PR Push for Azaleos and Fast Search
March 14, 2012
My email overflowed this morning with descriptions of Azaleos, its expertise in Microsofty stuff, and Fast Search. I am on the ball with regard to Fast Search, its legal back story, and the issues associated with getting the system to deliver useful results to users on time and on budget. You will find the Azaleos blog quite interesting. I noted no recent postings about Fast Search. For some current information about the search system, you may want to check out this Beyond Search write up. I ran a query using the Azaleos search system and got three hits about Fast Search. The coverage of search suggests that Azaleos may be succumbing to a communications expert’s inputs about how to sell search services.
What was new was the statement in MSPmentor’s “Azaleos Cloud Gets Microsoft Fast Search Server 2010”. How does a Microsoft partner “get” Fast Search? I don’t know. Maybe pay a fee? Here’s the passage I noted:
…the company’s Managed Enterprise Search solution addresses a different need. It gives enterprises the ability to remotely design, configure, monitor and manage FAST Search Server 2010. According to Azaleos, the development is big news for its customers because the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 can perform searches in “an interactive and visual format,” in addition to the basic search functions that the Microsoft SharePoint Server provides. The FAST Search Server is a high-visibility solution, which brings its own set of complex issues to the table for enterprise IT departments. But Azaleos claims its Managed Enterprise Search solution eliminates the challenges associated with high visibility applications and can keep the FAST Search Server available and running at top speed.
My thoughts after reading this included:
- There is an implicit assumption that Microsoft’s cloud search will be Fast centric. My own view of this is that the assumption may be out of kilter. The reasons include performance, extensibility, and customization. Fast Search can be turned into a capable performer, but the “cloud” angle implies a certain standardization of features. So of Fast Search’s vast capabilities what will the core service do? Keywords, clustering, linguistic analysis, entity extraction, sentiment analysis, relationship mapping, etc. My point is that customers may want all of these functions and that suggests the Fast Search from Azaleos may be very different from the Fast Search marketing collateral’s assertions.
- Can Azaleos maintain an “interactive and visual format” when the content throughput increases. The challenge of keeping indexes fresh equates to resources. Resources, in my experience, cost money. The fix may be to gate how much data are processed in order to keep the fees acceptable to customers. Price spikes are not encouraging to some licensees in my experience.
- The assertion of “available and running at top speed” is an interesting one. My thought was, “Relative to what?” Are we comparing a small corpus with weekly index refreshes or are we talking about 100 million documents refreshed in near real time? I am not sure Fast in an on premises installation with original Fast engineers babysitting the hugely complex system with often unexpected dependencies can be a challenge to keep perking along at optimum performance levels.
I want to watch how this business unfolds. After all, a PR blitz which puts several stories in front of me signals some real enthusiasm on the part of the Azaleos stakeholders.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Texis 6 from Thunderstone
March 9, 2012
A new version of the time-tested Thuderstone search software Texis has been announced in the news release “Thunderstone Releases Texis Version 6” on its Web site. Nearly every feature has been overhauled or altered for this new version, with much care put into updating the presentation and functionality .
From the article:
“New features available in Texis 6 include:
- More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent-insensitive queries:
This improves non-English searches; e.g. “cœur” will also match “coeur”, “resume” will match “resumé”.- Improved XML/XSLT support, including a new API for building XML based applications more easily.
- HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization:
Reduces load on targeted servers, and potentially allows access to more content.- Enhanced options for showing search results, including multiple snippets and styled highlighting:
Shows more query-relevant text in results, and allows full customization of query term presentation.”
Also updated were the Webinator tools, which now allow for faster category searches, expanded language usage (including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters), and a customizable thesaurus, to name a few key features. It should be noted that some of these changes are for the Texis program only, and not the main Thunderstone product. A full rundown of the changes is available here.
Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
MessageSolution for Managing SharePoint Data
March 8, 2012
We have here another attempt to tame SharePoint’s content wild ponies: “MessageSolution Showcasing SharePoint Governance and eDiscovery Platform at Microsoft SharePoint Technology Conference 2012”, reports SeattlePi. The write up declares:
By integrating award-winning enterprise archiving policy with SharePoint’s record center functions, MessageSolution has created a framework to automate eDiscovery and manage risk in SharePoint distributed farms. Now SharePoint administrators can regulate compliance, remotely offload Blobs to optimize SharePoint storage space and server performance, as well as search and restore objects instantly without the need for additional IT assistance.
For those who may not know, a Blob (also written BLOB) is a Binary Large Object. By offloading these objects from a SharePoint server using Microsoft approved EBS and RBS protocols, MessageSolution can speed up tasks in the SharePoint environment. This comes in handy when searching and restoring data for legal discovery proceedings. Furthermore, the article asserts, the tool reduces storage requirements with a high compression rate and single-instance storage.
Designed for both mid- and large-scale organizations, the product also sports a unified index; retention management; legal holds with hold notifications; a unified user interface and index; and federated search. The product’s focus on back-end design, according to the write up, means fewer hassles during installation and maintenance as well as a reduced backup time. See the article for more details.
MessageSolution’s SharePoint Management Solutions and its Enterprise eDiscovery Platform will be showcased at the 2012 SharePoint Technology Conference February 28-29 at the Union Square Hilton in San Francisco (booth #808).
Founded in 2002, MessageSolution has assembled a team of veterans from a number of other Silicon Valley enterprises. The company prides itself on providing solutions that simplify the complex processes of archiving and eDiscovery, including managing language differences, for organizations around the world.
Search Technologies stands ready to assist clients with search and content processing services for Microsoft SharePoint environments.
Iain Fletcher, Search Technologies, March 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Registration Now Open for AppRapids Conference
March 5, 2012
Beyond Search and AppRapids have announced that registration is open for the first AppRapids Conference in Louisville, Kentucky on March, 28, 2012.
The enterprise information service, AppRapids, is a Monday through Friday service which focuses on app-related issues in the digital world. AppRapids targets important developments in the field and provides critical comments about these developments.
The one-day conference, held at WorkShop, the Creative Workplace, will bring together participants and speakers, allowing everyone to collaborate and share ideas and insights in the field of mobile applications.
The press release, “Apps are Where it’s at: Register Now for AppRapids Conference” tells us more:
“Apps have been integrated into every aspect of life on both personal and professional levels. However, a lack of knowledge, and consequently agency, exists among many app users and potential app creators. Apps have roots in the past, are impacting the present, and will construct the future. Conference sessions will range from planning and development to implementation and business implications. Speakers will provide details of real-life use cases, best practices and lessons learned.”
The conference will include presentations by women and minorities, and discounted rates are available for students and Seed2020 members. Conference sponsors include: Arnold IT, PolySpot, WorkShop, the Creative Workplace, and Interactive Media Lab.
To register and view the schedule and speaker information, head over to http://www.apprapids.com/conference-registration/.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Database Design Directions
February 23, 2012
We came across a quite useful checklist every database architect should keep on hand. Java Code Geeks give us “20 Database Design Best Practices.” The list covers everything from the commonsense:
“Use well defined and consistent names for tables and columns (e.g. School, StudentCourse, CourseID …).”
To the more advanced:
“Normalization must be used as required, to optimize the performance. Under-normalization will cause excessive repetition of data, over-normalization will cause excessive joins across too many tables. Both of them will get worse performance.”
With a little strong opinion mixed in:
“Lack of database documentation is evil.”
If you design (or oversee those who design) databases, do yourself a favor and check it out.
Most people think of search as providing access to unstructured information. Examples of unstructured information include email, Word documents, and Excel. Our extensive work in enterprise search has spanned structured data; that is, information in a database.
Search Technologies can handle difficult content acquisition tasks when needed information is held within Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, or a similar data management system. In addition, Search Technologies can set up automated processes to handle extraction, transformation, and loading of data or subsets of data.
For more information about our capabilities to make structured and unstructured data more findable, navigate to www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, February 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PolySpot Technology Makes Big Data Manageable
February 23, 2012
A recent white paper by Beyond Search’s own analyst, Stephen Arnold, “Cutting Big Data Down to Size: The PolySpot Solution,” tackles the issue of high-volume data flow by taking an in-depth look into PolySpot’s Information at Work Solution.
Arnold gives much credit to the France-based company for creating a revolutionary system that offers an easy-to-use solution to Big Data, making data available and thus valuable to companies. Information from ArnoldIT’s investigation is summarized on PolySpot’s website:
PolySpot has developed an innovative approach that makes it possible to deploy a robust frame-work over existing content repositories. The PolySpot technology allows licensees to access information from many different sources and deliver information that answers real-life business questions. Users access the content via applications or apps from mobile devices to desktop computers. The company delivers solutions+apps.
Our team at Beyond Search is glad to see PolySpot offering innovative enterprise search solutions that are much needed in the search enterprise search market place. This technology is necessary in ensuring that information of significant value is not lost in the petabytes of information that is growing daily.
Check out Apprapids for more insight from the ArnoldIT team or direct your browser to PolySpot to download a full-length copy of the analysis.
Andrea Hayden, February 23, 2012
Another Take on Visual SharePoint
February 16, 2012
We noted the excellent article “How to Do Visual Best Bets for Built In SharePoint Search”. Mikael Svenson has done a very good job of explaining the details of an earlier article about best bets (content which may of interest to a user) enhancements to SharePoint FS4SP.
Users find useful suggestions and content flagged as having particular relevance to a query. The suggestions in many systems are in the form of “facets” or highlighted results. Busy users can scan the results list and note the suggestions. A visual component can make it even easier for a SharePoint user to spot potentially useful content.
We learned from Mr. Svenson:
Visual Best Bets is a feature of FAST Search for SharePoint which lets you point to a file with html content to be displayed above your search results. For example an image, Silverlight or flash content can be used to graphically enhance what is linked to the keyword term. The Visual Web Part uses an iframe to accomplish this and loads up your content inside the iframe. This is useful as you can easily edit the html file at will. But why go the extra mile for a separate file, or opt in for FS4SP for this feature? The Best Bet web part support the showing of keywords and keyword definitions. Keyword definitions are formatted as html. And a definition with html formatting is in effect a Visual Best Bet. (If you have more than one Visual Best Bet you want to assign to the keyword you would have to add them all to the same html for this to work.)
We agree, and we want to add that there are numerous other options available to a SharePoint licensee. These range from the integration of visual displays from Microsoft-certified third party developers to custom code. One company with some interesting technologies is Nevron. The firm’s components can convert a SharePoint page into an advanced dashboard or a report. The user no longer looks at a results list. With Nevron-type technology, the user sees a report which answers a specific business question.
At Search Technologies, the technical team can implement FS4SP via PowerShell or other system, integrate third party components, or develop a customized solution to meet a SharePoint licensee’s specific needs. To learn more about Search Technologies’ customization and FS4SP services, navigate to the Search Technologies’ Web site.
Iain Fletcher, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Interview with Paul Doscher
February 1, 2012
Paul Doscher is the CEO of LucidWorks, formerly Lucid Imagination. Before taking the helm of LucidWorks, Doscher led enterprise search vendor Exalead, from 2008-2011. Fierce Content Management has taken an interest in Doscher’s expertise and has conducted an interview with the leader entitled, “One on one with Paul Doscher, CEO LucidWorks.”
Fierce Content Management’s first question to Doscher asked how large amounts of untraditional data could be handled by the enterprise. He responded:
“Enterprise search has adapted dramatically over the past years. Many people think of search as executed through the use of a simple user interface and predicated on keyword matching. Such search results are static and lack intelligence. These types of search solutions remain relevant and appealing to certain enterprises. And yet, with the rapid explosion of text messaging, emails, video, digital recordings and smartphones, the amount of data that companies need to access and understand has grown monumentally and continues to mount. We see enterprise search extending well beyond the basic functionality to deliver results to business users that are meaningful and actionable.”
Doscher goes on to discuss the power of LucidWorks Search and particularly LucidWorks Big Data to conquer the new challenge of unstructured data. LucidWorks gets its strength not only from Doscher’s experience and leadership, but also from its open source foundation. Open source is in general a more agile, a more cost effective, and a more sustainable base for powerful software solutions.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 1, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Selecting the Right Enterprise Search System for Your Business
January 31, 2012
Companies looking into enterprise solutions will likely be overwhelmed by the variety of options available and may not know the first place to start when considering which product is the right fit for their needs. Susanne Koch’s recent presentation “The Landscape of Enterprise Search” on Pandia.com highlights some of the recent trends in enterprise search and offers advice on how to navigate through the difficult process that is understanding and choosing the appropriate enterprise system for your business. According to Koch:
Recently, many enterprise search vendors have improved the usability, performance, and functionality of their systems.
The presentation discusses several trends that are surfacing in enterprise system development and which vendors are developing these trends. For instance, Koch points out that Endeca is combining structured and unstructured data into their enterprise system to simplify search capabilities, and Microsoft is including integrated social functions to increase searchability.
With so many options available, it’s extremely important for companies to do their due diligence before deciding on an enterprise solution. And take a look that the full presentation for additional information and a suggested list of questions to ask.
As Koch suggests in her presentation:
Allow time and resources to go beyond what you, the buyer, think you want and find out what you really need.
For more information about the study to which Ms. Kock refers, click this link.
Stacey Duwe, January 31, 2012
Freebie
Slaying Data Tigers: The PolySpot Approach
January 26, 2012
A recent study conducted by Mindjet estimated twenty-one minutes a day were wasted searching for data among employees. Although that number seems small upon first glance once the math is done one realizes just how much money that costs companies. The blog post, Employee productivity: 21 critical minutes, on Polyspot’s Web site puts that cost upwards of two weeks’ worth of pay per employee putting a little more bite into that statistic.
So, what is a company to do to eliminate this waste? The answer, according to Polyspot, is quite simple really – utilize a search engine. As the post explains,
Search engines are often seen as a commodity. However, when used properly, they can breathe new life into information distribution within a company, saving employees valuable time that would otherwise be wasted. Now more than ever, with the appearance of so-called “Big Data”, these information asset management technologies provide a strategic gateway to a company’s entire knowledge base, enabling each and every employee to become more flexible, responsive, efficient and productive.
All too often as big data looms over their heads companies throw more and more money into data silos and other data management products thinking the storage of such vast amounts will fix the problem. As the post points out, however, storing data is the least of a company’s problem. As more business applications are being created and added into a company’s system more data is, in turn, being produced. In some instances the applications are meant to manage the data yet in reality only create more.
Without proper search within a larger data management solution companies are doomed. With entire industries existing solely online data will only continue to grow. Complicating the increasing data problem is the ever increasing types of data popping up making traditional search applications irrelevant. To be truly competitive in today’s market companies facing data problems must stop turning to applications to solve their problems and listen closely, rather, to Polyspot’s advice: invest in search.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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