IBM unveiled new software for managing and analyzing big data to the workplace. The new offerings span a wide variety of big data and business analytics technologies across multiple platforms from mobile devices to the data center to IBM’s SmartCloud. Now employees from any department inside an organization can explore unstructured data such as Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, weather data, log files, genomic data and video, and make sense of it as part of their everyday work experience. IBM is also placing the power of mobile analytics into the hands of iPad users with a free download in Apple’s iTunes Store. The new software is designed to help employees in industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, communications, retail, and travel and transportation use and benefit from business analytics on the go. IBM is delivering new analytics and information management offerings: New Hadoop-based analytics software on the cloud, which helps employees tap into massive amounts of unstructured data from a variety of sources including social networks, mobile devices and sensors; New mobile analytics software for iPad users; and new predictive analytics software with a mapping feature that can be used across industries for marketing campaigns, retail store allocation, crime prevention, and academic assessment. http://www.ibm.com/
Month: October 2011
Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the immediate availability of Adobe AudienceResearch, a new audience measurement tool that provides publishers and digital marketers with certified metrics on the size and engagement of digital audiences for websites, mobile applications and digital magazine editions. These key metrics are captured by Adobe SiteCatalyst, an online analytics application, and provide publishers with the information critical to attract advertising dollars. AudienceResearch is available at no additional cost to SiteCatalyst customers. In conjunction with AudienceResearch, the company also announced the general availability of the Adobe Audience Certification Program. Under this program, publishers become Adobe Certified Publishers, meaning Adobe has certified that their digital audience data meets certain criteria regarding the accuracy of data collection and reporting. Adobe Certified Publishers can contribute their data to the AudienceResearch tool. AudienceResearch provides census-based measurement of metrics, meaning that the metrics are generated by counting all relevant traffic, a method considered more accurate and representative of actual traffic and behavior than panel-based methods. Panel-based methods monitor the behavior of a small group of volunteer consumers (i.e. the panel) and then use statistics to generate estimate metrics. The statistically generated results from panel-based estimates often differ significantly from census-based results and have been a point of controversy in the advertising industry. Additionally, publishers using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to create digital magazine editions for tablet devices may elect to have their metrics automatically certified as analytics is natively built into the Digital Publishing Suite. This native integration ensures the integrity of data collection. http://www.adobe.com/
Oracle announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Endeca Technologies, Inc., a provider of unstructured data management, web commerce and business intelligence solutions. A privately-held company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Endeca provides products that help companies analyze unstructured data, gain better business intelligence, and deliver a better customer experience. Endeca’s core technology, the MDEX Engine, is designed to enable enterprises to correlate and analyze unstructured data. Endeca InFront is a leading customer experience management platform that enables businesses to deliver targeted and relevant customer experiences online with merchandising and content targeting tools for web commerce. Endeca Latitude is a technology platform that enables businesses to rapidly develop analytic applications bringing information from many unstructured and structured information sources together. The combination of Oracle and Endeca is expected to create a comprehensive technology platform to process, store, manage, search and analyze structured and unstructured information together. The combination of Oracle ATG Commerce and Endeca InFront is expected to enhance cross-channel commerce, merchandising, and online customer experiences. The combination of Oracle Business Intelligence and Endeca Latitude is expected to provide a comprehensive business intelligence foundation and analytic applications, bringing together information from structured and unstructured data sources. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close before the end of 2011. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently. http://www.oracle.com/ http://www.endeca.com
TEMIS, the provider of Text Analytics Solutions for the Enterprise, today announced the launch of the next generation of Luxid, its flagship semantic content enrichment solution. Luxid 6 is a semantic tagging platform which automatically extracts relevant information (entities, topics, events, sentiments), identifies relationships residing in unstructured data and facilitates links between similar and related documents. Luxid 6 optimizes the management of Enterprise content through the capture and structuring of targeted information. The software also enhances the utilization of content within an Enterprise’s workflows such as competitive intelligence, research and innovation, voice of the consumer and reputation management. http://www.temis.com/
We are going to have fun with the keynotes this year with our new rapid-fire format. You won’t want to miss any of it so be sure to get their early enough for a good seat. Also, please remember that after seven years at the Westin at Copley Place we have moved to a roomier spot at the Westin Waterfront at 425 Summer Street. You could easily lose 45 minutes by showing up at the wrong hotel!
K1. Opening Keynotes: Big Ideas – Bold Statements
Wednesday, November 30, 8:30 – 10:00 & 11:00 – 12:00
Our keynotes are designed to inspire, provoke, and provide perspective on the big issues, trends, and shifting foundation of technologies, digital strategies, and channels for communication and engagement. Our keynote sessions this year will use a rapid-fire format. Each speaker will focus on describing a single big idea or making a bold statement that will help us think a little differently about our use or expectations of content and content technologies. Presentations are limited to 10-15 minutes with 5 minutes for Q&A. Use of slides will be minimal.
Moderator: Frank Gilbane
Christos M. Cotsakos, Ph.D.
Founding Chairman, CEO & President, EndPlay
Christer Johnson
Partner, North American BAO Advanced Analytics Leader, IBM Global Business Services
Georgiana Cohen
Manager, Web Content and Strategy, Tufts University & Co-founder, Meet Content
Maureen Chew
Chief Applications Officer, Information Technology Division, Commonwealth of MA
Stephen Powers
Principal Analyst & Research Director, Forrester Research
Tony Byrne
Founder, Real Story Group & CMS Watch
Scott Liewehr
Lead Analyst, Web Content Management, Outsell Gilbane Services & President, Content Management Professionals Assoc.
Registration information
Adobe Systems has launched a new version of its digital publishing suite for individuals: the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition. Essentially it enables freelance designers and small design firms to publish interactive content created with Adobe InDesign CS5.5 software on Apple iPad. Adobe’s Single Edition provides an end-to-end workflow for designers to publish a single-issue application for sale or distribution through the Apple App Store. Designers can now use their existing skills and workflows to create an application for the iPad, saving on development costs while allowing them to maintain creative control. Moreover, Single Edition allows users to publish single-issue content such as a brochure, highly-visual book, annual report or personal design portfolio as an application for the iPad. As an extension of the Digital Publishing Suite line, Single Edition enables users to utilise Creative Suite 5.5 workflows to create an application for the iPad. http://www.adobe.com/
Why isn’t “search” the logical end-point in any content and information management activity. If we don’t care about being able to find valued and valuable information, why bother with any of the myriad technologies employed to capture, organize, categorize, store, and analyze content. What on earth is the point of having our knowledge workers document the results of their business, science, engineering and marketing endeavors, if we never aspire to having it retrieved, leveraged or re-purposed by others?
However, in Information Week, an article in the September 5, 2011 issue entitled “HP Transformation: Autonomy is a Modest Start” gave me a jolt with this comment: Autonomy has very sophisticated search capabilities including federation–the ability to search across many repositories and sources–and video and image search. But with all that said, enterprise search isn’t a hot, mission-critical business priority. [NOTE: in the print version the “call-out” box had slightly different phrasing but it jumped off the page, anyway.] This is pretty provocative and disappointing to read in the pages of this particular publication.
Over the past few months, I have been engrossed in working on several client projects related to taxonomy development, vocabulary management and integration with content and search systems. There is no doubt that every one of these institutions is focused with laser intensity on getting the search interface to deliver the highest value for the effort and dollars expended. In each case, the project involved a content management component for capturing metadata with solid uniformity, strong vocabulary control, and rich synonym tables for ensuring findability when a search query has different language than the content or metadata. Every step in each of these projects has come back to the acid test, “will the searcher be able to find what s/he is looking for.”
In past posts I have commented on the strength of enterprise search technologies, and the breadth of offerings that cover a wide array of content findability needs and markets. From embedded search (within content management systems, archive and records management systems, museum systems, etc.), to standalone search engines designed to work well in discrete vertical markets or functional areas of enterprises (e.g., engineering, marketing, healthcare, energy exploration) buyers have a wealth of options from which to choose. Companies that have formerly focused on web site management, business intelligence, data mining, and numerous other content related tools are redefining themselves with additional terminology like e-discovery, 360-degree views (of information), content accessibility, and unified information.
Without the search component, all of the other technologies, which have been so hot in the past, are worthless. The article goes on to say that the hottest areas (of software growth) are business analytics and big-data analysis. Neither of these contributes business value without search underpinnings.
So, let’s get off this kick of under-rating and marginalizing search as “not mission critical” and think very seriously about the consequences of trying to run any enterprise without being able to find the products of our intellectual work output.
