Landscape of Search Order Form Live
June 8, 2011
Pandia.com, the publisher of “The New Landscape of Enterprise Search”, has posted an information page and a link to an order form. This new study takes a frank, objective look at the market for enterprise search systems and six leading vendors. Unlike the “pay to play” studies and conferences, the 150 page report provides the detail procurement teams and business professionals need to decide which system best suits a particular findability problem.
The report answers a number of questions which are routinely overlooked, ignored, or unknown to some of the organizations writing “pay to play” reports about vendors; for example:
- What was the status of the rewrite of Fast ESP prior to the purchase of the company by Microsoft in 2008?
- What technical methods cause certain scaling challenges in some Endeca and Vivisimo implementations?
- How do the platforms of Autonomy and Exalead compare in multi content deployments for enterprise applications?
- Why are most procurements won by a small number of vendors despite dozens, if not hundreds of lower cost options?
- What are the cost implications of Google’s GSA pricing method for the GB 7007 and GB 9009?
- What’s the outlook for search innovation in the next nine to 12 months?
This report goes beyond Stephen E Arnold’s 2008 report on content processing for the Gilbane Group, the Successful Enterprise Search Management monograph for Galatea in 2009, and his three studies of Google’s now-ageing search technology in the Google trilogy, published by Infonortics. Significant additional investigation via interviews and hands on involvement with search technology propel this report well beyond his first three editions of the Enterprise Search Report, 2004 to 2007.
If you are involved in enterprise search, you will want to get a copy of this report which discusses search solutions available from Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, Google, Microsoft (Fast Search), and Vivisimo. The report includes a table providing brief facts about two dozen other systems, including open source options.
What sets the report apart is that the information in the new report does not duplicate the information which is available without charge in the Search Wizards Speak collection of more than 50 interviews with experts in search and retrieval or Mr. Arnold’s blogs about search and content processing: Beyond Search and Inteltrax.com
You can access the Pandia.com description of the report and the order form at http://www.pandia.com/enterprise-search/. The report costs $20 and is available as a PDF file.
Don Anderson, June 8, 2011
The post was sponsored by Stephen E Arnold
Smoothing SharePoint Upgrades
June 7, 2011
After a whirl of conferences, I was catching up on my reading. I was interested in J. Peter Bruzzese’s article “Don’t Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 Until You Read This” suggests, this is not an update for the faint of heart. Our experience at Search Technologies was that SharePoint upgrades have been reasonably straight forward.
His warning suggests:
You may like to be hands-on with your own environment, installing all your own servers and such, but the upgrade to SharePoint 2010 should either be treated with the utmost care or turned over to an expert who’s done it a bunch of times and has it down to a science.
He continues by saying it took him “a week to research and test in-place upgrade process and the database-attach migrate process before throwing down the ‘hire somebody else’ gauntlet.”
So there it is.
His caution comes complete with neon blinking lights. His article cited some well known experts; for example, Spencer Harbar, Microsoft Enterprise Architect and Don Holmes, Intellium consultant and trainer. The article suggest that any “headaches” that you encounter “depends more on your current environment than on SP2010 itself.”
We agree.
They claim that this upgrade “is far less of an issue than upgrading from SPs2003 to Moss2007.”
We have some suggestions. First, check with specialists. Please, consider Search Technologies as a potential resource. Second, work through Microsoft’s documentation paying particular attention to customization notes. Microsoft’s installers are thoroughly tested, but it is impossible for any vendor to upgrade every possible configuration of SharePoint. Third, make certain you have a back up, installation discs and their keys, and any other information that Microsoft provides licensees, certified engineers, or certified SharePoint developers. Often a hiccup can be addressed easily when these essentials are at hand.
For more information, contact us via our Web site at www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, June 7, 2011
Search Technologies
Update on Thetus Savanna
June 6, 2011
A Sys-Con Media article “Thetus’ Savanna Analytical Tool” provides an overview of the Thetus Savanna Analytical Tool by two authors and includes a video evaluation. We found the information interesting, but parts did look as if the Thetus marketing gene was dominant.,
The Savanna Analytical tool is designed to provide search, discovery and visualization tools for analysts. The article said:
Savanna uses tools such as Kapow to scrape websites and all-source data and then pushes them through MetaCarta (for geo-spatial analysis) and Janya (for real-language textual analysis). This data is then sorted into a Savanna’s application – enabling real-time search.
After the documents go through Kapow, MetaCarta and Janya, Savanna re-renders the documents and turns the masses of text into real pages making the search and discovery of the pages much easier.
The write up added:
Savanna’s search function crawls through the document repository added, and uses socio-economic indicators to categorize. It allows analysts to take a large number of search returns and narrow them down quickly and accurately.
If only all decisions could be so simple. Real data in real life can give even sophisticated systems indigestion.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Microsoft Search Blog Not Updated in Months
June 2, 2011
If you have not visited the Microsoft Search Blog, you may want to check it out. We think it is a good example of the commitment Microsoft has to enterprise search. Oh, Microsoft still sells Fast Search, consulting, certifications, and add ons. However, the blog is not exactly a pivot point.
It’s about relevance, it’s about speed and it’s all about competition…ya snooze, ya lose, right?
We’re a little confused then, by the search results we got from Google recently when queried “enterprise search.”
Our queries for content and visits to the site over a week or so revealed that the last update seems to have been about ten months ago.
My hunch is that somewhere, in some small, cubby in Redmond, there’s a person who’s supposed to be searching and updating the enterprise blog.
We try to monitor the SharePoint search world, and we are finding that the information about SharePoint search is mostly about getting a SharePoint system under control, back on track, and delivering specific functionality. You can track our SharePoint coverage at www.sharepointsemantics.com. We also cover SharePoint in Beyond Search. Just search for the category SharePoint in the search box on the blog’s splash page.
The goslings and I will try to “mind the gap”.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Protected: Indexing SharePoint Content through Northern Light
June 2, 2011
Exalead Makes a Sage Move
June 1, 2011
We have no qualms over recurrent expressions of our appreciation and enthusiasm for the Exalead brand.
A long time leader in the field of search enabled applications and data management software, the company continues to prove itself relevant in a landscape that shifts more frequently than the iTunes’ Recent Hits page.
The most recent news we saw about Exalead, a unit of Dassault Systèmes, comes in the form of a deal with the Sage Group. Sage is one of the leaders in enterprise resource planning (ERP). Sage will use Exalead’s technology in the Sage ERP X3 system.
The write up “Sage Innovates with Exalead CloudView to Enhance Its ERP User Experience” said:
CloudView brings the speed and simplicity of consumer Web search to the Sage ERP X3 user experience, offering flexible natural language search across all Sage database content, including both data and metadata. Offered as a simple drag-and-drop Gadget in the Sage portal, CloudView-powered Sage Search enables users to locate information anywhere in the system using a single text box: no training, complex forms or SQL queries required. Moreover, fuzzy matching and flexible search refinement by dynamic results categories help ensure search success even when a user’s query is incomplete, misspelled or imprecise.
CloudView may give Sage a turbo boost. With this deal, Sage and Exalead jump up the enterprise charts to super group status.
Micheal Cory, June 1, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
EMC: Lots of Initiatives and Now an Appliance
June 1, 2011
EMC has been busy. The company has announced a wide range of initiatives. The flow of announcements has been overwhelming. We did notice “SAS Will Be Available On A Database Appliance From EMC,” SAS has announced that it will begin to offer SAS High Performance Analytics. The system will be available on an EMC database appliance.
The blog asserted:
This new offering from SAS on the EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance will provide an environment for customers to perform analytical exploration and development on all data to complement their regular analytic operations.
Clients will be able to form models that take into account their data from each department and showcase all the possible scenarios. Being able to see the whole picture definitely gives customers a more accurate picture to enable to them to make better decisions. In addition when compared to current technology, SAS High-performance Analytics blows the competition out the water and solves problems in seconds rather than hours. This appliance could be in the running for best in class.
However, with appliances proliferating in some organizations, management of yet another toaster is, in our experience, beginning to generate some pushback.
April Holmes, June 1, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Protected: A SharePoint Diagnostic Tool from Microsoft
June 1, 2011
OpenText Gets More Social
May 31, 2011
OpenText is dedicated to helping businesses get the most from their content. The company helps clients clearly pave out clear business goals so they can provide them with the enterprise technology services they need to support their various programs and departments. According to the Business Insider article “How OpenText Uses Social Media” Greg Second, vice president of investor relations at OpenText opened up about their new role for social media. He stated that:
“All staff especially management members are encouraged to use social media to ‘reach out’ to their customers and people in the industry.”
The popularity of social media makes it a great tool to communicate with the public but analysts, portfolio managers and others in the field are more interested in the comments of the employees in order to get a better understanding of the industry. Sounds like a great tool but with so few details, one must wonder if it ever lived up to the hype. We are, however, wary of categorical affirmatives. That “all” surely does not mean everyone?
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information
Protected: Indexing SharePoint Content through Northern Light
May 31, 2011
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