Dirty Secrets of SharePoint Online
June 11, 2012
SharePoint Online is getting a lot of buzz, and rightfully so. For many, the simplicity of a fully online solution is desirable. However, despite the hype, there are some seemingly essential features that have been overlooked, or have been poorly drawn.
Pankaj Taneja provides the details for Sys-Con Media in, “5 Dirty Sharepoint Online Secrets You Didn’t Know About.”
When you go through vendor feature datasheets, you get a view of features at a very high level. It’s only once you dive deep and actually start using the software do you get a sense of how it works. The experience might sometimes yield unexpected surprises . . . So while you might have absorbed some of Sharepoint Online’s marketing hype, here are some things they failed to mention.
The negative feedback ranges from the inability to cut and paste to customization difficulties to the fragmented overall structure.
For those who desire the low overhead of an online enterprise deployment, but the intuitiveness and customization of an on-site installation, we encourage you to explore Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Mindbreeze has both Cloud and on-site installations, both of which are updated are far more regular intervals than SharePoint. Mindbreeze can stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint installation.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
In addition, Fabasoft Mindbreeze finds strengths in its seamless integration with other auxiliary services. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Connectors incorporates all manner of electronic data repositories. Mobile search and public-facing web site search are all done with Mindbreeze, while full attention is given to security concerns.
For a flexible and intuitive third-party enterprise solution, consider the offerings of Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Semantic Duet Seems to Harmonize. Will 1+1=3?
June 10, 2012
The enterprise data crowd is being entertained by a new duet according to, fluid Operations and Ontotext Team Up to Usher in the Next Generation of Enterprise Data Management. The article states:
“Ontotext and fluid Operations (fluidOps) have teamed up to offer clients practical enterprise solutions for RDF data mining, access, publishing and search.”
Dr. Andreas Eberhart of fluid Operations predicts an evolution in data management, stating:
“This is really a pairing of best-in-class tools that we feel will usher in the next generation of enterprise data management. There are many players in the semantics space providing bits and pieces of a solution, but Ontotext and fluidOps have proven to deliver turnkey products that deliver a complete solution and have solved real world customer demands.”
Ontotext develops core semantic technology, text mining and web mining solutions. They specialize in creating software for tools and solutions based on semantics that optimize performance in data integration, analysis, evaluation, management and publishing.
fluid Operations is stationed out of Walldorf, Germany and designs open platform software. Their specialty is semantic integration for both structured and unstructured data entwined with business and IT stacks. They also provide infrastructure and cloud monitoring, management and orchestration solutions.
These two software designers harmonize well. The stage is set and this duet may very well write the next data management symphony. Ontotext and fluid are an interesting tie up. It makes us wonder, will 1+1=3?
Jennifer Shockley, June 10, 012
IBM Concerned with Personal Mobile Device Security
June 8, 2012
In an age where technology is moving completely towards mobile, including enterprise and content management solutions, concerns about security are valid and growing. General security awareness regarding mobile technology has not yet caught up to the level that is assumed for desktop or in-network computing.
David Roe gives a full report for CMS Wire in, “IBM Curtails Use of Personal Mobile Devices Over Unsecured App Fears.”
According to an article in the MIT Technology Review, IBM is stopping employees from using their own portable devices in the IBM workplace.
Some of the concern is about business intelligence and keeping a tight lid on proprietary information.
Public file transfer systems like Dropbox have been banned as has Apple’s iCloud; instead, employees use an IBM-hosted version called MyMobileHub as, Horan says, there is the possibility that internal, sensitive information will get loose and into the wild. Also getting the chop is Apple’s personal assistant Siri based on fears that confidential information will get out. It seems that the licensing agreement says that anything recorded using the app will also be recorded by Apple servers so you can see why IBM might be nervous.
However, this opens up a broader discussion about the security of mobile devices and software, and its continued usage for business essentials such as enterprise search. SharePoint deployments are common, but secure means to access the farm remotely are plagued with security concerns. Some third party solutions are doing a good job of anticipating the need and bridging the gap.
We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their attention to the mobility needs of the enterprise.
Smartphones and tablets allow you to act quickly in business matters – an invaluable competitive advantage. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company knowledge available on all mobile devices. You can act freely, independently and yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: Search results are displayed homogenously to the web client with regards to clear design and intuitive navigation.
Keep an eye on Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their ability to adapt quickly to the ever changing needs of SharePoint users or enterprise newcomers.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Final Considerations During a SharePoint Deployment Project
June 7, 2012
Robert Schifreen spent around eight months deploying and chronicling a SharePoint implementation project. In the twelfth and final installment of his SharePoint 2010 series, “SharePoint Deployment: The Final Chapter,” Schifreen highlights final configurations and the unavoidable prospect of going live. Schifreen summarizes the experience:
So where are we now? My two-server test farm is long since gone, and is now a proper six-server, three-tier farm that’s almost working the way we want. After that, and some user testing, duplicating my efforts on the production farm should be relatively straightforward. Then it’s a case of migrating users’ data from our existing network shares, at which point we can begin to roll out a working SharePoint environment for all our staff.
Longer term, we have great plans for what we hope will become a core strategic service for all staff and students. We’ll be looking for SharePoint development skills within the next year or two, as we begin to create a true intranet and portal that means our users have just a single point of entry into all our systems. Our intranet will evolve from a document collection into a proper intranet/portal.
Schifreen adds this comment about user challenges:
We’re conscious that the biggest complaint from users about our existing intranet and document repositories is that people can’t find what they’re looking for, so conversations these days include “taxonomy” or “managed metadata” in every sentence. Frequently both.
Schifreen’s series may be a valuable one to follow if you’ve been involved with a SharePoint implementation and deployment project. We also know that user complaints about search in SharePoint are not isolated to the deployment stage. Gaps in the out-of-the-box SharePoint search feature have many users turning to a third party solution. We like the feedback we’ve seen about Fabasoft Mindbreeze. With clear navigation and a self-explanatory interface, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates findability.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
While discussion about SharePoint user-adoption seems to be a constant among the community, Mindbreeze can save employees time by connecting them to the right information now via a user-friendly interface. Navigate to http://www.mindbreeze.com/ to read more.
Philip West, June 7, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Live Data and Web Site Design Considerations in SharePoint Deployment
June 6, 2012
We’ve been covering Robert Schifreen’s SharePoint 2010 series of posts on his SharePoint deployment experience. In his eleventh installment, “Countdown to Launch: Importing Data,” he continues the topic of security and how to manage it alongside live data and a public-facing web site.
Schifreen has this to say about importing data:
There’s a good bulk upload tool, which improves on the facilities in out-of-the-box SharePoint, available for a couple of hundred dollars, which will make it easy for users to copy stuff across. Or they can just use WebDav from Windows. Or I could probably do the whole thing in PowerShell, because there’s enough information in our Active Directory for me to find their current files, check that they are staff rather than a student, and copy the files to the correct SharePoint library.
And he goes on to comment on developing a public facing web site,
A SharePoint site, especially one that isn’t a public-facing website, tends to look like every other SharePoint site on the planet. You can, if you wish, customise it in any way you want. At the simple level you can replace the SharePoint logo with your own.
Importing data and branding your SharePoint site are both important steps in the overall SharePoint deployment. If you’re in the same process, you may want to read the article for some handy tips and guidance. You may also consider a third party solution to extend the capabilities of your SharePoint system. It seems that the experts at Fabasoft Mindbreeze understand the importance of a web site brand and design.
An attractive website serves as an effective digital business card. Surprise your website visitors with an intuitive search. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite is intuitive and user friendly and is instantly ready for use as a Cloud service. It turns your website into a user-friendly knowledge portal for your customers and recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise “finding experiences” and is the perfect website search for your company.
And with no installation, configuration, or maintenance required, the comprehensive and cost-effective solution will save you valuable time and training resources. Navigate to http://www.mindbreeze.com/ to read more about the full suite of solutions.
Philip West, June 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
HP Autonomy: The Big Data Arabesque
June 5, 2012
Hewlett Packard has big plans for Autonomy. HP paid $10 billion for the search and content processing company last year. HP faces a number of challenges in its printer and ink business. The personal computer business is okay, but HP is without a strong revenue stream from mobile devices.
“HP Rolls Out Hadoop AppSystem Stack” provided some interesting information about Autonomy and big data. The write up focuses on the big data trend. In order to make sense out of large volumes of information, HP wants to build management software, integrate the “Vertica column oriented distributed database and the Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) 10 stack.” The article reports:
On the Autonomy front, HP has announced the capability to put the IDOL 10 engine, which supports over 1,000 file types and connects to over 400 different kinds of data repositories, onto each node in a Hadoop cluster. So you can MapReduce the data and let Autonomy make use of it. For instance, you can use it to feed the Optimost Clickstream Analytics module for the Autonomy software, which also uses the Vertica data store for some parts of the data stream. HP is also rolling out its Vertica 6 data store, and the big new feature is the ability to run the open source R statistical analysis programming language in parallel on the nodes where Vertica is storing data in columnar format. More details on the new Vertica release were not available at press time, but Miller says that the idea is to provider connectors between Vertica, Hadoop, and Autonomy so all of the different platforms can share information.
HP’s idea blends a hot trend, HP’s range of hardware, HP’s system management software, a database, and Autonomy IDOL. In order to make this ensemble play in tune, HP will offer professional services.
InfoWorld’s “HP Extends Autonomy’s Big Data Chops to Hadoop Cloud” added some additional insight. I learned that former Autonomy boss Michael Lynch will leave HP “along with Autonomy’s entire original management team and 20 percent of its staff.”
The story then explained that Autonomy, which combines with Vertica:
can now be embedded in Hadoop nodes. From there, users can combine Idol’s 500-plus functions — including automatic categorization, clustering, and hyperlinking — to scour various sources of structured and unstructured data to glean deeper meanings and trends. Sources run the gamut, too, from structured data such as purchase history, services issues, and inventory records to unstructured Twitter streams, and even audio files. IDOL includes 400 connectors, which companies can use to get at external data.
Autonomy moved beyond search many years ago. This current transformation of Autonomy makes marketing sense. I am interested in monitoring this big data approach. IBM had a similar idea when it presented the Vivisimo clustering and deduplication system as a “big data” system. The challenge will be applying text centric technology to ensembles which generate insights from “big data.”
Will the shift earn back the purchase price of $10 billion and have enough horsepower to pull HP into robust top line growth? Big data and analytics have promise but I don’t know of any single analytics company that has multi-billion dollar product lines. Big data is a hot button, but does it hard wire into the pocketbooks of chief financial officers?
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
Security Concerns and Account Permissions in SharePoint 2010 Explained
June 5, 2012
Robert Schifreen brings us the tenth installment of his SharePoint 2010 series in his ZDNet.co.uk post, “Security on the Farm: Accounts and Permissions.” Shifreen explains that SharePoint’s most important database is SharePoint_config but that if it breaks, you’re best bet is to rebuild from your notes and restore backed-up content databases. Why? Schifreen points out that restoring a backup of SharePoint_config isn’t actually supported by Microsoft and rarely works in practice.
The author also has this to share about the nuances of a SharePoint deployment:
When you start building and running a SharePoint farm, you will come across dozens of seemingly unsolvable problems that turn out to be merely down to permissions.
He goes on to say,
Best practice is then to use separate accounts for installing various underlying services, databases, and so on…The most tempting option, of course, is to forget best practice and just use one account for running all the SharePoint internal stuff. The upside is that things will work a little better, with fewer permission-related errors. There are two downsides. First, if a hacker manages to penetrate the account he’ll have access to the entire farm rather than just a half or a third of it. Secondly, splitting everything across multiple accounts can actually aid troubleshooting in some cases because, by glancing at the server’s security log, the account that caused the problem will give you a clue as to why things are going wrong.
Schifreen’s topic of security is a valuable one in the world of big data that is continuously growing across on-premise and cloud platforms. Consider a comprehensive out of the box solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, to extend your SharePoint system with the added certified security benefits.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise “finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users.” Further, Mindbreeze offers certified security and reliability with regular external audits of their relevant standards ISO 27001, ISO 20000, ISO 9001, and SAS 70 Tup II. The solution is worth a second look at www.mindbreeze.com.
Philip West, June 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The New Lexi-Portal Version 4 Offers More Options
June 5, 2012
Leximancer just introduced Lexi-Portal Version 4 to the market. This new service provides availability to users for all the wide-ranging text analytic capability of Leximancer. Market researchers will find that this portal will provide them with fast analysis of qualitative surveys, spreadsheets and verbatim data.
Leximancer’s technology is proven with customers all around the globe. Their providing new and innovative ways for businesses to benefit in a no strings attached way. Basically, you have options on how to utilize the Lexi-Portal.
There are several aspects of their portal that make it unique to users, such as the fact they made it an ‘on demand’ service. This means you don’t actually have to subscribe every month, but instead are charged for the actual amount of usage based on either a time used or service basis. The convenience of the pay as you go aspect is that the Lexi-Portal will retain your company’s information for up to two months even if your usage drops for a month.
About Leximancer:
“Leximancer is an Australian company that has been providing leading-edge text analytics technology for almost 10 years.”
“The technology was created following 7 years research and development at the University of Queensland by Dr Andrew Smith. Andrew’s physics and cognitive science background, in conjunction with his working IT application experience, enabled him to envisage and develop an innovative solution to the growing need to readily determine meaning from unstructured, qualitative, textual data.”
You can view sample out’s at the Leximancer Chart Gallery such as the interview dashboard below:
Jennifer Shockley, June 5, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Inteltrax: Top Stories, May 28 to June 1
June 4, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, what is hot and trending in big data these days.
The first answer came from our story, “Dashboard Data Analytics Hot” which showcases the many ways in which increased usability is increasing big data’s popularity.
Also, “The Next Great Data Gold Mine” looks a little deeper into what we already know, social media is going to be huge for analytics.
Finally, “Analytic Healthcare Contests Boom” showed that many of the health field’s biggest problems are being solved by analytic contests.
The rapidly evolving world of big data is always in flux. What’s hot today might be cold next week. But know we’ll be taking the industry’s temperature every day to stay atop all the exciting changes.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
June 4, 2012
Get a Comprehensive Search Solution for SharePoint from Fabasoft Mindbreeze
June 4, 2012
In “SharePoint Log: When Databases Rebel,” Robert Schifreen looks at how one user can generate 16 gigabytes of logs in just three months. The article is the ninth part of a larger SharePoint 2010 series chronicling a SharePoint deployment at the ZDNet Blog.
Schifreen has this to say about navigating the growing amounts of data:
Microsoft markets a separate SharePoint add-on product called FAST Search, and likes to imply that no successful SharePoint installation is complete without it. In practice, from what I have read, it seems that FAST is unnecessary unless you have tens of millions of documents to index. Otherwise, SharePoint’s out-of-the-box indexing system will crawl the full text of all your documents (you’ll need to download a free ifilter, as it’s called, to crawl PDF files) perfectly well.
But he goes on to add:
There’s a handful of things missing from the standard search, such as having the number of hits displayed in brackets within the search results page, and there are no thumbnail previews of search results, but nothing that is sufficiently must-have to warrant the added expense or complication of learning yet another Microsoft technology.
We know SharePoint is a complex and beneficial system for content management, but we also know there are gaps in the out-of-the-box search feature. But you don’t have to learn a new Microsoft technology or settle for less. Consider a third party solution developed and devoted specifically to search, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Their Web Parts based information pairing capabilities give you powerful searches and a complete picture of your business information, allowing you to get the most out of your enterprise search investments. And your end users will benefit from the fast and intuitive search with clearly displayed results and simple navigation.
Creating relevant knowledge means processing data in a comprehensible form and utilizing relations between information objects. Data is sorted according to type and relevance. The enterprise search for professionals.
Mindbreeze’s intuitiveness also means less training required. They have tutorials and wikis that are easy to use and more efficient. Here you can browse Mindbreeze’s support tools for users, including videos, FAQs, wikis, and other training options. Check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, June 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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