Protected: Is There a SharePoint Chasm of Despair?
September 15, 2011
PolySpot Secures Investment
September 15, 2011
Polyspot, based in Paris, is a specialist enterprise search solution vendor. I learned of the two million euro infusion of capital in the announcement “PolySpot Raises €2 Million from Newfund to Boost its Growth.” The write up said:
PolySpot’s enterprise search solutions are the result of over 10 years of research and development, featuring a highly innovative architecture and technologies (including Apache/Lucene indexing library and Apache/Solr search service). As a result, PolySpot is able to offer open, functionally rich and highly competitive solutions that are used by major accounts across all sectors, including BNP-Paribas, Crédit Agricole SA, Bureau-Veritas, Veolia, Vinci or Schlumberger. Building on this success, PolySpot is now using this fund-raising round to move to the next level and boost its international business in the coming months. This fund-raising is part of an intensive work that began with the arrival of Gilles André (the figure behind success stories such as Leonard’s Logic and Augure) as the company’s new Managing Director and the appointment of David Fischer as head of R&D in 2010.
If you are not familiar with the firm, Polyspot is pushing forward with integrated information solutions. Founded in 2001, PolySpot designs and sells search and information access solutions designed to improve business efficiency in an environment where data volumes are increasing at an exponential rate. PolySpot’s solutions offer built in connectivity to most file types and file systems. The firm’s solutions are based on an innovative infrastructure offering both versatility and high performance at a competitive price point. The firm’s solutions are in use at such organizations as Allianz, BNP Paribas, Bureau Veritas, Crédit Agricole, OSEO, Schlumberger, Veolia, Trinity Mirror and Vinci.
For more information, navigate to the firm’s Web site at www.polyspot.com. You can get additional information about the firm’s capabilities in this interview with Olivier Lefassy, one of the firm’s senior executives.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Search May Be Flawed, but Maybe Content Management Is Worse?
September 14, 2011
I pay some attention to search and content processing. I take a dim view of content management because it is a weird business. Unlike records management, CMS as the “real” experts label the systems, CMS has few rules. In the tidy world of records management, there are document retention policies. Even when one ventures into the murk of legal content, there is a body of information about how documents must be tattooed before the legal eagles get to add value to the results of a discovery process. And CMS? Most of it is a Wild West rodeo on broken down horses and amateurs trying to distract the wild bulls and kicking stallions of content creators. I find CMS amusing to watch, but I steer clear. The “governance” experts are swarming over the mess CMS vendors and system users create. Need an example? How about the chaos of many Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint systems. Software just does not impose an editorial policy on employees with degrees in business administration and home economics engaged in writing marketing collateral, proposals, and reports.
I read “Inefficiencies in Collateral Management Cost the Financial Sector More than EUR4 Billion Annually, According to Accenture/Clearstream Survey” and reached two working hypotheses:
First, some information functions may be unmanageable unless rules are set up before the users start cranking out digital outputs. In my experience, this pristine state is tough to achieve. Consequently, most CMS implementations are not going to deliver what users and chief financial officers want. In short, the cost excess is likely to persist. How much money is blown with lousy CMS? Here’s what the article asserts:
The financial services sector could save more than EUR4 billion annually in collateral management costs by addressing operational inefficiencies, according to a survey by Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Clearstream.
Assume the estimated cost is inflated. Then do a back of envelope calculation that says Manhattan and Tokyo are probably as inefficient. Bingo. We have a nice fat six billion euro number. Not quite like the PIIGS’ debt, but a respectable number which CMS vendors should have kept more manageable.
Second, what about XML. I thought that Extensible Markup Language and systems which whip this file type around would have reduced content costs. I am not sure that has happened. I have formulated a notion that XML has become its own worst enemy. There is not single XML and the costs of pushing verbose objects to and fro, the expense of the humans who must work with systems designed for coding rock stars, and the bewildering diversity of XML tagged content look like deal breakers.
I don’t want to name any XML search and content vendors. I don’t want to highlight vendors who talk about XML and then slap big price tags on content transformation services. I do want to mention that Exalead is XML friendly and does a good job in my opinion with XML in many different forms. To Exalead’s credit, it handles XML quietly. Tooting the XML tuba has not sunk a musical hook in the financial institutions mentioned in the survey.
I am generally suspicious when I read a giant consulting firm and a smaller consulting firm have mined their contacts for data. However, in this case, I think that CMS and XML help me understand the persistent problem which exists in certain market sectors. How do you fix the problem? My hunch is that one should hire Accenture. Given the mess that exists, Accenture may buy better lunches for clients than the “real” poobahs, the art history majors, and the self appointed experts have delivered. Wait. I want to restate this. The problem may be unmanageable. Content is increasing too rapidly and few outfits have the appetite to spend good money after bad. Just my opinion formed in a land fond of beets.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: CSS Reference Chart for SharePoint 2010
September 14, 2011
Protected: Managing Email with SharePoint
September 13, 2011
SAP Collaborates with Google Maps
September 12, 2011
Real-time access to location-based data via Google Maps is the goal behind the latest Google and SAP collaboration, as revealed in “SAP and Google Team to Put Big Data on the Map” at LBSzone.com. explains SAP’s Sanjay Poonen,
Today, more and more information is being geo-tagged, and it is unlocking an entirely new dimension for enterprise data. SAP’s work with Google marries powerful enterprise software with the world’s most popular mapping platform to create entirely new ways for people to understand and interact with business information. We aim to provide our customers the opportunity to tap into the power of business analytics combined with location intelligence through a geographic view and use rich, interactive analytics to respond to events as they unfold in real time.
Globally successful SAP specializes in mobile solutions, social technologies, and the wrangling of big data. Google Maps has become the most popular online mapping tool worldwide. The two companies have a history of working together; it must be going well so far.
Google has been inking deals with a number of companies which can give it leverage into the enterprise market. Once that’s accomplished, we wonder, will the love affairs last? Now can SAP get back into turbo charged revenue mode? How many other firms are using Google Maps to “collaborate”?
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Protected: How to Use Multi-Page Forms on SharePoint
September 12, 2011
OpenText: Search to Teaching Is Not the Deal about Selling Services?
September 8, 2011
Another data management, search, collaboration vendor does the “we are in a new business” quick step. Searching with the Stars could be a TV sensation because there are more twists, dips, and slides in the search and content ballroom than in an Arthur Murray Advanced Beginners’ class.
Navigate to “Open Text acquires Peterborough’s Operitel”. The news is that one Canadian firm snapped up another Canadian outfit. What makes this interesting is that I was able to see some weak-force synergy between Nstein (sort of indexing and sort of data management) and OpenText, owner of lots of search, content processing, and collaboration stuff plus an SGML database and the BASIS system. But the Operitel buy has me doing some speculative thinking.
Here’s the passage which caught my attention:
Operitel’s flagship LearnFlex product is built on Microsoft Corp.’s .NET platform and is a top tier e-learning reseller for the Windows maker. Open Text also has a long standing partnership with Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.
I see more Microsoft credibility and a different way to sell services. OpenText strikes me as a company with a loosely or mostly non integrated line up of products. The future looks to be charging into the SharePoint sector, riding a horse called “eLearning.”
In today’s business climate, organic growth seems to be tough to achieve even with RedDot and a fruit basket filled with other technologies. (What happened to OpenText’s collaboration product? What happened to the legal workflow business? I just don’t know.) So how does a company which some Canadians at Industry Canada see as one of the country’s most important software companies grow? Here’s the answer:
Open Text’s growth-by-acquisition strategy has recently won accolades among the analyst community. The company purchased Maryland-based Metastorm Inc. for US$182-million, Texas-based Global 360 Holding Corp. for US$260-million and U.K.-based WeComm Ltd. for an undisclosed amount all in the past six months.
My hunch is that OpenText may want to find a buyer. Acquisitions seem to be a heck of a lot easier to complete than landing a major new account. I am not the only person thinking that the business of OpenText is cashing out. Point your browser at “Amid Takeover Fever, Open Text Looks Like a Bargain.” Here’s a key point in my opinion:
Open Text shares have climbed about 20 per cent this year, an increase that would pale in comparison to what would happen if a potential buyer emerged offering a premium similar to what HP has given Autonomy.
So we see a big payday for Autonomy has triggered a sympathetic response at the Globe & Mail, among “analysts”, and I am pretty sure among some OpenText stakeholders.
Several observations:
First, bankers think mostly about their commissions and fees. Bankers don’t think so much about other aspects of a deal. If there is a buck to be made from a company with a burlap sack of individual, solutions, and services, the bankers will go for it. Owning a new Porsche takes the edge off the winter.
Second, competitors have learned that other companies are a far greater threat than OpenText. A services firm can snag some revenue, but other vendors have been winning the big deals. The OpenText strategy has not generated the top line revenue growth and profit that a handful of other companies in search and content processing have achieved. So the roll up and services play looks like a way to add some zip to the burlap bag’s contents.
Third, customers have learned that OpenText does not move with the agility of some other firms. I would not use the word “glacial,” but “stately” seems appropriate. If you know someone with the RedDot system, you may be able to relate to the notion of rapid bug fixes and point releases. By the way, RedDot used to install an Autonomy stub as the default search engine. I find this interesting because OpenText owns BRS search, Fulcrum (yikes!), and the original Tim Bray SGML data management and search system. (Has SGML and XML come and gone?)
I am not willing to go out on a limb about a potential sale of OpenText, but I think that the notion of eLearning is interesting. Will OpenText shift its focus back to collaboration and document management much as Coveo flipped from search to mobile search to customer support and then back to search again. Canadian search and content processing vendors are interesting. Strike up the music. Another fast dance is beginning. Grab your partner. Search to services up next.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Hlava on Machine Assisted Indexing
September 8, 2011
On September 7, 2011, I interviewed Margie Hlava, president and co-founder of Access Innovations. Access Innovations has been delivering professional taxonomy, indexing, and consulting services to organizations worldwide for more than 30 years. In our first interview, Ms. Hlava discussed the needs for standards and the costs associated with flawed controlled term lists and some loosely-formed indexing methods.
In this podcast, I spoke with her about her MAI or machine assisted indexing technology. The idea is that automated systems can tag in a consistent manner high volume flows of data. The “big data” challenge often creates significant performance problems for some content processing systems. MAI balances high speed processing with the ability to accommodate the inevitable “language drift” that is a natural part of human content generation.
In this interview, Ms. Hlava discusses:
- The value of a neutral format so that content and tags can be easily repurposed
- The importance of metadata enrichment which allows an indexing process to capture the nuances of meaning as well as the tagging required to allow a user to “zoom” to a septic location in a document, pinpoint the entities in a document, and automated summarization of documents
- The role of an inverted index versus the tagging of records with a controlled vocabulary.
One of the key points is that flawed indexing contributes to user dissatisfaction with some search and retrieval systems. She said, “Search is like standing in line for a cold drink on a hot day. No matter how good the drink, there will be some dissatisfaction with the wait, the length of the line, and the process itself.”
You can listen to the second podcast, recorded on August 31, 2011, by pointing your browser to http://arnoldit.com/podcasts/. You can get additional information about Access Innovations at For more information about Access Innovations at this link. The company publishes Taxodiary, a highly regarded Web log about indexing and taxonomy related topics.
Stephen E Arnold, September 8, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Protected: More SharePoint Myths Dispelled
September 8, 2011
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