Protected: SharePoint Service Package Documentation
July 12, 2011
Exalead Injects Its Expertise into Dassault Aviation
July 11, 2011
It’s a great idea for an aviation company: a search-based application for flight line crew and mechanics. Timely information is precious in this area. The write-up elaborates:
“Developed in less than a month by a mixed Dassault Systèmes-Bull team, it allows instant post-flight access to all the maintenance data used for diagnostics support.
“Several hundred thousand records – aircraft, system and equipment repair records and other maintenance reports – contained in different databases are collected, indexed and linked together by high-performance search algorithms. The innovations offered by this new technology open the way to other applications in every sector of the company’s activities.
As just one example, the piece cites a worldwide spare part stocking system. Efficiency is good.
We have long been impressed with Exalead and its industry-leading technologies. The company serves clients worldwide with both Web and enterprise search products. Their advanced semantic technologies can’t be beat.
Dassault Aviation is another company we admire. A subsidiary of the Dassault Group, the French company has been operating since 1930. They manufacture cutting-edge jets for military, regional, and business use.
Cynthia Murrell, July 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of the New Landscape of Enterprise Search.
Protected: Microsoft’s New Office 365 for SharePoint and Exchange
July 11, 2011
Digital Reasoning Forges Ahead With New Select Partner Program
July 10, 2011
Digital Reasoning has solidified its reputation thanks to its data analytics solutions which help companies dig deep into their data and really get the most from their resources. According to the Red Javelin Communications press release “Digital Reasoning Introduces Select Partner Program for Big Data Analytics” Digital Reasoning recently announced the formation of a new Select Partner Program for technology partners. “The program has been created to support the growing ecosystem of leading technology vendors building the next generation of analytic solutions for Big Data.” Digital Reasoning hopes to integrate its Synthesys business intelligence platform in not only commercial enterprises but also the federal government’s intelligence sectors.
Data Analytics is a way of life for companies such a Cloudera, DataStax and Fetch Technologies and they make-up the initial member lineup for the Select Partner Program. Cloudera provides clients with the valuable Apache Hadoop based data management software, Cloudera Distribution which is a commercial distribution of Hadoop platform. Apache Hadoop is an open-source platform designed to efficiently analyze both structured and complex data. Many companies use Hadoop because of its ability to handle different data sets, the flexibility to add or remove servers and its capability to detect errors or problems and fix them simultaneously while continuing to process data. According to the Cloudera Web Site, Cloudera Distribution “integrates the most popular projects related to Hadoop into a single package, which is run through a suite of rigorous tests to ensure reliability during production.”
Digital Reasoning’s latest version of its popular intelligence platform Synthesys will be fully integrated with Cloudera’s Distribution, specifically Apache Hadoop (CDH3) and HBase. According to the Marketwire.com article “Cloudera and Digital Reasoning Partner to Provide Complex Data Analytics for Government Intelligence and Enterprise Markets” this new integration will allow “Digital Reasoning to achieve extreme scale capabilities and provide complex data analytics to government and commercial markets.”
DataStax provides another valuable open source program, called Apache Cassandra. DataStax is the commercial leader for this open-source platform which allows customers to build, deploy and operate high volume real time operations across various servers, databases, computers etc without interruption. Fetch Technologies brings another important piece to the puzzle with its real time technology-based solutions. The technology allows companies to not only access their data but also compile it while accessing real-time Web data. Clients can access valuable websites and get important information such as data analysis.
Though each company’s products have some similarities they each bring something different and valuable to the Data Analytics table. According to a statement from the CEO of Digital Reasoning Time Estes, “We strongly believe that working with the best-in-class partners is the ideal way to help customers solve their Big Data analytic challenges.” Digital Reasoning understands the power of team work and is extremely optimistic about the partnerships. Proof the company believes “there is power is numbers.”
A happy quack for the Digital Reasoning team.
April Holmes, July 11, 2011
You can read more about enterprise search and retrieval in The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, published by Pandia in Oslo, Norway, in June 2011.
Protected: How To Virtualize SharePoint with Hyper-V
July 10, 2011
Hadoop, Search, and Business
July 8, 2011
We have had a theory that the NoSQL data management systems were poised to make search a component of their systems. There was the repositioning of MarkLogic’s XML server as a search engine. But MarkLogic is not an open source centric company in my opinion.
However, we noted an interesting perspective on the Open Source data analytics tool Hadoop. eWeek.com’s article “Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: Hadoop Data Analytics: 10 Reasons Why It’s Important for Business” was thought provoking.
Created by Apache Chairman Doug Cutting, Hadoop has since resided at Yahoo! Now, it plans move to the startup Hortonworks, which is funded by Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital. Writer Chris Preimesberger remarks,
Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework built in Java that works with distributed data-intensive applications. It enables applications to scale securely in order to handle thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. More and more businesses are finding out that they need to analyze their stored data to help them make better business decisions. A number of Hadoop distributions are now available.
He presents his ten reasons in slideshow format. They include such persuasive points as “Hadoop Is No Longer a Science Experiment,” “Hadoop Was a Key Part of IBM’s Watson,” and “Hadoop Knows It Still Needs to Improve.” Do see the article for the complete list.
We agree, but we think that there is a larger movement taking place. The companies which are cloud centric, based on open source technologies like Hadoop, and providing access to structured and unstructured data may pose a challenge to traditional enterprise search and business intelligence vendors relying on relational data management systems.
The mini trend is an interest in reducing costs and complexity. The cloud may not be an ideal solution, but when data management, findability, and reduced headcount become available, we think quite a few organizations will shift their approach to search.
Oracle and other data management outfits may need to consider these reasons and take action. Open source search vendors may find themselves squeezed by open source vendors once considered partners or benign organizations. Now we think the landscape is shifting.
Cynthia Murrell July 8, 2011
You can read more about enterprise search and retrieval in The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, published by Pandia in Oslo, Norway, in June 2011.
MarkLogic, FAST, Categorical Affirmatives, and a Direction Change
July 5, 2011
I weakened this morning (July 4, 2011) with a marketing Fourth of July boom. I received one of those ever present LinkedIn updates putting a comment from the Enterprise Search Engine Professionals Group in front of me.
The MarkLogic positioning exploded on my awareness like a Fourth of July skyrocket’s burst.
Most of the comments on the LinkedIn group are ho hum. One hot topic has been Microsoft’s failure to put much effort in its blogs about Fast Search & Transfer’s technology. Snore. Microsoft put down $1.2 billion for Fast, made some marketing noises, and had a fellow named Mr. Treo-something talk to me about the “new” Fast Search system. Then search turned out to be more like a snap in but without the simplicity of a Web part. Microsoft moved on and search is there, but like Google’s shift to Android, search is not where the action is. I am not sure who “runs” the enterprise search unit at Microsoft. Lots of revolving door action is my impression of Microsoft’s management approach in the last year.
The noise died down and Fast has become another component in the sprawling Shanghai of code known as SharePoint 2010. Making Fast “fast” and tuning it to return results that don’t vary with each update has created a significant amount of business for Microsoft partners “certified” to work on Fast Search. Licensees of the Linux/Unix version of ESP are now like birds pushed from the next by an impatient mother.
New MarkLogic Market Positioning?
Set Microsoft aside for a moment and look at this post from a MarkLogic professional who once worked at Fast Search and subsequently at Microsoft. I am not sure how to hyperlink to LinkedIn posts without generating a flood of blue and white screens begging for log in, sign up, and money. I will include a link, but you are on your own.
Here’s the alleged MarkLogic professional’s comment:
Many organizations are replacing FAST with MarkLogic. MarkLogic offers a scalable enterprise search engine with all the features of FAST plus more…
Wow.
An XML engine with wrappers is now capable of “all” the Fast features. In my new monograph “The New Landscape of Enterprise Search”, I took some care to review information presented by Fast at CERN, the wizard lair in Europe, about Fast Search’s effort to rewrite Fast ESP, which was originally a Web search engine. The core was wrapped to convert Web search into enterprise search. This was neither quick nor particularly successful. Fast Search & Transfer ran into some tough financial waters, ended up the focus of a government investigation, and was quickly sold for a price that surprised me and the goslings in Harrod’s Creek.
You can get the details of the focus of the planned reinvention of the Fast system and the link to the source document at CERN which I reference in my Landscape study. A rewrite indicates that some functions were not in 2007 and 2008 performing in a manner that was acceptable to someone in Fast Search’s management. Then the acquisition took place. The Linux/Unix support was nuked. Fast under Microsoft’s wing has become a utility in the incredible assemblage of components that comprises SharePoint 2010. I track the SharePoint ecosystem in my information service SharePointSemantics.com. If you haven’t seen the content, you might want to check it out.
More Than File-Sharing Needed in SharePoint 2010
July 2, 2011
The article “Is SharePoint 2010 Ready For Social Business? Nope” chomps on the meat and potatoes of the competition between leading file-sharing programs. The loser? SharePoint 2010, and it is no big surprise.
A run down of SharePoint 2010s inadequacies seen from a rather narrow angle is the focus of a This Week in Lotus podcast. Expert Luiz Benitez examines the overwhelming challenges Microsoft faces with its SharePoint 2010, focusing on file-sharing as a jumping off point. Mr. Benitez asserts that the much more progressive IBM Connections offers tools that meet the needs of organizations jumping into social computing.
Briefly moving past file-sharing into the other essential components of a successful social business platform Benitez states,
…this is just comparing file sharing. It doesn’t even get to compare head-to-head Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Team places, Profiles/My Sites, Ideation (which SharePoint doesn’t have), and other capabilities that are in Connections but not in SharePoint (microblogging!)
The final nail on SharePoint 2010s “sharing” coffin is that a major consulting company, IDC, ignored this weakness not once, but twice. We must admit we did not know about this alleged IDC shortcoming, but Mr. Benetiz has been more attentive.
Despite SharePoint 2010s popularity as a file-sharing entity, it clearly faces hurdles unlikely to be overcome with the fast-changing pace of social business initiatives demanded in the world marketplace. Microsoft may be able to redeem itself and its insufficient SharePoint with its next release. We think that SharePoint might be late to the sharing snack table.
Catherine Bize, July 2, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
Google Misfires on Cloudy Office
July 2, 2011
According to the Business Insider’s “Google Tries to Show Microsoft How the Cloud Should Work,” the Internet giant has announced an update to its Google Cloud Connect that will let users open documents stored on Google Docs from directly within Microsoft Office through a new menu option. We learned in the write up:
The feature ONLY opens files that are in formats supported by Office, like .doc and .docx for Word or .xls and .xlsx for Excel.” “Google-formatted files can’t be opened from Office, so Google decided they shouldn’t even show up in the dialog box.
While Google’s update is an improvement over the lack of coordination between Microsoft’s Skydrive cloud storage service and Office documents, people who do some work in the browser and other work in Office and want all files to be available from everywhere are still without a solution.
Other vendors are adding value to Microsoft’s cloud offerings. You can get a good short profiles of a a couple of other companies in this sector in “Office 365 Partners Extend UC and Email Options.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 2, 2011
You can read more about enterprise search and retrieval in The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, published my Pandia in Oslo, Norway, in June 2011.
BA Insight Books a New CFO
June 28, 2011
BA Insight, founded several years ago, boasts patented software that “empowers organizations to optimize their information access and search protocols in order to achieve higher productivity, greater efficiencies, and happier end users. The firm has also optimized two of its key company functions: accounting and legal.
“BA Insight Appoints Chief Financial Officer” alerted us that Gary Traynor, MBA, JD has been named the firm’s chief financial officer responsible for directing “the development and execution of BA Insight’s financial growth strategy and oversee the company’s accounting, internal reporting, and investor relations activities while also managing the company’s legal matters.”
Guy Mounier, BA Insight’s CEO, touts Traynor’s 15 years of investment banking and management experience with technology companies as necessary for the “financial performance of a rapidly growing company like ours.”
So what’s BA Insight up to? Given Traynor’s background in successfully guiding numerous tech companies through the ventures of venture capitalism, including capital raising and private placements, BA Insight may be aiming for more funding or an initial public offering.
The press announcement emphasized the company’s plan to “engage in new markets around the world,” “build the global team,” and to execute its next phase of “responsible growth” with “expansive and global plans for the future.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
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