Enterprise Search: Cruising on the Concordia
January 19, 2012
I keep my eyes peeled for useful management examples. Whilst recovering from a minor hitch in the goose liver, I watched the drama of the Concordia cruise ship unfold. The horrific event reminded me of several enterprise search deployments I had analyzed. I was not the “captain” of these enterprise search voyages. I was able to do some post-crash analysis.
To get the basics of the event, you will want to familiarize yourself with the write up in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, “Concordia Disaster: Should a Captain Go Down with His Ship?” In my opinion, the key passage in the Daily Telegraph’s story was:
…leadership entails an obligation to be courageous – morally, physically or both. It is the price of leadership; it is why leaders are more highly regarded and rewarded than the rest of us. But even subordinates in certain professions have the duty to be brave, as the rest of us do not. A soldier is expected unquestioningly to put himself in the way of bullets as a civilian is not.
(But my favorite news item was Cruise Captain Says He ‘Tripped’ Into Lifeboat, Couldn’t Get Out.”
Not Taking Responsibility
The alleged behavior of the captain shares one similarity with enterprise search implementations that sink. The person running the operation shirks responsibility for the disaster. My view is that ego plays a part. The more important factor may be the person’s character. I have reviewed a failed search implementation and had a difficult time determining who was responsible. The procurement team has the thick linen of committee think under which to hide. The information technology manager often keeps well away from search, a behavior conditioned by knowledge that making information findable is often impossible. The chief financial officer just counts the dissipated dollars. Accountants are not implementers. The person charged with the failure is often a young engineer whom those ultimately responsible deem expendable.
The first similarity is that in big disasters those who are responsible do whatever is needed to avoid responsibility. In enterprise search, there is a ship captain. Pretending that a captain does not exist is one interesting characteristic of today’s organizational life. Think Jerry Yang at Yahoo. Recall Leo Apotheker. You get the idea. What about the search system at your company? The National Archives? Amazon’s online store? There are captains responsible. Unfortunately these captains do not get global news coverage for their behavior.
Show Boating
The crash and sinking was a consequence of show boating. The idea is that doing something fancy is appropriate and within the perimeter of the job description is allowed. In enterprise search, the show boating becomes visible when one or more people make suggestions along these lines:
- We need to deliver answer to users, not laundry lists
- Natural language processing is essential to the success of our search system
- We need a taxonomy and semantic technology to make information accessible
- Our system has to work just like Google.
Each of these is similar to the Concordia’s buzz close to shore. Few of those involved in an enterprise search implementation realize how downright expensive, complicated, and resource intensive these “suggestions” become. Vendors go along to keep the contract. The deployment team is thinking about making search headlines and maybe getting a raise and a promotion. Great idea but when the effort sinks the search project, the result is a disaster.
The second similarity between the Concordia and the ill fated enterprise search system deployment is that getting cute can wreck havoc. Now you may say, “Hey, semantic methods will only help our search system.” Maybe, maybe not. My view is that show boating is one characteristic of doomed enterprise search system. The fix? Just do the basics well, then add some special sauce.
Amazon: Will DynamoDB Electrocute the Big Boys?
January 18, 2012
I want to capture a few business related observations about Amazon’s now public DynamoDB. The blog post by Amazon’s chief technical officer provides a good overview of the home grown NoSQL data management service. Navigate to “Amazon DynamoDB–A Fast and Scalable NoSQL Database Service Designed for Internet Scale Applications.” For a run down of some of the features, point your browser at “Notes About Amazon DynamoDB.” The basic idea is that Amazon has created its own NoSQL database, matched it to the Amazon cloud environment, and packaged it with taxi meter pricing.
Why didn’t Amazon use Hadoop or some other NoSQL, open source, Codd free systems? My hunch is that Amazon sees big money in a ready-to-role, automatic sharding, solid state disc base data management solution. Rolling its own solution gives Amazon control. In fact, Amazon is cranking up the dial on its Controlometer.
The issue that interests me is the business angle of the DynamoDB. Here are several preliminary thoughts.
First, Amazon is getting frisky but slowly. My sources report that work on the DynamoDB system began several years ago. Microsoft picked up wind of the project and was unable to respond. Right now, Amazon’s an engineering magnet, attracting talent from outfits once considered the best in the soggy city. With higher quality engineering horsepower, the dowdy retailer is shifting from a horse and wagon to a far more capable vehicle.
Second, MarkLogic had the idea that it could impinge on Oracle. Well, we know how that turned out with AtomicPR (the content fallout kids), management change, and wild and crazy marketing. Now Amazon is on the path to make life tough for Oracle. Amazon had Oracle as a steady date, but senior year is coming. Amazon may be marrying the DynamoDB, leaving Oracle without a homecoming date. If Amazon pulls off this new hitch up, Amazon may be ready to go for the enterprise gold. I think this is better than a 50-50 deal but I may change my mind.
Third, Amazon has demonstrated the value of a “Google Legacy.” Google plunged forward, diffused its resources, and ended up with its lovely self snared in legal and social thorns. Amazon, on the other hand, has avoided some of the traps into which Google threw itself. In the process itself, Amazon used Android to move its branded hardware forward. There is nothing like a friend who plans on evicting you from your home. Amazon is, once again, going beyond Google.
I have a number of other thoughts, but the goose’s liver needs a rest. Oh, oh, here comes a scowling nurse. Will she rescue the electrocuted big boys of database? I doubt it.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Life Fix: Take More Breaks, Get More Done
December 31, 2011
Get ready for the New Year!
Can you get ahead by taking a nap at your desk every day? That’s what Tony Schwartz advises in Harvard Business Review’s “How to Accomplish More by Doing Less.” Actually, Schwartz doesn’t advise napping per se. It’s about combining focused ninety-minute work sessions with breaks throughout the day.
He illustrates his point by comparing two theoretical workers. The first, Bill, spends the day straight through at his desk, even eating lunch there. Nick, however, takes a fifteen minute break after every hour and a half of work, takes forty five minutes for lunch, and even takes a nap of up to twenty minutes each afternoon. While it may appear to the casual observer that Bill is the better worker, Nick actually gets better results because he isn’t burning himself out. The article insists:
It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk in that determines the value we generate. It’s the energy we bring to the hours we work. Human beings are designed to pulse rhythmically between spending and renewing energy. That’s how we operate at our best. Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy — physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually — requires refueling it intermittently. Work the way Nick does, and you’ll get more done, in less time, at a higher level of quality, more sustainably.
Schwartz boosts his conclusion with studies of pilots and violinists, as well as with his personal experience. He seems to understand, though, that such patterns aren’t widely tolerated, much less encouraged; he appeals to managers to embrace intermittent renewal for their employees.
Good luck with that in 2012 as you race to fix a search system which has indexed employee medical and employment records.
Cynthia Murrell, December 31, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The AOL Shuffle
December 27, 2011
Cyber space gossip: more trouble at AOL? Crunched declares, “AOL Looking for New Huffpo Media Group President.” Blogger Michael Arrington admits that the news is “being whispered,” not official, but his sources say AOL has engaged recruiter Spencer Stuart to find a new business leader for the Huffington Post Media Group. AOL bought Huffpo earlier this year.
Arianna Huffington, founder of the media group, is now running the business side as well as the editorial side since AOL’s Jon Brod was reassigned. Arrington finds the reported change in the chain-of-command to be the juiciest part. The write up asserts:
By far the most interesting part of all this, though, is it’s not clear that Arianna Huffington is aware that the new position will report to Tim Armstrong, not Huffington. Whatever happens, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting my old job back.
I hope Arrington doesn’t actually want his old TechCrunch job back. He seems to have pretty thoroughly burned that bridge. Just saying. One thing is for sure: Googlers make interesting managers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Construction Ahead for AOL
December 26, 2011
Shareholder pressure, poor financial performance, and staff defections—now that’s a Kwanzaa gift with quite a few goodies inside. Will Google-inspired management reverse the Yahoo-ization and Research in Motion approach to corporate progress?
Once again, AOL is about to restructure itself, reveals Steven Musil at CNET News in “AOL to Announce Company Reorg, Report Says.” Is this really necessary? Reorganizations make for lost time, after all. True, AOL has suffered for being behind the curve on Internet trends; its share price has fallen over 40% over the last 52 weeks. But will it gain more than it loses with this rework?
CEO Tim Armstrong believes so. The article notes:
AOL hired Armstrong away from Google in 2009 with hopes that the Web giant’s advertising sales guru would help revive the ailing AOL. However, Armstrong, who is best known for developing Google’s online advertising business, has had trouble competing for ad dollars with his former employer, as well as Facebook and Yahoo.
I’m sure he knew it wouldn’t be easy. Now he hopes consolidating AOL services into one division will help. The company is also creating dedicated units for advertising, local services, and the Huffington Post media group.
Speaking of the Huffington Post, where’s the Huffington rescue squad? Can’t Arianna do anything she sets her mind to?
Cynthia Murrell, December 26, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Jets and a Place to Park
December 25, 2011
Too bad for Larry Ellison. He has to park his jets somewhere other than Google Air Force Base. Since mid September, Occupy Wall Street protesters have used the memorable slogan “We are the 99%” to reference the growing disparity in wealth in the U.S. between the richest 1% and the rest of the population. Google executives are not exempt from these attacks.
According to the TechCrunch article “Google’s 3 Top Executives Have 8 Private Jets,” Google executives, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt own eight jets. 2.6 jets per person, for the 2 co-founders and the executive chairman? That seems a bit excessive.
The article states:
The jets are not owned or operated by Google. Instead, the 3 Google leaders operate the fleet through an LLC called H211. Google has no official relation with H211. Ken Ambrose, the Director of Operations for H211, announced the funding offer at a public meeting this week. He also complained that NASA, which owns Hangar One, has taken too long to respond to the offer.
While it is not abnormal for CEO’s and executives to own private jets, owning eight seems extreme. I guess this is just another example of how the 1 percent lives. Hopefully it will not add too much fuel to the Occupy Wall Street fire. The deal may also pour fuel on Mr. Ellison’s ire.
Jasmine Ashton, December 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
OpenText, Its Management Shift, and Search Challenge
December 16, 2011
Short honk: Management shifts are flashing yellow lights. Examples range from the shuffles underway at America Online to the RPMs at Thomson Reuters’ revolving door. Now OpenText, a collection of poorly integrated information and content processing companies, has allegedly started the process of replacing its top dog. I read “SGI’s Barrenechea To Run Open Text.” Here’s the passage I noted:
Open Text this morning said it has named current SGI chief Mark Barrenechea as president and CEO effective January {,2012].
Mr. Barrenechea’s background according to Forbes includes:
Mr. Barrenechea served as Executive Vice President and CTO for CA, Inc. (?CA?), (formerly Computer Associates International, Inc.), a software company, from 2003 to 2006 and was a member of the executive management team. Prior to CA, Mr. Barrenechea served as Senior Vice President of Applications Development at Oracle Corporation, an enterprise software company, from 1997 to 2003, managing a multi-thousand person global team while serving as a member of the executive management team. From 1994 to 1997, Mr. Barrenechea served as Vice President of Development at Scopus, an applications company. Prior to Scopus Mr. Barrenechea was with Tesseract, an applications company, where he was responsible for reshaping the company’s line of human capital management software as Vice President of Development. Mr. Barrenechea holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Saint Michael?s College.
Interesting. Three developments to watch in my opinion are:
- OpenText’s ability to integrate a wide range of products and services into a cohesive offering. Compared to Autonomy’s marketing, also a company built via content centric applications, OpenText has not mounted compelling marketing campaigns which make the company’s products interesting.
- OpenText’s engineering to update some of its properties to keep those products in step with competitors’ offerings.
- OpenText’s cloud services deliver value and features to enterprise customers unable or unwilling to cope with the burdens of traditional on premises solutions.
One of the more interesting tasks for the new president will be figuring out what to do with OpenText’s line up of search systems. These include the aging BASIS and BRS Search, the Nstein system, the SGML search system, and the embedded components in such OpenText properties as RedDot. The cost of keeping each of these systems in step with competitive solutions strikes me as too large for even OpenText’s revenues.
Will OpenText be a kinder, gentler marketer? Will open text implement Computer Associates’ style of sales? Exciting 2012 for OpenText, its customers, employees, and technology staff. I hear the revolving door spinning in rural Kentucky.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Jungle Logic? How about Jungle Growth?
December 13, 2011
Let me be upfront. I am not a professional writer. I am not a “real” journalist or story-telling consultant. I am a semi retired person living in rural Kentucky. I know my limits, and I know when another is testing those limits.
I read in the dead tree edition of The New York Times this morning (December 13, 2011), an article on page A 29, “Amazon’s Lost Jungle.” The author is Richard Russo. I looked him up in Bing and learned that he is a “real” writer. You can get more information about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russo. I was disappointed that the dead tree edition of the New York Times did not include some basic information about the author, but that’s what sets dead tree publishers apart from the faux folks who write in blogs like Beyond Search. I am supposed to know Mr. Russo. I told you I had limits.
Amazon has been making headlines. First, there was the Kindle Fire, which was supposed to be an Apple iPod killer. The gizmo is an okay reader. The “iPad killer” part is a non starter. Second, there has been a flurry of information on podcasts, including Adam Carolla’s comedy program, about Amazon’s offering authors money to publish a book with Amazon in place of a New York outfit. Third, there’s The New York Times’s article by Mr. Russo.
I want to focus on that write up.
The hook for Amazon’s Lost Jungle is the cash back for buying from Amazon, not a brick and mortar store front. There are not many of those left in Harrod’s Creek. WalMart, Costco, and BestBuy took care of that. What the big boxes did not crush, Kroger and convenient stores mostly eliminated. Need a vacant store front? Harrod Creek’s for you.
The article recounts via quotations from authors various views of the shift from paper to digital content. The observations are interesting, and I quite liked the phrase “scorched earth capitalism.” Here’s the passage I marked with a question mark:
Like just about everybody I’ve talked to about it, I first attributed Amazon’s price-comparison app to arrogance and malevolence, but there’s also something bizarrely clumsy and wrong-footed about it. Critics may appear weak today, but they may not be tomorrow, and if the wind shifts, Amazon’s ham-fisted strategy has the potential to morph into a genuine Occupy Amazon movement. And even if the company is lucky and that doesn’t happen, what has it really gained? The fickle gratitude of people who will have about as much loyalty to Amazon tomorrow as they do today to Barnes & Noble, last year’s bully? This is good business? Is it just me, or does it feel as if the Amazon brass decided to spend the holidays in the Caribbean and left in charge of the company a computer that’s fallen head over heels in love with its own algorithms?
I think, just guessing I suppose, that Amazon is “bad” somehow. Amazon is successful because people find value in what the firm does. Is Amazon supposed to behave differently with regard to books. In its own way, Amazon is just doing what comes naturally to 21st century, information based companies.
I have three observations:
- Amazon is going to get bigger and more invasive. Mr. Bezos has a vision which may be as all encompassing as the Apple or Google view of what the firms can accomplish.
- Books are going to face an uphill battle. I know that in certain demographics books are hot tamales, but in certain demographics so are vinyl records. Unfortunately the big world of money is not based on looking at the world through niche colored glasses.
- Consumers in the US are into video. Now I know that I like books, but I am old and woefully out of step with the 20 somethings with whom I am sometimes forced to work. The world is video and embedded devices which pump connectivity direct to the brain. Watch for it in the next 10 years.
The “jungle logic” is not operative in the digital world. Think in terms of natural monopolies which attempt to embrace broad expanses of information, information services, and content outputs. The law of the jungle is a lion eats man thing. The law of the digital Amazon is closer to uncontrolled cellular growth colonizing a host. Without meaningful regulation and management common sense, we are looking at some unpleasant, large, and ultimately unhealthy growths. Call the doctor. I just went to voicemail and I have to listen because the menu choices have changed.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
System Deployment Woes Continue: Search and More
December 12, 2011
Financial directors can only do so much from their end, and are frustrated by poor management of their software investments. That’s the gist of “Why Do Financial Directors Have Little Confidence in Business Software?” from the UK’s BCW.
Writer Julian Swan cites research showing that only 7% of financial directors in the UK are very confident that their organizations software is correctly deployed, and 65% are unhappy with the way it is being managed. Furthermore, we learned from the write up:
Only 12% of FDs think that Intellectual Property (IP) is valued within their company, which might explain why almost 30% of those surveyed admitted that illegal software could be in use in their organization. Some of the worst performing organizations when it comes to software management are in the public sector. Only 35% of FDs in the education sector are confident that their software is deployed correctly.
Swan recommends proper, long-term planning as the remedy. Assuring that licensing issues are addressed can not only ward off all the problems that come with unlicensed software, but also save money lost to over-licensing.
We know, we know; that’s why we’re on top of it here. Do we get a gold star? Do we, do we, do we? Guess not. Our deployments work. No poobahs or satraps of home economics, big smiles, and laser printed taxonomy boot camp certificates needed. Thanks though.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: CRM Idol Offers ISV Insights
December 8, 2011
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