Search vs Structure
Search is the religion on the Internet today, with Google as its high-priest. And the story has become so convincing that IT executives in companies start to believe that we can do the same inside the walls of a company. Earlier I already wrote about a Google pilot (the
Power of Search) and then I already noted that Google has some advantages, but definitely not all the answers. So before we take the plunge towards relying everything on Search we need to step back a little and think. We could make the same mistake as we did when we moved to desktop computing (which was a recipe for anarchy in terms of information management).
Funny enough the other hype - around master reference data management - is at the other extreme end of the scale. This is where we try to set up the taxonomies of the company. So it could be that the answer is in the middle: We should do 'Search' - it helps if all information is indexed and easily available ... and we should see what we can do to define some key master reference data objects, because this will provide a mechanism to provide more context to the information we try to index. Information related to master reference data will rank higher and the reference data itself will provide navigation in the mountains of results available through search. So the seamingly extreme ends of the scale actually provide building blocks for the retrieval architecture of tomorrow.
Labels: Google, master reference data, search, taxonomy
Application Services
Probably the big paradigm shift currently happening in the industry is the move to 'Services' hosted by 3rd parties. Who wrote some years ago already that the '
network is the computer'? (well, it was one of Microsofts rivals - SUN). This vision is becoming a reality now. Why have Word and Outlook installed, if their online sisters are more reliable, cheaper, ...
Right now Google apps is growing to become a serious competitor of Microsoft, and even Amazon is entering this market with offering storage services ... Soon we have SAP moving to a service model (they are already working on this for some years) and soon after this others will follow.
This trend will give new opportunities and challenges to the industry. The opportunity is that we get the option to focus more on what really matters for the company (because services like storage, word processing, accounting are becoming commidities, just like electric power ...). The other challenge is that we need to rethink the way we manage our networks. At the end of the day the only asset that stays is 'our' information (the data and documents) that need to be managed, protected, etc. Opening up to market services changes this model.
I see it mostly as an opportunity, since it will put information management firm at the center of what we have to manage!
Labels: Google, Information Management, SOA
The Power of Search
Having powerful Search tools in place is one of the critical things that will change the way Information Managers have to work. Our work used to be about organising information, ensuring its availability, security and quality, now it is about opening up our internal infrastructure so people can look for themselves. Search is the key enabler for this.
But we are not there yet!
First of all there is still no 'out-of-the-box' solution that can easily cover everything. Although I must say Google has come a long way. The
Google Search Appliance is about the closest thing you can get to 'out-of-the-box'.
I have evaluated the solution and below is my verdict:
+ Ups: it just works like Google on the WWW and therefore people love it & trust it. This is great for internal marketing and yes it actually unlocks a lot of hidden information!
- Downs: 1) it still struggles with internal Security ... Having powerful search in place requires a culture change in the organisation. It requires breaking down the walls between departments. 95% of all information inside a company is open, so why not share it?
2) The other thing is that a lot of information is very homogeneous in a corporate organisation and Google is not great at that (especially if there are no cross links). So therefore there is still work in educating the content creators to be specific about their content when storing the information on the network
Labels: Google, search
