Comments on: Enterprise Search Hype: An Example

By: Search-Related Conferences: Where’s The Beef? | The Noisy Channel

Search-Related Conferences: Where’s The Beef? | The Noisy Channel — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:48:09 +0000

[...] amount of conference spam” in the enterprise search space. Sharing his frustration with the marketing and hype that passes for technical discussion in this field, I posted a comment extolling the upcoming SIGIR [...]

By: Daniel Lemire

Daniel Lemire — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:37:28 +0000

This is just the age-old tension between engineering and marketing. If you read Dilbert, you already know all about it.

Back when I was a consultant, I had clients who sold things I would presumably do, before they spoke to me.

It is mostly harmless because nobody reads these interviews.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Touché. If it were my call, we (Endeca) would have a bit less spin on our front page. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have any authority over our marketing department. That said, the site does go into a lot more detail than that description, if you click through the links beyond that front page.

But it’s still apples and oranges. It’s hard to pick what to put on a home page to address the broad set of people who arrive there. It shouldn’t be hard to answer a question like “What is the basis of your firm’s technical approach?” with more than buzzwords, and I offered my own example as demonstrative.

By: Bob Carpenter

Bob Carpenter — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:34:46 +0000

It's not unfair to single out one company. Just about any provider of information access software is good for something similar:

The information in your existing systems could be worth far more to your business. XXX's unique technology lets anyone explore and analyze this information, unlocking its value. Other technologies like search, business intelligence, and databases just weren’t designed for the types of exploration that lead to this value. XXX’s information access software has a purpose-built architecture that makes it straightforward for you to succeed and eliminates many of the challenges and risks associated with these earlier technologies.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:29:21 +0000

There’s a lot of work on different kinds of information seeking behavior in the library and information science literature. I think that this research is highly applicable to enterprise search, or at least should inform how we build and apply enterprise search technology.

For example:

http://library.humboldt.edu/~ccm/fingertips/kuhlthau.html

By: Joe Mako

Joe Mako — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:05:34 +0000

Your short explanation of what Endeca does, reminds of how Juice Analytics describes the 5 Phases of Data Analytics Maturation, where they say "Good information tools are just like an experienced safari guide." Do you think there are similar phases for enterprise search?