Google

Apple makes move toward web-based productivity apps

Ron Miller — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:49:47 -0500

This week's Apple keynote at Macworld was a low-key event by previous standards, especially without Steve Jobs there to deliver the news, but one interesting tidbit did emerge regarding Apple's move into online productivity Apps. Apple might not be taking on Google just yet, but it is beginning to build an online presence. For now, it's for sharing and collaborative editing, but this could grow into something more substantial down the road. Article

Lycos closes doors in Europe

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:00:13 -0500

EContent had a blurb this week that Lycos Europe shareholders had voted to liquidate its assets. Lycos is still operating in the United States, but the once leading search engine has certainly fallen. Back in its heyday, in the late 90s, before Google was a verb, Lycos was a go-to site. This is one more sign, as though we needed one, of the shift in power in online search engines. Article

Google unveils Search Wiki

Ron Miller — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:22:16 -0500

Google came out with an interesting concept last week when it released the Google Search Wiki. It enables you to take the standard set of results and move the ones you like best to the top of the results lists. What's more you can leave notes about why you like or dislike a site, and the notes are then available to the public. To be sure, there is room for lots of manipulation on the open web, but this could prove quite useful in an enterprise search environment where the universe of results is going to be much smaller.

Some search vendors like Oracle's Secure Enterprise Search product include the ability for IT to set certain results at the top of the list, but this could put the power to place search results in the hands of the end user, which is very powerful. Picture being able to put your favorite presentation at the top of a set of search results.

Further, you could attach a note to it, giving you the ability to let other folks know why you like it, and why it makes a good template for other customers in the same vertical market. It's important to understand that the notes are public, but the way you manipulate the results is only available in your personal set of results. Whether this can work at all on the open web is still open to question, but it should be interesting to see what happens if Google makes this available in its enterprise search products.

For more information:
- see this article

Related Articles:
Google news from FierceContentManagement

Google Site Search upgrade includes on-demand indexing

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:48:45 -0500

Google announced last week that they were upgrading the Google Site Search product to include on-demand indexing. In previous versions of the product, when you added new content to the site, you had to wait for Google's algorithm to kick in and re-index, a situation many customers were not happy with. The newest version enables you to click the "Index Now" button whenever you add new content, giving the site owner complete control over the indexing process. Article

One on One with Content Management's Movers and Shakers

Molly Bernhart — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:44:00 -0500

FierceContentManagement Editor Ron Miller conducts in-depth interviews and conversations with the leading ECM minds of our time. Click on any of the articles below to eavesdrop on the experts, and don't forget to check back regularly to gain the insight and analysis you need to keep pace with the industry.

One on one with Bill Forquer of Open Text

Bill Forquer is Executive Vice President, ECM Business Development at Open Text. He has been with the company for 10 years and has been involved with knowledge and content management for more than 30 years. We asked him about his company and how its many purchases, the changing economic conditions and CMIS are changing the way it does business. >> READ MORE
Open Text | Web 2.0

One on One with Daniel Tunkelang of Endeca

Daniel Tunkelang is the Chief Scientist and a co-founder of enterprise search vendor, Endeca. He is a an advocate of dialog-oriented approaches to information retrieval, and has organized annual workshops on Human Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR), in collaboration with researchers at MIT, IBM and Microsoft. Tunkelang also publishes The Noisy Channel. >> READ MORE
Endeca | Enterprise Search

One on One with Bård Farstad of eZ

Bård Farstad is co-founder and CTO at eZ, the software company behind the open source enterprise CMS system eZ Publish. As CTO, he is one of the main software architects behind eZ Publish and he has also written several magazine articles and spoken at numerous conferences about Content Management, Open Source and the online media industry. We spoke with him about his company, open source content management and how it makes money selling an open source product. >> READ MORE
Open Source | CMIS

One on One with Andy MacMillan of Oracle

Andy MacMillan is VP of Product Management at Oracle where he oversees all aspects of content management including enterprise content management, web content management, digital asset management and rights management. He recently co-wrote a book called “Transforming Infoglut!” The book outlines strategies to help organizations gain control of content. We asked MacMillan some questions about content management issues as they relate to the Oracle approach. >> READ MORE
Oracle | ECM

One on One with Nitin Mangtani of Google Search Appliance

Many experts have commented on the difficulty of enterprise search and what happens when you move consumer-style Google search to the enterprise. Recently, Mangtani surprised a few people when he published an SAP-sponsored editorial on Forbes.com in which he basically defended Google enterprise search against critics. It was a bold move, so I asked him some questions of my own about his Forbes piece and his rebuttal to Google Search Appliance critics. >> READ MORE
Google | Enterprise Search

One on One with Len Devanna of EMC

EMC's director of Web Strategy is responsible for the internal community platform known as EMC ONE. He says of his job, "I often feel like a kid in a candy store. I have a strong passion for all things online, and [I] get to help drive the evolution of our online ecosystem each and every day." I asked Devanna about EMC's Web 2.0 initiative and how that has helped increased collaboration and knowledge sharing. >> READ MORE
EMC | Web 2.0

One on One with Jim Howard of CrownPeak

Howard has been running his web content-management company since it launched back in 2001, a tough year to start a company based on a business model that was still fairly unknown back then. But the growth and acceptance of SaaS, not coincidentally, has mirrored CrownPeak's growth. In the past seven years, CrownPeak has experienced explosive growth, with over 90 percent year-over-year revenue increases. >> READ MORE
ECM | SaaS

One on One with David Nüscheler of Day Software

There's been a lot of coverage on CMIS, but it's safe to say Nüscheler has something to add to the conversation. He knows a thing or two about standards as the Spec-Lead of JSR-170 and JSR-283 and a member of the Apache Software Foundation. I asked Nuscheler to give me his views on CMIS and where it fits in the content management standard landscape. Nuescheler thinks some companies may be putting the cart before the horse when it comes to announcing products for an unapproved standard. >> READ MORE
Standards | CMIS

One on One with John Newton of Alfresco

Newton has been involved in the content management industry since 1990 when he was one of the founders and the lead designer at Documentum. More recently, he helped launch Alfresco, the open source content management vendor. Alfresco was involved with the talks that lead to the creation of the new CMIS standards. I asked Newton about the significance of the CMIS and what it means to ECM. >> READ MORE
John Newton | Alfresco | CMIS

One on One with Google about Chrome

After the surprise release of Google's Chrome browser, I sent Google some questions about the reasoning behind releasing its own browser, and what they hoped to achieve. While Google didn't let me interview a product person, they did send me some answers. Although these answers don't give you deep insight into the product by any means, they do give you some idea of what Google was thinking. >> READ MORE
Google | Chrome

Can Microsoft dominate web-based applications?

Ron Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:18:48 -0500

Last week Microsoft unveiled a web-based version of Microsoft Office finally bringing the iconic desktop office suite online, but has it waited too long and will it be able to dominate online as it has on the desktop? Forrester Research analyst Sheri McLeish writes in the Forrester Blog that she thinks it's a big deal and that many customers will be waiting to see what Microsoft does. I'm not so sure.

The trouble with Microsoft, is not that they are going online or that their online approach is wrong, but the fact that the company has waited so long to develop an online strategy. While they plodded along, lots of competitors who have cut their teeth online have been establishing markets of their own. That includes the likes of Zoho, Google Docs, Transmedia Glide, Adobe and others; and all are offering reasonably-priced alternatives.

But McLeish thinks the market has been slow to evolve and she may be right. That may give Microsoft some time to play catch up and it would be unwise to ever count out a company with the resources of Microsoft. That said, many organizations are fed up with Microsoft lock-in and have been actively looking for alternatives. What remains to be seen is if Microsoft can win back the goodwill it has lost over the years. What's more, just because Microsoft has announced the products, it's unclear when they will be ready for distribution.

For now, it's better to test what's out there, then judge Microsoft's offerings on its own merits compared with the existing players when they have an actual offering to show us.

For more information:
- read the entire McLeish blog entry

One on One with Nitin Mangtani of Google Search Appliance

Ron Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:28:20 -0500

Nitin Mangtani is the lead product manager for the Google Search Appliance (GSA). In this role, Nitin focuses on defining enterprise search strategy, establishing the product road map and defining new releases for the GSA. There have been several pieces, published in this space, on the difficulty of enterprise search and what happens when you move consumer-style Google search to the enterprise.

Recently, Mangtani surprised a few people when he published an SAP-sponsored editorial on Forbes.com in which he basically defended Google enterprise search against critics. It was a bold move. It prompted me to write to him and ask some questions of my own about his reason for publishing the Forbes piece and his rebuttal to Google Search Appliance critics.

FCM: You gave a spirited defense of your product in Forbes. What prompted you to react in that forum in that fashion?

NM: Our words are a reflection of our commitment to enterprise search. At Google, we are constantly innovating to ensure that our search solutions for the enterprise are as powerful and easy to use as Google.com. It's important to us that everyone--from CIOs to IT admins to employees--hear how we're taking our online search expertise, and tailoring that experience to meet the specific needs of businesses large and small.

FCM: Google's PageRank is the frequently touted "secret sauce" for the web-based search experience. Yet the majority of content in enterprise is not web-native content. How does Google adjust the search relevancy strategy for a non-hyperlinked body of content?

NM: Google has made a name for serving the most relevant results. In the workplace, the more relevant your results, the easier and faster you can get your job done. Speed and relevance are the twin pillars of a successful search, and are our primary focus in delivering search solutions for enterprise customers.

It's important to understand that PageRank is just one of the many signals we use to determine relevancy for Google.com. Similarly, in the enterprise, there's no one signal we rely on to deliver results. The Google Search Appliance leverages the technology tested daily by millions of users at Google.com, but also incorporates algorithms and models that we develop exclusively to suit the challenges of an enterprise search environment.

To meet these challenges, we have some of the best and brightest engineers in the world working on enterprise search. Our dedicated team is made up of experts in information retrieval, putting the power of PhDs and years of experience to work for our customers. If there's any secret to our strategy, it's simply that we don't let our recipe for search get cold. Our secret sauce is a team committed to innovation, and delivering the truly useful results that allow businesses to focus on business goals.

FCM: Along the same lines, I think Google loses its advantage inside the enterprise where there are fewer likely correct choices. As one analyst puts it, it's far easier to find a correct document among many correct answers, more difficult when there are only one or two correct ones. How does Google compensate for this difference?

NM: We find that end users in the enterprise often need to perform both functions, whether it's finding a specific document, or more general information discovery. Our goal is to make sure they can tackle both of these tasks with ease.

In both instances, relevance is key--and our ability to deliver relevant results is unmatched. One way we achieve relevance is through the personalization of search results. With the Google Search Appliance, administrators can adjust search results for different user groups, based on department or function. This means engineers see code and design documents at the top of their search results, while employees in marketing department see market analysis and white papers at the top of search results for the same query.

For the employee who doesn't know exactly what they're looking for, we also dynamically cluster results, which allows users to drill down on information through automatically generated categories. This allows employees to pull information from related areas and projects, often leading to the discovery new information they didn't know existed.

And for those looking for information residing in enterprise applications, like SAP or an employee directory, we provide an Enterprise OneBox that pulls information directly from across a business' enterprise applications. That way employees looking for the Q4 sales report or the status of a purchase order can find it all from the convenience of their search box.

Providing the best search possible isn't just about returning results. It's about understanding the nature of the search query and the searcher. Our search solutions are designed to take both into account, and to get better over time by learning the types of results that are most useful to you.

FCM: Carl Frappaolo of AIIM has said that what makes enterprise search so difficult is what he calls the "digital landfill" of information, data that is spread out across repositories in the enterprise. How does Google enterprise search get at this type of information locked away in a variety of repositories?

NM: This is one area where our experience online has taught us an important lesson. Whether searching online at home, or behind the firewall at work, employees want to have all their results accessible through one search box.

We call this universal search. In the same way we pull together web pages, news, blogs, financial quotes and more online, we've designed our enterprise search to pull results from across business infrastructure, including intranets, databases, portal servers, fileshares and content management systems, like Documentum, FileNet, OpenText, Livelink and Microsoft Sharepoint. We provide native connectors that allow businesses to index data from their various repositories, and our built-in Content Connector Framework gives businesses the flexibility to build the custom connections they may need.

Pulling all this information together certainly isn't easy, but its our job to ensure that from a user's perspective, everything they need is at their fingertips. Our universal search ensures that employees can find information, no matter where or how it's stored, while our expertise delivering fast, relevant results ensures they can act on the information they uncover.

FCM: In my view, based on my conversations with industry experts over the years, the Google Appliance is an excellent choice for a department, but not so great for an enterprise-wide search tool that crosses departments, repositories and data types. Why do you think I'm wrong about this conclusion?

NM: I think the best way to answer this is with the response we've gotten from our customers. We have more than 20,000 customers using our search solutions, encompassing a range of business sizes and types, and many of these are large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies.

Kimberly Clark, a Fortune 500 company known for brands such as Huggies and Kleenex, is a fantastic example of a large company faced with precisely the dilemma you outlined. They had millions of documents across a range of departments and repositories, and they needed a solution that could bring it all together. With the Google Search Appliance, employees can now search more than 22 million documents from across their company intranet, as well as web applications, homegrown document management systems, filer servers, and their public internet site. And best of all, they were able to install the search appliance quickly, and with minimal training for employees who were already used to the Google.com search experience.

Honeywell International, a leader in the tech manufacturing industry, is another great example of a large enterprise using the Google Search Appliance with great success. Honeywell needed a solution that could power both their internal search, as well as the external search on their public website. The Google Search Appliance addressed both of these needs, and was optimized and serving results within a day.

The range of customers we serve, again, speaks to the flexibility of our search solutions for the enterprise. Whether a small business with a rapidly growing number of files to manage, or a large business with content buried across databases and departments, our search solutions can scale and be tailored to meet a range of different needs from across the business community.

FCM: Users are always saying they want the Google consumer experience in the enterprise, but you don't seem to have the same success there you have on the web, why do you think that is?

NM: Our corporate motto at Google is "focus on the user and all else will follow". In the case of enterprise search, users are demanding the Google experience they know, trust and depend on. We can't think of anyone in a better position to provide this experience than us.

We hear from many of the businesses we work with how glad they are to have a solution at work that is as easy to use as Google.com. Our solution saves time and money by being easy to set up and maintain, and saves businesses the worry of needing to provide extensive training to employees who already understand and trust the experience they get with Google.

Success has many forms. If our success is judged by adoption, then we stand by the 20,000 customers using our search solutions. If it's judged by commitment to innovation, then we stand by our continued deployment of new products and improvements. And if it's judged by end user experience, then we absolutely stand by the power and simplicity of the search solution we provide to our customers. Search for us is never a solved problem, and in our minds, the best is yet to come.

Can Google dominate enterprise search?

Ron Miller — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:08:13 -0400

Michelle Manafy wrote a piece on EContent Magazine's website summarizing the recent Enterprise Search Summit West. According to her report, Stephen Arnold's keynote predicted that Google, the definitive consumer search, is so popular that we might as well raise the white flag and just start building add-ons to support Google in the enterprise. Arnold thinks Google will eventually dominate enterprise search just as it has consumer search. I'm not ready to concede the enterprise search market to Google just yet.

Whenever I talk to people in the search industry, they are quick to point out that while Google works well on the open web, it's less reliable in the enterprise. In fact, I wrote about this recently in Enterprise search is not a simple matter. In a recent conversation with Mark Bennett, CTO at New Idea Engineering, a search consulting firm, he pointed out that Google loses its advantage inside the firewall. Bennett says their ranking algorithm, what he calls the "secret sauce," really doesn't apply and Google is left using the same search techniques as other vendors.

Sue Feldman, an IDC analyst also spoke at the Summit, according to Manafy. Feldman pointed out that people tend to ask lousy questions, which is really important when considering Google in the enterprise. Bennett explains that when people don't enter very good search queries on the open web, you can still find the right answer because there are a myriad of possibilities, making it more likely you'll find the correct document. But when you move into the enterprise there may only be a couple of good results. Without a good query, it's much easier to miss.

Enterprise search is still a tough nut to crack. Users may demand Google-like functionality, but I don't think Google is necessarily the final answer to search in the enterprise.

For more:
- read the full Manafy article on EContent
- and this article from The Goose Quacks

Cisco buys Jabber IM tool

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:18:20 -0400

It was a big week for corporate collaboration. In addition to Oracle's big Beehive announcement, hardware company Cisco bought Jabber, the IM tool that lets you use different IM clients such as Google Talk and Apple iChat from a single interface. Seems like a strange play for a company like Cisco, but if you take a closer look, it makes sense. Cisco, like so many companies, has seen the future and believes that collaboration will play a key role. It can build IM into a number applications and take advantage of presence awareness, the ability to recognize when someone is online and take certain actions based on that.

The only trouble with IM is that it's a bit passé in a world where we suddenly have enterprise-class micro blogging applications like Yammer. Cisco might be better off looking at Enterprise 2.0 tools to help foster collaboration, but as Chris Keal writes in the National Business Review, many companies still don't even allow instant messaging, even inside the firewall. Hard to believe, but many corporations are so hung up on security, they are severely limiting their employee's collaboration options.

IBM recognized this when they announced new Web 2.0 tools for the Web Sphere portal at the Interop conference in New York City this past week. They also announced they were opening a Web 2.0 incubator of sorts in Cambridge, MA to research and test Web 2.0 tools. The question is, does IBM understand the future of collaboration better than Cisco (or Oracle)? Or is the enterprise not yet ready for Web 2.0 tools?

What do you think? Is IM still viable or is Web 2.0 the way to go?

For more information:
- see the NBR article
- read a CRN article on IBM's Web 2.0 announcement

Enterprise search is not a simple matter

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:35:48 -0400

If you work in an enterprise, chances are you've heard the complaint: "Why can't our search work more like Google?" Employees, spoiled by the Google search experience on the web quite naturally think it should be simple enough to extend to the enterprise. Unfortunately, as Dan Woods points out in his Jargon Spy column on Forbes.com this week, it's not easy to extend this type of search to the enterprise for a number of reasons related to the differences between the open web and a company content repository.

In fact, AIIM released a study last spring that proved that employees want a consumer experience, but the enterprise is a different animal. In an article in EContent called "Enterprise Search Still Lacking", Carl Frappaolo, VP at AIIM stated that the enterprise has to deal with what he calls a digital landfill of information. With so many content sources to cross, it's not easy to pinpoint the document you need. Woods points out that Google is built on a page rank algorithm and most companies don't have a link-based system.

There are a myriad of other issues, too, including the fact that, as Woods points out, you don't always know what you're looking for. One way to solve this issue is to use targeted tagging, but in a large enterprise this is a hard system to keep under control. There are, in fact, no simple answers to enterprise search. If there were, somebody would be making a lot of money.

For more information:
- read Wilson's column
- check out the EContent article
- view AIIM's findability study