Kroll Takes on Search and Restoration Software
December 16, 2012
With a current arsenal of ediscovery and data recovery options, Kroll Ontrack is now offering a new search and restoration tool, Ontrack PowerControls through a partnership with Info X. The press release was found on Business Wire “Kroll Ontrack Partners with Global Distributor Info X to Address Demand for Granular Search and Restoration Software.”
Info X provides storage solutions to clients worldwide. Their partnership with Kroll Ontrack ensures that resellers will have access and technical support for the software solution. This is to replace a full-site restore or backup.
Exchange and SharePoint are the culprits of annual data loss according to a recent Kroll Ontrack survey of 326 individuals in IT, engineering and sales. Nearly half of organizations have this problem.
Sr. Manager of Enterprise Software Dan Leary, Kroll Ontrack was quoted in the article:
“This partnership with Info X enables more resellers to offer a powerful tool that addresses a common, but time-consuming problem. Ontrack PowerControls works directly with your backups and allows you to extract and restore only the items that you need, saving IT administrators 50 percent of restoration time when compared to using traditional methods.”
Altergrity Kroll expands into search and restoration software. Is this a sign there is room in the market or just a company putting feelers out in every possible arena? Time will tell.
Megan Feil, December 16, 2012
Sponsored by Arnold IT.com, developer of Augmentext
Former HP Boss: The Buck Stops Over There
December 15, 2012
Who knows if this assertion is accurate? I read “Former HP CEO Shifts Blame for Autonomy Deal to Chairman.” The real journalists reporting this story know a heck of a lot more than a goose floating in a pond filled with mine drainage. The main point is that HP’s once and former leader, Léo Apotheker has allegedly asserted, “I did not buy Autonomy.”
Well, who did?
According to the write up:
Apotheker says that “no single CEO is ever able to make a decision on a major acquisition in isolation, particularly at a company as large as HP — and certainly not without the full support of the chairman of the board.” He then turns his guns on Chairman Ray Lane, without mentioning him by name: “The HP board, led by its chairman, met many times to review the acquisition and unanimously supported the deal, as well as the underlying strategic objective to bolster HP’s market presence in enterprise data.”
What I find interesting is that some key players are not mentioned by Mr. Apotheker or the article. Who is not involved? Here’s my short list:
- The Fiddler on the Roof in the deal, allegedly Frank Quattrone
- Various investment bankers for HP, Autonomy, and assorted stakeholders to the deal
- The lawyers for the key players
- The accountants who worked on the deal for the key players
- One or more government officials who stumbled upon the deal or had to review the deal before it could conclude.
In my opinion, HP was a juicy, fat, and slightly distracted goose. I should know because I am a goose. There’s a picture of me on my Web site and on this blog. From experience, a distracted goose can do some fascinating things. These span a spectrum from landing in front of a hunter dressed in bright orange and wielding a sparkling shotgun on a sunny autumn morning to attacking two 80 pound, slightly dim witted boxer dogs.
How persuasive are lawyers, accountants, and matchmakers where there is a fat, plump commission in play? In my experience, these folks can be quite convincing. Like magicians, leveraging distraction can work what seem to be miracles.
In the HP situation, I have concluded that HP was listening to the ticking of its biological clock. The best looking mate in the restaurant at closing time was Autonomy. Now, about a year later, the mate has proven to be somewhat difficult to convince that the HP way is the right way.
Logical step: Show Autonomy the highway.
Mr. Apotheker is partially correct. Maybe he, as I and HP, have some goosely qualities. Maybe challenging the annoyed boxer dogs is a very good idea. For me, it is back to the pond.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2012
Finding the Horror in Search
December 15, 2012
Taking the perspective of retail Web site users, SLI Systems’ blog examines “Site Search Horror Stories: Horrific Hidden Search Boxes and Menacing Merchandising.” Hyperbole? Perhaps, but then we have been fearful since we learned our beloved publisher used to investigate search vendors whose clients believed the installation did not match the statement of work. But I digress.
SLI’s Kemberly Gong aims to help online marketers by steering them clear of issues that will scare away customers. She recalls sites that make it an ordeal to find their search boxes, and even one that had no search function at all. Terrifying! (Well, frustrating anyway.)
Gong emphasizes some basic principles:
“Your search box should be a harbinger of safe, effective site search, clearly visible at the top of the page. Then give customers a prompt such as ‘What are you looking for?’ to lead them to begin shopping. When customers search for products, they are more likely to buy because they have a clear idea of what they want, and are looking for it directly. Make sure they find it. . . .
“Allowing refinements of search attributes such as brand, color, rating, size or other product specification lets customers quickly narrow down results to find their desired product. Instead of searching for ‘bolt’ and finding thousands of options, Dr. Frankenstein can narrow the selection by material, diameter, length and thread pitch to make sure it’s just the right fit for his monster.”
Yes, I think it best to avoid angering the mad scientists among us. Though these tips seem like common sense to many, there are obviously still a few sites out there that need the information. Let us hope they are not afraid to act on it.
Cynthia Murrell, December 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Idea Engineering Joins LucidWorks Team
December 14, 2012
After a successful sixteen year career providing professional consulting for roadmapping and best practices in all aspects of search, New Idea Engineering has become part of the LucidWorks team, effective December 1, 2012. The New Idea Engineering blog focuses on engaging readers with all aspects of the enterprise search world.
Read the founders’ remarks to his followers as to why the company has decided to join forces with LucidWorks in, “Why LucidWorks? And Why Now?”
They conclude:
“A few years back, Lucid Imagination was started to provide that support, along with training and an easy to use interface that lets business owners – not just developers – use Solr search. We’ve called them “the RedHat of Open Source Search”. Now, Lucid Imagination has become LucidWorks, and it is set to be the best way to search web, file, and database content, with extreme control, and of course with big data. A few months ago we spoke with Lucid CEO Paul Doscher about upping our contract with them, and about where they were going, and it just made sense to us at that time to join a bigger team.”
LucidWorks is a great team to join, a company that will continue to have something important to say about the enterprise search landscape for many years to come. New Idea Engineering is no doubt another way that LucidWorks is strengthening all they have to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Momentary Attention Placed on Connotate in the Search Software Market
December 14, 2012
One search and content processing software vendor seems to be picking up steam based on the news release, “Connotate Reports Expansion into New Markets and Applications in Third Quarter 2012.” Privately-held, ventured backed software firm Connotate is moving in a growth-oriented direction. They have announced new partnerships with both Systech, a leading business intelligence services provider, and Crowdsource, Amazon Mechanical Turk Partner.
Connotate has directed attention to itself by announcing a significant increase in bookings and partner signings in the third quarter 2012. Growth is demand for its solutions by a variety of use cases has also helped in making Connotate’s case for positive growth.
The article quotes Ryan Mulholland, president of Connotate:
“We anticipate continued expansion into new markets and applications as the focus of Big Data turns outward to the vast untapped potential of the Web. Our technology platform was built to ensure optimal results and timely data. As a full-service solution, our ability to offer CAPTCHA and throttling as well as follow-the-sun support is unparalleled in the industry – and customers are reaping the rewards of this approach.”
Connotate seems to be headed in a good direction, but we wonder about their competition. Are other search and content processing vendors following the same path? This may be a crowded market sector.
Megan Feil, December 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Get Beyond the Latest Enterprise Buzzword with Feature Rich Solutions
December 13, 2012
Today’s successful company buzzword is agility, but one does not see cheap prints mimicking the word plastered on office walls around the globe. It would be unnecessary because according to The Enterprise Architect’s article“Enterprise Agile: Extending the Agile Process Outside Development” agility takes teamwork to an entirely new level, without the use of pictures.
There may not be an i in teamwork, but there is in agility. Individual departments continue to work separately while working together for a common goal, ROI:
“Solutions need to be fit in an existing ecosystem: the definition of done needs to include compliance and multiple teams working towards a common goal. Agility is only possible when the whole organization adopts the mindset: in an agile enterprise the marketing and sales side of the organization is balanced with product development. In an agile enterprise the entire business is organized in a way that it can respond quickly to changes in the market. All departments are fully integrated with the overall value stream, there is end-to-end agility.”
Companies need results in order to generate ROI, so agility is a great way to respond to the buzz of big data and enterprise solutions. Smart corporations know that the latest trendy buzzword will not provide results. They have to get beyond the buzz to reliable, feature rich search solutions with a provider like Intrafind… the other ‘I’ in agility.
Jennifer Shockley, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Users Will Discover Built-in Search Is More Than Icing On Cake
December 13, 2012
After Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, which took place over the summer in Toronto, more information has been released in regards to SharePoint 2013. In fact, Search Technologies has published an article on “Search For SharePoint” that includes the major bullet points of SharePoint 2013’s search functions and capabilities. The article follows the flow of documents, providing an idea of the process from crawling all the way to search functionality provided to users.
The driving force behind this latest version of SharePoint is the FAST search technology that Microsoft acquired back in 2008. Additions from Bing and other search companies have been added into the software in order to offer clients a comprehensive solution; that also means customization is available for companies with specific needs.
As for the process, once crawling – or capturing metadata – occurs, the content processing known as the indexing pipeline takes place:
“In SharePoint 2012, this resembles the FAST pipeline and looks to have retained important features. The content processing component also writes information to a “link database”. This information can be subsequently used by the analysis processing component to calculate link popularity statistics and provide relevancy weighting possibilities. Anchor text within links can also contribute to page content for ranking purposes.”
The analytics processing that happens next in the sequence of events allows for additional context to be woven into the indexing process. The final step after indexing lies in an often overlooked aspect of enterprise search: query processing. This component improves search with attention to precision, recall and relevancy.
Now that SharePoint 2013 includes a top-tier enterprise search infrastructure, competitors do not have as much room in the conversation on search. Companies are lining up to implement SharePoint everyday, and with that software in the bag they also get to discover the magic of FAST technologies. Search is not just the cherry on top for SharePoint, it encapsulates the entire sundae.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
X1 Discovery and NW3C Offer Social Discovery Class
December 13, 2012
We’ve made a discovery regarding eDiscovery. The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) has teamed up with X1 Discovery to offer some social media eDiscovery training. So far, their “X1SD Class List” is quite short, with one low-profile event scheduled to be held in Dec 2012 in New York City. The class description reads:
“This course provides ‘hands-on’ training designed specifically to address the needs of social media investigators. Participants will develop the practical skills, insights, and knowledge necessary to successfully gather data from Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedln in a manner and form conducive to an investigation, whether that investigation is civil or criminal in nature.
“X1 Social Discovery Training will:
- Familiarize students with Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln;
- Teach Students how to use X1 Discovery to address social media content and information:
- Teach Students how to collect and authenticate information relevant to their investigations;
- Teach Students how to prepare reports; and
- Provide the students with practical exercises to enhance their skills.”
A central resource for state and local agencies fighting economic and high-tech crime, NW3C began in 1978 as the Leviticus Project, and was originally devoted to a specific multi-state investigation. In 1991, its mission was expanded to providing training, maintaining databases, and providing analytical services to agencies in all 50 states. Renamed the following year, the Center has vastly expanded its membership throughout the U.S. and into fifteen other countries.
Not surprisingly, X1 Discovery focuses on eDiscovery, with a current emphasis on social media and cloud-based data. The company designs its eDiscovery and enterprise search solutions specifically for IT and legal professionals. Originally founded by Idealab in 2011, X1 is based in Pasadena, California.
Cynthia Murrell, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ElasticSearch Scores Ten Million in Funding
December 12, 2012
ElasticSearch has secured some hefty new financing for its analytics engine and other projects, we learn from the post, “Elasticsearch Big Data Search Startup Pulls in $10M Funding” at the TrustedInsight blog. With this $10 million in series A funding, Elasticsearch will have to work fast to outrun the one-man-band reputation the firm has earned since the days of Compass search.
The press release specifies:
“In addition to [primary investor] Benchmark, other investors in the round include Rod Johnson, the creator of the Spring Framework and co-founder of SpringSource, and Data Collective. Elasticsearch said it will use this initial round of funding to help build out the organization in all functional areas and expand into key geographic regions to support the adoption of Elasticsearch. The open-source search and analytics software emerged in the last six months as one of the more popular open-source projects in the big data market and is already being used by thousands of companies all over the world, the company said.”
Shay Banon, founder of the Compass open source search project, decided that the software really needed a complete overhaul; the ElasticSearch software, which Banon says he sees as “Compass 3.0,” is the result. Both projects are built on Apache Lucene.
ElasticSearch (the company) was formed this year by Banon and folks from Apache. It offers resources for users of the ElasticSearch solution with training, consultancy services, and support subscription plans. Naturally, they emphasize their unique expertise on the subject. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Journey Through Enterprise Search Benefits from a Reliable Roadmap
December 11, 2012
The KM World 2012 Enterprise Search Conference brought to light some interesting tips for success in the enterprise. It also provided an opportunity for Martin White, the Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd to promote the release of his new book, ‘Enterprise Search’, from which key points were made during the discussion for the future of enterprise search.
According to KMWorld’s conference review “12 Tips for Enterprise Search Success”, White outlined twelve critical success factors during the conference that will not only affect enterprise search now, but will continue to affect it in the future:
*Invest in a search support team.
*Get the best out of the current investment in search.
*Enterprise search is an approach and not a technology
*Set search within an information management context
*Content quality is essential for quality search
*Understand user requirements and monitor user satisfaction
*Search then browse then alert then search then alert.
*Provide location-independent search
*Undertake intelligent log analysis.*Search is a dialogue
*Procure value not functionality.
*Search is a journey
Enterprise search is indeed a journey… and for a pleasant trip one should always acquire a reliable road map in order to prevent getting lost or stuck in a detour. These 12 tips are a good place to vet enterprise solutions, partners, and approaches. Combining a dedicated, reliable vendor such as Intrafind can be a key component to blending these tips into a complete solution that excels in execution and gets companies where they want to go.
Jennifer Shockley, December 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
