Adobe Back Out of the Enterprise
November 16, 2011
We came across another interesting write up from Megan Feil on the shifting business approach at Adobe. Here’s what we found:
When the markets invariably change, does a company follow suit and 180 with the changing times? Well, we know how Adobe responds after reading Mac World’s report on Adobe’s restructuring in their article, “Adobe to Reduce Enterprise Software Investment.” Adobe sees digital media and digital marketing products as the areas with the potential for astronomical growth and they want to cash in.
Adobe is changing things up for their company, but predictably choosing the safe route. It will continue to invest in its Creative Suite products and place more emphasis on HTML 5. As far as marketing goes, they plan on investing in analytics and reporting, especially on mobile devices and social networks.
Mac World quotes their CFO’s statement:
“We believe that by focusing resources on two large initiatives and shifting our business model, we can drive faster and more predictable growth in [fiscal year 2013] and beyond,” CFO Mark Garrett said in a statement.
Their enterprise software brought in less than 10 percent of their overall revenue last quarter, so it seems like they might be making a good move for their business. In regards to enterprise software in general, Adobe seems to be snubbing the possibilities this market has for expansion. With the consumerization of information technology, there are wide open spaces of room for companies to innovate software and applications for the enterprise. It’s all about tapping into what users want: business intelligence with intuitive ease.
We think that this shift is illustrative of how a company’s direction can shift. It is interesting to note that they are concentrating on HTML5 instead of Flash for the mobile world. We did find that Polyspot’s business intelligence approach was already poised to handle the mobile economy. Our colleague Constance Ard over at Answer Maven is pretty adamant about mobile: “If companies do not account for personal and business mobile devices in their enterprise information management they will suffer the consequences.” Guess it’s good that there are software companies that can help.
Andrea Hayden, November 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Business Process Is Not Information Management
November 15, 2011
We continue to run across some interesting stories about Enterprise Data. This one from Catherine Lamsfuss caused quite a debate at lunch. Here’s what we read:
As the amount of data within a business or industry grows the question of what to do with it arises. The article, “Business Process Management and Mastering Data in the Enterprise“, on Capgemini’s website explains how Business Process Management (BPM) is not the ideal means for managing data.
According the article as more and more operations are used to store data the process of synchronizing the data becomes increasingly difficult.
As for using BPM to do the job, the article explains,
While BPM tools have the infrastructure to do hold a data model and integrate to multiple core systems, the process of mastering the data can become complex and, as the program expands across ever more systems, the challenges can become unmanageable. In my view, BPMS solutions with a few exceptions are not the right place to be managing core data[i]. At the enterprise level MDM solutions are for more elegant solutions designed specifically for this purpose.
The answer to this ever-growing problem was happened upon by combining knowledge from both a data perspective and a process perspective. The article suggests that a Target Operating Model (TOM) would act as a rudder for the projects aimed at synchronizing data. After that was in place a common information model be created with enterprise definitions of the data entities which then would be populated by general attributes fed by a single process project.
While this is just one man’s answer to the problem of data, it is a start. Regardless of how businesses approach the problem it remains constant–process management alone is not efficient enough to meet the demands of data management.
“It’s not the process its the people that implement and use the process that matter” stated Jasmine Ashton in a final summary of the lunch debate. We had to agree. However, as we looked through the Polyspot data management description that Ms. Lamsfuss’ article pointed us to we had to agree that starting with a good technology implementation could go a long way towards helping the people follow the processes.
Constance Ard November 15, 2011
Mindbreeze Offers Standalone Enterprise Solution
November 14, 2011
CMS Wire follows the latest trends in enterprise CMS in “Forrester Wave Q4 2011: Bye-Bye Enterprise CMS Suites, Content-Centric Apps Are King.” Content needs are becoming more complex and organizations are turning to multiple solutions and away from a single CMS suite.
“The first dynamic that the Forrester report identifies shows that companies are no longer looking to a single enterprise CMS suite to solve all their content needs. There are a number of reasons for this, but looming over them all is the fact that changing content-types and greater use of, and need to manage, unstructured content is pushing many companies to use whatever application suits, from whatever vendors are providing those applications, to solve specific business problems. And then, of course, information workers have to be able to use all these applications.”
Relying on the variety of vendors might not be the solution to the changing enterprise landscape. Instead, choosing an agile and capable vendor like Mindbreeze seamlessly solves all of your business needs on multiple levels: mobile, web, and enterprise. When multiple vendors are utilized, information workers are forced to train on a variety of platforms and applications. Using one flexible solution like Mindbreeze saves valuable training time.
“SharePoint, and in particular the new release, Forrester argues, which provides ‘ECM for the masses’ has forced many vendors to rethink strategies and move towards more content-centric development. As a result, competing vendors have been obliged to move toward specific content sets to differentiate themselves from it. Consequently, the market is now divided into a number of different types of players.”
Instead of being forced into this trend, and choosing different vendors for different content, choose one reliable vendor like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Applications are still content-centric, but in a smart and streamlined way, all underneath the banner of one dependable name.
*Disclaimer – Mindbreeze is currently upgrading their website. Links will be checked and if problems arise they will be updated. Thanks for your patience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 14, 2011
ISYS Has 16,000 Customers. Did I Goof?
November 11, 2011
I covered six vendors of enterprise search systems in my June 2011 The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. An azure chip consulting firm borrowed a key word from my monograph’s title and put out a report covering twice as many vendors.
Today I read “16,000 Organizations Worldwide Now Boost Their Productivity with the ISYS 1-Click FileFinder.” In a write up about AtomicPR’s spam attack on me and the MarkLogic “reinvention of itself as more than a file markup and repository outfit,” I mentioned ISYS Search Software was licensing its connectors, essentially software widgets that allow one system to ingest the files from an incompatible system. So ISYS, ISYS, ISYS.
Years ago I met the founder of ISYS Search Software in Crow’s Nest in a suburb Sydney, Australia. I recall a very interesting lunch in a restaurant that was almost next to the ISYS headquarters. Very interesting those Australian engineers. At the time, I was doing something for some outfit sponsoring the international chief of police conference or some similar intelligence-type event. I was one of the speakers and a guest of the Australian government. In my spare time, I was either watching folks shoot red kangaroos or visiting search and information retrieval experts. After the visit, I did some work for Ian Davies, the founder. His role has changed, and I have lost track of him, his senior sales professional, and the senior engineer whom I met that day. Distance and time I suppose.
I have drifted away from ISYS because I learned that the company–despite a new president, new lines of business like licensing connectors, and introducing file finding utilities—was not hitting my radar with the sort of information I am now tracking. No problem, of course. Quite a few search vendors have changed their spots or at least their marketing pitch faster than a rap star who signs a movie deal. Examples range from Coveo becoming a customer support solution provider to Vivisimo’s puzzling “information optimization.” Other vendors have gone quiet like Dieselpoint, an XML centric search system vendor. Others have found themselves on the receiving end of a dump truck filled with cash. Think InQuira, Autonomy, Endeca, and RightNow to name four vendors who are now happily within giant corporate shells thinking about which island to buy.
My understanding is that ISYS generates about one third of its revenue from the US and the balance from elsewhere. Although the UK is a good market for ISYS, the company’s stronghold is Australia. This raises what I call “the Canadian question.” Ah, you ask, “What’s Canada got to do with Australia and ISYS?”
Here’s my point. When determining how much revenue one of my ventures can generate in Canada, I take the US revenue and then figure that Canada will product 10 percent of that amount. The reason has to do with population, appetite for the sort of products my team produces, and experience. The 10 percent can be five percent, or it could be 15 percent. However, 10 percent is a good rule of thumb.
Therefore, if a company in Australia generates $10 million a year in that country of 23 million people, then it follows that the US with its population of 308 million should produce revenue of about 12 to 13 times the Australian revenue. If we assume that ISYS is generating $10 million from the land down under, I would expect $120 million from the land up above.
I may be off base, but in our research for The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, I did not find data to support that ISYS was generating revenue in this range. Therefore, I decided to exclude the company from my monograph.
The azure chip consulting firm replete with home economics majors, a handful of former journalists, and a couple of failed webmasters sees the world differently. I think the reason is that the azure chip outfit uses its reports as sales collateral. I don’t have any first hand experience with the “real” consultants in enterprise search, but after reading some of these reports, I formed my own opinion. Yours may differ.
To answer the question, “Did I goof by not including ISYS along side Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, Google, Microsoft, and Vivisimo?,” The answer is, “I don’t think so.”
Hoping a vendor is competing with the likes of Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, etc. is one thing. Actually beating these firms in major accounts is a different one. Just my opinion, and I look forward to the push back from the “experts” who know more than I, aggrieved company executives who want me to revisit my conclusions about which companies are altering the landscape of search, and the “real” consultants who will swarm over my view point.
Have at it kids. Sales revenues matter. When someone plops down $1.2 billion as Microsoft did for the Fast Search & Technology system or the interesting $10 billion for Autonomy, I will make another pass over the “big six.” Until then, I need to hear first hand about how non US firms cope with my Canadian rule of thumb. I quite like the ISYS technology. But for Landscape, revenues play more of a role than technology.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Gartner and Another Magic Quadrant
November 10, 2011
We don’t believe in magic, but consultants do. We came across an interesting write up from a Megan Feil. We contacted her and she said she was working on a test of a new blog. Alas, no details.
Here’s what she wrote:
Bizzdesign, a company specializing in enterprise architecture, recently published a news release on their website claiming that they are “positioned as a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture 2011.”
One of Gartner‘s research methodologies is the magic quadrant. This graphic released by the technology research giant shows competing players in various markets. With ability to execute on the y-axis and completeness of vision on the x-axis, this research can offer a comprehensive look at where companies are in the larger picture. Gartner’s analysts identify the challengers, leaders, niche-players, and visionaries.
Gartner appears to be pretty transparent regarding the details of their process for collecting and evaluating data. Further information can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section. It is important to note that each of these roles has a place in the ecosystem. It would be interesting to discover how much monetary success factors into the overall equation, and by how much those numbers vary, for each of these categories.
Bizzdesign’s CEO Henry Franken said the following in regards to their placement in the leader quadrant:
Only three years ago we set our first steps into the international market. From a solid Dutch base, with a lot of knowledge and experience, we have since then grown very fast and have made remarkable progress. To be able to achieve an international top position in a relatively short amount of time is a milestone for both our organization and customers. We are proud of the confidence that the market has given us and we are aiming to expand this confidence along with our growth strategy.
Seeing a relatively young company labeled as a leader in the enterprise architecture market is surprising since it is such a specific market, and one that includes a few larger companies with more seniority. However, it is great to see a company with support for open standards like the TOGAF method and the ArchiMate modeling language in such a position. Additionally, this shows hope for other smaller, younger, and innovative companies to pop up.
Open source architecture provides clients with an enterprise architecture that allows them to customize solutions to solve their business problems instead of adding to them. As 2011 nears to a close we’ll be looking at more companies that just those mentioned on the quadrant for new leaders in the field.
We’re not so sure about magic. We have questions about azure chip consulting firms. We did find the information about Polyspot suggestive. Worth a look. No magic required.
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Mindbreeze Delivers More Convenience More Relevance
November 10, 2011
Our previous stories have highlighted the rapid and broad adoption of SharePoint following the release of its 2010 version. However, SharePoint adoption by an organization does not always equal greater efficiency or productivity. Enterprise solutions, such as Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise are built with the user in mind, greatly increasing the user’s perception of convenience and relevance. “Stadium of More: The 2011 Summer Release,” details the many ways that Mindbreeze improves the enterprise experience from the viewpoint of the user.
A highlight is the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Connector:
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise now supports Microsoft SharePoint 2010 out-of-the-box with its standard product functionality. All standard types of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 are indexed and line of business applications are supported as well.”
This tutorial briefly explains how Mindbreeze’s composite application allows the user to search and access all items to which they have access while remaining within the application. Streamlining search and retrieval into the same platform saves time and aggravation. Mindbreeze constantly verifies and updates access rights, insuring that each user is only retrieving results that they have permission to view.
Continuing the company’s theme of “Not searching, but finding,” this tutorial highlights additional ways that Fabasoft Mindbreeze brings convenience and relevance to the forefront. Search restrictions are available via intuitive tabs. Mindbreeze thinks semantically, allowing a search for “records” to retrieve actual records and not simply files names containing the word “record.” More examples can be found on the brief tutorial.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that “searching” via Microsoft SharePoint is enough. Choose Fabasoft Mindbreeze and discover how “finding” can be the key to efficiency and user satisfaction for your enterprise needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 10, 2011
Search Silver Bullets, Elixirs, and Magic Potions: Thinking about Findability in 2012
November 10, 2011
I feel expansive today (November 9, 2011), generous even. My left eye seems to be working at 70 percent capacity. No babies are screaming in the airport waiting area. In fact, I am sitting in a not too sticky seat, enjoying the announcements about keeping pets in their cage and reporting suspicious packages to law enforcement by dialing 250.
I wonder if the mother who left a pink and white plastic bag with a small bunny and box of animal crackers is evil. Much in today’s society is crazy marketing hype and fear mongering.
Whilst thinking about pets in cages and animal crackers which may be laced with rat poison, and plump, fabric bunnies, my thoughts turned to the notion of instant fixes for horribly broken search and content processing systems.
I think it was the association of the failure of societal systems that determined passengers at the gate would allow a pet to run wild or that a stuffed bunny was a threat. My thoughts jumped to the world of search, its crazy marketing pitches, and the satraps who have promoted themselves to “expert in search.” I wanted to capture these ideas, conforming to the precepts of the About section of this free blog. Did I say, “Free.”
A happy quack to http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amcl_astronomical_material02.html for this image of the 21st century azure chip consultant, a self appointed expert in search with a degree in English and a minor in home economics with an emphasis on finger sandwiches.
The Silver Bullets, Garlic Balls, and Eyes of Newts
First, let me list the instant fixes, the silver bullets, the magic potions, the faerie dust, and the alchemy which makes “enterprise search” work today. Fasten your alchemist’s robe, lift your chin, and grab your paper cone. I may rain on your magic potion. Here are 14 magic fixes for a lousy search system. Oh, one more caveat. I am not picking on any one company or approach. The key to this essay is the collection of pixie dust, not a single firm’s blend of baloney, owl feathers, and goat horn.
- Analytics (The kind equations some of us wrangled and struggled with in Statistics 101 or the more complex predictive methods which, if you know how to make the numerical recipes work, will get you a job at Palantir, Recorded Future, SAS, or one of the other purveyors of wisdom based on big data number crunching)
- Cloud (Most companies in the magic elixir business invoke the cloud. Not even Macbeth’s witches do as good a job with the incantation of Hadoop the Loop as Cloudera,but there are many contenders in this pixie concoction. Amazon comes to mind but A9 gives me a headache when I use A9 to locate a book for my trusty e Reeder.)
- Clustering (Which I associate with Clustify and Vivisimo, but Vivisimo has morphed clustering in “information optimization” and gets a happy quack for this leap)
- Connectors (One can search unless one can acquire content. I like the Palantir approach which triggered some push back but I find the morphing of ISYS Search Software a useful touchstone in this potion category)
- Discovery systems (My associative thought process offers up Clearwell Systems and Recommind. I like Recommind, however, because it is so similar to Autonomy’s method and it has been the pivot for the company’s flip flow from law firms to enterprise search and back to eDiscovery in the last 12 or 18 months)
- Federation (I like the approach of Deep Web Technologies and for the record, the company does not position its method as a magical solution, but some federating vendors do so I will mention this concept. Yhink mash up and data fusion too)
- Natural language processing (My candidate for NLP wonder worker is Oracle which acquired InQuira. InQuira is a success story because it was formed from the components of two antecedent search companies, pitched NLP for customer support,and got acquired by Oracle. Happy stakeholders all.)
- Metatagging (Many candidates here. I nominate the Microsoft SharePoint technology as the silver bullet candidate. SharePoint search offers almost flawless implementation of finding a document by virtue of knowing who wrote it, when, and what file type it is. Amazing. A first of sorts because the method has spawned third party solutions from Austria to t he United States.)
- Open source (Hands down I think about IBM. From Content Analytics to the wild and crazy Watson, IBM has open source tattooed over large expanses of its corporate hide. Free? Did I mention free? Think again. IBM did not hit $100 billion in revenue by giving software away.)
- Relationship maps (I have to go with the Inxight Software solution. Not only was the live map an inspiration to every business intelligence and social network analysis vendor it was cool to drag objects around. Now Inxight is part of Business Objects which is part of SAP, which is an interesting company occupied with reinventing itself and ignored TREX, a search engine)
- Semantics (I have to mention Google as the poster child for making software know what content is about. I stand by my praise of Ramanathan Guha’s programmable search engine and the somewhat complementary work of Dr. Alon Halevy, both happy Googlers as far as I know. Did I mention that Google has oodles of semantic methods, but the focus is on selling ads and Pandas, which are somewhat related.)
- Sentiment analysis (the winner in the sentiment analysis sector is up for grabs. In terms of reinventing and repositioning, I want to acknowledge Attensity. But when it comes to making lemonade from lemons, check out Lexalytics (now a unit of Infonics). I like the Newssift case, but that is not included in my free blog posts and information about this modest multi-vehicle accident on the UK information highway is harder and harder to find. Alas.)
- Taxonomies (I am a traditionalist, so I quite like the pioneering work of Access Innovations. But firms run by individuals who are not experts in controlled vocabularies, machine assisted indexing, and ANSI compliance have captured the attention of the azure chip, home economics, and self appointed expert crowd. Access innovations knows its stuff. Some of the boot camp crowd, maybe somewhat less? I read a blog post recently that said librarians are not necessary when one creates an enterprise taxonomy. My how interesting. When we did the ABI/INFORM and Business Dateline controlled vocabularies we used “real” experts and quite a few librarians with experience conceptualizing, developing, refining, and ensuring logical consistency of our word lists. It worked because even the shadow of the original ABI/INFORM still uses some of our term 30 plus years later. There are so many taxonomy vendors, I will not attempt to highlight others. Even Microsoft signed on with Cognition Technologies to beef up its methods.)
- XML (there are Google and MarkLogic again. XML is now a genuine silver bullet. I thought it was a markup language. Well, not any more, pal.)
Getting Fierce about Search
November 9, 2011
Well, semi-fierce may be a better way to approach this write up, Search Is the Key to Everything. We agree that considerable effort has been applied to finding information. Maybe we could get an NSF grant to quantify how big search is. McKinsey & Co. came up with a big number, but a government funded study would be much more satisfying than free information from a blue chip consulting company whose executives wear orange jump suits on occasion.
According to Fierce Content Management editor, Ron Miller, the world’s problems lead back to search. Well, okay, maybe not every problem, but definitely quite a few. Mr. Miller likens the problem of search to his Internet TV. When he wants to find a movie he must negotiate several different programs’ (Hulu, Netflix, and Crackle) search functions instead of being able to search all the applications from one central search. Enterprise search is basically the same thing. According to Miller,
In the case of the enterprise, we may know that the content is out there somewhere across the vast stores of information, but finding that one document you need may be not be that easy. Sometimes this is a known document and sometimes it’s one that you are hoping is there.
While the article does admit individual search engines can be quite efficient, the lack of organization within enterprises is the chief gripe. We cannot disagree with the premise that search would be much easier if all the information were available in one simple search. But we do disagree that search is the key to everything.
At Fierce does the firm’s search engine search employee employment and compensation data, employee health information, contracts between Fierce and its suppliers and customers, the confidential notes made by a reporter, and similar juicy information?
We don’t think so. We think that search is a complicated beastie, a work in progress, and not understood particularly well by licensees, pundits, former webmasters, home economics majors, and unemployed oboe players. That is why it is so darned satisfying to redefine “search” as XML, facets, metatags, semantic analyses, and other buzz words like content management that make the uninformed person’s adrenaline gush like a Pennsylvania brine well in 1815.
Catherine Lamsfuss, November 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SQL 2012 SharePoint Enhancements
November 9, 2011
The recent SharePoint Conference gives users a lot to look forward to (see: enhancements formerly known as “Denali.”) There are some big things worth noting and paying attention to.
One of my favorite bloggers gave a list of what’s coming and people should be excited. A great recap of SQL 2012 is discussed by SharePoint Joel in his post, “Top 10 SQL 2012 ‘Denali” Enhancements for SharePoint.” He covers big points, such as SQL Reporting Services, cross farm reporting, and security improvements. However, the big focus is on disaster recovery. We learned:
Disaster Recovery and Resiliency Improvements – Always On – this was the big one. At the SharePoint Conference they showed an automatic failover of a 14 TB database in less than one minute. There’s a ton in here. Improvements to combining the best of log shipping and mirroring into one. Such as automatic failover for groups of databases with automatic or manual failover or failover an entire instance of SQL. Don’t forget the ability to do failover multi site across subnets with encryption and compression built in and with multiple secondaries.
Search Technologies is working closely with Microsoft and is on top of these innovations. The team maintains deep expertise in these leading search products and no matter what changes or challenges come, Search Technologies has the people, processes, and technologies to deliver results. www.searchtechnologies.com
Iain Fletcher, November 9, 2011
Search Technologies
Mindbreeze: A View from the Top
November 9, 2011
Fabasoft Mindbreeze managing director, Daniel Fallman, gives his insight to KM World in, “Mindbreeze, Managing Director, Daniel Fallmann: View from the Top.”
Using open standards, Mindbreeze offers high-performance enterprise search and digital cognition for all kinds of enterprises. We have developed context-enriching indexing services, which are available without time-consuming set up procedures. Information access without ironclad security is not a solution. Fabasoft Mindbreeze ensures that only authorized users can access the information. Our product was designed from the beginning to be installed quickly in minutes, thus obviating expensive installation processes. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance can be up and running for your users in just a matter of hours.
Fallmann, the Fabasoft Mindbreeze founder, talks about his Austrian start-up on this brief video. He is able to succinctly explain how the Mindbreeze solution assists users with internal and external search.
Saving the user from lengthy installation and clunky customization, Mindbreeze seamlessly integrates onto an existing platform. Semantic recognition enhances search results, providing not only quick but relevant search results. Third-party application data is available to mobile devices through Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile. Standard installations such as Microsoft SharePoint can lack versatility and customization becomes lengthy and difficult.
Evaluate your enterprise needs and see if Fabasoft Mindbreeze and its highly efficient solutions might be the right choice for your organization. In Fallmann’s words, “Make informed decisions.”
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 9, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
