Autonomy Mines Iron Mountain
May 16, 2011
I have written about Stratify in the three editions of the Enterprise Search Report which I wrote when “search” was hot, and in my Gilbane report named after this blog. Since late 2010, Stratify (originally named Purple Yogi which got some In-Q-Tel love in 2001) has gotten lost within Iron Mountain’s labyrinth of organizational tunnels. Now Iron Mountain seems to face significant financial, technical, business, and management challenges. The details of what Autonomy snagged are fuzzy, but based on the sketchy information that flowed to me since May 12, 2011, here’s what I have been able to “mine”:
Autonomy mines Iron Mountain for revenue, customer, and upsell “gold.” Image source: http://www.davestravelcorner.com/articles/goldcountry/article.htm
- Autonomy will get the archiving, eDiscovery, and online back up business of Iron Mountain
- No word on the fate of Mimosa Systems which Iron Mountain bought in early 2010. (My recollection is that Mimosa used a mid tier search solution obtained from a third party. I want to link Mimosa with dtSearch, but I may be mistaken on that point.)
- Autonomy will apply is well-honed management method to the properties. Expect to see Autonomy push ever closer to $1.0 billion in revenues, maybe this calendar year.
You can get some numbers from the news item “Autonomy Acquires Some Iron Mountain Digital Assets for $380 Million.”
Stratify’s technology was the cat’s pajamas years ago. More recently, the technology has lagged. Iron Mountain’s own difficulties distracted the company from its digital opportunities. My view is the Iron Mountain made an all to familiar error: Online looks easy but looks are deceiving.
Some of the former Web masters, failed “real” journalists, and self appointed search experts will enjoy the opportunity to berate Autonomy for its acquisitions and growth tactics, but I think those folks are wrong.
Autonomy does manage its acquisitions to generate stakeholder and customer value.
In fact, Autonomy’s track record with its acquisitions is, in my opinion, better than either Google’s or Microsoft’s. As for Endeca, that company has fallen behind Autonomy due to different management strategies and growth tactics. Don’t believe me?
Just look at Autonomy’s track record, top line revenue, profits, and customer base, not tweets from a yesterday thinker at a lumber-filled, pay to play meet up.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2011
Freebie.
Microsoft and Its Research about Search
May 13, 2011
We loved Microsoft’s use of the “beyond search” phrase to describe some of its earlier efforts to wrest the King of Search crown from the rampaging Googzilla.
Non-techies tend to take the complexities and subtle nuances of search for granted. I’ll admit that at one point I was also in the dark. Since the switch has been flipped, I find sites like the one summarizing Microsoft’s Information Retrieval and Mining research incredibly interesting.
The overview explains:
We aim at developing fundamental technologies for general web search and enterprise search. Our main technology areas include machine learning, information retrieval, data mining, and natural language processing. We partner with Microsoft Live Search and SharePoint Search. Currently, we are working on five projects: Learning to Rank, Search Result Ranking, Data Selection in Search, Search Log Data Mining, and Next Generation Enterprise Search.
I recommend scanning the page if the subject piques your interest, but here are some of the highlights. For ranking web pages, they have advanced the common practice of web graph data to large-scale graph data collected from users’ own browsing habits. Complimenting this achievement is the work on a search log mining platform, culling search session and click-thru data, enabling the graph modeling mentioned above. They are even delving into what is on the tips of many tongues: enterprise social computing.
There are a lot of critics of Bing, even more of SharePoint. Regardless, Microsoft refuses to stand down when it comes to search development. Will these advancements launch Microsoft to the top of the field? Perhaps, with a little streamlining of their products or more negative PR for Google. If Apple could rise from the grave with the iPod, I guess anything is possible.
Sarah Rogers, May 13, 2011
Freebie unlike the technical and engineering support some of SharePoint search users experience
JackBe Joins the Business Intelligence Is Easy Parade
May 13, 2011
In our sister publication Inteltrax, you can read about the machinations in the data fusion sector. We wanted to highlight this news story because it sheds some light on the attempt to make really complicated enterprise solutions look like child’s play. Child’s play, in our experience, is a good description for kids like Wolfie Mozart or the 11 year old Srinivasa Ramanujan. Other times child’s play is somewhat less sophisticated. I remember my finger-painting classics my mother taped to the fridge.
According to the eWeek.com article:
“JackBe Presto Enables Information With Ease” the JackBe Presto 3.1 development platform is not just your normal real-time intelligence product. According to the article unlike other business intelligence products Presto 3.1 allows users to build on their existing data structures and transformation tools, instead of replacing them.”
The article asserted that Presto can handle both internal and external data sources and also comes equipped with a number of tools to ensure that managers can easily utilize the data for their specific needs. I noted this passage:
Developers and power users can use these tools to quickly create applications that are easily reworked as needed to react to rapidly changing business conditions and requirements.
Presto’s App Store provides users with valuable applications which can be shared in addition to being deployed and giving users even more flexibility. In addition Presto can run on the cloud. Presto 3.1 may not fit in every organization but for most it would seem that the pros far outweigh the cons.
Is this business intelligence activity child’s play? For some licensees, sure. For others, the colors of my finger-painting masterpieces was often muddy and a bit of a mess. Make sure you have a Shirley Temple on your project, a young Shirley Temple, that is.
Alice Holmes, May 13, 2011
Freebie
Vivisimo Rolls Out Cross-domain Search with Enhanced Security
May 12, 2011
Top Hosting Service Information reveals that “Vivisimo Showcases Secure, Cross-domain Intelligence Solutions” at this week’s DoDIIS Worldwide conference in Detroit. Since Vivisimo serves the federal government, including the defense community, this is a welcome development.
The defense and intelligence communities recognize the need to improve information sharing as a way to achieve true all-source analysis and deliver timely, objective, and actionable intelligence to our senior decision makers and war fighters,’ says Bob Carter, vice president and general manager, federal, of Vivisimo. ‘In an era where spending cuts are being made to improve efficiencies, Vivisimo helps streamline operations and ultimately costs by allowing analysts significantly better access, processing and sharing of critical data necessary to the defense of the U.S.
Assembling the myriad of data gathered from around the globe into useful information is one of today’s biggest challenges for the intelligence community. Though the government often travels behind the curve in tech fields, it seems to be stepping up in this area.
Cynthia Murrell May 12, 2011
Oracle Text Import Tip
May 12, 2011
Want to import text into Oracle? A user at the Oracle FAQ’s forum has kindly provided the following instructions:
“PROCEDURE test_file_contents IS
input_file Text_IO.File_Type;
linebuffer VARCHAR2(200);
BEGIN
input_file := Text_IO.Fopen(‘test.txt’,’r’); — notice ‘r’ for Read file
Loop
Text_IO.Get_Line ( input_file, linebuffer );
Text_IO.Put ( Linebuffer );
Text_IO.New_LIne;
End Loop;
EXCEPTION
WHEN no_data_found THEN
Text_IO.Put_Line(‘Closing file…’);
Text_IO.Fclose( input_file );
END;”
Who says this content acquisition is not easy?
Cynthia Murrell May 12, 2011
Recommind Inserts Itself into Email Management
May 12, 2011
“IntApp and Recomind: A Quick & Easy Path to Industry Leading Email Management,” proclaims American Banking & Market News.
IntApp, provider of application integration software for law firms, has partnered with eDiscovery maven Recommind to develop law-specific email management templates:
“Working hand-in-hand with firms, Recommind and IntApp have developed pre-built templates to integrate [Recommind’s] Decisiv Email Management into an existing portfolio of systems and processes. The same level of automation that end users enjoy within Decisiv Email Management is also experienced by IT organizations through Integration Builder. With the help of Integration Builder rule templates, Decisiv Email Management can be quickly and seamlessly integrated into existing processes such as new business intake, user provisioning, and confidentiality management.”
Compared to custom software, such templates allow clients to implement solutions quickly and with less expense. They also provide integration between diverse management programs which may not play well together unsupervised.
Recommind, like other search vendors, is probing different markets from eDiscovery to enterprise search to email management. We think they are wise to distribute their eggs between multiple baskets.
Cynthia Murrell May 12, 2011
Keep on Top of Microsoft Knowledge Base Updates
May 11, 2011
We are always on the look out for useful SharePoint resources. At a small gathering of corporate clients I attended last month, more than 80 percent were heading for SharePoint 2010 at various speeds. Not a scientific study, but it concurs with anecdotal evidence we have seen recently. At that meeting a colleague at Search Technologies mentioned a new service that provides hourly updates to Microsoft FAQs (frequently asked questions). I took a look at Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles, a site not affiliated with Microsoft.
A cursory review of the site suggests that it would have considerable value if the service kept pace with Microsoft’s own knowledge base publication flow. Microsoft FAQs are called knowledge base articles, and these appear at irregular intervals. There may be few KBs provided and then a number of them become available.
According to the independent site:
The purpose of this site is to inform you about the latest information of the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles. Every day Microsoft releases new KB articles. This site checks Microsoft’s information 24 times a day. This means that the Microsoft Knowledge Base information provided here is up to date.”
One quick example: the story “Description of the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Cumulative Update Package” from April 28, 2011, described the hot fixes available in that update and tips for implementing them. On May 5, 2011, I found “TFS Test Manager – Run Test Error: 403: Forbidden,” which explains the reasons for, and resolution of, that particular error.
Many, many more examples are available for your perusal. Check it out— keeping up with this site could save a lot of frustration.
At www.searchtechnologies.com, we focus on search-related implementation services, especially for SharePoint. We have delivered more than 25,000 consultant days of Fast Search-related services in the last four years along. We are currently helping more than a dozen organizations take a search-led approach to upgrading to SharePoint 2010.
Iain Fletcher, May 11, 2011
Clearwell Systems Continues Government Contract
May 10, 2011
It looks like Clearwell Systems http://www.symantec.com/theme.jsp?themeid=clearwell-family, one of my favorite eDiscovery vendors has managed to get the US government to get some work done. According to the SBWire.com article “U.S. Extends Contract with Clearwell Systems for E-Discovery” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have formally extended its service contract with Clearwell’s E-Discovery Platform. We learned in the write up:
The Clearwell E-Discovery Platform procured under the subject contract meets the government’s needs and performed in a satisfactory manner.
Clearwell won the position initially because it met the government’s Statement of Work (SOW) conditions. Important E-Discovery capabilities such as search functionality, review functionality, case management, export and production are included in the SOW. The write up added:
Clearwell is being used in the electronic discovery litigation process to assist ICE attorneys in processing, reviewing, analyzing and producing electronically stored information.
Clearwell’s past work record and satisfactory performance with the government spoke for itself and left little doubt. Guess one could say, looks like a job well done. In a faltering economy, litigation is a big business within and outside of governmental agencies.
Alice Holmes, May 10, 2011
Freebie unlike the services of legal eagles
Another Oracle Text Tip
May 10, 2011
We ran a query about Oracle text search on Google the other day. We were surprised and almost delighted that Beyond Search appears near the top of the results list. We would prefer that the vendor appear at the top of the results list for information about the vendor’s own search engine. The goslings try, but the vendor has an obligation to provide a flow of on point, timely information about its products in our opinion. Believe it or not, a number of vendors are falling behind in providing information to their licensees. We hope this tardiness is not a trend.
Anyhoo, here’s another useful nugget of Oracle information for DBAs and users alike. DbaSupport.com posted up an article titled “Oracle Text – Expanding Your String Searching Capabilities in Oracle Database”.
When the SQL WHERE clause falls short, the LIKE condition can generally be manipulated in creative ways to produce the results you need. One mustn’t stop with LIKE; LIKEC, LIKE2 and LIKE 4 exist and are explained here. The drawback is that there is a level of honing required to apply these, namely you need a pretty good idea of what you are looking for and where it is located.
So for broken and complex strings or searches in larger data sets, Oracle Text can help. Directly from the article we absorbed:
“The four index types (generally domain indexes for that matter) and their query operators are:
- CONTEXT, using CONTAINS
- CTXCAT, using CATSEARCH
- CTXRULE, using MATCHES
- CTXPATH, using existsNode()
Some of the indexes also use parameters, and those will be examined in subsequent articles. The query operator names are somewhat intuitive in how they support the index type. In a context search (based on large coherent documents), we want to know if the text contains what we’re looking for. For many, but smaller documents (also of various types), we have to search through a catalog, so we perform a catalog search. In most contexts, we know that rules require a match, and one thing you can’t escape in XML is searching a path to see if something exists (at a node).”
We’ll spare you the needle/haystack reference. Just consider tucking this tip away for later.
Sarah Rogers, May 10, 2011
Freebie unlike some of the engineering services provided by search vendors to licensees who are working to make these findability products “find”
Autonomy Extends Linklaters Relationship
May 10, 2011
In August 2009, we published “Autonomy … De Facto Standard for Global Law Firms”. We saw another news item about one of the firms mentioned in that write up, Linklaters.
According to the “Linklaters Selects Autonomy’s IDOL for Enterprise Search Easy Search Interface and Conceptual Search To Boost Productivity at Leading Global Law Firm,” the leading global firm Linklaters is embracing Autonomy’s IDOL technology. IDOL or Intelligent Data Operating Layer is an innovative users-oriented enterprise search platform.
We learned:
In a project spearheaded by Autonomy and longstanding Autonomy partner, Okana, now part of the Realise group, Linklaters selected Autonomy’s IDOL for enterprise search due to its unique conceptual abilities, language independence, scalability and ability to connect to virtually every data repository.
Though there are other search tools on the market Autonomy’s technology is so popular because the user specific enterprise helps to boost productivity. The write up asserted:
Okana’s Sense User Interface combined with Autonomy’s IDOL enterprise search provides our lawyers with an intuitive interface designed with them in mind, allowing both implicit and active conceptual searches that deliver only the most relevant information.
When it comes to the courtroom, Autonomy is a hard case to beat. Is this an extension of an existing Autonomy deal or a new one? We are not sure. Obviously Linklaters is a happy IDOL user.
April Holmes, May 10, 2011
Freebie