Hewlett Packard Versus IBM: The Poobah Viewpoint
June 18, 2013
I read “Hewlett Packard Can’t Afford to Let Competition Keep Winning.” I thought the title should be, “HP Is a Loser and Lunch for IBM” or “HP: The Deer in IBM’s Headlights.” I found the write up more about the wonderfulness of IBM and its prescient executives than about the proud owner of Autonomy and marketer of Haven.
In my opinion, here’s the key passage from the write up:
HP was overmatched because it didn’t see IBM’s move for what it was and accordingly adjust its event to appear competitive. This is the second time this year I’ve seen HP choose to ignore what IBM said to an influential audience and, as a result, appear out of step. Marketing, not individual product groups or the office of the CEO, drove the message at IBM Edge. IBM came to Las Vegas to do battle, while HP came to give executives face time. This was like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
One quite remarkable revelation in the analysis of the seemingly hapless HP was a discussion of Watson. Watson, as I like to point out, won a game show. After cracking problems in health care, Watson is working in food service. Fascinating résumé for a smart search engine.
The write up makes this point about “taking Watson to the next level”:
Each Watson use case has significant global implications that could improve quality of life and prevent a variety of significant problems.
Use cases? The write up does not mention Jeopardy. But the write up points out that Wellpoint can save lives with Watson. No facts were offered to support this point, but I am sure there is ample evidence available. Also, Watson can improve cyber security. Again, not much detail was available, but the assertion seems possible. The Pew Charitable Trusts are using Watson with “other IBM technologies” to reduce maybe/possibly election fraud. I presume IBM’s Big Data technologies would help deliver the bacon.
I find this type of analysis fascinating. On one hand, the arguments sound so darned reasonable. On the other, the facts are in short supply.
HP and IBM, in my opinion, are worthy competitors. A consulting firm which is downsizing and a struggling ink vendor make an interesting enterprise dust up.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky, the portal to ArnoldIT
SharePoint and SharePoint Search: End of Life?
June 16, 2013
I had a chat with a former IBM executive. At lunch, an interesting emerged as we talked about the trials and tribulations large enterprise software vendors are facing. In addition to the embarrassing layoffs at IBM, there are signals that the financial screws are being turned at Hewlett Packard, Oracle, SAP and elsewhere. Part of the pressure is normal because the April May June quarter is an important one before the world goes on vacation in July and August. September, obviously, will be another flat out period for sales and marketing professionals. But there was one t hought which we kicked around in a post-prandial stupor.
A dilemma now exists in the enterprise software sector.
Stick with what works and has worked
Go in a new direction and improvise.
What happens if Microsoft does the Adobe thing and forces SharePoint licensees to embrace the cloud? What happens to the resellers? What happens to the integrators? What happens to the in house staff who know the intricacies of on premises installations of SharePoint but not the secrets of Azure?
Microsoft has a significant dependence on on premises sales. This is the client access license, the enterprise license, and the special set ups which make Microsoft the de facto choice for desktop computing workers worldwide.
Is an end of life play for SharePoint possible without making Microsoft even more vulnerable to the enticements of Google and others who want to supplant Microsoft as the “king of the desktop enter” and “baron of the back office”?
On one hand, the idea that SharePoint and its okay search solution, administrator employing mail and database systems, and its quirky collaboration and document management solutions could shift to the cloud is silly. Why give up those license fees? Why alienate service firms dependent on sales and support to hundreds of millions of SharePoint users? Why assume that a cloud business model will work for on site license customers? Organizations are conservative. Change comes slowly or not at all. Stick with the status quo.
National Instruments Selects Attivio
June 14, 2013
Increasingly major national and international companies are turning to open source solutions to solve their information storage and retrieval needs. These companies need enterprise solutions that are agile, efficient, affordable, and secure. The latest to join the ranks of open source adoption is National Instruments. KM World covers the news in their story, “Powering Information Discovery and Search Needs.”
The article begins:
“National Instruments has chosen a unified information access platform to enable more efficient knowledge discovery and analysis into the future. After evaluating a number of solutions, National Instruments decided that Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) would best handle its requirements, particularly related to ontology-driven query completion, auto categorization, sentiment analysis, dictionary management, recommendations, language support and improved relevancy boosting, according to Attivio.”
Attivio’s Active Intelligence model strives to integrate business intelligence, enterprise search, and Big Data into one scalable model. This type of consolidation seems to be driving the value-added open source market. For instance, LucidWorks offers two solutions: LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data. Both have distinct functions, but are designed to serve the all-encompassing enterprise needs of an organization. Small and medium sized organizations even find that they can benefit from the scalability of LucidWorks, and rest on their trusted support and security. Explore both options and see how they will fit into your enterprise.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
SRCH2 Poised to Take Industry by Storm
June 11, 2013
We came across a recent press release that posed an interesting question. At this point, can any vendor in the enterprise realm produce a search solution disruptive to Google? SRCH2 might be an outfit to keep an eye on, according to the information we learned from an interview with Dr. Chen Li in the Arnold Information Technology Search Wizards Speak series.
SRCH2’s niche in the landscape of search options is geared towards corporate sites and apps. Their plan is to build “Google style” solutions.
The press release offers a summary of what Chen said in the interview in regards to the problem that SRCH2 wants to solve:
“‘SRCH2 offers clear differentiation when you also consider complexity and time to market. When you add in-memory performance to this, SRCH2 offers a killer combination for these use cases.’ A key innovation in the SRCH2 method concerns the speed with which content can be processed and then accessed to generate a response to a user’s or subsystem’s query. Speed, particularly in mobile applications, is essential. Latency can drag down response time. SRCH2, like Google, knows that speed is often more important than some other considerations.”
Apparently, SRCH2’s clients are using their technology in a number of different contexts and for a variety of devices. If there is even a major global handset manufacturer porting it to the kernel across millions of handsets, what other uses will be found? Only time will tell.
Megan Feil, June 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprise Search Ignorance Can Be Costly
May 20, 2013
Why What You Do Not Can Bite Your Pocketbook. Marketers Have Their Interests Front and Center, Not the Customers’ Interests
A few days ago, I sat through several presentations about enterprise search. The systems struck me as quite similar. The emphasis was placed on providing basic information access to users. For the purpose of this short essay, I will not make distinctions among search vendors which position themselves as providers of analytics, business intelligence, discovery, and Big Data access, among other synonyms for search and information retrieval.
The missing pieces of the cost puzzle can make budget deficits a reality. A happy quack to Vermont’s Department of Information and Innovation. See the discussion to drive down the cost of doing business. States are paragons of fiscal probity.
However, the talks caused me to reflect on what the vendors left out of their presentations.
Here’s a checklist of the omissions in commercial systems which are now being marketed as an alternative to the high profile and expensive solutions available from Dassault, Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Microsoft, and Oracle, Each of these large enterprise software vendors acquired one or more search systems. Each has taken steps to integrate search with other enterprise software solutions.
The gap the acquisition of such companies as Autonomy, Exalead, and others is now left to smaller and less well know vendors of search. I don’t want to mention these companies by name, but a quick search of Bing or Google will surface many of the firms vying to become the next $100 million vendor of enterprise search systems.
The first omission is a component which can acquire, normalize, and present textual content in a form the search system can process. For newcomers to enterprise search, the content acquisition process can add significantly to the cost of deploying an enterprise search system. Connectors are available from a number of specialist vendors. Most of the search vendors provide some basic tools for acquiring content. Depending on the organization, the vendor provided tools may be adequate for acquiring documents in text or Web pages in HTML. Other document types may be more problematic. A vendor offering a system which requires documents to be in a supported XML format often emphasizes the system’s ability to slice, dice, parse, and perform certain operations with alacrity. What’s omitted is the time, cost, technical expertise, and work flows required to get content into the search system. Cloud based enterprise search solutions and certain lower cost enterprise search systems leave content to the licensee or offer for fee consulting services to assist with these often complex activities.
Enterprise Search Climbing in Europe
May 15, 2013
Enterprise search is a must for American organizations, but new numbers show that enterprise search adoption is also on the rise for European organizations. Read more about the trend in the KM World piece, “Open Source, SharePoint, Big Data and User Experience Take Center Stage at Enterprise Search Europe.”
The author begins:
“Search has been steadily climbing up the attention ladder in many European organizations in recent years, according to Martin White, Conference Chair of Enterprise Search Europe which takes place in London on May 15-16. He identifies a number of reasons for this, ranging from a recognition of the power of open source search applications, the enhanced search functionality in SharePoint 2013, the fact that Big Data initiatives are causing organizations to look at wider issues of information discovery, and the need to improve user experience.”
The author goes on to explore the trend of European organizations seeing search as a long-term investment, and rightly so. When taking this long-term view, organizations are best off with a strong solution that produces results now, but offers a scalable and sustainable future. LucidWorks is one option for these companies who are new to the enterprise search market. Their open source foundation of Apache Lucene/Solr ensures a safe and promising future.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
MapR Offers Enterprise Grade Search Through LucidWorks Partnership
May 8, 2013
MapR Technologies M7 Edition is launching MapR into the world of enterprise with a platform for NoSQL and Hadoop. As everyone is trying to find a way to meet the needs of Big Data, MapR wanted to be in the game. Naturally, they sought a partnership with one of the existing leaders in the field, LucidWorks. Read more about their partnership and subsequent product offering in the story, “MapR Technologies Distributes Enterprise-Grade Search with Hadoop Platform.”
The press release begins:
“MapR Technologies, Inc., the Hadoop technology leader, today announced the distribution of LucidWorks Search™ with the MapR Platform for Apache Hadoop. On a single platform customers can now perform predictive analytics, full search and discovery; and conduct advanced database operations. MapR also announced today the general availability of its new M7 Edition which combines unprecedented Hadoop and NoSQL capabilities together in a single easy, dependable and fast platform.”
LucidWorks Search brings the added value of security, connectivity, and user management that are powered by the open source platform of Apache Lucene/Solr. Through LucidWorks and the MapR partnership, these are now fully supported benefits of the solution. The shared vision of MapR and LucidWorks makes this a big win for the enterprise industry and a bigger win for enterprise users.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 8, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
LucidWorks Receives Top Honors from Gartner
May 6, 2013
In the world of information technology, Gartner is the standard in quality IT research and advisory. Their ranking and awards truly mean something to others in the industry. For this reason, when LucidWorks received their latest commendation from Gartner, people paid attention. Read the full report in the article, “LucidWorks Positioned in the ‘Challengers’ Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Search.”
The report begins:
‘”The LucidWorks product suite transforms the technical and distribution innovations of open source into a cost-effective, commercial-grade solution for building the next generation of business-critical applications,’ said Paul Doscher , president and CEO of LucidWorks. ‘We believe that being named in the ‘Challengers’ quadrant of the Gartner Enterprise Search Magic Quadrant validates the capabilities and flexibility of our existing suite and the business and product roadmaps we are implementing.’”
This is the first ranking of the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Search by Gartner. Google, Oracle, and Microsoft were listed as the only three in the “leaders” ranking. The significance of being named as a challenger is that LucidWorks is in a strong enough position to join those big names at the top of the list in the near future. With their investment in a strong open source infrastructure, and their eye toward innovation, LucidWorks will be in the leader category very soon.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 6, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
SRCH2 Hopes to Challenge Existing Enterprise Search
April 30, 2013
A new start-up is trying to bring Google-like search to the enterprise with its new SRCH2 solution. For quite a while, users have been discussing how to bring the Web search experience to the enterprise market. It seems SRCH2 is hoping to finally achieve that feel. Read more in the Venture Beat article, “SRCH2 Launches Google-like Tech to Fix Enterprise Search.”
The article begins:
“The newly launched startup SRCH2 doesn’t focus on standard web search, a space inhabited by Google and Bing. It’s offering a new take on ‘enterprise search.’ Bhatia considers search companies ElasticSearch and LucidWorks as the primary competition. But he clarifies that these search products are built on top of Lucene. SRCH2 is developed from the ground up.”
Unfortunately for Bhatia and his company SRCH2, what makes LucidWorks a standout is not just its creativity and agility, but its strong track record. Start-ups are great, and often inject a new shot of originality into any given market; however, what enterprise customers are looking for is dependability and security. These are qualities that LucidWorks can stand tall on, and defend now and in the future.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 30, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
ManageEngine Accommodates the IT Professional
April 28, 2013
Is this a fresh angle in the enterprise search game? Gigaom announces, “ManageEngine Hones Enterprise Search for IT Admins.” The key lies in taming the wealth of information IT pros must now deal with every day. Writer Bob Darrow explains:
“Anyone who’s been an IT administrator for a decade or more will tell you of the good old days when there was far too little information about the underlying IT configuration of a given enterprise. Now, the problem is too much information — which can be just as useless unless put into the right context. That’s the issue that ManageEngine said it’s addressing with a new Enterprise Search function for its IT360 IT management software.
“‘There are too many IT consoles, too many vendors — one for network management, one for help desk, one for application performance,’ said Raj Sabhlok, president of ManageEngine’s parent company Zoho. Pity the poor admins who have to piece all that information together to figure out what’s going on, or worse, what went wrong.”
A “Google-like” interface simplifies these challenges, allowing ManageEngine users to search by device name, server type, and so on, and quickly view every relevant instance and associated data. (See the article for a screenshot.) Though this functionality is part of ManageEngine’s overall IT360 on-premises management product, it acts across all relational database backends. It even works, insists Darrow, on competitive management products like SolarWinds. The company is considering offering its Enterprise Search as a standalone package down the road.
Previously known as AdventNet, ManageEngine was founded in 1996. A part of Zoho Corporation, the company is splits its headquarters between Pleasanton, California and Chennai, India. The company’s global roster includes prominent clients like Disney, Sony, and the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
Cynthia Murrell, April 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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