Comperio Provides a Safety Net at SharePoint
June 27, 2012
Entering a Misspelled word during internet search can lead to a few moments of irritation, but in the business world things become even more complicated. Typing one wrong letter can often send users spiraling downward towards a promotional disaster. Fortunately, some providers are hanging up a few safety nets to prevent the fall.
Microsoft just revamped Bing to recognize common errors during internet search. According to, ‘Bing reveals efforts to help with human search errors Bing will remember key words and phrases most frequently used. To correct issues the search feature itself was altered as:
“We used to show synonyms as part of our recourse links and this would open up some surface area for showing alterations. The query “define interesting” highlights an example where the recourse link was unnecessary. In this case, showing the Recourse Link didn’t enhance the experience. We’ve removed the Recourse Links in cases where we are very confident that they add little value or distract users.”
Basically, Microsoft created a net to catch errors in advance and Comperio can implement similar functions within SharePoint using Fast technology. The safety net Comperio provides can help catch users before they fall into the uncomfortable realm of presentation faux pas. They can customize the programming towards the specific needs of the business to increase efficiency.
Comperio is respected worldwide as experts on search driven solutions and search enabled business models. Comperio told Beyond Search:
“We serve their clients with innovative services and products in order to create truly engaging user experiences. We allow users to not only find what they are looking for but also discover information and surface new insights from relationships across data and content.”
For more information about Comperio, visit the firm’s Web site at www.comperiosearch.com.
Jennifer Shockley, June 27, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
New Version of Funnelback
June 25, 2012
Funnelback’s latest version boasts a number of new features, we learned at Regina’s List in “Funnelback 11 Launched with Automated Tuning and SEO Assistant.” The press release describes the new Automated Tuning component:
“Brett Matson, Managing Director of Funnelback, said Funnelback 11 has the ability to continually and automatically optimize its ranking using a correct answer set determined by the customer. This enables customers to intuitively adjust the search engine ranking algorithm to ensure it continuously adapts and is optimized to the ever-changing characteristics of their own information environment. A related benefit is that it exposes how effectively the search engine is ranking, said Mr. Matson.”
Other new features include an integrated SEO assistant, updatable indexes, efficient crawling, 64-bit indexing, a new high performance search interface, a broken links report, and a People Search feature for users’ customers. The software is available on Windows, on Linux, and as a cloud service.
Based in Australia, Funnelback grew from technology developed by premier scientific research agency CSIRO. The company was established in 2005, and was bought by UK content management outfit Squiz in 2009. They offer Enterprise and Website Search, both of which include customizable features. Their memorable name derives from the names of two Australian spiders, the funnel-web and the red back.
Cynthia Murrell, June 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Search the Impossible Search
June 22, 2012
The concept of “virtual documents” will be a familiar one for many search engine professionals. Simply put, it means assembling an indexable record in a search engine from constituent parts that otherwise exist in different places. A recently posted staff blog on Search Technologies’ Web site provides an excellent example of how virtual documents can directly address a business need.
The perspective of the searcher is often not well served by existing content structures.
The “people search” issue described by the article is a common one, and the case study shown clearly illustrates the value of virtual documents.
Read on at Virtual Documents, Search the Impossible Search.
Iain Fletcher, June 22, 2012
Sponsored by Search Technologies
Document Previews: Necessary but Tricky in Some SharePoint Installations
June 22, 2012
Users find laundry lists of results a necessary but sometimes hard to use way to pinpoint needed information. Users looking for a PowerPoint presentation want a way to spot presentations without browsing, opening, scanning, and repeating the process. One feature of SharePoint is its document thumbnail and preview function. Instead of a list of text results, SharePoint can display search results with a thumbnail image of the document. Users can quickly identify a document type, which allows a research task to be accomplished more quickly.
There is, however, one challenge in some SharePoint installations. According to the document Office Web App & FAST Search Document Thumbnail and Preview scenarios, many users found document previews and thumbnails to not show up in FAST search results for SharePoint 2010. Microsoft acknowledges:
“Document Previews do not work with Claims Based Authentication and is a known limitation with the Product.”
Microsoft’s knowledge base article provides a number of ways to resolve the problem. But what does a SharePoint administrator do when a third party application is part of the mix? The SharePoint licensee needs immediate access to deep expertise with both SharePoint and Fast search are required to ensure that system performance and functionality are maintained at a high level.
Comperio, one of the world’s leading firms in Fast search engineering and consulting, can resolve preview issues quickly. Comperio’s engineers have in-depth experience with both SharePoint and Fast search. If you want to tap document previews using Microsoft’s native functions or employ third party software from firms such as BA Insight (www.bainsight.com), Comperio delivers. Comperio combines experience and technical expertise for leveraging Fast search within SharePoint. For more information about Comperio, visit the firm’s Web site at www.comperiosearch.com.
Jennifer Shockley, June 22, 2012
Sponsored by Comperio
Microsoft SharePoint: Controlled Term Functionality
June 13, 2012
Also covered “SharePointSearch, Synonyms, Thesaurus, and You” provides a useful summary of Microsoft SharePoint’s native support for controlled term lists. Today, the buzzwords taxonomy and ontology are used to refer to term lists which SharePoint can use to index content. Term lists may consist of company-specific vocabulary, the names of peoples and companies with which a firm does business, or formal lists of words and phrases with “Use for” and “See also” cross references.
The important of a controlled term list is often lost when today’s automated indexing systems process content. Almost any search system benefits when the content processing subsystem can use a controlled term list as well as the automated methods baked into the indexer.
In this TechGrowingPains write up, the author says:
A little known, and interesting, feature in SharePoint search is the ability to create customized thesaurus word sets. The word sets can either be synonyms, or word replacements, augmenting search functionality. This ability is not limited to single words, it can also be extend into specific phrases.
The article explains how controlled term lists can be used to assist a user in formulating a query. The method is called “replacement words”. The idea of suggesting terms is a good one which many users find a time saver when doing research. The synonym expansion function is mentioned as well. SharePoint can insert broader terms into a user’s query which increases or decreases the size of the result set.
The centerpiece of the article is a recipe for activating this functionality. A helpful code snippet is included as well.
If you want additional technical support, let us know. Our Search Technoologies’ team has deep experience in Microsoft SharePoint search and customization. We can implement advanced controlled term features in almost any SharePoint system.
Iain Fletcher, June 13, 2012
Microsoft Surprise: Lucid Thinking with Regards to Search
June 7, 2012
Our Overflight system snagged this news release: “Lucid Imagination Search Product Offered in Windows Azure Marketplace.” A version of the story appears on Beta News as well. According to the release:
Lucid Imagination…announced that its LucidWorks Cloud product has been selected by Microsoft Corp. to be offered as a Search-as-a-Service product in Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace. LucidWorks Cloud is a full cloud service version of its LucidWorks Enterprise platform. LucidWorks Cloud delivers full open source Apache Lucene/Solr community innovation with support and maintenance from the world’s leading experts in open source search. An extensible platform architected for developers, LucidWorks Cloud is the only Solr distribution that provides security, abstraction and pre-built connectors for essential enterprise data sources – along with dramatic ease of use advantages in a well-tested, integrated and documented package. Example use cases for LucidWorks Cloud include Search-as-a-Service for websites, embedding search into SaaS product offerings, and Prototyping and developing cloud-based search-enabled applications in general.
According to Bill Hamilton, director, product marketing for Microsoft Azure:
In line with Windows Azure’s commitment to working with open source communities and serving developers, we’re excited that Lucid Imagination is offering its LucidWorks Cloud search technology in the Windows Azure Marketplace. Developers gain the benefits of Windows Azure’s openness and flexibility while providing search capabilities in their cloud applications.
One one hand, Microsoft is following in Amazon’s footsteps by hosting third-party search-and-retrieval systems. On the other hand, the fact that Microsoft is taking a step toward open source search is an interesting development.
Does this move presage a “Fast shuffle”? In my opinion, Microsoft is probably aware of Attivio’s use of Lucene/Solr in its platform product. Attivio, as you may know, was founded by former Fast Search & Transfer executives. With that DNA, Attivio’s embrace of Lucene is important because it suggests that Attivio may have perceived that Fast Search was nearing its “end of life.” The fact that IBM uses Lucene to reduce the massive costs that keeping a basic search system bright and shiny cannot be overlooked either.
Will Microsoft itself cozy up to Lucene / Solr? The shift would be wrenching for some developers and Certified Partners. These folks have built on going engineering and support of Fast Search technology into their business models. A Fast shift could deliver higher payoff velocities to some and strip the gears for others.
From my Harrod’s Creek vantage point, this announcement warrants a happy quack.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
Google and Enterprise Search: The Eichner Vision
June 7, 2012
Google has a new head of enterprise search, Matt Eichner, Yale, Harvard, and Endeca. Computerworld UK ran an interesting article on on June 5, 2012 by Derek du Preez. “Matt Eichner: Bringing Google.com to the Enterprise” walks through what appears to be the game plan for the enterprise search unit for the next three or four months, maybe longer if Google generates more traction than it has in the previous year or two.
The article reports that Google “commands over 90 percent of the UK’s online search market.” Mr. Eichner allegedly said:
If you look at Google in the search space, we are taking that consumer expectation that we developed on Google.com and packaged both the user interface and the algorithms behind it into an enterprise appliance.
The GSA as the Google Search Appliance is presented has been available for about a decade. Based on chatter at conferences and opinions floated by assorted search experts, Google has placed upwards of 55,000 GSAs in organizations worldwide. Autonomy, by contrast, is alleged to have about 20,000 licensees of its search and content processing systems. Microsoft SharePoint, which includes a search system, is rumored to have more than 100 million licenses. It is difficult to know which enterprise search vendor has the most customers. The numbers are not audited, and each vendor in the enterprise search market tiptoes around how customers many customers are signed up, how many customers are paying their bills, how many customers are dropping licenses, and how much revenue flows to the vendor from enterprise search service and support. In short, it may be difficult to know how big any one vendor’s share of the enterprise search market is or if there is even a market for enterprise search in today’s mash up and fluid business environment.
A block diagram showing a GSA in an enterprise installation. Note the presence of “OneBox” units. Authorized Google partners may be needed to get this type of implementation up and running. If this is accurate, then Mr. Eichner’s assertion about an “out of the box” solution may require some fine tuning. Image source: DevX at http://www.devx.com/enterprise/Article/33372/1954
Google believes there is a market, however.
The pointy end of the spear for Google is its search appliance. The idea is that a customer can order an appliance and get it up and running quickly. The GSA can scale by plugging in more GSAs. The GSA understands “enterprise context”.
According to Computerworld’s write up, Mr. Eichner asserted:
At Google we have billions of queries from Google.com coming in every day that we are able to analyze and deliver an enterprise tool that balances human behavior and search relevance.
Google’s enterprise services are cognizant of big data, which most vendors suggest can be managed by their search system. Google is no exception. Mr. Eichner, according to Computerworld, observed:
Big data is in the eye of the beholder. If I gave you 500,000 documents, which doesn’t sound like a lot, and I said to you find something in there – you would look at me and say, ‘can I use a search engine?’ From your perspective, 500,000 would be big data. We often lose sight of that. Insight needs to be delivered when you have more data than you can process. This can come in the form of 500,000 documents or hundreds of millions of documents. The real mandate in the world today is to get up the competitive stack by being more knowledgeable about what you are doing more quickly – that’s the nature of the information economy. The imperative is to get better at assimilating the knowledge you have and acting on it. The inverse of this is if you have big data and you don’t have insight. That’s the equivalent of saying ‘I’ll take a guess, I won’t use the information and I’ll take a guess.”’
New Exclusive Interview: Bjorn Laukli, Comperio US
June 6, 2012
At a recent conference devoted to enterprise search, I spoke with Bjørn Laukli, now the president of Comperio US. Mr. Laukli was the Fast Search & Transfer chief technical officer. Prior to Fast Search’s acquisition by Microsoft in 2008, Mr. Laukli joined Comperio AS, a search solutions company. For more information about Comperio, navigate to the company’s Web site, www.comperiosearch.com. If you mistype the url as comperio.com, Google displays a malware warning, which does not apply to Comperio AS.
I asked Mr. Laukli about Comperio’s business focus. He told me:
We founded Comperio AS in 2004 with a vision of utilizing search technology to improve the way people interact with information, ensuring that the solutions understand people and context, rather than the other way round. Early on, Scandinavia was Comperio’s focus area, however, since 2008, it has expanded into the US and UK. Initially, the business was building a practice around the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP) with both products and services. Since Microsoft acquired FAST, Comperio’s business focus has expanded into SharePoint and FAST Search for SharePoint.
A company’s approach to client engagements is key to the success of an engineering services firm. In response to the question, “How do you lead a client through a solution?”, Mr. Laukli said:
After an engagement agreement has been established, we typically enter the discovery phase. Often we follow an agile methodology like Scrum, and in such a setting we refer this phase to Sprint 0. In Sprint 0, we gather requirements and talk with the stakeholders from the client. This includes business and IT resources, as well as end users of the system. Sprint 0 consists of many activities from analysis, to concept development, interaction and technology design. The output of this initial phase is normally a detailed project plan outlining key deliverables and dependencies. A system design is also outlined and communicated. After sign-off on the project plan, we start the implementation. After the solution is deployed, it enters the maintenance phase. Comperio offers application management service (AMS) which in many cases is a great option for the client. That way they can focus on their core business, while we can ensure that their system produce high-quality results all the time.
You can read the full text of the interview with Mr. Laukli on the ArnoldIT.com subsite Search Wizards Speak. For one click access to the 2009 interview with Mr. Laukli, click here. For the 2012 interview, click here.
The Search Wizards Speak collection of interviews contains more than 70 interviews with individuals who are involved in search and content processing. The index of the interviews is available at the subsite http://www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak/.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
HP Autonomy: The Big Data Arabesque
June 5, 2012
Hewlett Packard has big plans for Autonomy. HP paid $10 billion for the search and content processing company last year. HP faces a number of challenges in its printer and ink business. The personal computer business is okay, but HP is without a strong revenue stream from mobile devices.
“HP Rolls Out Hadoop AppSystem Stack” provided some interesting information about Autonomy and big data. The write up focuses on the big data trend. In order to make sense out of large volumes of information, HP wants to build management software, integrate the “Vertica column oriented distributed database and the Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) 10 stack.” The article reports:
On the Autonomy front, HP has announced the capability to put the IDOL 10 engine, which supports over 1,000 file types and connects to over 400 different kinds of data repositories, onto each node in a Hadoop cluster. So you can MapReduce the data and let Autonomy make use of it. For instance, you can use it to feed the Optimost Clickstream Analytics module for the Autonomy software, which also uses the Vertica data store for some parts of the data stream. HP is also rolling out its Vertica 6 data store, and the big new feature is the ability to run the open source R statistical analysis programming language in parallel on the nodes where Vertica is storing data in columnar format. More details on the new Vertica release were not available at press time, but Miller says that the idea is to provider connectors between Vertica, Hadoop, and Autonomy so all of the different platforms can share information.
HP’s idea blends a hot trend, HP’s range of hardware, HP’s system management software, a database, and Autonomy IDOL. In order to make this ensemble play in tune, HP will offer professional services.
InfoWorld’s “HP Extends Autonomy’s Big Data Chops to Hadoop Cloud” added some additional insight. I learned that former Autonomy boss Michael Lynch will leave HP “along with Autonomy’s entire original management team and 20 percent of its staff.”
The story then explained that Autonomy, which combines with Vertica:
can now be embedded in Hadoop nodes. From there, users can combine Idol’s 500-plus functions — including automatic categorization, clustering, and hyperlinking — to scour various sources of structured and unstructured data to glean deeper meanings and trends. Sources run the gamut, too, from structured data such as purchase history, services issues, and inventory records to unstructured Twitter streams, and even audio files. IDOL includes 400 connectors, which companies can use to get at external data.
Autonomy moved beyond search many years ago. This current transformation of Autonomy makes marketing sense. I am interested in monitoring this big data approach. IBM had a similar idea when it presented the Vivisimo clustering and deduplication system as a “big data” system. The challenge will be applying text centric technology to ensembles which generate insights from “big data.”
Will the shift earn back the purchase price of $10 billion and have enough horsepower to pull HP into robust top line growth? Big data and analytics have promise but I don’t know of any single analytics company that has multi-billion dollar product lines. Big data is a hot button, but does it hard wire into the pocketbooks of chief financial officers?
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
Forward Search 2.7 Arrives
June 1, 2012
The eagerly anticipated newest version of Forward Search has finally been released. According to Release of Forward Search 2.7, extensive testing has been done over the past several weeks to ensure the functionality of new features and improvements. The company is secure in their opinion that this is the most stable, flexible and versatile Forward Search version ever.
The Highlighted Features and Improvements are as follows on the backend client:
“Facet Counted Search – Count of each found result, Faster Numerical Range Query – Returns hits within specified range, Type-ahead improvement – Support for selected fields and sorting by frequency, Improved HTML5 support – New filtering options for extended custom fields, WebService improvement – Json-returning search interface, Web Crawler – Now supports partial crawl, and Indexing – Complete re-indexing of an index. “
Some of the new Administration Clients Services are:
“New Atom-Feed News reader – relaying news from the Forward Search Partner Portal, Added support for above backend features, and improved interface for related control element editing”
Forward Search is a Microsoft Partner that offers Enterprise Search for enterprise solutions including Content Management, intranets, databases, document repositories, OEM software etc. They currently work with over 35 partners in 9 countries offering backing and support to enable corporations to handle large amounts of unstructured data and create success within their client circles by utilizing Content Management Solutions based on Microsoft technology like EPiServer, Sitecore and Umbraco.
Jennifer Shockley, June 1, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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