When Dinosaurs Fight: Oracle vs IBM
January 30, 2010
I enjoyed the Bistahieversor sealeyi fight between Oracle and IBM. The eWeek story “IBM Defends DB2 Against Ellison’s ‘Ignorant’ Remarks” is a delightful he-said, she-said. What made it even more delicioius for me is that both of the companies have aging products and are facing some tough competition from a certain outfit in Silicon Valley. When I read the article, I thought about two dinosaurs making big bird calls and scratching the earth. I want to highlihgt one exchange I though worthy of the Scott McNealy school of competitive sniping:
Ellison [Oracle]: “I can’t understand why IBM has never come out with a database machine. DB2 doesn’t cluster, doesn’t scale, nothing. You cannot run an OLTP [online transaction processing] application on DB2, because it doesn’t scale.”
Spang [IBM]: “Let’s talk about the TPC-C [Transaction Processing Performance Council] benchmark. Over the last seven years, DB2 has been in the leadership position about twice as long as Oracle. This game with benchmarks is a leapfrog game. Companies use the latest hardware, [the results improve] and it depends on point in time. What really matters is looking over a period of time for the consistency in the leadership position. So seven years, about twice as many days in the leadership position [over Oracle].
“I’ll give you another one close to a real-world situation: In the three-tiered SAP benchmark, DB2 [on Power systems] has held the record there for almost five years now, doing more than 50 million SAP steps per hour.
“Let’s talk about the SAP apps themselves. Just last year we announced that more than 100 companies had switched from Oracle to DB2 to power their SAP applications. The stories we hear are: better performance—in the range of 20 percent better—while reducing costs 30 to 40 percent. Coca-Cola Bottling was one that was quoted back then, talking about migrating from Sun servers to Power systems. It just made sense to them from a money point of view. “Larry also said something else: That the [recent] uncertainty about Sun systems was just a blip [due to the acquisition process]. Well, Coca-Cola pointed out that they have been switching from Sun to Power systems over a number of years. “I would argue that the uncertainty about Sun systems versus IBM accelerated a trend, and frankly, the uncertainty remains.
IBM and Oracle are more alike than different. Neither seems ready to acknowledge that an ecosystem change may send both big birds to the butcher.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2010
A freebie. I will report this food related post to the Department of Agriculture.
Google Squeezes LexisNexis and Westlaw Hard
November 18, 2009
Google’s Uncle Sam service is arguably a more effective way to find information from various US government entities. I heard a couple of years ago that Google was indexing the content on various state servers. During that time, LexisNexis (a unit of Reed Elsevier) and Westlaw (a unit of Thomson Reuters) have continued with their for-fee content services without much significant change. The legal world has been hit hard by the economic downturn. Many well-heeled corporate clients have holes in their shoes. The law firms to these giants have been asked – nicely, of course – to reign in their spending. Law firms are complying and some are even trimming their staff and looking closely at the expense account of some partners.
Google announced on November 17, 2009, that Google Scholar will contain the full text of
legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar.
Bang. Just like that the worlds of the for-fee legal information services hear the shockwave of the Google hypersonic bombers buzzing their citadels.
I can hear the rationalizations now: “Our legal content contains footnotes and cross references to make legal research quick, easy, and trouble free.” Or “Google does not understand how to present complex legal information as well as we do.” Or “Lawyers cannot trust Google.”
These and other truisms may have some accuracy embedded in them, but the one big reality is that Google is indexing legal content. Furthermore, Google has some nifty algorithms that can and will add metadata to content so that the Google service will be “good enough.” For law firms struggling to pay their country club fees, Google’s service will be given a close look. My hunch is that the small law firms who cannot afford the fees assessed by the LexisNexis and Westlaw systems will use the Google system. Over time, Google’s approach will choke off much of the oxygen to the commercial legal firms. These outfits have to respond.
So, what are the options?
First, the smart legal publishers will want to figure out how to surf on Google. In my own experience, most of these executives will dismiss this idea, but I think some thinking about this approach is warranted. My videos at http://www.arnoldit.com/video might offer some ideas to legal publishers nervous about the Google’s legal content push.
Second, the firms on the fringe of legal information now have a way to access some information that can be used to enhance their existing content offerings. Google’s service delivers a Ford F 350 stuffed with information that is now accessible. Raw material in my opinion.
Finally, government agencies may just pump content directly into Google. This creates an opportunity for a different type of information service. Lateral thinking is useful for the companies in Washington, DC that recycle information for their constituencies. I see opportunities in this sector.
What is the financial outlook for the LexisNexis-type and Westlaw-type firms? Short term there won’t be much change. Over time, life gets tougher. I do quite a bit of work in online information, and I am not sure these outfits can adapt to the Google’s legal push. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2009
A quick report to the Department of Justice. I was not paid by anyone to write this opinion. You, gentle reader, have not paid me to read it. Seems fair.
Treat from an Online Search
October 30, 2009
I am making my way from the frozen wilds of Canada to the comfort of Harrods Creek. I ran a query on the Courier Journal’s Web site and spotted this news item. (Yes, I know the site is almost unusable, but that’s not my problem, gentle reader.) I cannot resist sharing it with my two or three readers.
Navigate to the story “Nord’s Long Johns Will Lure Bacon Fans.” Read the article and consider your own breakfast fare. A pastry with a strip of bacon. Now that’s Kentucky kuisine.
Stephen Arnold, October 20, 2009
Obviously no one in his or her right mind would pay me for an article with the word “kuisine” in it.
Coveo Launches Thought Leader Initiative
September 14, 2009
Interesting item crossed my desk this evening (September 11, 2009): “Coveo Announces Thought Leaders of Enterprise Search – Seminar Series”. The news item stated:
[Coveo] announced the first seminar in its Thought Leaders of Enterprise Search – Seminar Series, taking place Thursday, October 1st, 2009, at Haley & Aldrich headquarters in Boston, MA. The Series will also be held in New York, San Jose, Brussels and Montreal.
The idea is to feature a customer describing the benefits of using the Coveo technology for enterprise search, content processing, and discovery. The Beyond Search team thinks this is a very good idea.
Stephen Arnold, September 14, 2009
Google Books and Lousy Indexing
September 6, 2009
Thomas Claburn’s “Google Books Metadata Includes Millions of Errors” disclosed some dirty meta data laundry from the Google Books project. Mr. Claburn reported:
A metadata provider gave Google a large number of book records from Brazil that list 1899 as a default publication date, resulting in about 250,000 misdated books from this one source.
Mr. Claburn rounded up additional information that suggests the error problem is orders of magnitude larger than some expect. The good news is that Google is working to correct errors. The bad news is that Google, like other commercial database producers, generates products and services that users perceive to be “right”. In reality, there are quite a few flaws in electronic products. Mistakes in print can be seen and easily shared with others. Electronic mistakes often behave differently and in many cases will go uncorrected for a long time, maybe forever, without anyone knowing what’s amiss or what the impact of the mistake is when smart software sucks up errors as fact. Whizzy new systems that generate reliability and provenance “tags” can be easily fooled. The repercussions of these types of propagated errors are going to be interesting to understand.
Stephen Arnold, September 6, 2009
Google Certification Baby Steps
July 6, 2009
Microsoft’s “partner” program has been a gold mine. Partners pay to be certified. Partners pay to attend conferences. Partners spend to dedicate engineers to things Microsoft. Google has some partner savvy wizards on its staff, but the company has been taking baby steps to build a really big partner ecosystem. Today’s partners are more like junior Googlers than the Big Deal Certified Gold outfits that Microsoft has in tow.
That might be changing.
Read “Google Sets up Accreditation Programme to Safeguard Site Conversion”. You see words that suggest that Google wants to do good. You see words that dance away from Big Time Certification and Accreditation. I noted this passage:
Google has extended the project by launching the Google Conversion Professional (GCP) programmed to help brands connect with those companies it deems to be the best conversion specialists….Graham Cooke, Google UK senior ecommerce manager, said, “We want our customers to get the best ROI from their advertising. If we’re driving paid clicks to a site but they’re not converting as well as they could be, we want that to be improved.”
For this addled goose, the Google is taking some baby steps.
Stephen Arnold, July 6, 2009
Brainware Gets Oracle Certification
July 1, 2009
I found the news story on the Forbes.com site interesting. (I am again puzzled about who wrote what on Forbes.com, so the provenance of this “story” may be Brainware’s ever alert PR department.) Assume that it is 100 percent beef. The headline offers only the tip of an implication iceberg: “Brainware Distiller Receives Latest oracle E Business Suite Certification”. Brainware is a vendor of search and content processing systems. The firm has an end-to-end capability; that is, a licensee can scan, convert to text, and then index with the Brainware trigram technology the content. For the industrious, Brainware provides a method to hook a taxonomy or other controlled term list into the system. What’s remarkable about this announcement is that Brainware is following in the footsteps of Autonomy, the original ace holder in Internet marketing. Here’s why:
- Oracle allows third parties to develop for its platform. This type of deal is usually additive. The Brainware approach allows somewhat deeper hooks into the cherished realm of Ellison land.
- Oracle is already making it tough to find information about SES10g. Ultra Search seems to be a popular moniker now, but Brainware is at its core a search system with an unusual technology. I wonder if this deal is a prelude Oracle’s finally making an effort to get search and content processing technology that is affordable, integrates with Oracle stuff, and works reasonably well.
- Brainware, already a player in legal document publishing, has found a way to put its search nose into a number of potentially lucrative Oracle customers’ cook outs. Other search vendors may want to rethink their Oracle strategies.
I am eager to see how this plays out with the Oracle sales machine.
Stephen Arnold, July 1, 2009
Microsoft Search Interface
June 21, 2009
Softpedia ran a story that caught my eye. “Bing Has Its Own Ribbon UI” reported that the Bing interface (shown below) has a ribbon. The story quoted Martin Stoddart, a Bing manager, as saying:
“The Explore Pane is one of the ways we are bringing more order to the page. It allows us to provide a set of helpful tools in a consistent location across the Bing experience that enable you to more easily navigate various categories of results relevant to your query, including web, video, image, news, local, shopping, and more… We conducted extensive research in planning Bing. One of the things people told us was that search results pages could be organized more effectively. We found that 66% of people are using search more frequently to help them make decisions. However, they are spending much more time on those decision-oriented sessions – averaging around 9 minutes per session. With that insight, we realized improving page organization to help get users to what they are looking for faster could have a big impact.
The Bing interface consists of several parts. Do you see the ribbon? A “ribbon” to me is:
a woven strip or band of fine material, as silk or rayon, varying in width and finished off at the edges, used for ornament, tying, etc. 2. material in such strips.
Here’s the Bing interface:
The “ribbon” in Office 2007 appears in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. I don’t recall seeing the ribbon in Outlook 2007 or Visio 2007. I also recall the ribbon in the Office applications as changing (sometimes unexpectedly) depending upon the operation I am trying to perform.
The ribbon in the Bing interface looks different from the ribbon in the Office 2007 applications that have a “ribbon”.
Softpedia said:
Stoddart claims that the Explore Pane is always present in the left hand pane on the page. But this is not true. Or it is true, but only if the user is located in the US, or if the search engine has been set to the US, and not to another part of the world (the UK also gets the Explore Pane). By default, Bing will deliver a localized experience and results to end users based on their location. “The contents of the Explore Pane are highly dynamic. The presence or content of Quick Tabs and Related Searches vary for every different query that you type, while the Search History tool is unique to you as a user,” Stoddart stated.
Here’s my take. Microsoft has different interfaces in Office 2007. The emphasis on user experience or what Microsoft called UX in the presentation I heard on June 4, 2009, is interface design. The goal is to make certain functions and actions obvious. Several comments:
- The notion of a ribbon is okay I suppose, but if you are going to use a “ribbon”, make them consistent. Right now, there is little consistency within and across Microsoft products.
- A ribbon can run across or down. The problem is that when something runs down, I see it as a list of hot links. The use of the term “ribbon” doesn’t make much sense to me. When the icons run horizontally across the top of the screen, I see these as icons or to use the Apple word, “dock”. Ribbon is not resonating with my understanding of the word.
- Microsoft is trying to differentiate its search system using visual techniques. That’s good, but the problem is that the options get in the way of finding answers. Presenting me with a mix of visual elements, different file types, text, and other access features takes me time to figure out what’s what. For me, it is easier to read a list of titles and scan snippets.
In short, marketing says one thing and the Microsoft implementation is inconsistent. That’s a problem for an addled goose like me who wants consistency. Google is not perfect, but at this time, the company’s interfaces are more consistent and, hence, more predictable for me. Design for its own sake and inconsistently applied gets in the way sort of like my Web feet.
Stephen Arnold, June 21, 2009
Google Enterprise Revenue
June 7, 2009
Dave Girpuard is a smart man. He is president of the Google’s enterprise unit. I read Larry Dignan’s article “Enterprise Business Profitable; Says Email Migration ‘Proof Points’ Building” here and was puzzled. The re3venue figure in the article was reported as “a few 100 million dollars”. What is included? Google has enterprise deals in education. It has revenue from the Google Search Appliance, enterprise partners who pay to play, it has the Postini business, and several others. Do some estimating, and the GOOG has a booming business that my estimates suggest with revenue way north of $100 million.
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Bing Kumo: The New Search Super Star
May 21, 2009
I awakened after an enjoyable midnight flight on UScare (I mean USAir) to find an RSS reader brimming with news of Microsoft’s new search engine. The name seems to be fluid, but I like Bing Kumo, which has an international ring to it. I picture Mr. Kumo, whom I shall call Bing, as a teen idol, androgynous in order to appeal to one and all.
You can get quite different views of Bing from the search engine optimization side of the world here and the inside Silicon Valley crowd here.
A quick run down of the speculation includes:
- A Google killer. Enough said.
- The skeptics. Larry Dignan asks, “Will it matter?” here.
- The critical wizards at Lockergnome here who said, “Seriously, it’s not going to work, no one will care, end of discussion.”
- The real Silicon Valley Insider here who said, “If Microsoft ends up doing a search deal with Yahoo (YHOO), this could all be for nothing. But either way, Microsoft needs help if it ever wants to be competitive in search. It represented 8.2% of the search market last month, down from 8.3% a year ago, according to comScore.”
The addled goose’s view of Bing Kumo, superstar, is more optimistic. Here’s why?
Bing Kumo, the new search rock star will be coming to a browser near you soon.
Most people fire up their computer with Windows 7 this fall and use whatever default Microsoft provides. I think Bing will get traction because Windows 7 will be a big success for Microsoft. The weird cursor behavior that makes it tough to navigate away from the default Microsoft splash page will discourage some users. The oddities of explaining that something other than Internet Explorer is the default browser will keep some of the Windows faithful using Bing. It’s easier.
The Google has been struggling of late. It’s not just the legal hassles, the copyright squabbles, and the YAGGs (yet another Google glitch). It’s the trust issue. I know it is hard to believe but Google has managed to achieve distrust in a remarkably short period of time. In a recent meeting, one really rich and really beef jerky tough executive asked me, “Do you trust Google with your information?” I did not answer, and he thankfully turned his cowboy features on another soft and pliant computer person.
Finally, Microsoft has been working overtime to get deals in the enterprise. These range from headway in the US government in some pretty big and well funded agencies to tough tactics to force SharePoint licensees to drink the Fast ESP Jonestown beverages. Certified Microsoft professionals in these organizations know that no mere mortal can find a file in the wild and wacky world of SharePoint. The complexity of the system and the sheer craziness of the file system’s naming conventions mean “A Job Forever.” Google is not able to deal with this combination of bundling and Certified Microsoft Professional resistance. Jobs, not technology, are operative here.
Now enter Bing Kumo. Lights, please.
Whether it works or not, Microsoft’s try-and-try-again approach to Web search is going to have an impact. I wonder if Bing Kumo will make an appearance on Oprah?
Stephen Arnold, May 20, 2001
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
