Is the Series A Crunch Going to Starve Search Vendors?
November 29, 2012
Short honk. If you watch the venture capital league tables, you will want to read “The Series A Crunch Is Hitting Now. Have We Even Noticed?” The main idea is that starts up looking for the next round of dough may not get it. I have a difficult time keeping track of the new search, content processing, and predictive analytics vendors. I don’t have much trouble keeping track of the vendor “pivots” and the legal hassles arising from information retrieval litigation. I am already experiencing HP fatigue. It is an ink company, right? Assume the write up is correct when it says:
But wherever you stand on that, there’s one very real consequence of this explosion in seed funding: There has not been a corresponding explosion in investors willing to lead the next round, the so-called Series A. In fact, if anything, there are fewer. In the late 90s there was an explosion of capital at every level. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. But the Series A has remained the same. While Series A is what everyone is focusing on now, life doesn’t get much easier for those who survive. Finding a Series B will be even harder. That means we’re getting a very different “nuclear winter” as a result of industry excesses this time around. And by most accounts, it’s a far more benign one, considering that potentially thousands of companies are — and will be — going out of business in droves over the next year.
Assume this is okay. My thoughts:
- Some companies will find that their access to cash is gated. These outfits will be forced to slash staff and take extreme measures to survive.
- Some companies will shift from serving customers to preening themselves to the handful of companies which buy technology to take it off the table.
- Some companies will remain university type research outfits chasing every money making opportunity that each can find. Open source search vendors and some of the fragile, government centric analytics companies may become fans of hyper marketing.
I am glad I am old and living in a goose pond in rural Kentucky. Here information retrieval means shouting at someone down the hollow. Less financial risk with this findability method.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2012
Amazon CloudSearch Features and Pricing Explained
November 29, 2012
Amazon Web Services Blog aims to bring tools to the table that helps build powerful Web sites and applications with little time and cost. In “Amazon CloudSearch – Start Searching in One Hour for Less Than $100 / Month,” the author explains the importance of Web site search and Amazon CloudSearch capabilities. This is given about search challenges:
Search plays a major role in many web sites and other types of online applications. The basic model is seemingly simple…Needless to say, things can get very complex very quickly…We know that scaling a search system is non-trivial. There are lots of moving parts, all of which must be designed, implemented, instantiated, scaled, monitored, and maintained. As you scale, algorithmic complexity often comes in to play; you soon learn that algorithms and techniques which were practical at the beginning aren’t always practical at scale.
The author also highlights Amazon CloudSearch’s advanced searching and programming features. And while Amazon CloudSearch touts search scaling capabilities, it is hard to overlook the complex pricing model based on the number of running search instances, hourly costs, batch upload charges, and per Gigabyte prices. You might first want to take advantage of the Mindbreeze InSite free trial for a truly powerful search feature with no install required. In addition, their pricing model is straight-forward.
Philip West, November 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
HP Autonomy: Thoughts about Big Deals for Search Vendors
November 28, 2012
I just finished my Information Today column for next month (January 2013). I thought briefly about about focusing on the Hewlett Packard Autonomy matter which is a tad too much in the news at the moment.
Caveat emptor. Hasn’t anyone heard this reminder? The deal is over. Type A MBAs, whiz kid lawyers, and blue chip consultants crawled all over this deal. The HP board approved the deal which was roughly 10X more than Microsoft paid for the exciting Fast Search & Transfer technology thrill ride.
I choose not to tackle HP and Autonomy directly. What I decided to do was work through some of the business cases I have encountered over the year which make murky financial water the status quo. The players in these examples which I characterize at a high level and as a non accountant are like the predators in the Amazon River. I wanted to point out that some of the deals related to search, content processing, and analytics can be models of complexity theory for math experts at the Santa Fe Institute to ponder. Normal lawyers and accountants and the run of the mill MBA are out of their depth in my experience when thinking about a search plus services tie up.
As I was finishing the article, my alert service beeped. The occasion was the arrival of articles about letters from Autonomy placed in “open source” and an equally public response from Hewlett Packard. You can find more information in the “Former Autonomy CEO Challenges HP” article in MarketWatch or you can wade through the lists of stories posted on Techmeme.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have several observations I want to capture before the slip away from me as I get ready to head to South America.
The 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk I almost bought in 1963 came with a sidewalk guarantee. Search and content processing systems are warranted in a similar manner by their sellers. The Wikipedia explanation of caveat emptor makes the meaning of this Latin catchphrase clear: Under the principle of caveat emptor, the buyer could not recover from the seller for defects on the property that rendered the property unfit for ordinary purposes. The only exception was if the seller actively concealed latent defects or otherwise made material misrepresentations amounting to fraud. See Wikipedia
First, the gap between some investors’ expectations for revenue from search and content processing greatly exceed reality. I have been around the information retrieval business for a week or two. In that time, I have encountered people who believe that their findability or indexing system will generate Google sized dollars. I tell these folks that Google generates Google sized dollars from ads, not its search technology. Only a handful of companies have been able to generate more than $100 million from search. These companies are the anomalies, not the rule. My hunch is that like the “smart money” that blew $50 million on one promising system, dreams can be expensive. As you may know, the folks who support the high expectations catch “spreadsheet fever”. The result is that when the money is finally sorted out, search is an expensive proposition. There’s a reason why IBM embraces open source search. May I suggest you read my IDC reports on this open source search subject.
Second, the crazy valuations are like the promises of teenagers in love. The parents, if they know, view such tie ups with skepticism. Just try and tell that to the two teens who have the force which through the green fuse drives the flower. In the grip of this “force”, history and hard facts play a modest role to play. What takes over is mutually reinforcing inputs from the youthful lovers on a hormone high. Deal lust works in the teen way. Is this why so many gray heads get into doing bigger and bigger deals under more and more false time constraints. Pant. Pant. Pant. I can hear the breathing now. Those contracts have to be signed, the commissions most definitely earned, and the money transferred pronto. Is it any surprise why so many acquisitions go off the rails? The parties to big deals include the buyer, the seller, the lawyers, the accountants, the partners, and the consultants. If that line up of professionals does not make clear how Voltaire’s bastards operate, read John Ralston Saul’s book on the subject.
Top 25 Most Influential People in the Microsoft SharePoint Community
November 28, 2012
In “These are the Top 25 Microsoft SharePoint Influencers for 2012,” Mark Fidelman discusses the community around SharePoint and those influencers leading the way. The top 25 were chosen based on the social scoring system outlined in the book, Socialized!. Numbers one and two on the list are discussed:
Joel Oleson (number one on the list this year) created a public facing micro-community on Yammer called SPYam to discuss and support SharePoint and Yammer. The community rallied around the Microsoft acquisition and in an attempt to learn about it – then quickly started using it in a highly visible way. You can’t buy community members like him.
Mark Miller number #2 on the list, helped organize a world SharePoint promotional tour which helped to expand the community base.
The SharePoint community is a major benefit of the software platform. The article points out that the community has grown stronger and more influential given increase in numbers and strength from year to year. Along with using the SharePoint community, you may also want to use a third party tool to fill in any gaps in the software. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a proven enterprise search solution with the benefit of a SharePoint Connector. The Connector links systems for enterprise-wide information access with faceted search, a familiar user interface, search results that can easily be processed into actionable information, and more.
Philip West, November 28, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
High Performing Enterprise Search Needs Solid Solutions That Work
November 27, 2012
It seems that once a month someone is announcing the latest, greatest development in search optimization software and each new or revamped product gets faster, more accurate or easier to use. The increasing competition among developers has inspired designers to get more creative with their initial designs… or possibly just their marketing.
TechWeek Europe’s article “Start-up InboundWriter Scales Search Optimization For The Enterprise” spotlights a new ‘writer’ targeted search optimizer:
“One of the last miles is having an automated and scalable way to make sure your content is really, really good. That’s what we do, and we do it as simple as a spell-check. When using the service, a writer gets notifications and suggestions on better SEO words and phrases to use as he or she goes along in writing the document. There is an efficiency meter in the upper-left corner of the application to keep the writer apprised as the document is being written about how SEO-ready it is.”
The AI ability to second guess the user is nothing new, although in marketing things can be open to interpretation. High performing enterprise search needs functionality and usability, not more gadgets and gimmicks. That is why Intrafind has been a successful enterprise search provider for well over a decade. They use solid solutions that began in the university environment and scaled out to commercial solutions that work. Their user friendly interface enables customizable connectors which allow enterprise wide access to both structured and unstructured data in a secure environment.
Jennifer Shockley, November 27, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
EPiServer Adds an SEO Manager Tool to Product Suite
November 27, 2012
In “EPiServer Gets SEO Manager Add-On for Web CMS,” Anthony Myers discusses the recent release from EPiServer to add to its Web content management suite of offerings. SEO Manager as a commercial add-on for EPiServer CMS is now available. The new tool is explained:
URL management in particular can be tricky because it has to be done on the server side for things like changing page names, changing section names and moving pages around a website.
SEO Manager is the tool that optimizes a site’s URL’s, one of the things many Web properties lose sight of while focusing on keywords, headings and content (see: Content Strategy: The Perils of Search Engine Optimization). Those are obviously key to improving on search results, but more is needed to bump that all important Google ranking.
New features include renaming pages without rank loss, URL history memory, and optimized results in Google Analytics. The new tool may be worth looking at for SEO. But it doesn’t take away the need for good content and a user friendly Web site. InSite illuminates all of your information from documents to Web pages to social media networks with the power of semantic search for your Web site visitors.
Philip West, November 27, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Big Year for Search, Expect More in the Future
November 27, 2012
The year 2012 has been one of the biggest for search and data. Big Data has been and will be the list term when it comes to analyzing data and finding new business insights. Search has made many big leaps as well and the BDaily Business News Network ran down the achievements and what we can expect in 2013 in the article, “Search, the Future, and the Big Data World.”
About 80% of the data generated in the workplace is unstructured—meaning humans have created it. Before unstructured data can be searched it needs to be preprocessed, which leads to Big Data. Enterprise search developers are well aware of the need to normalize unstructured data and have created technology this past year that makes the process quicker and reliable. It helps put back the human element, the “why” the data was came into existence in the first place.
Fat piles continue to grow and even with Big Data software, one key component remains the same: search.
The article puts it this way:
“Despite these acquisitions, enterprise search continues to be of growing importance in its own right. The process of finding information becomes more difficult as data sizes scale. At the same time, in the information economy, finding information – whether it is to check a fact, retrieve a known document, or conduct new research into a subject – remains a critical part of the process of doing business…In conclusion, a well-implemented enterprise search system remains a key component for driving business productivity.”
Search is and will always remain one of the core essential functions of the Big Data game. Search pares down the irrelevant data to pull out the key facts a user is looking for. Data is only as useful as long as it can be found. It still remains a quick fact that software designed specifically for search proves to be a good investment on the part of Big Data. LucidWorks, the search experts, have been ingrained in the Big Bata boom since the start and have developed a search application useful for developers and end users alike.
Whitney Grace, November 27, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Enterprise Search Needs More than Plug and Play
November 26, 2012
Today’s businesses are consistently looking for ways to improve enterprise management and overall operations, so it comes as no surprise that software marketing is targeting those needs. The unfortunate side effect of a good marketing plan can often be a product that does not live up to user expectations. FCW’s article “Does Your Enterprise Search Engine Stink? Here’s Why” reiterates how often times if new software seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Content processing, productivity tools and sorting options are just a few elements of enterprise software that should be evaluated before considering a change:
“Given the predisposition to think of search as pre-formatted to meet our needs, many IT managers and executives believe they can simply purchase, install and operate enterprise search software right out of the box. To a large extent, the leading search software vendors promote this plug-and-play mentality because it is a message customers want to hear. If you are familiar only with Web search as a personal tool, it makes sense to assume that a search engine for your business would operate the same way.”
When relevant results and increased efficiency are the primary concerns a friendly user interface is just an added bonus. Despite marketing hype, quality search requires more than plug and play attention. Full service solutions, expert tagging and feature rich search, such as that provided by Intrafind are a great start for enterprise search solutions.
Jennifer Shockley, November 26 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Nextag Troubleshoots Declining Google Web Traffic
November 26, 2012
Relying on Google alone for Web site traffic is tricky business. In the New York Times article, “Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites,” Steve Lohr and Claire Cain Miller look at the comparison shopping Web site Nextag.com’s bout with declining Google traffic. After Nextag engineers tested their side of the matter and found no issues, they doubled their spending on Google paid search advertising in the last five months. The move was seen as a necessity considering the amount of Web traffic Nextag received from both free and paid search ads. The issue has also gotten the attention of the US government because of possible antitrust violations. The author’s add this about Nextag’s next move:
His Google traffic now costs more. Two years ago, 60 percent of Nextag’s traffic from Google was from free search and 40 percent paid — people clicking on ads Nextag bought. Today, it is 30 percent free and 70 percent paid.
But his company has also shifted its strategy to become less vulnerable to Google’s charge into commerce. It has invested heavily in its underlying technology to help Web sites attract visitors, especially ones most likely to buy their goods.
The article is a good overview of the pitfalls when relying on Google advertising and what direction the issue is headed. One way to shift strategy from advertising is by enriching your Web site experience for visitors with a powerful search feature. InSite from Mindbreeze is one cost-effective and no-install required option worth looking at. InSite gives a custom searching experience unique to the user with the added benefit of mobile capabilities.
Philip West, November 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Open Source Cloud Company Expands
November 26, 2012
Clouds expand and contract based on heating and cooling. Cloud computing companies expand based on how many partners and funding they receive. Network World tracked down a company that is following this economic trend: “RightScale Joins OpenStack, Supports Rackspace’s Open Cloud.” RightScale’s software is used to manage private and public clouds, and it will join with Rackspace to support its open source project. Rackspace has an OpenStack-powered Cloud. OpenStack is gaining more traction and this also that RightScale is dedicated to include open source choices for its customers.
“ ‘Enterprise interest in OpenStack continues to increase,’ says RightScale CEO Michael Crandell. Rackspace’s open source cloud aligns closely to the OpenStack trunk code, which minimizes proprietary extensions, he says. RightScale already works as an integrator with a variety of other public and private cloud platforms…on the private cloud side, RightScale can be used to manage workloads on the OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus platforms, all of which are open source.”
This partnership does not come as a surprise, as more companies are understanding the benefits of Cloud computing and storage, not to mention the cost-effectiveness of open source. They need to remember, however, that Cloud enterprises need to be searched as much as site-based storage. They may want to give LucidWorks’ search applications a look, a trusted industry leader.
Whitney Grace, November 26, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
