Fast deal muddies Microsoft search strategy

A lot of people see Microsoft’s agreement to buy Fast as just another example of how mergers and acquisitions are leading to inevitable consolidation in enterprise software generally. I’m not so sure it’s as cut and dried as that.

Most M&A is done to fill a gap in functionality or to grab market share. The Fast deal does both but it would also appear to cut right across Microsoft’s strategy of late last year when it described a plan to develop its search capabilities by organic means with a product called Search Server 2008.

Microsoft now says it plans to integrate Fast with Search Server and SharePoint but, having just cost Redmond $1.2bn, the Fast technology is a racing certainty to be predicated.

It’s a slightly odd state of affairs as it’s only a few months since Microsoft was describing how Search Server would soon be able to compete at the top end of enterprise search but, like Newcastle United parting company with coach Sam Allardyce, one can only assume that Microsoft saw the light a little at an odd juncture.

One report suggests Microsoft also might have taken a close look at Endeca and Autonomy before deciding Fast was the pick of the bunch available. Of course, Autonomy, at perhaps twice the price of Fast, would be pricey given Microsoft’s relatively Scrooge-like attitude to acquisitions, but both of these companies will now be under more sale scrutiny than ever, of course. It will come as no surprise that the most likely buyers are IBM, Oracle and Google.

Incidentally, Fast, like Autonomy, has R&D in Cambridge. That’s Cambridge as in the great university, punting on the Cam and so on, not Cambridge, Massachusetts or some other Cambridge. In enterprise search, at least, there is a part of the tech world that remains forever England.

Social software implementers: read this

Thomas Vander Wal is a man with at least two claims to fame. One was his invention of the term 'folksonomy' and the other his coining of another term, 'infocloud' or 'info cloud'. Anyone who's involved in social computing will have bumped into each of these phenomena. They are the way that ordinary folk tag and access information, rather than having to work with conventional rigid taxonomies.

So the man's no slouch when it comes to information, its organisation and architecture, especially in the digital social world. He's a pioneer and a deep thinker. And, this week, he brought a ray of sunshine into my life.

I'd been working on a content management, collaboration and web-publishing project. Trying to nail all the inputs, outputs, tags, relationships, and so on was not easy. But it seemed right that I should do this mapping without any consideration of the actual software tools that would eventually be brought to bear on the problem. The approach owed much to the clear thinking Lee Bryant of Headshift, who explained that he always works on user needs long before thinking of what solutions to apply.

So, having got all my ducks in a row, I decided it was time to investigate the software and services that would best deliver the elements. But a quick diversionary visit to Twitter revealed a message from Thomas Vander Wal. He'd posted 'The elements in the social software stack' on his blog. And he explained in considerable, and convincing, detail how and why social software worked. He even had a diagram to clarify how the bits hung together.

It was a perfect reality check for my own thinking. It explained the issues way beyond my own articulation. I won't spoil his story but I'll give you a clue: The running order for the elements to work is: Identity, Object (social object), Presence, Actions, Sharing, Reputation, Relationships, Conversation, Groups and collaboration.

If you're involved in introducing social software into your organisation, read this single post, even if you read nothing else.

Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the blogosphere

He’s an award winner and an information professional at the leading edge of where the industry is going. Roddy MacLeod tells IWR about his involvement in trailblazing blogging.

Q. Where is your blog or blogs?
A. There’s the Heriot-Watt Library blog Spineless (at http://hwlibrary.wordpress.com) and News from TicTocs (http://tictocsnews. wordpress.com). TicTocs is a JISC-funded project to develop a service to transform journal current awareness. There’s also a private library staff blog I created to post details of anything of interest, a private TicTocs project blog for the project consortium, and a blog in Emerge, another JISC project (http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/roddym weblog). I also write a fun pseudo-travel blog, which I’m too embarrassed to reveal to any but close friends.

Q. Describe your blog?
A. Spineless provides news, views, information and advice on Heriot-Watt Library’s resources and services. We try to create eye-catching subject lines and write posts from the reader’s perspective, explaining what they may gain from whatever is under discussion. There have been posts about e-book services, open access, useful web tools, and even what we did over the summer. In the future I hope to get some students involved in posting. News from TicTocs keeps stakeholders updated with the project’s progress. We’re currently busy with technical development, so most of the posts have been about journal table of contents’ RSS feeds.

Q. How long have you been blogging?
A. Since 2005.

Q. What started you off?
A. I discovered by chance that there were several hundred bloggers claiming to be located in the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are actually uninhabited. It seemed such a ludicrous yet free-thinking idea that people could locate themselves virtually, anywhere, and then write blogs (some of which supposedly describe life in those islands) that I got hooked. Later, I realised there was also a serious side to blogging.

Q. Do you comment on other blogs and what is the value of doing so?
A. I have some RSS feeds for search terms such as TicTocs, which allow me to monitor any blog that mentions the project, and I comment on those posts, often just to thank them for their interest.
I also make occasional comments on one or two other library and information blogs, if I think I can add anything to the discussion. With respect to fun blogs, comments encourage the bloggers, so I regularly contribute to a handful.

Q. How does your organisation benefit from your presence in the blogosphere?
A. The Spineless blog is one way to market the library, give it a higher profile, and make sure that expensive resources are exploited. News from TicTocs is, I hope, building interest in the future service.

Q. How does it help your career?
A. I think bloggers are scratching the surface of what may be achieved in the future, and it’s exciting to be involved in all this. Also, the best way to develop and learn is at the coalface.

Q. What good things have happened to you solely because of blogging?
A. Blogging has helped me keep up to date with new trends, and my circle of virtual friends has increased. It has also, I hope, made me aware of writing things that will interest readers, rather than just myself.

Q. Work aside, which blogs do you read just for fun?
A. Blogs that are located on uninhabited islands, and Silversprite (www.silversprite.com) because its author is an eccentric with a good photographic eye.

Which bloggers do you watch, link to and why?
I hate to admit that I monitor 250 feeds via Bloglines, but some of these are RSS feeds rather than blogs. I regularly check Phil Bradley’s blog (at http://philbradley.typeapad.com) because he’s completely on top of things; Really Simple Sidi (http://rafaelsidi.blogspot.com) because Rafael Sidi often has new and informed angles on things of interest; CleverClogs (www.cleverclogs.org) in the hope that I can understand Marjolein Hoekstra’s posts (which recently included the following: “Twitter to Skype Mood Message using Twype”); UK Web Focus (http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com) because Brian Kelly is informative and amusing; and Lorcan Dempsey (http://orweblog.oclc.org) because he’s a big thinker. Peter Scott’s Library Blog (http://xrefer.blogspot.com) contains lots of news items of interest. Maeve’s Blog (http://maeverest.blogspot.com) is interesting, and, of course, the IWR blog http://blog.iwr.co.uk) to keep up with industry news.

First step taken in copyright consultation process

This morning the British Library (BL) hosted the Intellectual Property Office Copyright Exceptions Consultation launch.

The consultation is the next phase for the government following last year’s recommendations on copyright law from Andrew Gowers. The Gowers review was widely seen as encouraging from a library and scholarly perspective. It recommended exceptions for institutions like library’s and archives from certain elements of copyright law. This could include their ability to format-shift copyrighted works in order to continue their safe preservation.

Outlining his vision for the IP consultation, Lord Triesman, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Intellectual Property and Quality, repeatedly called for contributions from interested parties across the board.

Speakers hailed from the British Phonographic Industry, National Consumer Council and British Universities Film & Video Council. Opinions and questions from attendees and speakers alike were sharp but remained civilised.

The minister pointed out that it was necessary to understand that adjustments would need to be made to copyright. The process would be an organic one, as that would be the best way of “staying up-to-date with changes in attitude, culture and technology”   

BL CEO, Lynne Brindley, identified the eminent polarisation present in the debate during her speech. She highlighted to the audience that “Exceptions in copyright law are fundamentally important for the society, culture and economy of a democratic society as, depending on how and where exceptions are allowed.”

Brindley outlined four big questions she believed that the consultation process needed to address;

1. How can we best ensure the interests of rights holders are respected and protected, while at the same time respecting and protecting established exceptions that are present in copyright to engender knowledge, learning and creativity?

2. How can a complex area of law like copyright be simplified to the point of intelligibility, and therefore gain legitimacy amongst the new generation of digital natives who see the right to mix, mash-up and share as being exactly that, a right?

3. How can the democratically established public interest elements of our copyright law, as represented by exceptions, be translated and made relevant in the digital age, when they are being undermined by private contract?

4. To what extent will or should copyright law be harmonised internationally, and to what extent will national differences in law be defensible or desirable on the internet - a world with linguistic but not geographic borders?

If you want to join the debate (deadline is 8 April 2008), get in touch with the UK Intellectual Property Office and email them at copyrightconsultation@ipo.gov.uk, telephone +44 (0) 1633 814 912 or just add your comment on our blog. For a further run down of the morning's events there is an interesting post over at the Open Rights Group site.

EMC’s Document Sciences buy points the way for ECM

Merger and acquisition activity has been the name of the game in enterprise content management for the last few years so it was no great surprise to see EMC adding to its content management and archiving division with an $85m agreement to buy Document Sciences in the dog days between Christmas and New Year.

However, whereas a lot of the buying and selling in ECM has been about consolidation, this is a “tuck-in” deal, meaning that it is a purchase EMC can easily afford, of a company that adds incrementally to its portfolio rather than changing the face of its strategy. That said, I think it’s indicative of the direction in which ECM is heading.

Documents Sciences’ Xpression suite helps firms automate document output and communications. If you want to create contracts, marketing correspondence or company policies, its software can help. More importantly, it has pre-built hooks into ECM software, as well as ERP and CRM programs, so output management is not a silo but an integrated part of your business infrastructure.

A lot of ECM 1.0 has been about taking a belt-and-braces approach to content. It has sprung from the “save everything” and “keep the CEO out of jail” period of post-Enron paranoia. The Document Sciences deal is a reminder that making use of that stored content through automated business processes should be the raison d’etre of ECM. A fully-functional ECM system is a system for saving time by creating a single, intelligent repository of content that can be reused and repurposed in many ways.

ECM shouldn’t be a glorified storage dump and it’s good to see EMC recognise this.

Egoless blogging?

I've spent (wasted?) a goodly chunk of the last month in Twitter. For those who haven't encountered it, it is a rapid-fire, miniblogging system which restricts each post to 140 characters. For those so-minded, it means they can post ten times as many items per day as when they were blogging. The posts appear on your computer screen or (selectively) on your mobile phone as text messages.

As you might expect, many of the 'in-crowd' hang out there - Scoble, Macleod, Le Meur and so on. A lot of the time they don't so much Twitter as witter. But then, every twenty posts or so, someone comes up with some really useful information. Obviously, you choose who to 'follow' so your diet should include some nourishment along with all the filler. The trick is not to eat everything that's put in front of you. Push it around the plate a bit and pick out the good bits.

A couple of months ago, these same people were all over Facebook. It was 'the' place to hang out. And, before that, of course, they were all busy trying to become 'A-list' bloggers. I don't think blogging's died for them but, judging from the current mood, Facebook is definitely falling from favour.

The great thing about all this is that if the ego-driven, time-wasting, blog postings are being shrunk and shifted to Twitter, then what's left ought to be a better, more thoughtful, blogosphere.

We can live in hope.

Happy new year.

Freedom of information – three years on

Unsurprising news today that MPs from the Commons Justice Committee have recommended that the government need to severely strengthen the Data Protection Act. The report followed numerous information security breaches that came to light, in particular the loss of 25 million personal information records at the end of last year.

The BBC points out that at present, “government departments cannot be held criminally responsible for data protection breaches”, if the committee’s recommendations are followed, that could certainly change.

Over the Christmas period it also emerged that nine National Health Service trusts had lost patient records, believed to include personal information. This bookended the loss of 3 million learner driver details a week before, when the information was sent to a US private contractor.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has warned that there is more to come.

Meanwhile, I came across this snippet of research conducted for his office which was released earlier in the week. The findings examined the positive impact and benefit the Freedom of Information Act has had, three years since its inception.

Polling 1,000 people, the results showed over 80 per cent of respondents now have more confidence in public authorities because of the act. This increased from a figure of 58 per cent, taken three years ago – just before the Act was put into place.

Essentially the respondents felt their public institutions were now more transparent and accountable than before.

There is no mention of whether confidence in their MPs who voted to place restrictions on the Act last year, citing necessary cost reductions as justification, would have had any effect on the results.

I do wonder if twelve months from now a similar piece of research would lead to positive figures like the “three years on” study seem to reveal.

If strict measures are put into place and action is taken quickly moves could be made to restore some faith. Hopefully such measures will motivate those with responsibilities of protecting sensitive information: to treat it with the respect it deserves. That will need to apply as much to business as to government.

Ultimately business leaders and civil servant bosses will need the guidance of information experts like our readers. Let’s see if rock-bottom public confidence in governmental data protection can be restored this year. The only way is up – isn’t it?