Friday, October 24, 2008
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Those companies embarking on an Enterprise Search initiative should be aware of the fact that the majority of search initiatives fail. According to a study conducted by Accenture, 65% over users are completely dissatisfied with their search tool. The first step in avoiding a failed search initiative is recognizing that unlike other infrastructure projects, delivering a project on time and on budget does not mean the project was successful. The key to search is getting people to use the system, because unlike an email or Active Directory, users don’t have to use the tool you provide if they don’t like it.
The second step to a successful search project is recognizing that one size does not fit all. Companies and organizations produce and consume data in different ways. In many cases, this is the source of an organizations competitive advantage. Yes, you certainly can get SharePoint Search up and running quickly out of the box, but without considering how the search system can be optimized for the unique requirements of your company, much of the potential benefit of the system will never be truly realized.
The good news is that SharePoint Search is a platform. Microsoft designed it to be extensible. As a Microsoft partner, BA-Insight has developed a product called Longitude which extends the platform to provide features that one finds in best of breed competing solutions. Longitude is an add-on to SharePoint Search that provides enhanced usability, relevance, and connectivity.
Usability or user experience is a challenge for all enterprise search technologies. Users are so accustomed to searching on the Internet, that they expect enterprise search to be the same. The challenge here is that Office documents, PDF’s, etc, are much larger than simple web pages. As such, users must download, open, and manually search through them. Users find this experience to be arduous. To improve the user experience, Longitude provide a unique preview technology that enables users to preview the most relevant page in the document in the same amount of time that one would view a web page. This saves employees hours of time per year. The short video demo below showcases this functionality.
Usability Video Demo
Relevance is another challenge for enterprise search technologies. While most people think of relevance as being a relevance ranking issue, often poor relevance is related to poor connectivity. If SharePoint is not indexing the data in a system that is important to you, you will never get a relevant search result from SharePoint. This is another aspect of SharePoint Search that is highly extensible. SharePoint’s Protocol Handler Framework is what enables SharePoint to index different types of content sources such as file systems, SharePoint Sites, etc. While SharePoint can index the most common data sources out of the box, Microsoft leaves connecting to other systems and custom applications to partners such as BA-Insight. BA-Insight’s Longitude provides a connector framework that enables SharePoint to index ECM systems such as Exchange Private Mailboxes, Documentum, Hummingbird, WorkSite, and Symantec’s Enterprise Vault. Longitude is also capable of indexing ERP, CRM, and custom database applications. The short video demo below highlights some of the key functionality that the connectors provide.
Connector Framework Video Demo
Whether you use BA-Insight’s product to extend SharePoint Search, or do it yourself, doing so dramatically improves the chances that your search initiative is successful and SharePoint Search becomes a mission critical application in your organization.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
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Hello everyone,
Please join BA-Insight on Tuesday September 30th at 2 pm EST for a live webcast on KMWorld.
Our focus will be on Ehancing the SharePoint Search platform. We'll be covering everything, from Microsoft's FAST acquisition to why most companies are dissatisfied with Enterprise Search implementations and what can be done about it.
Please register here:
http://www.kmworld.com/Webinars/Details.aspx?EventID=101
Hope you to see you there!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
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A friend of mine is in the process of interviewing at Google and asked me for assistance in prepping for the six or seven interviews that Google is known for. As a Microsoft partner, BA-Insight is often called by Microsoft into competitive situations with Google so as part of my job, I'm more knowledgeable about Google than most. Our conversations led us in different areas, but kept coming back to the power of Google's brand. Clearly the Google brand is what is keeping users loyal and coming back. Google continues to focus on simplicity, usability, and relevance.
Apparently staying focused is not as simple as it seems or sounds. Take Microsoft Live for example. I was taking a quick look at how BA-Insight was being ranked by Google, Yahoo, and Live this morning. When I went to the Live Search page (http://www.live.com) , I was presented with a beautiful picture of what turned out to be Kagoshima Japan. The image was vivid and took up the entire screen. After a few seconds, three boxes appeared and then disappeared. On a mouse over each box, a text box would pop up giving more detail about the picture.
I sat there for a few minutes thinking about what just transpired and regardless of how I framed it, I concluded that this was a usability nightmare. When people search, they are trying to solve a problem. Anything that gets in the way of that can only be negatively perceived. After hitting the page, I sat there for 20 seconds looking at the image before I remembered why I had come to the site in the first place.
So what does Microsoft want the Live brand to represent? I thought about this over breakfast, but I'm afraid I still haven't a clue. I did decide, however, that I would like to visit Japan one day.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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BA-Insight will be attending ESS West in San Jose taking place September 23rd and 24th.
Please stop by booth #318 for a demo of newly released features which extend the usability, relevance, and connectivity of SharePoint Search, and Microsoft Search Server.
Hope to see you there!
Monday, June 09, 2008
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For those of you attending TechEd this week, please stop the the BA-Insight booth (#1151).
Our team will be presenting several new features that provide SharePoint Search and Search Server with powerful capabilities. One of these features is called Parametric Search which offers significant improvements on your standard Advanced Search page. I'll leave the team the rest, so as not to steal their thunder.
Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
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Today at the SharePoint Conference, the BA-Insight team will be announcing a new product line - Longitude for Microsoft Search Server. This is very exciting for us, because it opens up a huge market. Companies and organizations that don't intend on deploying SharePoint can deploy Search Server and extend the search capabilities with all that Longitude provides. The full press release can be found here.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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Please join BA-Insight at the SharePoint 2008 Conference (http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/default.aspx) taking place March 3rd thru March 6th. Search is going to be a focal point of this conference.
BA-Insight will be exhibiting in the partner pavilion at booth 100.
Friday, February 22, 2008
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I'm pleased to announce I'll be presenting a Live Webcast on behalf of BA-Insight hosted by KMWorld on March 25th. The title of the webcast is - Microsoft Enterprise Search: Extending SharePoint for Advanced Search Solutions The webcast will focus on how the SharePoint Search Platform can be extended to address sophisticated Information Access Requirements.
Chris Bochenski, Director of Enterprise Search at Microsoft will be joining me for this one hour event.
Please register with KMWorld by clicking this LINK
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
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Microsoft is announcing the release of two new search products slated to be released in the first half of next year. Both products are designed to address the needs of companies that require a search solution, but aren't willing to commit to the purchase of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS as it's often called). The MOSS offering contains a number of modules such as Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Records Management, in addition to Enterprise Search. Many smaller organizations where unwilling to pay a higher price just to obtain the search piece. This enabled Microsoft's competitors to successfully attack the low end market. Companies like Google, with Google Mini, and IBM with the IBM-Yahoo! OmniFind edition has done very well in this market according to the analysts.
One of the products is called Microsoft SharePoint Search Server Express and will be available as a free download. This is clearly a reaction to the low priced Google Mini which starts at $2,500 and IBM's offering which is available for free. The Express Edition is currently available in the Release Candidate Version at the following location:
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/...
.....searchserverexpress/download.aspx
Pricing for the more robust SharePoint Server for Search has yet to be released, but Microsoft has announced it will have serveral new features such as a Federation framework that will enable partners to develop connectors enabling Federated Search. BA-Insight is currently leveraging this framework developing a number of connectors to different data repositories. The current list of partner connectors can be found here:
Friday, November 02, 2007
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Just a quick note of congratulations to the team at Stratify who were just acquired by Iron Mountain for $158M. http://www.stratify.com/news_events/press_releases/press_release74.html
Anyone familiar with the Stratify story knows that the company almost went of business when the Internet bubble burst. The companies management took bold steps to refocused the company on Legal e-Discovery where it has since prospered.
Congratulations to the Stratify team!