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Enterprise Search is Never Magic

November 20, 2012 / Lynda Moulton / 0 Comments

How is it that the blockbuster deals for acquiring software companies that rank highest in their markets spaces seem to end up smelling bad several months into the deals? The latest acquisition to take on taint was written about in the Wall Street Journal today, noting that HP Reports $8.8 Billion Charge on Accounting Misstatement at Autonomy. Not to dispute the fact that enterprise search megastars Fast (acquired by Microsoft) and Autonomy had some terrific search algorithms and huge presence in the enterprise market, there is a lot more to supporting search than the algorithms.

The fact that surrounding support services have always been essential requirements for making these two products successful in deployment has been well documented over the years. Hundreds of system integrators and partner companies to Microsoft and Autonomy do very well making these systems deliver the value that has never been attainable with just out-of-the-box installations. It takes a team of content, search and vocabulary management specialists to deliver excellent results. For any but the largest corporations, the costs and time to achieve full implementation have rarely been justifiable.

Many fine enterprise search products deliver high value at much more reasonable costs, and with much more efficient packaging, shorter deployment times and lower on-going overhead. Never to be ignored is that enterprise search must be accounted for as infrastructure. Without knowing where the accounting irregularities (also true with Fast) actually lay, I suspect that HP bought the brand and the prospective customer relationships only to discover that the real money was being made by partners and integrators, and the software itself was a loss leader. If Autonomy did not bring with it a solid service and integration operation with strong revenues and work in the pipeline, HP could not have gained what it bargained for in the purchase. I “know” nothing but these are my hunches.

Reflecting back on a couple of articles (If a Vendor Spends Enough… and Enterprise Search and Collaboration…) I wrote a couple of years ago, as Autonomy began hyping its enterprise search prowess in Information Week ads, it seems that marketing is all the magic it needed to reel in the biggest fish of all – a sale to HP.

Successful Deployment of Systems of Engagement: Making it Work with the Team That Will Make it Work

November 20, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Gilbane Conference Workshop: Successful Deployment of Systems of Engagement: Making it Work with the Team That Will Make it Work

Instructors: Scott Liewehr, President and Principal Analyst & Rob Rose, Senior Analyst, Digital Clarity Group
November 27th, 2012, 1:00pm – 4:00pm, at the InterContinental Boston Waterfront

We’ve all heard that enterprise marketing technology tools are really only as good as they are well-implemented. So why is it that enterprises often place much more effort into selecting the tool than they do the team that will make it work for their unique needs? Even if the deployment will be performed by the internal technology team, enterprise business managers need to make sure that the team that is going to help them realize their objectives by implementing the Web Content Management (WCM), Social, Marketing Automation, Search, and Analytics systems is ready to facilitate the new world of constant change in strategic content and web engagement. This workshop will explore proven methodologies for translating business strategies into selection criteria for both technologies and the agencies and integrators that implement them. It will prepare participants to answer critical questions that will help them ensure their enterprise technologies are successful:

What does my organization need to be prepared for?
How should I determine the optimal solutions given the many options?
What are the best practices for finding the best team to carry out my strategy and implement my chosen technology(ies)?
What responsibilities do I have for making sure the team is successful, and how can I stack the deck in my favor?

We will explore all of this and more in an entertaining, informative and actionable workshop. Led by Digital Clarity Group’s Scott Liewehr and Robert Rose, attendees will leave this workshop much better equipped to make strategic decisions about how to select and work with the team that help fulfill their vision.

See the full pre-conference workshop schedule at Gilbane Boston, then [button link=”http://gilbaneboston.com/registration_information.html” variation=”red”]Register[/button].

Tablets in the Enterprise and BYOD strategies

October 30, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 1 Comment

A couple of observations about tablets in the enterprise:

Tablets of all dimensions have a role in enterprise use, as do all types of personal computing devices.
BYOD is certainly a challenge for some organizations, but is a reminder of how we should have been managing data all along.

Tablets and other personal computing devices in the enterprise
One reaction to Apple’s iPad mini last week was that it would change the dynamic of Apple’s market for tablets since a 7″ inch tablet is more appropriate for consumers so enterprises would stick to the 10″ versions. The only thing correct about this view is that the tablet market will change. But we don’t know how – use-cases are evolving and there are way too many variables beyond physical size. It seems just as likely that the iPad mini form-factor could grow faster in enterprises than the full size iPad. In any case there are certainly enterprise use cases for a smaller, cheaper iPad, especially since those seem to be the only significant differences, and there is no apparent app development cost or learning curve further easing enterprise adoption.

But the bigger point is that enterprises need to be able to support not only multiple tablet and smartphone form factors but a large subset of an unpredictably large set of personal device types.

This is not a new challenge, it is simply one that is accelerating because of the decreasing costs and increasing ease of device development. “Personal” devices in enterprises are not new – employees have often used their own personal computers especially as they shrunk in cost and to BYOD notebook size. Tablets and phones are the next step, but enterprises will soon be dealing with watches, wearable computing, and implants which is why…

BYOD strategies need to focus on the data not the devices
The BYOD continuum is also largely additive – employees aren’t just replacing devices but often using multiple devices to access and process much of the same data – keeping up with the variety and volume and versions of personal devices is hopeless. A BYOD management strategy that focuses on device management will at best have a negative impact on productivity, will certainly increase costs, and most likely fail. There are environments and applications where data security is critical enough to warrant the overhead of a device management strategy that approaches being fail-proof, but even in these cases the focus should be on the data itself with device control as a backup where it makes sense.

It may not be much easier to manage the data independently but that’s the ball to keep your eye on.

Social Media: Creating a Voice and Personality for Your Brand

October 26, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Gilbane Conference Workshop: Social Media: Creating a Voice and Personality for Your Brand

Instructor: AJ Gerritson, Founding Partner & Social Media Strategist, 451 Marketing
November 27th, 2012 at the InterContinental Boston Waterfront

For consumers, brand interaction on social media platforms is no longer the exception, it’s the expectation. In order to stay relevant, companies must develop digital tactics that boost the brand’s overall communications strategies and marketing campaigns. When utilized effectively, social media marketing enhances your brand’s voice and personality, making you more approachable and transparent to your target audience. But, how can your company devise a social media strategy that entices audiences and encourages interaction? Which platforms make sense for your brand? How can you monitor the effectiveness of a social media campaign?

In this interactive session, 451 Marketing founding Partner and Social Media Strategist, AJ Gerritson, will outline the major social media platforms, strategic approaches, best practices, time commitment, and measurement tools and techniques necessary as part of an effective social media strategy. Using industry statistics and case studies, AJ will teach attendees how to structure a successful social media strategy that can be easily integrated into your brand’s existing communications campaigns.

Frank Gilbane interview on Big Data

October 15, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Big data is something we cover at our conference and this puzzles some given our audience of content managers, digital marketers, and IT, so I posted Why Big Data is important to Gilbane Conference attendees on gilbane.com to explain why. In the post I also included a list of the presentations at Gilbane Boston that address big data. We don’t have a dedicated track for big data at the conference but there are six presentations including a keynote.

I was also interviewed on the CMS-Connected internet news program about big data the same week, which gave me an opportunity to answer some additional questions about big data and its relevance to the same kind of audience. There is still a lot more to say about this, but the post and the interview combined cover the basics.

The CMS-Connected show was an hour long and also included Scott and Tyler interviewing Rob Rose on big data and other topics. You can see the entire show here, or just the 12 twelve minute interview with me below.

Private Companies and Public Companies – Sizing up IT Spending

October 15, 2012 / hhenry / 0 Comments

One aspect of the Global 5000 company database is that we include all types, shapes and locations of companies including those that are publicly listed as well as private firms. For those who sell to corporations (as opposed to consumers) there is a great deal of interest in private companies. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that public companies have to disclose so much about their size, shape and all aspects of their organizations – most everyone knows or can find out what they need to. Privates, on the other hand, are less well known and hold the allure that there is great, undiscovered opportunity in there.

To get a sense of the dynamics of the public/private we examined a number of metrics related to companies in the Global 5000 database. It is true that more large companies are publicly traded. Of the 5000 companies, nearly 4,000 are public and just over 1,000 are private. That is the inverse of the market as a whole where most companies in any country or industry are private. Here are a few facts about each group.

The average revenue for a public company in the Global 5000 is $10.3 billion while the private companies averaged $10.6 billion
Public companies reported an average revenue per employee of $214,000 while private companies were just over $282,000
For both 2010 and 2011, revenue for both public and private companies grew by slightly more than 11.5%. Virtually no difference.
In both cases, IT spending per company is over $290 million and approximately 2.7% of revenue.
Total IT spending for Global 5000 public companies is approximately $1.1 trillion while private Global 5000 companies will spend about $300 billion.

The bottom line here is that big is big. It does not make much difference if the company is public or private, the big guys will spend a lot on a wide variety of products and services including IT products and services. The real difference is in the number of these large opportunities there are. Just because we find a few of these nuggets among the privates, does not mean all privates look alike. Most are quite a bit smaller.

Learn more about more the Global 5000 database

W3C Web Platform Docs – a new resource for web developers

October 13, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

W3C announced Web Platform Docs, which promises to be a valuable new resource for web developers of all levels. Imagine a single site that you can depend on for up-to-date, accurate, and browser and device neutral answers and advice for both simple and complex questions. It is brand new and “alpha” but already useful. Below is info from their announcement and a short video. For those of us that prefer textual info see this blog post from Doug Schepers: http://blog.webplatform.org/2012/10/one-small-step/

W3C, in collaboration with Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and others, announced today the alpha release of Web Platform Docs (docs.webplatform.org). This is a new community-driven site that aims to become a comprehensive and authoritative source for web developer documentation. With Web Platform Docs, web professionals will save time and resources by consulting with confidence a single site for current, cross-browser and cross-device coding best practices.

Gilbane Boston Early Discount Deadline Extended

October 11, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Plan to be in Boston for the 9th annual Gilbane Boston Conference and you still have time to SAVE!

Save up to $400 for Three Days, Four Tracks, 45 Sessions & Labs, 6 Workshops with One Objective: to help you understand what technologies can and can’t do, what practices succeed or fail, and how to plan for the rapid changes in market and technology evolution.

Today, you need to be flexible, agile, and ready to incorporate web and multiple mobile platforms with different form factors and capabilities, and you need to combine engaging content and interfaces with small devices and big data – this is not the same challenge you had last year.

To help you keep pace and be able to cut through hype and make informed decisions we bring together a diverse audience of technologists, marketers, strategists, business managers and analysts to learn, share, and debate best practices and strategies. Our conferences have sessions designed for attendees in marketing, technology, business units, as well as analysts and consultants.

Just sign up by October 31st and use discount code GILBANE. Learn more http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

2012 Technology Showcase Hours
Wednesday, November 28: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Thursday, November 29: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

See the conference program:
http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

See the current list of speakers:
http://gilbaneboston.com/speakers.html

See this year’s in-depth pre-conference workshops:
http://gilbaneboston.com/workshops.html

See the current list of Sponsors & Exhibitors:
http://gilbaneboston.com/exhibitors_sponsors.html

Sign-up today to make sure you receive your $200 discount! Just use discount code GILBANE

Or sign-up for your free Keynote and Technology Showcase Pass.

The Gilbane Advisor

Page 196 of 930

Enterprise Search is Never Magic

Successful Deployment of Systems of Engagement: Making it Work with the Team That Will Make it Work

Tablets in the Enterprise and BYOD strategies

Social Media: Creating a Voice and Personality for Your Brand

Frank Gilbane interview on Big Data

Private Companies and Public Companies – Sizing up IT Spending

W3C Web Platform Docs – a new resource for web developers

Gilbane Boston Early Discount Deadline Extended

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