Asia Technical Services
April 20, 2011
An Interview with Patrick and Jean Garez
In Hong Kong in late March 2011, I met with one of the senior officers of Asia Tech. The company’s official name is “Asia Technical Services Pte Ltd.” I learned about the company from Dassault Exalead. For eight years Asia Tech has been the partner for Exalead in Asia and has become the “go to” resource for the Dassault Systèmes team covering South Asia regarding Exalead after the acquisition. Based in Singapore, Asia Tech is hours away from Dassault clients in Thailand, China, and Viet-Nam, among other countries whose thirst for Dassault technology continues to increase. In my initial conversation with Jean Garez, the person who appears to be the heir apparent to the firm his father founded, I learned that Asia Tech is now responding to a surge of inquiries about Exalead’s search based applications.
Patrick (founder) and Jean Garez (senior manager), Asia Technology Services Pte Ltd.
Upon my return to the US, I followed up with Mr. Garez via Skype for a more lengthy discussion. On the call, Patrick Garez joined the interview. For convenience, I have merged the comments from both Garezs into one stream. The full text of that interview appears below:
What’s the history of Asia Tech?
Asia Technical Services Pte Ltd was first conceived in Hong Kong in 1974 by our founder, and my father, Patrick Garez. The original business was the marketing and after-sales support of products, engineering services and asset management solutions to the commercial aviation industry. My father was a pioneer because he was among the first to predict the growth potential of commercial aviation in the Asia Pacific region and to identify Singapore as the future hub for South East Asia and beyond.
Along the way ATS tackled some industry-specific software solutions supporting various maintenance data management, engineering processes and workflows, but it wasn’t until 2003 that ATS officially began distributing software solutions as a dedicated part of our business.
What triggered the shift?
Client demand. ATS has prided itself on responding to the needs of its clients across this region. Once we started doing work in a different area, word of mouth sent additional projects our way.
ATS focuses on finding leading edge innovative and cost effective ISV solutions from Europe and the US and offering them a platform to enter into the Asia Pacific market with a limited investment.
And your activity in search?
Same path.
In the mid-2000’s up until probably 2009, the search market in Singapore and the region was dominated by legacy platforms built with an 80’s approach key word indexing and information retrieval. There was some interest in the SPSS and SAS approach to structured data, of course.
However, in response to a client project, we came across a technologically-advanced company in Paris, France. The founder was a member of the original Digital Equipment AltaVista.com search team and making significant progress with technology that was scalable and very, very speedy. In addition, Exalead was deploying a lighter, automated semantic engine that did the thinking for the user by automatically categorizing and providing structure to unstructured data. We tapped them for our client project from then on, we knew we were going to see great things from them. We continued to follow and participate in the growth of this company from their incubation phase until its acquisition in 2010 by Dassault Systems. ATS remains its partner for the region.
Asia Tech Interview: Opportunities in the East
April 20, 2011
Short honk: If you company wants to expand its technical footprint in Asia, you will want to read the exclusive interview with Patrick and Jean Garez. Asia Technical Services Pte Ltd. provides a number of useful services to clients in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries. You can read the full text of interview by clicking this link. For more information about Asia Tech, navigate to the firm’s Web site at www.asiatechserv.net.
Stephen E Arnold, April 20, 2011
Freebie but Jean Garez bought me dinner.
Protected: SharePoint Document Types: Some Tips
April 20, 2011
LexisNexis Unveils Semantic Search
April 19, 2011
LexisNexis, a legal search engine, has added semantic search technology to its search engine According to the Read Write Web article “LexisNexis Introduces Semantic Search.” The article states
The next-generation semantic search technology identifies the meaning of multiple concepts within a single search query to help users zero in on core concepts faster and make fewer revisions to their search queries.
Semantic search works by utilizing the science of meaning in language to produce quality and relevant search results. The TotalPatent service will help legal services to do important patent research as well as detailed analysis of their results. The Visualize and Compare Tool is a notable valuable addition
that allows users to compare and analyze any two or three result sets or lists of patents, regardless of the underlying search mechanism.
The legal search engine system has received a surprising yet much needed powerful boost from a somewhat unexpected source. This powerful technology could drastically improve productivity. However, the expensive price tag is a huge road block and makes this new technology unapproachable for a lot of legal heads.
We did ask about pricing. The LexisNexis contact could not comment about pricing. We did ask about the source of the technology. The LexisNexis contact could not comment about the source of the technology.
Our take. LexisNexis is rolling out another service that may be out of reach of most users. LexisNexis has some interesting pricing models and fees. Will semantics get LexisNexis back on the revenue trajectory of the era before lawyers sued their universities and big firms cut back on their hiring? Reed Elsevier probably hopes this semantic technology will be a huge financial winner. Reed Elsevier (Ticker: REN) is about $9.50 a share. Believers may want to boost their holdings.
April Holmes, April 19, 2011
Freebie
Netezza CEO Speaks Big Data, Not Search
April 18, 2011
Xconomy Boston recently ran an interview with a former Endeca executive. In the piece titled “Netezza Chief Talks About “Formative” PTC Days, IBM Deal History, and the Future of Big Data“, James Baum has much to discuss. We found this interesting because Endeca has been a player in moving search into business intelligence, and IBM now owns Netezza. Making the mix more interesting, IBM used Endeca technology for one of its Web sites.
The IBM purchase of Netezza late last year was valued at about $2.0 billion. Netezza had flirted with search vendors Attivio and Coveo, but the Endeca hook may alter the Netezza search landscape once again.
The former Endeca professional has, according to the article, played a role in building revenues in a number of companies. Now the Endeca executive is tackling a commercial business with some open source challenges. Mr. Baum asserted:
There’s some really interesting stuff going on with open-source analytics that has the opportunity to offset some of the dominance of the big analytics vendors. We’re seeing many customers beginning to use open-source tools like R [language for statistical computing]. There are startups around it, sort of following the Red Hat [Linux] model. There’s really interesting stuff going on in solid state—SSD [solid state drive] storage is becoming important to big data. It’s still expensive and hard to maintain, and hard to build around. But it’s a really important technology and one that you’ll see us taking advantage of. The other area in core technology that we’re seeing evolve is the use of GPUs [graphics chips] for some of the specific computational processing activities going on. There is opportunity there. Those are interesting spaces to watch.
While he is certainly knowledgeable and successful, whether or not he is a prophet as well remains to be seen. Trends, like polls and reviews of just about anything, tend to be a touch subjective. With IBM and its resources anything is possible.
Sarah Rogers, April 18, 2011
Freebie
Protected: SharePoint: Time Is Money
April 18, 2011
Autonomy Boosts the Discipline of Indexing
April 14, 2011
We found the story “Indexer Flourishes as Search Fails” quite interesting. A few days ago Autonomy, a global leader in enterprise software and “meaning based computing”, released its new service pack for WorkSite Indexer 8.5 as well as for its new Universal Search Server. While the indexer has done well and received many good reviews, the notion of a “universal server” is a difficult concept. The pre-Microsoft Fast Search & Transfer promised a number of “universal” functions. When “universal” became mired in time consuming and expensive local fixes, some vendors did a global search and replace.
The service pack touts a new Autonomy control center which simplifies the management structure of a multi server environment, improved query returns, additional control over Autonomy’s IDOL components, and an automatic restart feature in case service is snarled due a problem outside of Autonomy’s span of control during a crawl. Network latency continues to be an issue despite the marketing hoo-hah about gigabit this and gigabit that. Based on the information we have at ArnoldIT.com, thus far the service pack has been deployed with little or no trouble.
We have heard some reports that the the Universal Search Server can create some extra perspiration when one tries to deploy multiple WorkSite engines. According to the article cited above, we learned:
Autonomy has identified this as a high priority issue and expects to have a resolution out in the very near future.
Autonomy has been among the more responsive vendors of enterprise solutions. We are confident a fix may be available as you read this or in day or two. If you are an Autonomy licensee, contact your reseller or Autonomy.
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2011
Freebie but maybe some day?
Improving Health via Analytics and a Competition
April 14, 2011
We have been poking around in health care information for about eight months. We have an exclusive briefing that covers, among other things, what we call the “shadow FBI.” If you are curious about this shadow FBI angle, shoot us a note at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. One of the goslings will respond. While you wait for our return quack, consider the notion of a competition to improve health care information in order to make health care better.
Competition promises better health care stated:
The goal of the prize is to develop a predictive algorithm that can identify patients who will be admitted to the hospital within the next year, using historical claims data.
According to the latest survey from the American Hospital Association more than 70 million people in the United States alone will be admitted to a hospital this year. The Heritage Provider Network believes that they can change all of that. The HPN will be holding a two year competition that will award $3 million dollars to the team that can create an algorithm that accurately predicts how many days a person will spend in the hospital over the next year.
An algorithm that can predict how many days a person will spend in the hospital can help doctors create new more effective care plans that can help “nip it in the bud” if there are any causes for concern. If possible the algorithm could help to lower the cost of care while reducing the number of hospitalizations.
This will result in increasing the health of patients while decreasing the cost of care. In short, a winning solution will change health care delivery as we know it – from an emphasis on caring for the individual after they get sick to a true health care system.
HPN believes that an incentive based competition is the way to achieve the big breakthroughs that are needed to begin redeveloping America’s health care system.
Leslie Radcliff, April 14, 2011
Freebie
Brainware Sambas to Latin America
April 13, 2011
Brainware blog has announced that Brainware Inc. has efficiently moved into some of the most prominent businesses in Latin America thanks to the help of OM30, a prominent business process outsourcer based in Latin America that specializes in knowledge management.
Brainware offers “intelligent access to information” which in you and me speak means accurate data removal. The software relies on a small sample to interpret many thousands of document formats and has the ability to be integrated with already in place platforms.
“We tested competitive products, including offerings from Kofax and ReadSoft, but Brainware, with its best-in-class Distiller product, offered the strongest results,” said Marcello Burattini, Chief Executive Officer at OM30.”
Brainware helps OM30 to continue the critical analysis, systems integration and digitization that they are known for.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2011
Protected: Lost a View? Pentalogic to the Rescue
April 13, 2011
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