SharePoint 2013 - Planning a Search Strategy

The Olympic Games and US Presidential Elections come around every four years but SharePoint upgrades come on a three year cycle. There are still organizations using SharePoint 2007 and in the process of migrating to SharePoint 2010 and now we have SharePoint 2013 in all its glory.  

Microsoft also seems to be hinting that in future there could be more frequent upgrades. Before long you will probably be able to major in Microsoft Upgrade and Migration Planning at most major universities.

My particular interest is in enterprise search and here I have to congratulate Microsoft on the progress it has made since the fairly terrible search functionality in SharePoint 2007. The company was also smart enough to go out and buy FAST Search and Transfer in 2008, but not quite smart enough about financial due diligence and building a sensible search technology strategy for itself and for SharePoint.

The Technology Story So Far

The immediate result was the arrival of FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010, abbreviated to FS4SP. This took a lot of the components of FAST ESP 5.3, suitably modified to SharePoint 2010, and offered a substantial enhancement to SharePoint Search 2010 which itself was a significant leap forward from the search offering in SharePoint 2007.

Two issues immediately became obvious. First, many companies were convinced that they now had a licence for FAST ESP 5.3 and had no idea of the real state of affairs. Second, no one in the Microsoft partner community had any idea of how to get the best (or indeed anything at all!) out of FS4SP. My experience says that not that much has changed since launch unless the company has brought in external implementation expertise.

In 2010 Wrox published "Professional Microsoft Search" by Mark Bennett and his colleagues that covered all the Microsoft search products (including FAST ESP 5.3) in 450 pages. It is an excellent book because of the substantial amount of guidance it gives on the skills and management attention needed to get the best out of any search application.

It was not until earlier this year that Microsoft itself published "Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint," which runs to 450 pages just on FS4SP. There are so many omissions from this book that it would take me the rest of this column to list them, but the most notable are no references at all to using search logs to manage search performance and a total absence of any indications of the staffing requirements to support the product. It creates the impression that search implementation is a project, when at the minimum it is a program and in reality it is a journey without end. 

The other significant problem is that (unlike the Wrox book) the book does not tell you what FS4SP does not do. A good example is document thumbnails, which out of the box are only supported for Word documents and Powerpoint files. Certainly there are some good third-party solutions (Documill comes to mind) but that misses the point.

Fortunately there are many excellent search implementation companies (Comperio, Findwise, Raytion and Search Technologies for example) that can really make FS4SP sing and dance but that inevitably adds to the implementation cost. Even then, any company running FS4SP probably needs a search support team of at least 3-4 people full time. A look at Sadie van Buren’s invaluable SharePoint benchmarking service shows search way down the list in maturity of implementation.

 

Continue reading this article:

1 2 Next Page >

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Data Delights at the Olympics - It's Social, Mobile, Big and oh so Revealing

Does the athlete who wins the most Olympic medals also win the most social media clicks per day?

Though many of us might think this may be the case, the reality is that swimmer Ryan Lochte beats out most-medaled Michael Phelps by a pretty handsome margin.

According to a realtime study that the data scientists at bit.ly are conducting for the Guardian, Lochte averages 61,295 clicks vs. Phelps 48,902 (swimmers, by the way, win more Olympic social media clicks than any other athletes). Track star Usain Bolt comes in third with 33,781.

It’s worth noting that because the study is being done in real time, these figures are likely to change, though at this point in the games, Lochte will be difficult to dethrone.

Back to the Tech Talk

Now of course, we at CMSWire aren’t here only to report on fun facts gleaned from Big Data sets that are being generated at the Olympics (though keep reading because there are more to come), we have to tell you something about technology, so get this, the scientists at bit.ly are creating their analysis using an experimental technology called realtime, and you too can use it with links you create.

What’s really cool about what bit.ly is doing with Olympics data is that they’re looking not only at numbers of clicks, but they’re also finding the link as to why something might be spiking at any particular moment in time.

Big Data in Context

Take, for example, that the number of clicks for Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang spiked 46,934 times the Olympic average (the largest click spike of the games) following his crash into the first hurdle. Yahoo sports call the picture of the former world record holder kissing the hurdle and hobbling over the finish line with the help of some friends as one of the most remarkable images of our time.

And while ten years ago, and even five years ago, it would have been impossible to note such a large spike in views, not so today. Consider not only the viral nature of the web, but also all of the smartphones in China. This ain’t your big sister’s Internet.

It’s also somewhat of a rarity to see an athlete’s clicks spike again and again, but that’s exactly what is happening for trail-blazing, scarf-wearing Saudi Arabian track star Sarah Attar whose country (or at least its rulers) prefers that its females not compete in the games.

Though Attar did not fare well in competition, she did win the hearts of people all over the world many of whom could not have witnessed her presence at the games were it not for their smartphones.

And though it would be great that every spike were celebratory, Canadian soccer player Melissa Tancredi won a shame-worthy social media spike when she stomped on American Carli Lloyd's head. Though she reportedly received no penalty from an official during the game, social media sneered loudly. Website FanIQ said that the head-stomping might be the most disgraceful moment of the 2012 Olympic Games.
 

Usain Bolt image courtesty of Nick J Webb on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Editor's Note: You may also be interested in reading some of Virginia's other articles on social media at the Olympics:

— Tweet Trouble at the Olympics

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Mobile and the Era of Fragmented Communication

In the lead up to the Olympic Games this month, London added Wi-Fi to its subway system in an effort to help keep communications among visitors open. But last week it was clear that mobile engagement issues were taking their toll when an increase in social media began interfering with mobile networks on which the games themselves depend.

The International Olympics Committee asked viewers to "use another means" to send texts and tweets because the activity was overwhelming operator networks. Many users turned to over-the-top content (OTT) to offset the networks and streamline communications as a result.

Over the Top and In Demand

These issues may be surprising, considering the advanced infrastructures in place and our increased expectations for faster than fast networks that power our mobility. However, a new study by tyntec, found that US operators are better prepared to more effectively deal with and profit from OTT services compared to European operators.

Previously, tyntec reported there was great opportunity for younger populations to utilize OTT services, which can help users communicate more efficiently and lowers costs associated with traditional SMS technology. This new report continues to emphasize the opportunity available as well as the discrepancies that exist across countries to implement and facilitate these services.

The report by mobileSQUARED and sponsored by tyntec, OTT: How Operators can overcome the Fragmentation of Communication shows a considerable discrepancy in attitude and a huge lag in uptake between Europe and the US:

• 100 percent of US mobile operators are already partnering with OTT providers, while only 18 percent are currently doing so in Europe.
• 25 percent of European operators have already seen losses in revenue by up to 5 percent. The US has yet to see any decline in revenue.
• Almost 75 percent of European operators anticipate OTT will impact revenue losses by up to 11-15 percent in the coming years. In comparison, the US is bracing for losses of up to 30 percent.
• 42 percent of operators believe that over 40 percent of their customer base will be using OTT services in 2016.
• OTT blocking and “walled gardens” are preventing adoption in Europe; whereas, the US is well positioned to profit from OTT, in part, because of our flat rate plans and infrastructure. 

Overall, the study suggests that European mobile operators feel more threatened, with 79 percent of European operators indicating that OTT clients on smartphones are a threat to traditional SMS and voice-based services.

An Era of Proliferation and Fragmentation

When we talk about OTT services, what exactly do we mean? Applications like Skype and What’s App are best known, with Skype leading the OTT charge with over 900 million users spending over 1 billion minutes a day. And while in 2012 20 percent of global smartphone users actively use OTT services, it is predicted to reach 45 percent by 2016.

So why the fragmentation? As OTT services expand and attract more users, it’s expected that more companies and developers will look to capitalize and flood the market with OTT services. Until then however, a majority of the existing proprietary OTT (Over-The-Top) communication service providers do not permit cross-platform functionality, therefore limiting the capability of their services. As the report puts it:

Consequently, the rise of these OTT services has created an era of fragmented communications in which consumers cannot easily communicate outside the ‘walled gardens’ of their respective service/app. This weakness presents mobile operators with an ideal opportunity to adopt a key role in enabling OTT services and associated revenues, as they seek new business models to offset the decline in voice and messaging revenues."

Here, Thorsten Trapp, CTO of tyntec discusses the latest figures and forecasts of the whitepaper and what they mean for Operators.

Global events like the Olympics help to showcase the era of fragmented communications, helping us all better understand the need for more interoperability and the opportunity the industry has to improve mobile communications. But it shouldn’t require such wide-scale events to highlight the lag — anyone who has ever sent a text only to have it arrive hours after, can appreciate the utility of OTT services.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com