations, not gather requirements.” Is that such a seismic shift? I’d bet a list of “requirements” will still be in that IT worker’s notes at the end of that meeting. Then there’s, “business leaders will dictate the scope of search.” Well, sort of. There is the commoditizing angle and the search enabled application movement. But business leaders are important if these management wizards pay attention to finding information within their organization. See the article for the other “trends.”
The write up observes:
As the industry standards for search evolve, the report predicts that vendors will change their products to adapt to new customer investment trends with changes in semantics capabilities and increased usage of search-based applications (SBA).
Well, that’s just business, isn’t it? Any company which fails to adapt is out of luck. Just because something has evolved doesn’t make it a new craze. We wonder: do some azure chip consultants recycle what’s in the Beyond Search blog? Please let us know if you spot any examples to sit along side the comment made to our beloved goose Stephen E Arnold about a certain azure chip consulting firm enjoining its new hires to read the free information available at ArnoldIT.com as prep for these talented art history majors’ advisory career in search technology.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, an company in Oslo, Norway that published Stephen E Arnold’s most recent monograph about enterprise search, The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. No trends it that report, however. Mr. Arnold confines himself to an analysis of what the six leading vendors’ search systems actually deliver. Which is the best? Mr. Arnold favors Exalead in his new Search 2012: The Incredible Shrinking Market for Search, available on site or via a webinar.
When Social and Search Meet in the Enterprise
September 8, 2011
Organizations are embracing Microsoft SharePoint as a platform for collaboration and other social online messaging. “If You Must Have In-House Social Tools, Go with SharePoint” is representative of the flood of information about SharePoint’s utility for collaborative activities.
J. Peter Bruzzese said:
he good news, at least from the SharePoint perspective, is that you have a tremendous amount of control over the amount of information people can share. For example, by deploying the User Profile Service Application in a SharePoint server farm, you can deploy My Sites and My Profile options to your users. They can then enter their own profile information, upload images of themselves for a profile picture, create a personal page with a document library (both personal and shared), tag other people’s sites and information, and search for people within the organization based on their profiles. The SharePoint administrator can control the extent to which the sharing occurs. You can adjust the properties in the profile page, turning options on or off and adding new properties if needed. You can turn off the I Like It and Tags & Notes features, and you can even delete tags or notes your corporate policy disapproves of. You can access profile information and make changes if needed. And you don’t have to turn on My Sites or let people create their own blog and so on: It’s not an all-or-nothing situation with these tools (ditto with third-party tools).
The excellent write up does a good job of explaining SharePoint from a high level.
There are three points which one wants to keep in mind:
First, collaborative content puts additional emphasis on managing the content generated by the users of social components within SharePoint. In most cases, short message are not an issue. What is important, however, is capturing as much information about the information as possible. One cannot rely on users to provide context for some comments. Not surprisingly, additional work is needed to ensure that social messages have sufficient context to make the information in a short message meaningful to a person who may be reviewing a number of documents of greater length. To implement this type of feature, a SharePoint licensee will want to have access to systems, methods, and experts familiar with context enhancement, not just key word indexing.
Second, the social content is often free flowing. The engineering for a “plain vanilla” SharePoint is often sufficiently robust to handle typical office documents. However, if a high volume flow of social content is produced within SharePoint, “plain vanilla” implementations may exhibit some slow downs. Again, throwing hardware at a problem may work in certain situations but often additional modifications to SharePoint may be required to deliver the performance users expect. Searching for a social message with a key fact can be frustrating if the system imposes high latency.
Finally, social content is assumed to be a combination of real time back and forth as well as asynchronous. A person may see a posting or a document and then replay an hour or a day later. Adding metadata and servers will not address the challenge of processing social content in a timely manner. Firms with specific expertise in search and content processing can help. The approach to bottleneck issues in indexing, for example, rely on the experience of the engineer, not an FAQ from Microsoft or blog post from a SharePoint specialist.
If you want to optimize your SharePoint system for social content and make that content findable, take a look at the services available from Search Technologies. We have deep experience with the full range of SharePoint search solutions, including Fast Search.
Iain Fletcher, September 8, 2011
Sponsored by Search Technologies
SharePoint: Embracing Social Functions and Features
September 7, 2011
The future of search is a subject that sparks a conversational camp fire. After email, search is one of the principal uses of online systems. In the last year, traditional key word search has been altered by the growing demand for “social content.” The idea is not just to index online discussions, but to use the signals these conversations emit as a way to improve the relevance of a search.
For example, when Lady Gaga sends her fans a Twitter message, the response and diffusion of that message provides useful information to a search system. A query about a fashion trend sent to Bing and Google, for example, will “respond” to the Lady Gaga message and include the retweets of her content as an indication of relevance.
This could apply to enterprise search. It could be possible to configure a mainstream solution such as Microsoft Fast Search Server to respond to social content.
A solid overview of what is possible is available in the InfoWorld article, “If You Must Have In-House Social Tools, Go With SharePoint.” Examples of SharePoint’s social tools are support for Weblogs, the “I Like It” tags, notes, and profiles pages. InfoWorld explains how these tools will contribute to user satisfaction and help enhance the findability of content within an enterprise SharePoint installation. The implementation of social functions falls upon SharePoint administrators. Coincident with the release of the social tools, InfoWorld points out that user training is helpful. The article makes this important point:
I’m not a fan of social networking tools at work. I believe it distracts people more than it provides value. Call me a dinosaur, but when I want to say something important to the entire company, I use this ancient system called email. Maybe I’m not a team player because I don’t like collaborating on documents; if I need your help on a document, I’ll email it to you and you can look it over.
My view is that social networking has a time and a place, is beneficial, and should be taken in small quantities.
“Enjoy Maximum Collaboration with the Help of SharePoint” is especially thought provoking. The author said:
What SharePoint applications do is the customization, configuration and the development of Intranet, Extranet and the portals of information that are present on SharePoint.
My thought is that SharePoint does not perform customization. SharePoint must be configured and tuned to deliver certain types of functions. In our experience, SharePoint requires additional scripts. The default services deliver access to document libraries to manage content, generate reports, locate services, and share content across a wide network. However, social features may warrant changes to the SharePoint infrastructure to ensure that content throughout performance is not compromised and make certain indexing processes receive additional tuning to handle the social content if needed. Due to the abbreviated form of some social content, additional metadata may be required to enhance the findability of a short message.
Search Technologies has implemented social functions into Microsoft SharePoint. The Search Technologies’ team has the experience to derive the maximum benefit from the services which Microsoft includes with SharePoint. In addition, our engineers can implement special features as well as install, configure, and tune third party add-ins from Microsoft certified software developers.
Social has arrived and SharePoint is the ideal platform to use to take advantage of this fast growing content type.
Iain Fletcher, September 7, 2011
Exclusive Interview: John Steinhauer, Search Technologies
August 29, 2011
A few days ago we were able to interview John Steinhauer, Search Technologies’ vice president of technology. In the discussion, Mr. Steinhauer talked about the rapid growth and Search Technologies’ approach to search-related engagements.
He told me:
We bring hard-won experience to customer projects and a deep knowledge of what works and where the difficult issues lie. Our partners, the major search vendors, sometimes find it difficult to be pragmatic, even where they have their own implementation departments, because their primary focus is their software licensing business. That’s not a criticism. As with most enterprise software sectors, license fees pay for all of the valuable research & development that the vendors put in to keep the industry moving forward. But it does mean that in a typical services engagement, less emphasis is put on the need for implementation planning, and ongoing processes to maintain and fine-tune the search application. We focus only on those elements, and this benefits both customers, who get more from their investment, and search engine partners who end up with happier customers.
I asked him about where the search industry was heading. He told me:
There are now two 800 pound Gorillas in the market, called Microsoft and Google. That’s a big difference from the somewhat fractious market that existed for 10 years ago. That will certainly make it harder for smaller vendors to find oxygen. But at the same time, these very large companies have their own agendas for what features and platforms matter for them and their customers. They will not attempt to be all things to all prospective customers in the same way that smaller hungrier vendors have. In theory this should leave gaps for either products or services companies to fill where specific and relatively sophisticated capabilities are required. We see those requirements all over the place.
For more information about Search Technologies, visit the firm’s Web site at www.searchtechnologies.com. The full text of the interview is located in the Beyond Search interview collection.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Attensity and Capgemini Team Up on Social Media Service
August 28, 2011
We see that Attensity is moving beyond its roots. Research reports, “Capgemini and Attensity Partner in Social Media Management.”
Capgemini Group provides a wide range of consulting, technology, and outsourcing services to industries that range from defense to financial services to entertainment.
Attensity has traditionally provided semantic solutions to the intelligence community and now serves Global 2000 companies and government agencies. They pride themselves on the accuracy of their analytic engines and their intuitive reports.
Now, in this partnership with Capgemini, Attensity is branching into the social media game. The write up explains:
The service offers real-time web listening and analysis by feeding results through to the firm’s offshore and onshore centers in Dallas, Guatemala City and Bangalore. Attensity’s text analytics platform is then used to examine content created by social media users. “Feedback gathered and analyzed at the these centers can then be used to modify marketing campaigns or improve overall customer experience, the firm said.”
Paul Cole, Capgemini’s VP for BPO Customer Operations, sees a unique opportunity. While most companies know social media can be valuable, few know exactly how to tap that power. Capgemini and Attensity intend to address that need and, of course, profit handsomely.
Now, is Capgemini ahead of its consulting competitors or lagging? A band wagon is going by. I will consider the question later.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Booz Allen Downplays Hack
August 14, 2011
Booz Allen Hamilton, a self-proclaimed leader in management and technology consulting services to the US government in defense, intelligence, and civil markets, is evading discussion of the severity of their recent hacking. ComputerWorld gives details in, “Booz Allen CEO Downplays Effect of Anonymous Hack.”
A July cyberattack on Booz Allen Hamilton will not materially harm the company’s bottom line, its CEO said Tuesday. The Anonymous hacking collective stole source code, e-mail addresses and other data from Booz Allen and published it online on July 11. Still, the company does not expect ‘the cost of remediation and other activities directly associated with the attack’ to ‘have a material affect on our financial results,’ said Ralph Shrader, Booz Allen’s Chairman and CEO on a conference call with analysts.
Although Anonymous is posing an increasing threat to corporate and government online records, this attack should not have happened. This company bids out quite a lot of national security work, and the information released was military email addresses and accompanying personal information. Is it a case of the shoemaker’s children not having their own shoes? It’s hard to sell security to the world at large, and not have a tight rein on your own.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 14, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Is Microsoft Implementing a Haphazard Search Strategy?
August 10, 2011
Nothing fires up Microsoft centric service firms like criticism of Microsoft Fast technology. We’re pleasantly surprised by this enthusiasm, which is generally lacking when we mention other vendors’ “search challenges.”
We think choice is a good thing, until it gets overwhelming. Redmondmag.com works on “Sorting Out Microsoft’s Mixed-Up Enterprise Search Strategy.” Writer Paul Korzeniowski posits that Microsoft’s array of six search alternatives is just too disjointed:
The various search alternatives vary in capabilities, sophistication and price, so there should be something for just about every enterprise. However, the Microsoft strategy can leave customers bewildered. The various products are largely autonomous, so it may not be easy to move from one to another. In addition, there are conflicting reports about which of the search engines Microsoft considers strategic, so there’s a possibility that companies may standardize on solutions that will eventually lose their luster and maybe even be phased out.
Korzeniowski emphasizes that Microsoft is not the only purveyor of enterprise search solutions to suffer from an incoherent strategy. The article analyses the problem in depth, including words on security, pricing, and the fate of Fast Search. We suggest reading it through.
We agree that the “experts” are a bit out of touch with the challenges Fast Search presents. We recommend you buttress your reading of the Redmondmag article with the corresponding chapter in the Landscape report, published by Pandia.com, in which Stephen Arnold digs into parts of Fast that most so-called experts ignore, don’t know, or simply find too darned confusing to figure out. One thing is certain. Our leader, Stephen E Arnold, will be delighted to have his views of azure chip consultants confirmed.
Cynthia Murrell August 10, 2011
Of course, this write up is sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Web 3.0: What about Search?
August 3, 2011
Consulting firm Booz & Company has published a new whitepaper, “Designing the Transcendent Web: The Power of Web 3.0.” A treatise on where we are headed online, the paper maps the contours of the road ahead.
Booze describes this new landscape:
“Imagine a world in which a movie search on your smartphone turns up only the kind of movies you like, and only those playing in your neighborhood. In which your behavior, inputs, and interactions on social networks automatically produce lists of recommendations, potential friends, even job offers. In which searching and browsing the Web becomes vastly more interesting and efficient, with results and link suggestions tailored specifically to your interests, and in which your ‘virtual representative,’ a kind of online personal assistant, keeps working to find you the best information even when you’re offline.”
Promising that this “transcendent Web” will drastically change the way we live and work, the paper is full of details. First, it examines the developments that led to this place. Next, it describes its key elements, how Web 3.0 is becoming a reality, and the impact they expect it will have. Finally, the work tells us how businesses can prepare to take advantage of the technology.
As with any piece produced by a consulting firm, our caveat is that these companies do create stuff to generate business. That being said, we recommend you check out this informative whitepaper.
However, keep in mind:
- Search is given little attention
- Consulting firms generate “output” in order to make sales, so the information may be appropriate to a consulting firm objective, not the reader’s
- The current Web seems to be shaping up to be a landscape filled with walled gardens, not the wide open information prairie of the Internet’s frontier days.
As we work through these white papers and position papers, we are starting to accept that search is little more than a utility. Search is not the main focus of consultants and, we think, of those with information problems.
Cynthia Murrell, August 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Make Metadata Useful. But What If the Tags Are Lousy?
July 28, 2011
I must be too old and too dense to understand why the noise about metadata gives me a headache. I came across a post or story on the CNBC.com Web site that was half way between a commercial and a rough draft of a automated indexing vendor’s temp file stuffed with drafts created by a clever intern. The post hauled around this weighty title: “EMA and ASG Webinar: 7 Best Practices For Making Metadata Useful”. The first thing I did was look up EMA and ASG because I was unfamiliar with the acronyms.
I learned that EMA represents a firm called Enterprise Management Associates. The company does information technology and data management research, industry analysis, and consulting. Fair enough. I have done some of the fuzzy wuzzy work for a couple of reasonably competent outfits, including the once stellar Booz, Allen & Hamilton and a handful of large, allegedly successful companies.
ASG is an acronym for ASG Software Solutions. The parent company grows via acquisitions just like Progress Software and, more recently, Google. The focus of the company seems to be “the cloud in your hand.” I am okay with a metaphorical description.
I am confused about metadata. Source: http://www.thebusyfool.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Decisions_clipart.jpg
What caught my attention is the focus on metadata, which in my little world, is the domain of people with degrees in library and information science, years of experience in building ANSI standard controlled term lists, and hands on time with automated and human centric indexing, content processing, and related systems. An ANSI standard controlled term list is not management research, industry analysis, consulting, or the “cloud in your hand.” Controlled term lists which make life bearable for a person seeking information are quite difficult work, combining the vision of an architect and the nitty gritty stamina of a Roman legionnaire building a road through Gaul.
Here’s the passage that caught my attention and earned a place in my “quotes to note” folder:
As data grows horizontally across the enterprise, businesses are faced with the urgent need to better define data and create an accurate, transparent and accessible view of their metadata. Metadata management and business glossary are foundational technologies that can help companies achieve this goal. EMA developed seven best practices that guide companies to get the most of their data management. All attendees receive the complimentary White Paper Managing Metadata for Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability authored by Shawn Rogers.
I am not sure what some of these words and phrases mean. For example, “better define data”. My question, “What data?” Next I struggled with “create an accurate, transparent, and accessible view of their metadata.” Now there are commercial systems which allow “views” of controlled term lists. One such vendor is Access Innovations, an outfit which visited me in rural Kentucky to talk about new approaches to indexing certain types of problematic content which is proliferating in organizations. Think in terms of social content without much context other than a “handle”, date, and time even within a buttoned up company.
What do users know? Image source: http://www.computersunplugged.com.au/images/angry-man.gif
Another phrase that caught my limited attention was “metadata management and business glossary are foundational”. Okay, but before one manages, one must do a modest amount of work. Even automated systems benefit from smart algorithms helped with a friendly human crafted training document set or direct intervention by a professional information scientist. Some organizations use commercial controlled term lists to seed the automatic content tagging system. I am all for management, but I don’t think I want to jump from the hard work to “management” without going to the controlled vocabulary gym and doing some push ups. “Business glossary” baffled me and I was not annoyed by what seems to be a high school grammar misstep. Nope. The “business glossary” is a good thing, but it must be constructed to match the language of the users, the corpus, and the accepted terminology. Indexing a document with the term “terminal” is not too helpful unless there is a “field code” that pegs the terminal as one where I find airplanes, trains, death, or computer stuff. A “business glossary” does not appear from thin air,although a “cloud” outfit may have that notion. I know better.
I did a quick Google search for “Shawn Rogers,” author of the white paper. Note: I don’t know what a white paper is. The first hit is to a document which is on what I think is a pay-to-play information service called “b-eye”. The second hit points to a LinkedIn profile. I don’t know if this is “the” Shawn Rogers whom I seek. I learned that he is:
[a professional who] has more than 19 years of hands-on IT experience with a focus on Internet-enabled technology. In 2004 he cofounded the BeyeNETWORK and held the position of Executive Vice President and Editorial Director. Shawn guided the company’s international growth strategy and helped the BeyeNETWORK grow to 18 web sites around the world making it the largest and most read community covering the business intelligence, data warehousing, performance management and data integration space. The BeyeNETWORK was sold to TechTarget in April 2010.
I concluded this was “the” Mr. Rogers I sought and that he or his organization is darned good at search engine optimization type work.
What clicked in my mind was a triple tap of hypotheses:
- A couple of services firms have teamed up to cash in on the taxonomy and metadata craze. I thought metadata had come and gone, but obviously these firms are, to use Google’s metaphor, putting more wood behind the metadata thing. So, this is a marketing in order to sell services. As I said, I am okay with that.
- These firms have found a way to address the core problem of indexing by people who do not have the faintest idea of what’s involved in metatagging that helps users. One hopes.
- The two companies are not sure what the outcome of the webinar and the white paper distribution will be. In short, this is a fishing trip or an exploration of the paths on an island owned by a cruise company. There’s not much at risk.
Okay, enough.
Here’s my view on metadata.
First, most organizations have zero editorial policy and zero willingness to do the hard work required to dedupe, normalize, and tag content in a way that allows a user to find a particular item without sticky notes, making phone calls, or clicking and scanning stuff for the needed items. I think vendors promise the sun and moon and deliver gravel. Don’t agree? Use the comments section, please. Don’t call me.
Second, most of the vendors who offer industrial strength indexing and content processing systems know what needs to be done to make content findable. But the licensees often want a silver bullet. So the vendors remain silent on certain key points such as the Roman legionnaire working in the snow part. The cost part is often pushed to the margin as well.
Third, the information technology professionals “know” best. Not surprisingly most content access in organizations is a pretty lukewarm activity. I received an email last week chastising me for pointing out that more than half of an organization’s search system users were dissatisfied with whatever system the company made available. Hey, I just report the facts. I know how to find information in my organization.
Fourth, no one pays real attention to the user of a system. The top brass, the IT experts, and the vendors talk about the users. The users don’t know anything and whatever input those folks provide is not germane to the smarties. Little wonder that in some organizations systems are just worked around. Tells range from a Google search appliance in marketing to sticky notes on monitors.
Will I attend the webinar? Nah. I don’t do webinars. Do I want to change the world and make every organization have a super duper controlled term list and findable content? Nah. Don’t care. Do I want outfits like CNBC to do a tiny bit of content curation before posting unusual write ups with possible grammatical errors? You bet. What if those metadata and other tags are uncontrolled, improperly applied, and mismatched to the lingo? Status quo, I assert.
Enjoy the webinar. Good luck with your metadata and the “cloud in your hands” approach. Back to the goose pond. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, which is not a white paper and it is not free. But at $20, such a deal.
Booz, Allen: Alleged Security Misstep
July 13, 2011
“Anonymous Leaks 90,000 Military Email Accounts in Latest #AntiSec Attack” caught my eye. The story points out that Booz, Allen seems to have been caught with its security Brooks Brothers suit pants down. The story said:
The leak, dubbed ‘Military Meltdown Monday,’ includes 90,000 logins of military personnel—including personnel from US CENTCOM, SOCOM, the Marine Corps, various Air Force facilities, Homeland Security, State Department staff, and what looks like private sector contractors. Their correspondences could include exchanges with Booz Allen’s highly brassy staff of retired defense folk: current execs include three former Directors of National Intelligence and one former head of the CIA. Anon was also kind enough to gut 4 GB of source code from Booz Allen’s servers. Anon cites the firm’s alleged complicity in the SWIFT financial monitoring program as at least partial motive for the attack.
I used to work at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Happier times. One of my goslings quipped, “Is this the same Bozo, Allen where you worked?” Happily I pointed out that my tenure took place when there was one highly regarded firm, no debt, and no allegations of broken toes with regard to security. I hope the story is incorrect.
Stephen E Arnold, July 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of the monograph, “The New Landscape of Enterprise Search.”
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