Survey Says Data Governance Is Important. But What Is Data Governance?
November 20, 2020
Here’s what the Google says governance means: The action or manner of governing. Okay, but what exactly is governing. Google says: Having authority to conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of a state, organization, or people.
Okay, now let’s add the magic word “data,” which is a plural, not a single thing. (That’s what datum means, right?)
Google says: Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.
Let’s put the information together, shall we?
An organization uses authority to conduct policy, actions and affairs to deal with facts and statistics for reference or analysis.
Why care? The answer is found in “Businesses Positive about Data Governance but Still Struggle with Privacy Concerns.”
Okay, now we have linked dealing with information and privacy. This is getting interesting or is it? I go with the “not interesting,” but let’s plod forward in the write up.
A vendor of search and retrieval software sponsored a research project conducted by Standard & Poor 451 Research. Note: That report is titled “Pathfinder Report Market Intelligence: Information Driven Compliance and Insight. Two Sides of the Same Coin.” I am not sure about the “coin” metaphor, compliance, insight, and pathfinding. But no one ever accused me of understanding mid-tier consulting firms, sponsored research, and 18 year old vendors of proprietary search and retrieval software.
The 451 outfit tapped its pool of “survey responders” and discovered:
72 percent of enterprises believe data governance is an enabler of business value rather than a cost center.
Okay, that’s a lot of enterprises, assuming the sample was statistically valid, the questions not shaped, and the data analysis of the survey responses was performed on the up and up. But sponsored research is different from the often wonky academic research churned out by professors and work-from-home students. That’s better, right?
I learned:
- One in four organizations have more than 50 distinct data silos
- 37 per cent of respondents say having relevant information automatically displayed, when the team needs it, would benefit them the most in the pursuit of automation.
- Budget, privacy issues, and expertise are barriers.
How does one deal with data silos, which I assume is “governance”? How does one deal with security? Privacy? How does an enterprise search company cope with the assorted sixes and sevens of data in an organization; for example, tweets, encrypted messages, images, geospatial data, videos, and information which must be kept isolated from the grubby “let’s federate information” crowd? (Why must some data be isolated? Find an attorney. Ask her what happens if information in a legal matter is out of her span of control.)
What’s the net net of the mid-tier consulting outfit’s report? Here it is:
Success requires alignment of business objectives by looking for common-denominator requirements across business units.
Let me be clear: Enterprise search is not the solution to problems with an “authority to conduct policy, actions and affairs to deal with facts and statistics for reference or analysis.”
Enterprise search is information retrieval, data governance no matter how much a marketer wishes it were. Enterprise search vendors have been struggling for relevance because Lucene/Solr are good enough and users want information to address right now business issues. Library style lists of stuff to read or look up may not ring the chimes of a thumb typing user.
Want the full report? Go here. Please, keep marketing and governance separate. Statistics 101 offered some useful guidelines. Some, however, did not pay attention. You will have to register. Marketing is still marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, November 20, 2020
Voyager Search Tapped for USDA Search and Discovery Project
November 4, 2020
Low-profile enterprise search company Voyager Search just made an important deal with a high-profile government agency. AIThority announces, “New Light Technologies and Voyager Search Team Win New Contracts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Implement Data Search and Discovery Solutions.” Voyager’s partner in the project, New Light Technologies (NLT), is a consulting firm working in the areas of cloud tech, cybersecurity, software development, data analytics, geospatial tech, and scientific R&D. The write-up reports:
“Access to accurate information is crucial to the department’s mission to support sustainable agriculture production and protection of natural resources. Both NLT and Voyager Search bring many years of experience developing award-winning federal data integration and dissemination platforms and will build federated data search solutions to index and link disparate cloud-based and on-prem data sources, including large repositories of imagery and geospatial data files that are used for a variety of analytical reporting and data dissemination systems, such as the Global Agricultural Information Network, Global Agricultural & Disaster Assessment System, Crop Explorer, and the Geospatial Data Gateway. Leveraging NLT and Voyager Search’s Professional Services Department and Vose technology which provides robust spatial search capabilities, the team’s solution will enable users to search for data, content, and documents by who, what, when, and where. Together, the team is providing the technology and services to advance a modern data architecture for the department that will support improved information flow, security, and analysis as well as power the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) of the future.”
“Voyager” is a popular name for a business, so do not confuse Voyager Search with other enterprises like digital innovation firm Voyager, manufacturer Voyager Industries, or even the Voyager Company that pioneered DC-ROM production back in the day. Vose is the name of Voyager Search’s platform that will be used for the USDA project, but the company also offers Server, essentially Vose for larger implementations, and ODN (Open Data Network), a searchable global-content catalog. Both products build on Vose’s “smart spatial search” technology. Based in Redlands, California, Voyager Search was founded in 2008.
Cynthia Murrell, November 4, 2020
Persistent: Enterprise Search and Cloud Expertise
October 22, 2020
I checked my enterprise search files. Sure enough, Persistent Systems is in the enterprise search game. You can get a sense of the firm’s consulting orientation if you download and study “An Essential Primer on Enterprise Search Evaluation.” Yep, evaluation. Most organizations have employees who need to locate information: Text, videos, PowerPoints on clever sales professionals’ work laptops, documents generated by the less-than-forthcoming legal department, and information about recreational softball in the Era of the Rona. We noted that the company acquired Capiot. This is a company which provides integration services. To sum up, “enterprise search” appears to be a consulting services operation at Persistent. With a workable search solution available as open source, renting people who can allegedly make search perform magic tricks seems logical. But what about rich media, tweets, silos of data, and uncooperative sales professionals who tweak slide decks moments before making a pitch to up the chances for a sale? Let’s not dig too deeply into the contents of the “Essential Primer,” shall we? Enterprise search appears to be a synonym for “consulting.”
Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2020
Another Crazy Enterprise Search Report
October 18, 2020
“Enterprise Search Market Investment Analysis | Dassault Systemes, Oracle, HP Autonomy, Expert System Inc.” may be a knock out report, but its presentation of the company’s nuanced understanding is like hitting an egg with a feather. The effort appears to be there, but the result is an intact egg.
You can learn about this omelet of a report at this link. The publisher is PRnewsleader, which seems to be one of the off brand SEO centric content outputters.
The first thing I noticed about this report was the list of vendors in the document; to wit:
Coveo Corp.
Dassault Systèmes
Esker Software
Expert System
HP Autonomy
IBM Corp.
Lucidworks
Marklogic
Microsoft
Oracle
Perceptive Software
Polyspot and Sinequa
SAP
What jumped out at me was the inclusion of Polyspot and Sinequa. Polyspot was acquired years ago by an outfit called oppScience. The company offers Bee4Sense and list information retrieval as a solution. As far as I know, oppScience is a company based in Paris, not on a street once known for fish sales. Sinequa is a separate company. True, it once positioned itself as an enterprise search developer. That core capability has been wrapped in buzzwordery; for example, “insight platform.” Therefore, listing two companies incorrectly as one illustrates a minor slip up.
I also noticed the inclusion of Esker Software. This company is a process automation outfit, and it says that it has an artificial intelligence capability. (Doesn’t every company today?) Esker is into the cloud, and its search technology is a bullet point, not the white paper/journal article/rah rah approach used by Lucidworks.
And what about Elasticsearch? What about Algolia (former Dassault Exalead DNA I heard)? What about Voyager Search? What about Maxxcat? And there are other vendors.
What’s amusing is that the authors of this report are able to set forth:
forecasts for Enterprise Search investments till 2029.
Okay, that’s almost a decade in the Era of the Rona. I am not sure what’s going on tomorrow. Predicting search in 2029 is Snow Crash territory. But I am confident the authors of this report are intrepid researchers who just happened to overlook the Polyspot Sinequa mistake. What else has been overlooked?
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2020
Hulbee Is In the Enterprise Search Derby
June 18, 2020
Enterprise search should be an easy out-of-the-box, deployable solution, but more often it is a confusing mess. Companies like Hulbee Enterprise Search develop search programs that delete the guesswork and immediately function:
“Hulbee Enterprise Search not only provides a simple search software, but also consolidates our experience and knowledge, which has been accumulated for over 17 years and combines intelligent search, format diversity, different corporate infrastructures, security, etc. in areas such as document management.
Our goal is to create a timely software technology for you that meets all security requirements. We would be very pleased if you test our software. Request a Proof of Concept.
Our software complements existing software products from other manufacturers such as SharePoint, Exchange, DMS etc. through the innovation of the search. It is thus not a competition, but an addition to and completion of the optimal search in the company.”
The purpose of enterprise search is to quickly locate information, so it can be employed by a business. Information includes structured and unstructured data, so enterprise search needs to be robust and smart enough to filter relevant results. Search must also be compliant with security measures, especially as more businesses host their data on clouds.
Enterprise search solutions like Hulbee must be flexible enough to adjust to changing security measures, but also continue to offer the same and better features for search.
Customization is key to being a contender in the marker for enterprise search.
Whitney Grace, June 18, 2020
AWS Kendra: A Somewhat Elastic Approach to Enterprise Search
May 12, 2020
Elastic, Shay Banon’s Version 2 of Compass, has a hurdle to jump over. Elasticsearch has been a success. The Lucene-centric “system” which some call ELK has become a go-to solution for many developers. Like Lucidworks (It does?) and many other “enterprise search and more” vendors, Elasticsearch delivers information retrieval without the handcuffs of options like good old STAIRS III or Autonomy’s neuro-linguistic black box.
Amazon took notice and has effectively rolled out its own version of enterprise search based on … wait for it … the open source version of Elastic’s Elasticsearch. The service has been around since Amazon hired some of the Lucidworks (It does?) engineers more than five years ago after frustration with the revolving doors at that firm became too much even by Silicon Valley standards. Talk about tension. Yebo!
Amazon has reinvented Elasticsearch. The same process the Bezos bulldozer has used for other open source software has been in process for more than 60 months. Like the system’s Playboy bunny namesake, Kendra has a few beauty lines in her AWS exterior.
A tweak here (access to Amazon’s smart software) and a tweak there (Amazon AWS pricing methods), and the “new” product is ready for prime time, ready for a beauty contest against other contestants in the most beautiful IR system in the digital world.
“Amazon Launches Cognitive Search Service Kendra in General Availability” reports:
Once configured through the AWS Console, Kendra leverages connectors to unify and index previously disparate sources of information (from file systems, websites, SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Amazon Simple Storage Service, relational databases, and elsewhere).
Does this sound like federated search or the Palantir Gotham approach to content?
Well, yes.
The reason is that most enterprise search vendors like Coveo, Attivio, X1, IBM Omnifind (also built on Lucene), and dozens of other systems make the same claims.
The reality is that these systems do not have the bits and pieces available within a giant cloud platform with quite a few graduates of an Amazon AWS training program ready to plug in the AWS solution. For example, if a government agency wants the search in Palantir, no problem. Palantir deploys on AWS. But if that government agency wants to use Amazon’s policeware services and include search, there’s Kendra.
You can get a free copy of the DarkCyber Amazon policeware report’s executive summary by requesting the document at this link.
What does Amazon bring to the enterprise search party?
The company has more than 200 services, features, component, and modules on the shelf. Because enterprise search is not a “one size fits all”, the basic utility function has to fit into specific enterprise roles. For most enterprise search vendors, this need for user function customization is a deal breaker. Legal doesn’t want the same search that those clear minded home economics grads require in the marketing department. Microsoft SharePoint offers its version of “enterprise search” but paints over the cost of the Microsoft Certified professionals who have to make the search system work Fast. (Yep, that’s sort of an inside search joke.)
Amazon AWS provides the engine and the Fancy Dan components can be plugged in using the methods taught in the AWS “learn how to have a job for real” at a company your mom uses to shop during the pandemic. Amazon and Microsoft are on a collision course for the enterprise, and the Kendra thing is an important component.
The official roll out is capturing headlines, but the inclusion of Lucene-based search invites several observations:
- Despite AWS’ pricing, an Amazon enterprise search system allows the modern information technology professional to get a good enough service with arguably fewer headaches than other options except maybe the SearchBlox solution
- Enterprise search becomes what it has been for most organizations: A utility. Basic information retrieval is now an AWS component and that component can be enhanced with SageMaker, analytics, and other AWS services.
- Amazon wins even if Kendra does not win the hearts and minds of IBM Omnifind, Inbenta, and Algolia users. Why? Most of the cloud based enterprise search vendors support the AWS platform. What are the choices? The wonky HP cloud? The “maybe we will kill it” Google Cloud? Azure, from the outfit that cannot update Windows 10 without killing user computers who activate game mode? Plus, dumping Kendra for another TV star inspired search system is easy. Chances are that, like Palantir, AWS hosts and supports that competitive system too.
Net net: The fight with Microsoft is escalating. The Bezos bulldozer will run over open source outfits and probably some AWS customers. But Kendra’s turning her gaze on the bountiful revenues of Microsoft in the enterprise. Will Amazon buy a vendor of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel clones?
Exciting times, maybe not just because of enterprise search? Why did those defectors from Lucidworks (It does?) embrace Lucene and not SOLR? Maybe they did that too?
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2020
The Crazy Search Market Report: May 4, 2020 Edition
May 4, 2020
DarkCyber is pondering a new feature called “Crazy Search Report.” The “search” refers to enterprise search. The “crazy” refers to the assertions and marketing hoo-hah in news releases about the steady stream of in depth analysis of the market for enterprise search.
Yeah, I know that sounds crazy. Well, that’s why the crazy search report will be useful. We will identify the producer of the report and include some content from the news releases issued to cheerlead for these five figure “believe it or not” compilations.
Let’s look at the first report in the series.
This is called “Global Coronavirus Impact and Implications on Enterprise Search Market Research Report 2019 Analysis and Forecast To 2029.” The publicity was generated by something called factmr.com on May 1, 2020.
Here’s the hook paragraph, that’s the one that will make you buy the report from Research Moz. Is this outfit in the same league as Bain, Booz, Allen, and McKinsey? You decide:
Companies in the Enterprise Search market are vying suggestive steps to tackle the challenges resulting from the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic. Exhaustive research about COVID-19 is providing present-day techniques and alternative methods to mitigate the impact on Coronavirus on the revenue of the Enterprise Search market.
The news release also talks about the enterprise search landscape. I remember writing a book, published by Pandia Press, called “The Landscape of Enterprise Search.” Happy coincidence maybe?
Are these some factoids to make you want to buy this report? Sure, for example:
…The report ponders over the various factors that are likely to impact the overall dynamics of the Enterprise Search market over the forecast period (20XX-20XX) including the current trends, business expansion opportunities and restraining factors amongst others. As per the market report suggested by ResearchMoz.us, the global Enterprise Search market is expected to register a CAGR growth of ~XX% during the forecast period and attain a value of ~US$XX by the end of 20XX.
Okay, the numbers are left out. You have to pay before you get the alleged factoids. That definitely makes me lust after a copy not.
What’s interesting is the list of companies allegedly profiled and X-rayed in the document. Note: I alphabetized the company names, but the Moz outfit does not bother with this convention. My comments are in parentheses.
Attivio Inc (business intelligence maybe?)
Concept Searching Limited (Microsoft add in from far, far way from the US)
Coveo Corp (customer support and assorted buzzwords)
Dassault Systemes (product engineering search)
Expert System Inc (semantic utility, focus on mobile)
Google (not in the search business)
Hyland (ISYS Search which dates from the 1980s)
IBM Corp (Lucene plus Vivisimo plus home grown code and Watson. I can’t forget Watson.)
Lucid Work (Typo. The company’s name is Lucidworks.)
Micro Focus (Autonomy)
Oracle (Secure Enterprise Search, RightNow, Endeca, and others)
Marklogic Inc (XML database company with proprietary extensions)
Microsoft (Fast Search & Transfer plus assorted acquisitions and home grown tomfoolery)
SAP AG (Who knew?)
X1 Technologies (desktop search and eDiscovery originally from Idealab year ago)
How much is the report? The news release does not say, but we held our breath and clicked the Research Moz link and learned that the document costs $3,900.
That’s it. Crazy stuff for a crazy market sector.
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2020
Enterprise Search Craziness: Destiny Adjacency
May 1, 2020
The enterprise search vendors are not to blame. The finger of ineptitude writes boldly:
Enterprise Search Market each qualitative and quantitative records analysis to provide an overview of the destiny adjacency around Enterprise Search Market for the forecast duration, 2020-2025.
You can read the original at this link. Enterprise search has tried a number of snappy phrases to make a utility the potent heart of a 21st century enterprise; for example:
- Semantic meaning
- Natural language processing
- Artificial intelligence
- Precision, recall, and relevance. Yikes, delete those loser words.
DarkCyber believes that “destiny adjacency” is the all-time leader in the meaningless baloney fest that is pulled into the orbit of enterprise search.
Yep, “destiny adjacency”. Maybe a T shirt? A tattoo?
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2020
Remote Work and Enterprise Search: Implement Now!
April 28, 2020
The US and other countries has been shut down for more than a month. Companies of all sizes are struggling for revenue. The shift to WFH (work from home) is not exactly going on as smoothly as paint at a pre lockdown Peugeot plant.
The enterprise search idea articulated by a person once affiliated with IBM Watson is a stunner. You can get the full scoop in the online publication RTInsights. (No, this RT is not part of the Russian propaganda system.)
“Making Remote Work More Effective with Enterprise Search” argues that the WFH crowd can be productivity pythons. Forget the kids, the loneliness, the hassles with shopping, the security goblins, and the fear of losing one’s job. Put them out of your mind, WFH’ers. You can be a productivity python.
Sort of.
First, your employer — assuming you have one — must have an enterprise search in place. Failing that, your employer must spend money to license a suitable service. Hey, why not Sinequa, the French system which also does Big Data, analytics, and phenomenal marketing.
Now there are a couple of very minor issues to address; for example:
- Conducting a content inventory, determining what information can be accessed by an authorized WFH’er.
- The security and access controls must be defined, put in place, tested, and deployed.
- The indexing cycles must be determined because WFH’er presumably put in their 12 hour days across time zones, from a variety of computing devices, and in chunks. (Someone has to remove the Amazon packages from the door step before a bad actor removes the inviting parcels with a smile logo.)
- A workflow for getting employee generated content into the system and then getting the “real time indexing” which vendors stress their system performs to index in a reliable manner.
- Assisting employees who use the WFH system and cannot find the document a colleague said was in the system on the Zoom call that ended five minutes ago. The basic questions are, “Where is the document? When will it be available? Who’s in charge of this clown car?
Second, candidate information must be located, vetted, and converted to a format that the enterprise search system can process. Videos, audio files, images, and proprietary file formats may be a bit of a challenge in terms of time and resources.
Third, the system must be made to work. No, I mean it, deliver results employees or authorized users need. How many enterprise search systems deliver on this final point?
The write up explains:
Almost all knowledge-intensive organizations have a digital workplace that includes enterprise search, which connects employees to the content they need to complete a given task. Companies typically either deploy a rudimentary open-source kit that relies on search queries using keywords or a larger ecosystem like Microsoft, Google, or IBM, which tend to exclude content and data stored outside of the ecosystem.
What?
Oh, here’s the point:
Now is the time for organizations to think about the way employees access content platforms and how that is impacting employee productivity, knowledge sharing, and competitive advantage.
Based on the research Martin White and I did for oru book Successful Enterprise Search Management, the time required to deploy an enterprise search system was measured in months, often years. Tossing in the WFH requirement is going to add more time and cost to those sensitive to data access, indexing cycles, optimization, and other easy-to-ignore factors.
The benefits of providing enterprise search for WFH’ers remind me of the IBM Watson promises about smart software: Failure and massive costs, a loss of stakeholder value, and the distinction to be removed from Houston’s cancer hub.
To sum up, Sinequa’s sales pitch wrinkled the DarkCyber forehead a tiny bit:
- Glittering generalities about off site access to certain content is not something one just “thinks about.” Real management effort is required to avoid loss of trade secrets, sensitive information, and data which may be subject to government restrictions.
- The data supporting the assumption “better, faster, cheaper search yields more productivity (whatever that is). There is zero evidence that WFH’ers will be more or less productive if enterprise search is available. Right now, finding information is more like a Zoom call, not a session online hunting through results lists and waiting for results lists to appear.
- Phishing and other exploits. Security is not automatic. Security takes work. Oracle tried to sell its search system with Oracle security. No one in my experience was prepared to go through the hoops necessary to implement secure search. The result silos. What’s the cost for the WFH cohort? Probably more than some organizations are able to pay. (The May 12, DarkCyber video news program profiles a free-for-now open source solution to certain types of exploits. That’s a solution for those with handy infosec skills.)
Most applications used by WFH’ers include some type of search function. When information is not available, send an email or, better yet, hop on a Zoom call. And don’t forget Google, the millennials’ Swiss Army knife for information, or some social media scanning.
Enterprise search has not created productivity pythons in the more than 50 years information retrieval systems have been available.
Net net: Using Covid, WFH, and rusted buzzwords like enterprise search may not move the revenue meter. Invoking the tired, cheers-for-hire outfits like Gartner and IDC won’t do the job either. New types of information access systems are available. For examples, check out CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access. Even millennials will find some of these newer systems a refreshing findability option. As for enterprise search, its day in the sun faded with vendors’ inability to deliver results for licensees. Don’t believe me? Just ask former customers of Delphis, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, and the other precursors of today’s laborers in the search-and-retrieval Incan potato terraces.
Stephen E Arnold, April 28, 2020
Austrian Enterprise Search Gets Upgrade
April 23, 2020
When it comes to search innovation, people think about Silicon Valley or Japan. Austria, however, has its own high tech search solution from Iphos IT Solutions. Open PR shares news about Iphos IT Solutions’ newest search endeavor in the article, “SearchIT 2020-Even More Features & Functions For The Enterprise Search Solution searchIT.”
SearchIT 2020’s upgrade comes at an important time, because more employees are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They need quick access to their company’s network from self isolation. The enhanced features and new function for SearchIT 2020 will make telecommunication seamless and guarantee employees are as productive, if not more, during quarantine.
Based on specially designed AI, SearchIT 2020 offers:
“SearchIT indexes and processes internal company data from a wide variety of sources, such as databases, file servers, mail servers, or various cloud storage sources. Finding data across all these sources is made easy with the full-text search function. The high degree of automation as well as many additional features not only provide users with an efficient and secure search tool, but also with the possibility of easy-to-handle document management, knowledge management, or the creation of comprehensive data archives.”
Since searchIT 2020 is built on AI, it does more than basic enterprise search applications. It allows users to build automatic data archives, starting data with third parties, and media monitoring. New features that are included in the upgrade include integrations of new search sources, dynamic report creation, meta and special searches with extended query syntax, preview function, explorer view, and automated language recognition.
Iphos IT Solutions provided solutions for large corporations to small and medium sized businesses. The pricing varies for all projects, but it is made to be affordable for any business while providing large scale services.
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2020