Microsoft Turns SharePoint Points Users to Yammer
November 11, 2014
SharePoint is a longstanding leader in enterprise search, but it continues to morph and shift in response to the latest technology and emerging needs. As the move toward social becomes more important, Microsoft is dropping outdated features and shifting its focus toward social components. Read more in the GCN article, “Microsoft Pushes Yammer as it Trims SharePoint Features.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft quietly retired some features from SharePoint Online while it enhanced mobile apps, email integration and collaboration tools of Yammer, the company’s cloud-based enterprise social networking platform. Microsoft MVP and SharePoint expert Vlad Catrinescu posted that the company was removing the Tasks menu option, and the Sync to Outlook button will also be removed. Additionally, SharePoint Online Notes and Tags were deprecated last month.”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search. He keeps a close eye on SharePoint, reporting his findings on ArnoldIT.com. The article hints that Microsoft is leaning toward moving to Yammer all the way, meaning that additional features are likely to be retired and collapsed into the new infrastructure. To keep up with all the changes, including the latest tips and tricks, stay tuned to Arnold’s specific SharePoint feed.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 11, 2014
Whither Bing?
October 31, 2014
I learned in “Microsoft’s Advertising Unit Shuts Down Global Agency, Creative Team in Latest Layoffs” that the latest round of cutbacks strike at Bing ad sales. Other announcements revealed that one of the Microsoft cheerleaders for the search engine optimization crowd has been given an opportunity to find his future elsewhere. (See “Bing Severs Ties with Webmasters by Firing Duane Forrester.”)
What’s up? Well, maybe Microsoft has come to the conclusion that Google is going to get most of the money from online search.
From my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek, the shift makes it clear that what Bing was doing wasn’t making certain folks in the executive suite giddy with joy.
So, let me ask the interesting question, “Has Google claimed another Web search victim?” If that is the case you will want to read my forthcoming article in Information Today about the outlook for Qwant, the French Google killer built on Pertimm technology and singled out by Eric Schmidt as a threat to all things Googley.
I know it is not popular to suggest that the Google is a monopoly, but if Microsoft is not committed to pumping money into Bing, who will challenge the balloon-crazed fighters of death in Mountain View?
How often do you use Jike, iSeek, Ixquick, or Yandex—or Bing?
Stephen E Arnold, October 31, 2014
Wall Street Journal Forecasts Microsoft Purchase of Equivio
October 23, 2014
The article titled Microsoft to Buy Israel Text-Analysis Vendor Equivio: Report on ZDNet covers the potential purchase reported recently by the Wall Street Journal. According to the article, Equivio’s main draw for Microsoft is the product Zoom, a legal tool for document organization. The article states,
“Equivio has been working with Microsoft technologies, including Windows XP, SQL Server and SharePoint Server, since 2006, if not earlier. The company develops text-analytics products for legal and compliance e-discovery tasks. Its main product is Zoom “a court-approved machine learning platform for the legal area”. Zoom organizes collections of documents in meaningful ways, while quantifying and visualizing the decision space. So you can zoom out for the big picture. Or zoom in to find just what you need.”
The price of the purchase is reported at $200 million dollars. This may sound steep, but makes sense when some of the users of Zoom include The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Microsoft has been in the habit of buying up text-processing technology, and has overseas cash to spend on companies outside of the U.S. (only a month ago Microsoft spent 2.5 billion on Mojang, the Stockholm-based Minecraft creator.) Microsoft had no comment on the deal, but the Wall Street Journal has been right before.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 23, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Cautious Words on Microsoft Delve
October 22, 2014
Much buzz has been collecting around Microsoft’s Delve (formerly known as Oslo), the new search-and-discovery component of Office 365. ComputerWorldUK, however, raises some questions in, “Delve, Office Graph Must Transcend Office 365 to be Revolutionary.” The application is designed to tap into the company’s Office Graph machine-learning engine, but apparently has a way to go before fulfilling its creators’ goals. Reporter Juan Carlos Perez writes:
“If Microsoft realizes its Office Graph vision — and it may take years to materialize — then the way information workers interact with business software today and the way they find digital information will seem ancient and grossly inefficient. And Microsoft might fly past competitors in the enterprise with a technology that creates a sort of cockpit that automates and simplifies for employees the use of their Microsoft and non-Microsoft software.”
Delve began gradually rolling out to Office users in September, with the process to be completed sometime next year. The tool can be used as a conventional search engine, but it is designed to do much more. The article supplies this example:
“Delve knows that ‘Joe’ has a meeting in an hour, what its topic is and who will be in attendance. So, Delve proactively fetches relevant documents, files and information about the topic and the participants, and displays them on its dashboard, so Joe can be prepared for the meeting. Joe didn’t have to spend 30 minutes compiling all this data manually, assuming that he even would have had the time to do it, and if he did, that he would have been able to find the information, a big challenge for employees of all stripes everywhere.”
Sounds great! However, Perez notes that some open questions stand between here and the realization of Delve’s potential. Perhaps most obviously, being able to comb only Office applications for data is limiting; most of us don’t limit ourselves to Microsoft products (as much as the company might like us to.) There are considerable technical challenges there. Then there’s the privacy issue—will users find it’s “stealthy technology” creepy, and possibly be worried about nosy supervisors? Apparently, some more end-user controls are planned, but they may not address that concern. See the article for more thorough discussion of these issues. Will Delve overcome these obstacles?
Cynthia Murrell, October 22, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Azure May be Permanently Broken
October 9, 2014
Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure, has had a rough month, and there are recent reports that it may be impossible for it to ever recover, at least in reputation. Read more of the details in the Tech Guru Daily article, “Is Microsoft’s Azure Permanently Broken?”
The article begins:
“There appear to be some serious issues with Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and some experts suggest the problems might be difficult if not impossible to fix. Last month we reported that Azure was having problems. According to the Microsoft Azure status page there were 38 separate incidents between July 15 and August 15, and apparently things haven’t improved at all. In fact the problems have gotten worse.”
And because this is a live running service, with lots of dependent customers now disappointed repeatedly over a long period of time, it is highly unlikely that Microsoft Azure will be able to recover. There are many other cloud services that preceded Azure that continue to function well, and most customers have likely moved on to one of these by now. If you are a current Microsoft Azure customer, and have yet to experience major issues, you may want to consider other options before it does interrupt your regular business.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 09, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Prediction Technology: What about Windows Phone Sales?
October 7, 2014
I am amused when a company can roll out a product that people do not like. A good example is the Windows 8 version of the popular operating system. I think of Vista and Windows ME. I wonder how a company cannot “predict” how its own customers will react to a series of very expensive operating system changes.
The answer is that Microsoft’s ability to predict is not particularly good in my opinion. I won’t mention Windows Phone. I would point out that Apple’s iPhone 6 moved millions of units over a weekend. Did Microsoft predict that its phone would perform at a comparable level? Probably.
I read “A New Kind of Data-Driven Predictive Methodology.” The article is one of a flurry of fancy math stories that are choking my Overflight intelligence system.
The article explains that Microsoft predicted the Scottish independence vote and:
Microsoft…correctly predicted the winners of all 15 World Cup knockout games earlier this year and got the Obama vs. Romney outcome right in 50 of 51 jurisdictions (the states plus the District of Columbia) in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Pretty impressive until I think about Microsoft’s dismal track record with its own products’ acceptance by its own customers.
If you want to get more insight into a system that seems to perform well for non Microsoft questions, dig in. Microsoft is into social, reinventing survey research, and analysis of data that “must be accurate.”
Yep, accurate data help. How did those predictions about the Fast Search & Transfer acquisition work out? I will try to “Delve” into that question.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2014
BA Insight New Hire Likes His Job
September 17, 2014
Navigate to “My BA Insight Enterprise Search Adventure Begins.” The enthusiasm, confidence, and Super Bowl winning attitude rips off my screen. With new executive and venture funding, BA Insight seems to be a go to solution. But is the company too closely allied with Microsoft and the aging SharePoint product? Will the forthcoming Delve (a variation on the vision for Fast Search & Transfer revealed during a talk at CERN in 2007) put pressure on the SharePoint centric outfits? I just don’t know.
Here’s the passage I find interesting. I did not have one of the goslings “fix up” the capitalization errors or add links.
As I’ve been ramping up I’ve been learning a lot about their products and solutions. BA Insight use to be known as the connector company. The BA Insight Longitude Connectors can connect Microsoft SharePoint to more than 30 enterprise systems for information access and cross-platform search. They have so many connectors that allow SharePoint 2013, 2010, FAST and previous versions of SharePoint connect to a huge variety of backend systems. Here are a few examples: Documentum, eRooms, Websphere, Hummingbird, LiveLink, SAP, Siebel, Notes, Autonomy, FileNet, Connections, Opentext, SalesForce, Netdocs, SQL, Docushare, and a bunch of different legal systems… I heard they recently setup a connector for Jive and are open to building a connector for companies that need one to other systems not listed. Even with all of that, I find they don’t want to be known as simply a connector company since they really have a platform for enterprise search. The autoclassify stuff is brilliant. It helps set properties on your content based on your managed metadata and with a set of rules for both content already in SharePoint and for the content that will stay in these other systems. You really need to have good metadata so you can drill down and filter your search results quickly and easily and that’s where their rich search UI comes in providing search parts that give you the ability to drill in without needing to know boolean search. At that point it’s the smart previews that save you time. On top of the Office Web Apps in SharePoint 2013, you get previews for PDF, ZIP, and a huge variety of other formats including the old office formats that you’d otherwise miss including to all of those systems I mentioned. There’s even more, but I think this is a good start for understanding a few of the top products. As an example they’ve been doing some really innovative work on hybrid search and real federation where the results are in one stream.
My question is, “Why would anyone use SharePoint when BA Insight can fill the bill as “enterprise search experts”? I think Fast Search had a good sense of what it had to do to address the limitations of its technology. The question is, “Will Microsoft want partners to siphon off revenue from the mother ship?”
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2014
Microsoft Azure Search is the Search of the Future
September 17, 2014
For a preview of Azure Search, visit Microsoft Azure. The article promises that Azure search is a breakthrough in “search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development.” For fast search, the future is Azure Search, the cloud platform that allows for the building, deployment and management of applications. Developers will be pleased at the ability to incorporate search without the infrastructure to worry about. The Azure client libraries are open source and available through GitHub. The article includes this information,
“Azure Search boosts development speed thanks to support for familiar tools and a consistent global cloud platform. Quickly provision search and start populating the index to get up and running quickly. Like other Azure services, Search uses familiar REST API calls. The worldwide network of Azure datacenters means reduced search latency no matter where your application is located.”
Pricing details are also available here. The pricing details include this information,
“Azure Search is sold in combinable “search units” that have a defined queries-per-second (QPS) benchmark and document count (index storage) benchmark associated with each unit.”
By combining units, users can achieve higher QPS and/or higher document count. Currently Microsoft is offering a month-long free trial, which should be enough time for anyone to ensure that it is worth the investment.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 17, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Azure Search Documentation
September 2, 2014
Microsoft has posted information about the Azure Search service. You can find the information at Azure Search Preview. The features remind me of Amazon’s cloud search approach.
The idea is that search is available. The “How It Works” section summarizes the procedures the customer follows. The approach is intended for engineers familiar with Microsoft conventions or a consultant capable of performing the required steps.
Of particular interest to potential licensees will be the description of the pricing options. The Preview Pricing Details uses an Amazon like approach as well; for example, combinable search units. For higher demand implementations, Microsoft provides a custom price quote. The prices in the table below represent a 50 percent preview discount:
Microsoft offers different “editions” of Azure Search. Microsoft says:
Free is a free version of Azure Search designed to provide developers a sandbox to test features and implementations of Search. It is not designed for production workloads. Standard is the go-to option for building applications that benefit from a self-managed search-as-a-service solution. Standard delivers storage and predictable throughput that scales with application needs. For very high-demand applications, please contact azuresearch_contact@microsoft.com.
Support and service level agreements are available. A pricing calculator is available. Note that the estimates are not for search alone. Additional pricing information points to a page with four categories of fees and more than two dozen separate services. The link to Azure Search Pricing is self-referential, which is interesting to me.
I was not able to locate an online demo of the service. I was invited to participate in a free trial.
If you are interested in the limits for the free trial, Microsoft provides some information in its “Maximum Limits for Shared (Free) Search Service.”
Based on the documentation, correctly formed content uploaded permits full text search, facets, and hit highlighting. Specific functionalities are outlined on this reference page.
Net net: The search system is developer centric.
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2014
Governance Information for Office 365
August 18, 2014
Short honk: I am not sure what governance means. But search and content processing vendors bandy about words better than Serena Williams hits tennis balls. If you are governance hungry and use Office 365, Concept Searching has an “online information source” for you. More information is at http://bit.ly/1teO5fA. My hunch is that you will learn to license some smart software to index documents. What happens when there is no Internet connection? Oh, no big deal.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2014
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