Enterprise Search

Some Good News in Tech Support

With all the complaints about customer service these days, we wanted to give a shout out to FAST Tech Support for a recent set of positive interactions.  Very professional, very patient, and they were able to "track the sun" by reassigning the call to various call centers around the world to continue working the issues beyond local business hours until everything was resolved, real team effort.  Ironically we had attempted to do this back at Verity in the early 1990s, but back then the technology wasn't quite up to it.

Come to think of it, we've also had some good interactions with some other companies' tech support and customer service folks recently, also worth a mention: AT&T (voice line), Verizon (in-store wireless card), GoDaddy, Dell (on-site service), GE (on-site service), Apple (in-store iMac and iPhone), HP (new HP tablet) and Tivo; HP is still working with with us on the new tablet, but they've made some progress and I'd give them an "A" for effort, and to be fair this is a brand new product.  Lest you think we live in some alternate universe, rest assured we've had less pleasant experiences with a few other household names lately, but calling those folks out in public is not our style!

And thinking about this a bit more, some higher level points come to mind:

1: As technology products get more and more complex, all products will have issues; zero problems is not a reasonable expectation when you're living on the crest of a technology wave.  But having a reputable company to call when the tech hits a glitch, and having the option of speaking to an actually being when none of the automated tools can handle it, is what sets these companies apart.  The open community support model can also work, albeit in a different way, if there's a critical mass of people, but not all technologies have this critical mass of energetic expertise.

2: We've noticed that many of the companies we've had good interactions with do conduct customer satisfaction surveys, either on an ongoing bassis, or after a specific tech support or customer service issue.  They seem to actually care about customer service.  To his credit, Bob Bramley had started a similar program back at Verity in the early 90's, which I inherited after he left.

3: Miles tells an anecdote about IBM customer service back in the day, also being content if something minor occasionally went wrong, seeing it as an opportunity for prompt and positive customer interaction, to help solidify customer loyalty.  This is still true today.  I've suggested Dell to many friends and colleagues because of their onsite support options, which do cost extra, but which are well worth it.

Yes, staffing with humans is more expensive then not doing so, but advanced technology really needs it.  And it's fine to try offering automated service as a first line of defense, if it's done well, and if there is clearly an escape hatch to talk to an actual person if the customer wants.  And if you already knew all this, forgive the platitudes.

So again, kudos to FAST, AT&T, Verizon, GoDaddy, HP, Dell, Apple, Tivo and GE for giving customer service a good name.

Gartner Magic Quadrant 2008 Now Available

If you have not seen it, the new Gartner Magic Quadrant for Information Access - their name for intranet and customer facing search - has been published and is available for viewing on the Gartner web site thanks to a pointer from Microsoft's Analyst Relations page.

The big story, one which must have them fuming in England, is that Autonomy has dropped down a bit, and the combined Microsoft-FAST offerings have moved up a bit. This puts Autonomy a bit higher up on the 'Completeness of Vision' scale - by a few pixels - but a decent quarter-inch below Microsoft on the 'Ability to Execute' scale. Endeca, IBM, ZyLAB and Vivisimo squeaked into the upper right quadrant, while Google moved right to the link splitting the 'Challengers' from the 'Leaders', but ever so close - one could say the Google dot is on the line. It's odd that Google is not higher on the 'Ability to Execute' scale, since that usually means how well funded the company is. Perhaps they are looking at the budget/sales for only the Google appliance; but even then, Steve Arnold's numbers put them above the others on the scale.

Some excellent search products fell off the list this year, as Gartner has changed their methodology. The products we feel still qualify for the report include Dieselpoint, SLI Systems, and X1 Technologies, as well as newcomer Attivio. The article has more details. And as the con artist Fagan said in the play base don Dicken's Oliver Twist, '...if you happen to pass the Tower of London, have a look at the Crown Jewels'.

The Future of Search is Simpler

Gary Szukalski, VP of Field Marketing at Autonomy,  gave a keynote speech at ESS West 2008 entitled "Meaning Based Computing" notable for its lack of vision. He was a replacement for Stouffer Egan, Autonomy's CEO, whose slides he likely used. The talk detailed the difficulties inherent in enterprise search, especially how challenging it can be to understand the full meaning of a word like "dog" or "shred" without context. We live in this world, we understand the difficulty.  While his talk outlined the direction of automatic categorization, alerts, profiles, dynamic and real-time clustering and schemas, it left me wanting real vision and a roadmap from the industry leader. He never rose above the complexity of information processing. 

In a sharp contrast, Google provided more vision in their 10-minute lunch pitch than Autonomy's same old key note speech. Google provided a clear vision: you can be up and operational in one day and search everything.  Simple to use and simple to administer.  In 2008, Google is not the naive implementation that we saw 6 years ago: they have made real progress toward their vision. While other companies are marching to that vision. Dieselpoint's OpenPipeline, Endeca's simple administrative controls, Fast's navigators, Autonomy's categorization, Google is providing the vision. The future is simpler and usable by everyone on the enterprise. We have along way to go - but we can change the business world.  We are moving closer to the vision of many sources of data providing insight and increasing the pace of business decisions.

New Idea Engineering Helps Orange County offer Residents Innovative Enterprise Search Technology to Community Web site

New search engine powered by FAST delivers quick and reliable search results allowing OC residents to easily find services

SANTA ANA, Calif. – September 10, 2008 – New Idea Engineering, Inc. (NIE) www.ideaeng.com and its partner InfoSolutions (www.infosolutions.com) today announced that they have helped the local Orange County, California government implement FAST Search & Transfer’s (FAST) Enterprise Search Platform© (ESP) technology for the county’s new and improved web site.

The County of Orange Information Technology Group, a public agency responsible for vital services to residents of Orange County, completed the first phase of the new site, implementing new Vignette portal and Fast Search technology, as well as converting several pilot agencies to the new site, in just four months.  FAST ESP will allow community members the ability to search the site more easily to locate information and interact with the county to reserve books, find park and recreation services, receive social services, and find quick and reliable answers to questions that arise in everyday life.

“With the support of the NIE / InfoSolutions team backed by FAST technology, our new search retrieval capabilities will have a significant impact on the delivery of information and services to our constituents,” said Satish Ajmani, Orange County's Chief Information Officer. “Our residents demand – and our staff provides – first class service. Since our comprehensive Web site encompasses online resources from numerous departments and agencies, we needed an infrastructure that seamlessly connects residents with essential information and services.”

The Web site’s new design and search platform connect Orange County’s 3.1 million residents to online services and individualized content for each of its departments. From paying property taxes online to locating information on animal care services or acquiring a business license, residents can now benefit from one of the most robust and user-friendly community Web sites available on the Internet.

Orange County selected NIE / InfoSolutions to implement FAST’s ESP technology due to the team’s extensive knowledge of the enterprise search industry as well as the complexity and scope of the project. The new search design required mapping each department’s and agency’s internal language and acronyms into user terms and building drill-down navigation to ensure users can quickly find accurate and reliable results. 

New Idea Engineering's President, Miles Kehoe, credits the project's success to the Orange County staff and the county’s visionary information technology team. According to Kehoe, “Migrating the old static Web pages to Vignette and FAST saved development time and cost, but ruled out a simple, ‘generic’ search solution. Ensuring that the search engine focused on the central Web page content rather than solely on the built-in navigation keywords was critical for providing relevant information to end users.”

InfoSolutions’ President, Bob Berberich, added, “On a project as complex as this, it helps to have a diversified team with deep skills to draw upon. It allows for much more than connecting the technical dots; it enables a creative synergy that allows us to truly address the client’s needs in both the short and the long term.”

To see the new site in action, please visit the Orange County Web site at: http://www.oc.ca.gov. 

Customer Facing Search: 7 eCommerce Friendly Search Engines

eCommerce Search: Specialized Customer Facing Search

Lots of vendors offer search, but as some vendors try to expand deeper into the Enterprise Search market, others are targeting customer facing direct-revenue producing systems.  They are looking to power either B2C or B2B sites.

These vendors are likely to pop up for one of three reasons:

1. Market Leader
2. Smaller player but with heavy focus / track record for powering commerce with search
3. Have technology directly targeted at eCommerce, with special results ranking or up-sell product suggestion engine, etc

And then there are the vendors you would think would be there... but we're not seeing so much of ...

Search Quality: You Can't Improve What You Don't Measure

In our latest survey of new newsletter subscribers we found that 29% had no formal metrics for measuring quality of search results.  Search metrics allow you to keep search on the right track and can be a powerful tool for managing your systems.  They are a wonderful source for insights and trends.  We thought we would share a couple that we think work well. Many of these are covered in greater depth in Interpreting Your Search Activity Reports in the Enterprise Search newsletter.

• Count the number of people who use search  
• Count the total number of searches  
• Count the number of zero search results  
• User feedback on top 100 searches  
• Track email complaints about search  
• Measure number of clicks on navigators (navigation menu items)  
• Business Goals  
•    
  • Reduce call volume (normallized for growth in customer base) by enabling self-service from search: results are good enough to reduce calls.
  • Reduce e-mail volume (again adjusted for growth in customer base) by enabling self-service from search: results are good enough to reduce e-mails. 
  • Revenue       
  • Add-on revenue       

Tips For Building Drill Down Navigators

Taking a cue from tagging at social networking sites, about 6 tags can identify most documents. Here are a couple tips for building drill down navigators:

	Who       Author             Attendees             Teams       Group             Project	Where       City             County             Site             Meeting Room
	What       White papers             Specs             Presentation       Meeting Notes             Audio             Products	Why - Visitor's Goal       Purchase Product             Find a Store       Service       HR Transactions
	When       Date             Event             Revs	How       Tips             Best Practices       Service Manual

 

We have  blogged about implicit versus explicit tagging, a big difference between enterprise and public web sites. And our article 5 Steps to Better Tagging is online in the archives of our Enterprise Search newsletter.

 

Some interesting Enterprise search events the week of June 2nd

There are two really interesting events happening next week that might be of interest.

First, Leslie Owens of Forrester is presenting a the Forrester Wave Enterprise Search platform webinar  on Monday morning, June 2 at 8AM. There is a nominal fee, but I think you will find it interesting.

Then, Leslie and several other interesting speakers will be at a free one day seminar hosted by FAST on Wednesday the 4^th in Redwood Shores California at the Sofitel Hotel. In addition to Leslie Owens' presentation on 'Technology Populism', speakers will include Jeff Spataro of Microsoft; Hadley Reynolds of FAST; and senior IT managers from Cisco and National Instruments.  Hadley, by the way, speaks and writes on Search Centers of Excellence and other innovations in the application of enterprise search. Be sure to register for the free FAST Search event.

A proposed standard for enterprise search

Dieselpoint has announced support for a technology it calls OpenPipeline, which can enhance the task virtually every enterprise search technology uses to get documents into the search index. They will be showing the pipeline at the upcoming Enterprise Search Summit on May 20-21 integrated with their new Dieselpoint Search 4.0, also on display.

The Dieselpoint press release claims:

OpenPipeline provides a common architecture for connectors to data sources, file filters, text analyzers and modules to distribute documents across a network. It is fully functional out of the box and includes an installer, a job scheduler, file scanner and crawlers, doc filters, and point and click interface with drag and drop module installation.

OpenPipeline is compatible with IBM's UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture), and is designed to connect UIMA annotators to other systems.

Document processing can be centralized or parallelized as needed. The transport mechanism is simple, web-services XML over HTTP. RSS/Atom feeds are also possible.

The development philosophy behind OpenPipeline stresses simple, elegant design, and massive scalability. Minimal external dependencies and straightforward plug-in implementation ensure that the learning curve is low.

OpenPipeline can be downloaded without charge from http://www.OpenPipeline.org. It's available under the Apache License.

Making this technology open source makes sense. The core technology for an enterprise search company, their 'secret sauce', is optimizing the index and making search great, not creating new code to parse the latest version of Microsoft Office or of Documentum. By embracing OpenPipeline, presumably we will start to see pipeline stages created by a number of smaller companies and individuals, easing the burden on enterprise search companies. And companies that provide possible sources of data like Content Management Systems, can create a single pipeline stage for their product that could work for every search technology, and be done with it.

To create a searchable index, all search technologies need to create a stream of text. If the source document is a binary file - Microsoft Word, for example - search vendors need to provide some way to read the format and convert it to text. The same is true of content stored in a relational database: each row represents a virtual document which needs to be extracted from the database and turned into a stream of text. This conversion is typically done as one stage of a pipeline. Other stages may include adding metadata, performing entity or sentiment extraction, or even enhanced language processing.

The concept of a 'pipeline' applies directly to many existing search technologies, each with a proprietary method of accessing content. On top of that, no search technology companies have cooperated with competitors to create standards. In the relational database world, standards have made life much better: consider ODBC and JDBC. Because of these standards, developers can write code that can connect to just about any relational database. Not so in search. Maybe this effort will help break the ice. Stay tuned...

As enterprise search users, are you glad to see an open source solution for part of the search puzzle?

The problem with alerts - Google or otherwise

I use Google alerts to keep an eye on current events. Over the weekend I got an alert: "AMEC uses Verity's K2" - Now, since Verity is part of former competitor Autonomy, and because K2 is generally not being actively marketed, I decided to read the article. Sure enough, the content is dated January 2004, but Google Alerts thinks it is brand new. So I have to conclude that either the publisher just changed something on the page, or Google is just finding that document - either way, Google thinks this is news and in reality, it isn't.

Not long after we started SearchButton.com, we met the Google founders Sergey and Larry. Mark Bennett, my co-founder at SearchButton and here at New Idea Engineering, asked about the then-young Google's handling of dates and recency, and the Google guys took the position that date wasn't that important. This has led to a couple of energetic email exchanges over the last few years, but my recent alert illustrates the problem Google - and most other search technologies have - in generating really useful alerts. In fact, this subject was of such relevance to enterprise search owners, we had an article about the importance of dates in the first issue of our enterprise search newsletter in April of 2003.