Marc Andrews Observations On Demand

InfoWorld Review of IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition

InfoWorld just published a great review of IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition.  This really highlights both the ease of use and functionality included in this product.  Check it out!

IBM and Yahoo Unveil Free Enterprise Search Software

The enterprise search market is about to change.  IBM and Yahoo! have partnered to make basic search capabilities free for enterprises.  Not only is this a FREE solution, but it also focuses on simplicity and ease of deployment.  Organizations can get it up and running on their existing hardware in just 5-10 minutes!  It has a slick out-of-the-box search application that can be completely customized through a graphical configuration tool, and even includes some advanced capabilities such as incremental indexing, support for 200+ document types, support for 30 languages, and linguistic features such as synonym detection, spelling correction, lemmatization, stemming, and a “did you mean” feature that suggests alternative queries.  You can download the software immediately from http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com and installation is just a 3-click process.

You can also learn more about this from the IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition announcement.

Podcast Interview on Cognos and IBM Partnering for Enterprise Search and BI

Not too long ago, I did an interview to talk about how Cognos and IBM are partnering to deliver combined enterprise search and business intelligence capabilities.  Cognos has published a podcast of that interview, which I thought I'd share here.

Click to download podcast

Functionality vs. Simplicity - What Will Guide Your Desktop Search Decision?

First impressions can be misconceiving.  Would you rather have something that was very simple to use at first glance, but often didn't help you find what you were looking for as quickly, or something that could help you immediately narrow in on that e-mail or contact you were looking for much faster, but used a different interface than you are used to, and possibly took you a day to figure out?

I've recommended the X1 Desktop Search solution to several folks, but the initial reaction has been quite intriguing.  They almost always come back to me, right after they've installed it, and say, "this looks complicated!"  Basically, they are not sure where to get started.  They have become used to the simple search box, and are not prepared to get anything back other than your standard Google-style list of links search results.  However, while Google and Yahoo work great for finding that web page you were looking for, I have found this approach extremely lacking when it comes to finding e-mails, contacts, or files on my desktop. 

I initially tried Google Desktop Search, but found that whatever I searched for resulted in tons of hits, which were not easy to navigate and filter through, and rarely had exactly what I was looking for at the top.  If I entered the name or company I remember being mentioned in the e-mail, it always turned out that there were several mentioning those terms, and just because an e-mail or document had the most mentions of that term did not mean that it was the document I was looking for (and I don't have links between my e-mails and documents to help the Google engine figure out relevancy, like on the web).  And to filter through the results, I would have to continuously try new queries, retyping everything in.  There was no simple "click here" approach to re-sort the list and easily make what I was looking for "surface" through the mire.

Enter X1.  While initially, it seems a little more complicated, I found that appearances can actually be deceiving.  It only seems complicated because it looks different.  But when I started using it, it was actually much simpler to find what I was looking for...and much faster!

There are 3 key features that I use ALL the time, which I have found to enable me to find stuff 10 times faster than I could with Google Desktop Search:

1) Fast As You Type Search - This feature is brilliant!  Being able to just start typing, and see a list of e-mails narrowing down with every letter you type is unbelievably productive.  You never have to hit enter and wait for a results list to pop up...but often times, you don't even have to finish typing the word!  In addition, if you need to further refine your search, you just start typing a few more letters...no need to re-key your search and hit an enter key.  This alone has enabled me to find stuff much more quickly.

2) Field Refinement and Sorting Bar - I don't think this is the official name of the feature, but basically, they have a bar with several fields at the top (for e-mail, it is stuff like From, To, Subject) that you can click on to sort, or, even better, can start typing in and leverage the same fast as you type search feature.  I start typing m-a-r-c in the From field, and in no time, it narrows down the list of e-mails to those that I sent.  Or, if I remember that a term was in the e-mail subject line, I start typing in the term in that field, and the list of e-mails quickly narrows down to the ones that are most relevant.

3) Grid Style Results with Preview Pane - This is probably what scares people the most, but is also what makes it so much easier to find what you are looking for.  While different that what you are used to for web search, using a grid (think Excel spreadsheet) to display the results actually enables you much more easily see the different aspects of each search result, and more quickly determine which result is most likely what you were looking for.  And of course, the ability to just click on a row and see the actual e-mail (or contact info or document) makes it much easier to determine the relevance of any particular result...and to more quickly look through a bunch of different results.

Yes, X1 is a real desktop application as opposed to using a browser as a client.  However, since desktop search is a "desktop" feature, I don't mind using a true desktop application - it's just as easy to click the X1 icon that remains in my system tray, if not easier than opening my browser and clicking on a link or bookmark.   And the benefits are tremendous.

I urge you to take the Pepsi...errr...I mean, X1 challenge.  Install both Google Desktop Search and X1 on your machine, take the time to figure out how to use X1 (make sure you have the Refine Search and Preview Pane options on), and do a few searches.  You'll quickly see which one gets you to what you were looking for faster.

It would be great to see these same capabilities extend into enterprise search...or even web search.  Frankly, I think it would provide a much easier way to find stuff.  But people are resistent to change and yurn for simplicity.  That is, after all, a big reason for Google's success to date.  But will this work in the enterprise?

I chose functionality and speed over simplicity.  What will you choose?

How Can Search Drive Sales?

While many people think about search as just a way to improve productivity by making it easier for you to find documents and web pages, some organizations are leveraging search technology to actually increase sales and grow revenue.  By making it easier for customers to find the products they want, and incorporating cross-selling capabilities, you can make a serious impact on customer purchasing behavior.  However, this requires going beyond keyword search.  You need to make it easier for customers navigate and "browse" through your products and offerings based on all of the different parameters that may be relevant to them, not just price - such as color, size, category, product features, etc.  And you need the ability to present other options that they may not even know to look for.

Amazon.com was one of the first major online ordering sites to incorporate some of these advanced capabilities, such as seeing what other customers purchased.  And they spent a lot of money building out all of this funcitonality.  But companies no longer need to make this type of investment to add the same capabilities to their sites.  Even small to mid-size companies can get the same benefits.  Just look at Johny's Selected Seeds (yeah, I never heard of them before either).  There is a good story on their solution in Line56.com.  If you search on "herbs" it allows you to quickly refine the results to edible herbs, organic herbs, herbs that are easy to grow, herbs that are good for drying and crafts, etc. 

They key is to provide easy tools that business users can use to create rules for what should be displayed to people.  You don't want to have to rely on developers or technical expertise to accomplish.  Look for solutions that provide fancy GUI-based wizards that enable anyone to create business rules that define what products or information is displayed to users based on their initial queries.  Also, be sure that you can provide users with the ability to easily filter through and navigate search results.  This will be critical.  While the standard Google style list of links results works for finding a web site, it is not effective for customers trying select what product or offering they want to purchase.

Webinar on Secure Intranet Search

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry on Enterprise Search and Security.  I just found out that there is an upcoming webinar hosted by KMWorld on Maximizing Intranet Search with Better Reach and Enhanced Security that will be talking about how to provide search across all relevant enterprise content and still deliver a secure search experience to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.  The event is being moderated by Andy Moore, who has written extensively on content management and search technologies, and is now the publisher of KMWorld Magazine.

For full disclosure, this webinar is being sponsored by IBM.

UIMA Used to Fight Crime - More Real World UIMA Examples

Consider this Real World UIMA Examples Part 3!  There is a great UIMA article in Byte and Switch about a pilot project at the Cape Breton Regional Police (that's in Nova Scotia, Canada for those of you wondering) that was demonstrated at the Canadian Chief of Police Conference last month and is now receiving interest from police departments across Canada.

They are using UIMA to analyze digitized surveillance videos, audiotapes of interviews and interrogations, voice clips, images of vehicle licenses and police reports, and the like.

The goal is to feed in police data and produce information that solves a crime -- or at least helps unravel it.

"The program provides detectives with timelines, linkage analysis, and disclosures," says Burke. As data from tapes, videos, and even voice messages enters the system, it will acquire date and time stamps and be parsed so that further analysis can tie information to specific individuals and situations. Data items also will be annotated with the date when each was shown to prosecutors, enabling vastly improved police record keeping.

The New York City Police Department (yes, NYPD Blue!) has also begun using UIMA.  They are only in the initial stages of truly leveraging UIMA, with the primary focus on basic search capabilities, but selected a UIMA based platform so that they can extend their solution to capture the kinds of buried knowledge mentioned above.  They started off by implementing a real-time Crime Information "Warehouse" that is enabling them to more quickly gather, share and act on information.  By transforming the way they use information, NYPD is able to redeploy resources in response to crime patterns and trends, and resolve crimes and apprehend criminals more quickly.  You can read the NYPD case study for more details.

Hurwitz on Evolution of Enterprise Search

Fern Halper, from Hurwitz & Associates, just published a great article on how Enterprise Search Evolves.  She touches on two very important points in here.

First of all, the fact that enterprise search is not just about finding web sites...and it is not even just about finding unstructured information anymore.  Enterprise search is about providing a way to find all relevant information across the organization, including information from structured and unstructured sources, and about surfacing knowledge, not just finding documents.

The first part of that is not necessarily new, but an important distinction when looking at the various enterprise search solutions out in the market.  Some have been designed with this in mind...others are bolting on these capabilities in various ways (although I have to admit they are doing this fairly quickly and in clever ways as they recognize the needs of enterprise customers).  However, the second part of that, about enterprise search moving towards finding facts and knowledge, is an important distinction.

The second, and more more important point highlighted by Halper is the fact that text analytics will be playing a greater and more important role in how enterprise users find the knowledge and facts buried across their organization in order to complete their tasks, make better decisions and innovate their business to create competitive advantages.  This article is definitely worth a read to see how text analytics and enterprise search are converging, and even includes a good example.  Halper is trying to help companies understand how they might use this new functionality and the potential value.

For a more specific and detailed overview of the value of text analytics, you should also check out her previous article entitled Patterns for Success - Options for Analyzing Unstructured Information. 

It's also interesting to see further touch points in both of these articles around how the worlds of business intelligence and search are starting to converge.  I blogged about the Convergence of BI and Search back in May and am continuing to see a lot of activity and inquiries from customers and analysts in this space.  I think this is an exciting area that is just getting started.

Enterprise Search and Security

Security is becoming a hot topic in the enterprise search world.  And a lot of companies are starting to claim that they offer secure enterprise search capabilities.  However, "handling" various types of security environments does not make a search solution secure.  Secure search means that when users perform a search, if an underlying content repository is using security, and a user is not authorized to see certain content, that content will NOT show up in the results list.

Now, once again, some vendors will claim that you can "integrate" repository security.  However, that typically requires a lot of development work - redeveloping content crawlers that interpret and index the security of the underlying repositories.  This is a fairly complex task and not one that should be taken lightly.  For better value, look to systems that have out-of-the-box support for indexing the security of the underlying systems. This is part of why Google continues to get dinged on their ability to deliver "secure" search, as Dejan points out in a comment on one of my previous blog entries.

Todd Leyba has a great post on on this - How Secure is Your Search? - worth a read if you want to understand more about all of the implications related to "secure" search for the enterprise.  You should also check out "Enterprise Search: Mapping Security Requirements to Enterprise Search, Part 1: Defining Specific Security Requirements" from New Idea Engineering.  This does a good job of highlighting what you need to think about.

Making Enterprise Search More Accessible

Over the past year or so, there have been a plethora of low cost search offerings introduced to the market.  This has been great for organizations since it is providing them with a lower cost of entry to begin taking advantage of search capabilities.  However, most of these solutions are requiring organizations to sacrifice functionality and quality for price.

That may be fine for the basic site search needs of many smaller organizations.  However, as organizations grow or departments want to extend their deployments to take advantage of some of the more advanced, enterprise search capabilities, they will be forced to move to entirely new platforms or begin trying to plug in various third party components and develop their own customizations.

IBM has taken the first step in trying to address this challenge by providing a lower cost entry point for its advanced enterprise search and content integration offerings.  This will make it easier for organizations to start off small, but still have access to rich search capabilities.  And it will provide them with a search platform that can grow with them and be incorporated into their broader enterprise environments.  You can read more about this OmniFind Starter Edition offering on the IBM site.  There is also a Starter Edition offering for the IBM content integration software.