Adaptation Mandatory for Enterprise Teams in 2012
December 13, 2011
The list of Gartner predictions is out for 2012. The theme? Adapt or be replaced. CMS Wire provides all the details in, “Gartner: 10 Predictions for 2012, IT Departments to Adapt or be Swept Aside.”
“According to Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, the primary characteristic of IT next year will be fluidity, and where that fluidity does not exist, IT departments will be replaced by business managers who see the economy of cloud computing and the value of moving their IT requirements there . . . Devices that are easier to use, combined with more intuitive software, as well as the acceleration towards cloud computing, means that IT will have less responsibility than before.”
Two implications: one, IT teams need to prove their worth when it comes to enterprise, but they need to do it in a way that improves the user experience. Two, they need to find the right solution that ensures that employees maintain high productivity and quality search results. This brings us to another conjecture from the Gartner findings:
“And to add insult to injury, it looks like IT organizations are going to be held responsible when organizations are not able to extract full meaning out of their growing amount of data and when businesses miss out on key opportunities.”
We think that a quality solution is the key to all of the potential IT woes in 2012. One suite of solutions we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. They excel in assigning meaning to results in a way that others, namely SharePoint, lack.
“There are several ways to connect with standard and even highly customized line of business applications. An effective information access tool needs to facilitate users’ access to all of these content sources while preserving value and context of each information object and knowledge asset.”
Will there be challenges in the new year? Yes, there always are. But choose the right solution and meet those challenges head on.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 9,2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Protected: The Contested Fact: Sharepoint Has Social Media Potential
December 13, 2011
Enterprise Information Alphabet Soup Explained
December 13, 2011
Recently, we found an interesting article from Reto Hug entitled “Manufacturing Productivity and MRP/ERP/MIS”…try to say that three times fast! Anyway, in his article in explains what each acronym means and what technology is available to aid manufacturing productivity.
So what does it all mean? Manufacturing resource planning (MRP) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are defined as:
management information systems (MIS) since they are converting raw data into useful facts such as reports and invoices to optimally run a manufacturing environment.
The article explains that the software for MRP and ERP:
allow for keeping track of inventories in a manufacturing setting as well as purchasing and manufacturing controls and communications with people on the fabrication floor so that things are running smoothly between all departments of a manufacturing company.
Though Hug seems to have some insightful, technical information in his posting, it seems a bit convoluted. Inforbix provides a much more direct solution to the problems brought forth in his article. They provide a simplified approach to product data access versus the traditional product data management. No more acronyms on top of acronyms, just the revolutionary Inforbix process of find, re-use and share data. It is just that easy
Jennifer Wensink, December 12, 2011
Enterprise Search in the Realm of Social Media
December 13, 2011
Enterprise and social media are two emerging trends gaining ground fast in the world of IT, but how do they work together? Not just fads, they have proven their worth and are here to stay, but how can they both be utilized in order to maximize efficiency? SharePoint is an obvious place to start, as it controls a large segment of the market. Rich Blank gives the pros and cons in, “5 Myths about SharePoint as an Enterprise Social Platform.”
When SharePoint 2010 arrived in the marketplace, the platform included new social capabilities to improve productivity and collaboration. However, as the consumer social web exploded, it became clear that the 2010 platform only provided the basic building blocks of social computing. As many organizations are now making social collaboration a priority, it’s important to dispel myths and provide a reality-based understanding of SharePoint 2010 as a social computing platform.
While SharePoint works as an enterprise foundation, its true potential comes through the addition of third party solutions. A solution that we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Fabasoft has taken an interest in social media, and is working to maximize its offerings to compliment social media needs.
Here Michael Hadrian discusses their participation in the Content and Collaboration Summit in London:
’With Folio Cloud, Fabasoft has developed a European Cloud for ECM and B2B collaboration. This enables worldwide connected collaboration and secure data exchange in protected team rooms,’ explained Michael Hadrian, Fabasoft Distribution GmbH managing director. ‘As Premier Sponsor at this established conference, we are looking forward to contributing towards the continued advancement and assertion of business Cloud applications.’ In his presentation, Michael Hadrian presented Fabasoft’s latest inter-company business applications live, showing which concrete business advantages companies can benefit from with Fabasoft Folio Cloud based on customer projects.
While there is not yet a single out-of-the-box solution for organizations needing to merge their enterprise and social media needs, there are good solutions out there. Check out the Mindbreeze suite of offerings to see if it might work for you.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Exclusive Interview: Gilles Andre, PolySpot
December 13, 2011
Last week I was able to interview Gilles Andre, the chief executive officer, of PolySpot late in November and then last week. Mr. Andre joined PolySpot in June 2010. Prior to this, Gilles was co-founder and CEO of Augure, a company engaged in e-reputation management and services. Mr. Andre was also the founder of Leonard’s Logic suite in 1997 (software editor of Genio ETL). Acquired by Hummingbird in 1999. Mr. Andre is board member at Talend, recognized market leader in open source middleware solutions.
PolySpot is a provider of open search solutions. The company offers a robust and innovative architecture which supports search-centric applications accessible from any device connected to a client’s network.
I was interested in Mr. Andre’s view of PolySpot. The search and content processing sector is in transition, and the role of open source solutions continues to gain traction. He told me:
PolySpot’s agile framework, its use of open source technology like Lucene, and a focus on putting information in the business work flow. Olivier Lefassy, David Fischer – our CTO – and I had designed some interesting ideas, and I was eager to fine tune these elements into a business model that would propel PolySpot over the hurdles which cause many enterprise information solutions to fail.
With open source making in roads at IBM and other major technology providers, I asked about Mr. Andre’s involvement in the “communities” which play an important role in the sector. He told me:
When I was board member at Talend, a very successful French initiative in the ETL [extract, transform, load] segment from inception in 2006 to December 2010, I came to understand the potential of open source software. PolySpot gives me a chance to leverage my knowledge about fast growth, high potential companies, open source software, and the “big data” opportunity around us. I think you can say that data management and information are woven throughout my business fabric.
The PolySpot approach boasts a robust framework. I asked what PolySpot has constructed around Lucene, the open source search system:
We build the connectors I mentioned before and a connector software development kit. We engineered out proprietary transformation and enrichment platform (that’s the Sense Builder components) which adds intelligence to raw information. We also developed a very innovative end to end administration console enabling to design and maintain search applications with no particular technical skill, this eases Lucene and Solr configuration but also amplifies the search functionalities provided by Solr. Last, we have added display modules, information views, and graphical user interfaces. These can easily be customized. To make it brief, PolySpot delivers the first end-to-end packaged search infrastructure over Lucene and SOLR core technologies.
After seeing several demonstrations of client deployments, I was impressed with the PolySpot technology. To learn more about PolySpot’s solutions and technical approach, navigate to www.polyspot.com. The full text of the interview with Mr. Andre is located in the ArnoldIT’s series Search Wizards Speak at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Optimizing Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy
December 12, 2011
Two main concerns need to be balanced when pursuing an effective mobile strategy for any organization: efficiency and security. CMS Wire reports in, “Mobile Risks and Opportunities: Is Your Company’s Strategy Optimized?”
“A balance needs to be struck so that the organization can take advantage of the new technology, but not at the cost of lost confidential information or an IT infrastructure that is unmanageable. How can IT be expected to support five versions of essentially the same application but from different vendors (not all of which may be in business next year), running on every imaginable mobile device and operating system — that everybody wants connected to the corporate network?”
Add the necessity for mobile enterprise to the equation to further complicate the challenge. Mobile changes can occur so rapidly that a plan needs to be in place in order to keep pace. But keeping pace without regard to security poses its own threat.
“The internal audit, risk management and IT security teams should provide advice on the risks. However, care should be taken that excessive concern about risks does not result in being slow, or even late, to seize the opportunities.”
Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a mobility solution that ensures security and efficiency are both priorities. Unlike broader solutions like SharePoint, you never have to worry about access and security issues with Mindbreeze.
“Smartphones and tablets allow you to act quickly in business matters – an invaluable competitive advantage. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company knowledge available on all mobile devices. You can act freely, independently and yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: Search results are displayed homogenously to the web client with regards to clear design and intuitive navigation.”
Change will always be a challenge in IT, but success is possible through anticipating the threat and responding with a smart solution. We think Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look for this, and many other reasons.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Protected: Take a Gander at PowerShell to Generate a SharePoint Architecture Diagram
December 12, 2011
Dueling Perspectives on PDM Versus PLM
December 12, 2011
stands for a broader data management solution that includes orientation on processes that influence changes of this data as well decision management in a context of this data.” This broader scope creates many “benefits of data completeness” and “created many overlaps in data management solutions.
DARPA’s Open Source Initiatives Require Product Data Management Reevaluation
December 9, 2011
“Correct by construction is an engineering approach used in software engineering and integrated circuit design that uses mathematical models to check the impact each component of a system has on the whole, ensuring that the design falls within certain constraints. DARPA is funding the development of engineering “meta-tools” that would allow engineers to contribute components to a design that would be checked against a set of models, checking for potential unintended integration issues.”
Catherine Lamsfuss, December 9, 2011
Protected: FAST Search Research Round-Up
December 9, 2011
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