PLM Market Report Looks Optimistically to Future
August 20, 2012
Over the course of 2012 CIMdata has released and will be releasing five components of the CIMdata PLM Market Analysis Report Series on the state of PLM worldwide. The fourth report was recently released and the results were promising according to the TenLinks article, “CIMdata Publishes 4th of 5 Parts of PLM Market Report”.
The article quoted CIMdata’s Director of Research, Stan Przybylinski, as saying,
“While the global economy sputtered, the PLM economy grew faster in 2011 than in 2010, which was a very good year. Most segments of the market that CIMdata tracks saw high double digit growth, with very strong license sales. Given that new license sales are often precursors to more software and services investment, this is a strong indicator that 2012 could be another solid year for PLM solution and services providers. Strong growth continued in industries with long-time PLM investments, such as automotive, high-tech and fabrication and assembly (F&A). Some other small markets, like shipbuilding and infrastructure also saw increased spending.”
For those in the PLM industry these results were not shocking at all. Several PLM providers have completed highly successful fund raising campaigns and some innovative, new products have been released onto the market over the last year or so. Some of the most notable providers are CIMdata, Inforbix, Dassault and PTC. If the predictions of the PLM Market Analysis Report are accurate we expect big things from these providers in the years to come.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Imagining The Future of Search
August 20, 2012
Citing (and sharing) an Israeli short film titled “Sight,” CNet News gives us “A Look at Our Gamified, Augmented-Reality Future.” Maybe a virtual librarian is the next innovation?
Perhaps, but that is not the focus of this film from student filmmakers Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo of the Screen-Based Arts Department of Bezaleal Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. (There’s a more extensive article on the film here, but do not read it before you view the film if you dislike spoilers.) Writer Eric Mack summarizes:
“Imagine a future where everything is a game, from cooking to dating, thanks to pervasive augmented-reality technology.
“That’s the premise behind this deliciously geeky, but ultimately disturbing Israeli short film titled ‘Sight.’ This seven-minute flick takes us along for a day in the life of an engineer at a dominant AR company, from breakfast to a date that goes off the rails and has to be ‘reprogrammed.’ The concept imagines the merging of big data, social media, gamification, and augmented reality into something that ultimately doesn’t seem that far-fetched, or even that far down the road.”
I agree with Mack, and I thoroughly enjoyed the video. It extrapolates a possible future that could quickly arise from something like Google’s Project Glass, and at least most of it seems quite probable to me. Definitely worth the eight minutes of your life; check it out.
Cynthia Murrell, August 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Expert System Client Wins Web Site Award
August 18, 2012
In another “we won a prize” announcement from a search and content processing vendor, Expert System boasts, “Expert System Customer Telecom Italia Recognized for Top Website.” Telecom Italia‘s site, which uses Expert System’s Cogito semantic technology, was named the top corporate site by KWD Webranking in its Europe 500 annual survey.
Naturally, Expert System takes the opportunity to highlight the newest Cogito features that helped Telecom Italia build a great site. The write up lists:
- “Did you mean?”: Cogito’s ability to understand the meaning of words facilitates greater access to information, even in the case of ambiguous requests. This feature suggests alternate formulas for search queries that contain errors or misspellings.
- Categorization: Expert System developed a custom taxonomy to categorize the Telecom Italia knowledge base, which enables more effective search and navigation of site content.
- Multilanguage results: In addition to search results in Italian, the search engine broadens results by including a separate set of results in English for each query.
- Results filtering by file type: Users can choose to refine results by the type of content they’re looking for, such as by web pages, videos or PDF.
All valuable features, to be sure. We find this crowing about prizes to be an interesting approach to marketing. Effective? Not sure.
Based in Modena, Italy, Expert System has satellite offices in Europe and the US. Business and government organizations in several fields use their solutions for data management, collaboration, and customer relationship management.
Cynthia Murrell, August 18, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Search: A Persistent Disconnect between Reality and Innovation
August 17, 2012
Two years ago I wrote The New Landscape of Search. Originally published by Pandia in Norway, the book is now available without charge when you sign up for our new “no holds barred” search newsletter Honk!. In the discussion of Microsoft’s acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer SA in 2008, I cite documents which describe the version of Fast Search which the company hoped to release in 2009 or 2010. After the deal closed, the new version of Fast seemed to drop from view. What became available was “old” Fast.
I read the InfoWorld story “Bring Better Search to SharePoint.” Set aside the PR-iness of the write up. The main point is that SharePoint has a lousy search system. Think of the $1.2 billion Microsoft paid for what seems to be, according to the write up, a mongrel dog. My analysis of Fast Search focused on its age. The code dates from the late 1990s and its use of proprietary, third party, and open source components. Complexity and the 32 bit architecture were in need of attention beyond refactoring.
The InfoWorld passage which caught my attention was:
Longitude Search’s AptivRank technology monitors users as they search, then promotes or demotes content’s relevance rankings based on the actions the user takes with that content. In a nutshell, it takes Microsoft’s search-ranking algorithm and makes it more intelligent…
The solution to SharePoint’s woes amounts to tweaking. In my experience, there are many vendors offering similar functionality and almost identical claims regarding fixing up SharePoint. You can chase down more at www.arnoldit.com/overflight.
The efforts are focused on a product with a large market footprint. In today’s dicey economic casino, it makes sense to trumpet solutions to long standing information retrieval challenges in a product like SharePoint. Heck, if I had to pick a market to pump up my revenue, SharePoint is a better bet than some others.
Contrast the InfoWorld’s “overcome SharePoint weaknesses” with the search assertions in “Search Technology That Can Gauge Opinion and Predict the Future.” We are jumping from the reality of a Microsoft product which has an allegedly flawed search system into the exciting world of what everyone really, really wants—serious magic. Fixing SharePoint is pretty much hobby store magic. Predicting the future: That is big time, hide the Statue of Liberty magic.
Here’s the passage which caught my attention:
A team of EU-funded researchers have developed a new kind of internet search that takes into account factors such as opinion, bias, context, time and location. The new technology, which could soon be in use commercially, can display trends in public opinion about a topic, company or person over time — and it can even be used to predict the future…Future Predictor application is able to make searches based on questions such as ‘What will oil prices be in 2050?’ or ‘How much will global temperatures rise over the next 100 years?’ and find relevant information and forecasts from today’s web. For example, a search for the year 2034 turns up ‘space travel’ as the most relevant topic indexed in today’s news.
Yep, rich indexing, facets, and understanding text are in use.
What these two examples make clear, in my opinion, is that:
Search is broken. If an established product delivers inadequate findability, why hasn’t Microsoft just solved the problem? If off the shelf solutions are available from numerous vendors, why hasn’t Microsoft bought the ones which fix up SharePoint and call it a day? The answer is that none of the existing solutions deliver what users want. Sure, search gets a little better, but the SharePoint search problem has been around for a decade and if search were such an easy problem to solve, Microsoft has the money to do the job. Still a problem? Well, that’s a clue that search is a tough nut to crack in my book. Marketers don’t have to make a system meet user needs. Columnists don’t even have to use the systems about which they write. Pity the users.
Writing about whiz bang new systems funded by government agencies is more fun than figuring out how to get these systems to work in the real world. If SharePoint search does not work, what effort and investment will be required to predict the future via a search query? I am not holding my breath, but the pundits can zoom forward.
The search and retrieval sector is in turmoil, and it will stay that way. The big news in search is that free and open source options are available which work as well as Autonomy- and Endeca-like systems. The proprietary and science fiction solutions illustrate on one hand the problems basic search has in meeting user needs and, on the other hand, the lengths to which researchers are trying to go to convince their funding sources and regular people that search is going to get better real soon now.
Net net: Search is a problem and it is going to stay that way. Quick fixes, big data, and predictive whatevers are not going to perform serious magic quickly, economically, or reliably without significant investment. InfoWorld seems to see chipper descriptions and assertions as evidence of better search. The Science Daily write up mingles sci-fi excitement with a government funded program to point the way to the future.
Sorry. Search is tough and will remain a chunk of elk hide until the next round of magic is spooned by public relations professionals into the coffee mugs of the mavens and real journalists.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
A Plan to Save the Manufacturing Industry
August 17, 2012
“Americans want to see action to help struggling manufacturers. A recent survey by the American Alliance for Manufacturing showed that 53 percent of those polled rated manufacturing as the most important sector of the economy and noted that a large majority of Americans want assistance provided. The Block Grant Program offers a critical, cost-effective, common sense solution to this serious economic problem. Economic recovery in the United States depends on a thriving, healthy manufacturing sector and resources must be targeted achieve that goal.”
Web Content Management in SharePoint 2013
August 17, 2012
John Ross gives us an updated view of web content management (WCM) in light of SharePoint 2013 in his piece, “SharePoint 2013: WCM and Search Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly.” With SharePoint 2013 the FAST search engine has been fully integrated into the platform and will be the primary force behind WCM.
Ross states:
Search will be a far more efficient way to surface content in almost all circumstances. The way we’ll plan and think about WCM in SharePoint will fundamentally change. For example in the past, content needed to be in SharePoint for us to roll it up. With the new model, as long as content is in the search index we can surface it where ever [sic] we need. So the biggest limiting factor we’d have would be whether we’d be able to get SharePoint to crawl a datasource. This has massively huge implications!
While the web content functionality of SharePoint has been improved, there are good third party solutions that integrate search more successfully into the platform without needing additional customization. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is an Austrian vendor worth keeping an eye on. In addition to increasing the intuitiveness of in-house enterprise search with Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise, Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite can also enhance search on public facing Web sites.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 17, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Will Video Inject New Revenue Into Venerable Kiplinger
August 17, 2012
Why just read advice when you can watch it? According to MSN Money’s article “blinkx Partners with Kiplinger for Personal Finance Wisdom” Kiplinger wants to go viral with their well-respected advice.
Most people think YouTube when they hear video, but blinkx has more than 35 million hours of audio and video content available with a customized search platform. Now they are combining with a company that holds the prestige of a well preserved antique in the world of finance wisdom.
Kiplinger is broadening blinkx’s financial horizon in hopes of expanding their viewer range:
“Kiplinger’s is one of the most trusted and well-respected sources for consumers seeking financial advice. Whether you’re a recent graduate coping with student loans or a parent looking for tips on tax breaks, our video library has helpful personal finance advice for you. We’re pleased to partner with blinkx to increase our exposure to new audiences and to make our video reports easily searchable for consumers around the world.”
Will video inject new revenue into the venerable Kiplinger? This noble company publishes the longest running newsletter in the US and is only one decade from the century mark. The print newsletters are not what they use to be and more presses collect dust every year.
This gosling does not think Kiplinger will receive any monumental renown via blinkx, but we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, Kiplinger does deserve a 12 Honk salute for reaching antique status.
Jennifer Shockley, August 17, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Global Report Misses a Significant Player in the PLM Industry
August 16, 2012
In a recent Sacramento Bee article, “Global Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Industry” we learn about a recent industry report that will have some significance in the manufacturing market in terms of efficiency.
The report analyzes the global product lifecycle management market measured by US dollars and broken down into product segments including, cPDm, PLM Tools, and Digital Manufacturing Solutions.The article shares the table of contents for this report and it includes a look at specific manufacturers and other providers.
As the article explains, the report has quite a bit of analysis.
The report profiles 84 companies including many key and niche players such as Accenture, Ansys Inc., Aras Corporation, Arena Solutions Inc., Autodesk Inc., Bentley Systems, Inc., Centric Software Inc., Computer Science Corporation, Dassault Systemes SA, Enginuity PLM LLC, Gerber Technology, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, Intergraph Corporation, International Business Machines Corporation, Lectra SA, MSC. Software Corporation, Omnify Software Inc., Oracle Corporation, Parametric Technology Corporation, SAP AG, Selerant, Siemens PLM Software Inc., Tata Technologies Limited, and T-Systems International GmbH. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based upon search engine sources in the public domain.
Administrative Options in SharePoint 2013
August 16, 2012
The blog world is buzzing with analysis of the public preview of SharePoint 2013. The Cloudshare Community Blog specifically breaks down the issues of administrative options in their post, “Administration Options in SharePoint 2013 with CloudShare!”
There are many things to show with SharePoint 2013, but I have decided to start with a basic one: how to administer the platform. In this article I will show you the available approaches you have to handle administrative tasks for SharePoint 2013. These approaches are essentially the same as in SharePoint 2010 with one big exception: you are not supposed to use (or even see!) the Stsadm command line tool that is now considered as deprecated.
It seems at this point the SharePoint world would be tired of the concept of customization, but apparently not yet. It seems like for every efficiency issue in SharePoint, the answer is customization. This is of course despite the fact that Microsoft does not want customers customizing SharePoint 2013. But how could a user possibly get around it, as SharePoint is still far from perfect?
The answer lies in smart third party solutions that can be added to an existing SharePoint infrastructure. A product like Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can streamline processes with its intuitive interface, specifically designed to meet users’ needs where SharePoint lags. Additionally, Fabasoft Mindbreeze releases smart and frequent updates, preventing the drama and hassle of huge and infrequent overhauls.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Increase Company Productivity with Streamlined Project Management
August 15, 2012
Tim Cermak discusses project management for the upcoming SharePoint release in his CMSWire.com post, “Project Management Today: How SharePoint 2013 Can Help.” Cermak explains some of today’s challenges with workflow:
Companies today face the challenge of determining what is happening both within their organization and externally in their marketplace. Information such as who is working on what and the progress of directives is fundamental and yet it is often elusive. The only way for companies to improve their business is to know what is happening, who is doing the work and what the outcome really is. People need to easily be able to collaborate on jobs and with colleagues, communicate with many people, and easily report the facts.
The author shares tips for all departments in an organization to work as a team to become a more successful company. To help drive your employees to increased productivity and collaboration, consider adding a comprehensive third party solution. Mindbreeze offers a lean suite of products that can add rich value to your workflow processes. Look to gain each employee two weeks per year through focused finding of data (IDC Studies) with Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Read more at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, August 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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