Attensity SAS Staff Shuffle
June 16, 2010
I learned recently that SAS lost Manya Mayes to Attensity. No big deal, but Ms Mayes had been at SAS for 15 years. Attensity seems to be serious about its text analytics business. You can get more information in the write up “Attensity Group Appints Manya Mayes as Director of Advanced Analytics.” Here’s what an Attensity officer said about the new hire:
Her SAS expertise and customer and product experience will be a great asset to the Attensity team. Her addition will build on Attensity’s current analytic capabilities, bringing advanced analytics expertise to the team.”
A couple of thoughts. I wonder why Ms. Mayes is not an officer of Attensity. Second, will SAS push back and make some noise about competition? When Google hired an Endeca expert in eCommerce, I received email suggesting that any connection between the Endeca hire and Google’s aspirations in markets where Endeca has a presence was silly.
That’s a silly goose for you I suppose.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2010
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Another First for Autonomy
June 16, 2010
Here’s the headline: “Autonomy Has Fastest Archiving Revenue Growth among the Top Six Suppliers.” I was intrigued. I think of archiving as the sort of work that takes place when an organization performs a records management function. Archiving is more than a back up. The other point that I did not immediately grasp was the phrase “top six suppliers.” Thee guts of the write up is a report from a consulting firm that specializes in technical fields. I did a bit of poking around and learned here that the storage software vendors in the study were:
- EMC with a reported / estimated market share of 21.7 percent and first quarter 2010 revenue of about $700 million
- Symantec with a reported /estimated market share of 18.5 percent and first quarter revenue of about $530 million
- IBM with a reported /estimated market share of 14.2 percent and first quarter revenue of about $430million
- NetApp with a reported /estimated market share of 8.3 percent and first quarter revenue of about $250 million
- Computer Associates or CA as the firm prefers being called today with a reported /estimated market share of 3.5 percent and first quarter revenue of about $105 million.
This is an estimated / projected market of about $3.1 billion. The top five vendors account for about 70 percent of the revenue.
What surprised me was IBM’s third place ranking. Symantec may be the vendor in the Top Three most vulnerable to the incursions of competitors. The final point that I noted is that with $1 billion divided among “Others”, newcomers may face considerable competition from incumbents and smaller players alike. The summary I saw talked about some business points such as the growth of storage revenues and IDC’s business services. Final question: “And the cloud?”
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2010
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EDS and CRM: A Price on a Flub
June 15, 2010
The likelihood of an enterprise software flop seems to be inching upwards. Busy 30-something MBAs are so busy. Accountants eager to manage costs see a programmer shooting USB rockets from his cubicle and chop some heads. Overworked chief technology officers quit returning phone calls and ignore email. Welcome to information technology in the last half of 2010.
Search and content management have become potential career sink holes. I wanted to capture this anecdote about another red ink inducing enterprise application, CRM or customer relationship management. We know what CRM means, right? No humans at the end of the line. Phone menu trees that are unworkable except for a person specifically paid by me to sit there and press buttons until we can get a human to answer a question about a financial transaction.
Navigate to this fascinating news story, which if true, makes clear how perilous short cuts and azure chip assertions can become: “ESA to Pay $460 Million over CRM Failure.” Even in today’s trillion dollar deficits, a company spitting out a half a billion dollars catches my attention. The idea is that Hewlett Packard, the ink company, wants to be an azure chip consultant. To achieve that goal, the company bought the econo-consultant, EDS, the progeny of an idiosyncratic entrepreneur and would-be president of the United States, Ross Perot. HP, the ink company, has learned that talking is much easier than doing.
Here’s the key passage in the write up, which if true, makes it clear that HP may want to stick with ink and toner:
System integrator, EDS, now owned by Hewlett-Packard, agreed to pay UK-based broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) a total of $460.3 million to settle its lawsuit over a failed CRM project.
My hunch is that the azure chip crowd will say, “Not us.” We’ll see.
Stephen E Arnold, June 15, 2010
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BA Insight Announces Longitude V4
June 15, 2010
I get quite a bit of information about snap in search and content processing systems designed specifically for Microsoft SharePoint. Many organizations find SharePoint and its components, add ins, and third party enhancements exactly what is needed to crack tough information management problems.
Make your SharePoint search as quickly as a Bugatti Veyron accelerates.
BA Insight – along with Fabasoft Mindbreeze, SurfRay, Coveo, Exalead, and other vendors – offers a search solution for SharePoint licensees. You can read about the “state-of-the-art search features” in “BA-Insight Announces Next-Generation Search Technology for SharePoint and FAST Search 2010 at Microsoft TechEd 2010 Conference. BA-Insight’s Longitude Version 4 Provides Automatic Optimization of Microsoft’s 2010 Enterprise Search Products.”
Among the state-of-the-art features are, according to the write up:
- Highly scalable performance, superior to Flash/Java in speed of rendition
- More efficient engine for rendering complex pages and 3D animation
- Linking of structured and unstructured data
- Text recognition within an image format, where OCR is executed on the fly
- Translation from foreign languages
- Strong .Net integration – customer ability to embed existing custom .Net extensions into the Silverlight viewer
- Full use of all existing Longitude Search Connectors
- Indexing of email including attachments
- Parametric search.
The description of this product might bring tears to the eyes of BA Insight’s competitors and smiles of joy to SharePoint licensees who struggle to get a distributed SharePoint system humming like a Bugatti Veyron.
You can get more information about the BA Insight “state of the art” system at www.ba-insight.com. Each time I read about a search solution for SharePoint I wonder what creates such a thriving business in SharePoint search now that Microsoft owns the Fast Search & Transfer technology.
Stephen E Arnold, June 15, 2010
IBM Wants You to Have an Information Agenda
June 14, 2010
I read “An Information Agenda Is a Comprehensive, Enterprise-Wide Plan that a CIO Can Use to Achieve Short and Long Term Strategic Changes.” Then I realized that this was not an article. Item was a pitch to download a white paper that would explain an Information Agenda. If you want to read this gem, you can navigate here and snag a copy. I flipped through the document and realized that IBM speak is an example of the importance of synonym expansion. An “agenda” is a plan. Marketers also use such five dollar words as “road map”, “horizon document,” and – my favorite — “Action Scenarios”. My hunch is that in today’s financial climate, CIOs are not exactly sure what problem is going to be solved by a “short term and long term strategic change.” The focus seems to be on controlling costs, keeping systems working, and figuring out how to deal with moving targets. Just my view from the goose pond, or as more properly described by an IBM marketing professional a “strategic analysis point”. I wonder where mainframes fit into an information agenda?
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2010
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Exalead Featured on ArnoldIT Podcast
June 14, 2010
Exalead’s Paul Doscher talks about Exalead’s search-based applications on the June 14, 2010, ArnoldIT Beyond Search podcast. Exalead has been growing rapidly, landing blue-chip accounts with the largest technology company in North America, the French postal service, and Canada’s Urbanizer.com. In this podcast, Mr. Doscher talks about Exalead’s origins and its focus on solving information problems that have slowed an organization’s growth using traditional search systems. You can listen to the podcast on the ArnoldIT.com Web site or click this link to access the podcast directly. More information about Exalead is available from www.exalead.com.
The ArnoldIT podcast series extends the Search Wizards Speak series of interview beyond text into rich media. Watch this blog for announcements about other rich media programs from the professionals who move information retrieval beyond search.
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2010
Sponsored by Stephen E. Arnold
The UK and Information Technology
June 13, 2010
Let’s face it. Law enforcement is not exactly the cocktail party chatter than brings smiles to faces. The problem is that money is short. This means that staffing is constrained but management may be an issue. To get an idea of the problems the lousy economic climate creates for law enforcement agencies, take a look at “Clunky’ IT Systems Hamper Police Work.” The write up said:
National police IT systems are hampered by the insularity of individual police forces and the desire of chief information officers (CIOs) to protect their turf, argued Berry. “One of the biggest problems is the vested interests of CIOs,” she said. “Forces agree on national standards, then go away and do their own thing.”
What can search and content processing vendors do to help the UK and other enforcement entities. One idea is to explain how “umbrella” systems can integrate separate systems. Entities can do their own thing, but the tools and methods to create a “360 degree view” are now available. Is this an educational issue? Is it a political issue? Is it a result of well known vendors going for the low hanging fruit?
The situation is not unique to the UK and I see the problem spreading. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, June 13, 2010
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Is Vivisimo Preparing for an IPO, Maybe to Be Acquired?
June 11, 2010
Short honk: I learned something interesting in the wake of the Exalead deal. (Watch for my take on the purchase of this search based applications company on June 14, 2010. I will let the azure chip crowd beaver away for now.) Navigate to “Vivisimo Boosts Management Team with Addition of Patrick Williams, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas.”My take on this story is that none of the newer executives, include Mr Williams, is into search. The management team wants to find a way to convert Vivisimo into a pay day. There are a number of outfits looking for a way to end their search woes. And there are lots and lots of companies for sale. So what will happen? Not much for a while but the ice shelf may crack next spring.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2010
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Exalead Acquired by Dassault
June 11, 2010
I have done some work for Exalead over the last five years, and I have gone down in history as one of the few people from Kentucky to talk my way into the Exalead offices in Paris without an appointment. L’horreur. I had a bucket of KY Fry in my hand and was guzzling a Coca Lite.
Out of that exciting moment in American courtesy, I met François Bourdoncle, a former AltaVista.com wizard. He watched in horror as I gobbled a crispy leg and asked him about the origins of Exalead, his work with then-Googler Louis Monier, and his vision for 64 bit computing. I wrote up some of the information in the first edition of the Enterprise Search Report, a publication now shaped into a quasi-New Age Cliff’s Notes for the under 30 crowd. I followed up with M. Bourdoncle in February 2008, and published that interview as part of the ArnoldIT.com Search Wizards Speak series. The last time I was in Paris, I dropped by the Exalead offices and had a nice chat. I even made a video. Several Exaleaders took me to dinner, pointing out that McDo was not an option. Rats.
So what’s with the sale of Exalead to Dassault Systèmes?
The azure chip crowd has weighed in, and I will ignore those observations. There is some spectacular baloney being converted into expensive consulting burgers, and I will leave you and them to your intellectual picnic.
Here’s my take:
Differentiator
There are lots of outfits asserting that their search and content processing system will work wonders. I don’t want to list these companies, but you can find them by navigating either to Google.com or Exalead.com/search and running a query for enterprise search. The problem is that most of these outfits come with what I call an “interesting history.” Examples range from natural language processing companies that have been created from the ashes of not-so-successful search vendors to Frankenstein companies created with “no cash mergers.” I know. Wild, right. Other companies have on going investigations snapping like cocker spaniels at their heels. A few are giant roll ups, in effect, 21st century Ling Temco Vought clones. A few are delivering solid value for specific applications. I can cite examples in XML search, eDiscovery, and enhancements for the Google constructs. (Okay, I will mention my son’s company, Adhere Solutions, a leader in this Google space.)
The point for me is that Exalead combined a number of working functions into a platform. The platform delivers search enabled applications; that is, the licensee has an information problem and doesn’t know how to cope with costs, data flows, and the need for continuous index updating. The Exalead technology makes it easy to suck in information and give different users access to the information they need to do their job. For some Exalead customers, the solution allows people to track packages and shipments. For other licensees, the Exalead technology sucks in information and generates reports in the form of restaurant reviews or competitive profiles. The terminology is less important than solving the problem.
That’s a key differentiator.
Technology
Google and Exalead were two outfits able to learn from the mistakes at AltaVista.com. Early on I learned that the founder of Exalead could have become a Googler. The reason Exalead exists is that M. Bourdoncle wanted to build a French company in France without the wackiness that goes along with tackling this mission in the US of A. Americans don’t fully understand the French, and I can’t do much more than remind you, gentle reader, that French waiters behave a certain way because of the “approach” many Americans make to the task of getting a jambon sandwich and a bottle of water.
I understood that M. Bourdoncle wanted to do the job his way, and he focused on coding for a 64 bit world when there were few 64 bit processors in the paws of enterprise information technology departments. He tackled a number of tough technical problems in order to make possible high performance, low cost scaling, and mostly painless tailoring of the system to information problems, not just search. Sure, search is part of the DNA, but Exalead has connectors, text to voice, image recognition, etc. And, happily, Exalead’s approach plays well with other enterprise systems. Exalead can add value with less engineering hassles than some of the firm’s competitors can. Implementation can be done in days or weeks, and sometimes months, not years like some vendors require.
So the plumbing is good.
That’s a high value asset.
Open Text and an Interesting Assertion
June 7, 2010
Open Text is ramping up its PR blitz in the social media space. We were chatting about a new content client yesterday (June 5, 2010). In that meeting, a person said, “Look at this. Open Text is in the corporate social media business.” I noted the url and took a closer look this morning. The document carried a very MBA type of assertion. Not bad for a company located in Waterloo, Ontario, where search and mobile devices are quite the rage. The title: “Open Text: Open Text Expands Social Media Offerings to Help Businesses Drive Bottom Line Results”.
For me, the one key passage was:
Now, Open Text leads the way for social media to be successfully deployed across the enterprise in a more secure environment. We are focused on helping customers realize practical and measurable business benefits such as faster time to market, higher customer retention or greater team productivity, while helping to reduce compliance, security and privacy risks. To support its customers as they seek to take advantage of the early-days social media explosion, Open Text stepped up quickly by adding blogs, wikis and other native Web 2.0 capabilities to the Open Text ECM Suite in 2008. Open Text, leveraging its strength in information governance, also took the lead in allowing customers to apply regulatory and legal rules to user-generated content. Then, last year, Open Text announced a completely new solution that lets companies create social workplaces for internal use cases, followed by the social media capabilities for marketing and external audiences from the acquisition of Vignette. Now, Open Text is evolving this foundation with a range of enhancements and new social media capabilities as part of the Open Text ECM Suite, building on a core strategy to apply social media technologies to pressing business challenges. Open Text enables companies to apply social media capabilities to drive marketing effectiveness, as well as customer support, sales and consulting, and strategic client engagement, among many others.
Then this caught my attention:
Open Text helps companies drive productivity within the enterprise with social media solutions that let users create profiles, follow co-workers and generate news feeds, or collaborate on projects. This dramatically improves information sharing and captures corporate knowledge, while reducing dependence on email. With the new and enhanced capabilities announced today, careful attention was paid to ease of use for business users and application to real business challenges, along with continued full support for Open Texts core competence in information governance and control. Expanded and enhanced offerings include: Open Text Social Communities Formerly Vignette Community Applications and Services, Open Text Social Communities is an enterprise social media solution that empowers organizations to engage with their customers, employees, and partners. As part of a broader marketing and CRM strategy, social media can give companies greater market insight, improved market engagement and, more importantly, significant improvements in customer satisfaction and retention.
This is an excellent example of how a company with roots in SGML databases, command line searching, and enterprise collaboration has embraced social media. I find the inclusion of Vignette, a content management system which can be quite a challenge to get up and humming like my late, dear grandmother’s treadle Singer sewing machine fascinating.
If there is a faux enterprise software niche, I would be among the first to nominate vendors of content management systems. When the Web became the rage, some entrepreneurs built systems to allow non coders to create a Web page. Over the years, the mess that some of these systems generate became a breeding ground for azure chip consultants. Not since Microsoft’s COM and DCOM has so much consulting work flowered.
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