Fast Search & Transfer (OSEAX: FAST.OL) (FAST) unveiled the FAST Adaptive Information Warehouse (AIW), a new approach that lets users capitalize on their entire universe of information to make better informed decisions for competitive advantage. Built on a search platform, FAST AIW integrates an end-to-end framework of products that unifies search and Business Intelligence. FAST AIW puts the Business Intelligence solutions on top of the search platform to integrate and orchestrate all of the information needed to make BI more effective. Users can directly search and navigate Business Intelligence data in an ad-hoc manner, then display relevant, usable information to users without the need for predefined report creation. The FAST AIW platform includes FAST Radar, a Web-based Business Intelligence portal and tool that brings actionable information and statistical analysis to decision-makers throughout the organization by means of a familiar search and navigation interface. FAST Radar provides insights into data through personal, flexible dashboards that move intelligence in the enterprise from IT and business analysts to every business user. Also included is the FAST Data Cleansing Solution, which provides up-to-the-minute access to all information, structured and unstructured, regardless of its source or location. It uses linguistics to improve data quality, enabling organizations to match, merge, and cleanse data automatically. The FAST AIW platform, including FAST Data Cleansing and FAST Radar, is available immediately. FAST Data Cleansing and FAST Radar may also be purchased as individual products. http://www.fastsearch.com
Category: Enterprise search & search technology (Page 44 of 62)
Research, analysis, and news about enterprise search and search markets, technologies, practices, and strategies, such as semantic search, intranet collaboration and workplace, ecommerce and other applications.
Before we consolidated our blogs, industry veteran Lynda Moulton authored our popular enterprise search blog. This category includes all her posts and other enterprise search news and analysis. Lynda’s loyal readers can find all of Lynda’s posts collected here.
For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.
IBM just launched a very interesting suite of enterprise search products. I have yet to try it or examine the specifications but the marketing message is the right one for the small and medium business enterprise buyer. What I like in the message:
- Pricing ranges from free to reasonable to ? (sky is probably the limit).
- Deployment is simple, intuitive and clean.
- IBM knows that simple and easy is the right call for IT but also the way to keep costs down.
- The solution is scaleable from a departmental solution to the entire business domain on the same basic software platform.
For the short term, I am placing OmniFind on the long list of products to consider for enterprise search. Check out the Web site at:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/enterprise-search/omnifind-enterprise/
How smart is it that IBM and Yahoo have chosen to team in this way? It could be a great strategy.
Disclaimer: This is the first product mention in this very new blog. It won’t be the last; I have a lot of interesting products on my list on which to comment. There will be much backfilling in the next few months but I have to start somewhere. The marketing message resonated; I hope OmniFind users will keep us informed by posting case experiences on whether the product delivers on the promises.
Sonic Foundry Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFO) has enabled advanced search capabilities for Mediasite.com, a searchable Website focused exclusively on offering expert information via rich media presentations with video, audio and graphics. The site enhancements combine phonetic search, optical character recognition, language processing and contextual analysis. Mediasite.com aggregates nearly 13,000 rich media presentations, including over 250,000 slides and almost 9,500 hours of analyzed audio on topics ranging from the treatment of contagious diseases and general health-related issues to robotics, business start-ups, sociology, ethics, financial advice, personal improvement and career advancement. Mediasite.com provides visitors with a directory of these publicly available presentations created by hundreds of experts around the globe. Optical character recognition allows for word and phrase spotting within slide content or visual aids. Advanced phonetic search algorithms coupled with language processing and contextual analysis provide the ability to locate specific spoken words or phrases within a rich media archive, based on algorithms developed by Sonic Foundry. Sonic Foundry customers can now take advantage of these advanced search features for their own Mediasite content through new hosted services offered through Sonic Foundry’s professional services group. http://www.mediasite.com/, http://www.sonicfoundry.com/
ISYS Search Software announced support for the newly released Microsoft Office 2007 document formats, offering immediate enterprise search functionality across core Office 2007 applications. ISYS also announced full support for Microsoft Windows Vista. Microsoft Office 2007 includes new document types for all main Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access. Microsoft has also included enhancements in the form of XML Paper Specification (XPS), its new alternative to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Congruent with enhancements in the Office product, Microsoft Windows Vista also comes with built-in support for XPS. To ensure a seamless transition for its customers moving to Office 2007 or Vista, ISYS has incorporated support for these new formats into its ISYS 8 platform. In addition to support for new Microsoft file formats, ISYS 8 also introduced support of .wma and .wmv. formats. http://www.isys-search.com/
Inmagic, Inc.and WebFeat announced a partnership that will enable Inmagic Presto customers to conduct federated searches across virtually unlimited external data sources. Inmagic Presto is a Web-based enterprise application that enables organizations to provide authorized end users with immediate and consolidated access to the right information, even when it appears in varied formats and multiple locations across and outside of the organization. WebFeat users can simultaneously search across unlimited numbers of resources from a single interface. WebFeat’s translator authentication and session management technology enables WebFeat to search virtually any searchable database. WebFeat maintains a library of over 6,000 database translators. http://www.webfeat.org, http://www.inmagic.com
I seem to be attending a lot of presentations because I think they are going to be about “enterprise search.” Instead they cover a new offering or positioning strategy by a search company seeking to help enterprises monetize their Web sites. There are great business models in this space as Yahoo, Google and Amazon have illustrated. These will morph to offerings, as yet, unimagined. The trouble is that for my audience, I want to help them understand offerings that will help them with searching content already in the enterprise or from outside that they can leverage for business uses: competitive intelligence, product development, supply chain improvements, marketing collateral development. That is what enterprise search is to most people working inside organizations. Admittedly, this is not a new or “sexy” market. I think that vendors of search may be so worn down by how they can make money offering their search tools for searching inside the organization that they may just be talking up other markets to stave off their own boredom with the “inside the enterprise market.” Horizontal markets are tough to deal with (more about that in a later blog entry).
To all you vendors who would like to cut and run, I respectfully ask that you stay. There is a crying need albeit a very big financial challenge in all of this. Enterprises have no idea what their true monetary loses are because workers can’t find “stuff.” There have been plenty of guesses put forth by analysts, but until we see search solutions that don’t take decades (OK years) to implement, who actually knows what gains could be made by really good and easy search tools that find both structured and unstructured content with a minimum of set-up.
The pricing models of tools need to make better sense, including ways to chunk the expenditures incrementally with “quick start,” and low overhead options. Why do the search tools with the mightiest claims also come with the highest price tags for licensing but the least out-of-the box functionality?
To all you enterprise information technology seekers of “true enterprise search” you bear responsibility for some of the mess this market is in. You’ve got to write better specifications, learn to start small and demand small to get started, and come to the selection process with real users and professional searchers on the team who will test drive products before they are purchased. If a product doesn’t solve the specific search problem you are trying to solve, don’t buy it. May-be it doesn’t feel like your money when you purchase for your enterprise but it really is your professional responsibility. Would you buy a car that will only take you to the beach or a lake but not to the grocery store?
MarketLive, Inc. announced that it has teamed with Endeca to introduce new MarketLive Intelligent Site Search and Navigation. Designed for online retailers, MarketLive Intelligent Site Search and Navigation includes search, Guided Navigation and Dynamic Merchandising capabilities powered by Endeca and will be offered as a component of the MarketLive E-commerce Platform. MarketLive Intelligent Site Search will be generally available to new and existing MarketLive v5 customers in Q1 2007. http://www.endeca.com, http://www.marketlive.com
If you signed up for feeds from this site, new posts have been slow coming. Gilbane’s announcement of an Enterprise Search Practice has not gone unnoticed. The past two weeks have resulted in more good will than this analyst could easily digest and filter. The good news is that ideas for posting on “enterprise search” are already accumulating faster than they can get written, and the number of enthusiastic well-wishers is encouraging. It looks like we have an audience and community of practice in the making. Thank you to all who have sent their support and good cheer.
Quite a number of responses have come from companies who want to discuss their technology offerings and positioning. At Gilbane we are following up on those requests and beginning to schedule time for discussions and presentations. With the recognition that vendors/suppliers of technologies want ink, and plenty of it, comes a responsibility of which I am acutely aware because I was one of that community for over 20 years. Having founded, in 1980, and lead an integrated library automation firm in the corporate arena, I know how industry press coverage can make or break the fortunes of even the best offerings. While blogs are intended to launch and promote discussions, even play devil’s advocate, I don’t take this role lightly. Every good intention and hard work by vendors deserves thoughtful and unbiased consideration. It deserves to have analysts who know what they are talking about, and those that would present what they can fairly assess in a useful context. The very definition of analyst (noun) supposes a responsible action, to analyze (verb) the offerings. While my analysis may not focus on what a vendor wants me to consider, it will try to present information that is both helpful and thought-provoking without being mean-spirited or dismissive, and content that helps potential users of the technology focus their own choices and decisions.
Now it’s time to get down to business and start making this a more frequent happening. Based on a number of comments, let’s begin with clarifying what we mean by enterprise search at Gilbane. While the marketplace often categorizes enterprise search as a specific kind of search product, we at Gilbane don’t. Any technology that serves any type of enterprise by helping it find electronic or physical content through an electronic search interface is fair game. Enterprise search is about looking for content in the organization or for the organization. It may be embedded in a specialized application, may be a platform designed to collectively search and aggregate content from many internal silos, or it may combine search of desktops, enterprise hard drives and the Internet. There is a very big universe of content out there; enterprises need all the search tools they can (afford to) leverage to harvest what they need and when they need it.
Now this analyst’s job is to give you a balance between what the vendors are saying and offering, and what the users really need, and get the two engaging more effectively with each other.
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