In the News

Matt Mullen on IBM's Vivisimo Acquisition
16-May-2012 | Data Informed | "IBM Pushes Big Data Campaign into Enterprise Search with Vivisimo Acquisition"

Providing quality big data solutions, regardless of the data’s origin, plays into IBM’s plan to offer a comprehensive big data dashboard populated with plenty of cutting-edge elements, said analyst Matt Mullen, who follows the search marketplace for the Real Story Group. “Having a method of filtration or trust-building as one of those elements is eminently sensible if you see that as a big problem,” Mullen said. “All of us nerds love the business analytics side of big data, but IBM is addressing the issue of how practically this data is going to work to improve its clients’ businesses.”

Matt Mullen on IBM Vivisimo and Big Data
16-May-2012 | Fierce Content Management | "IBM buys Vivisimo for Big Data analysis"

Analyst Matt Mullen, who covers search for the Real Story Group isn't sure what IBM is trying to do with this purchase. He says, on the surface it appears to be about Big Data, but when you read the release carefully, there is something else.

"On the face of it, what IBM has done is acquire a nice bit of technology that has proven to be pretty good at federated search. This is in itself not really that big a news story, until you factor in the bracketing of this as being related to buzzword du jour: 'Big Data,'" Mullen said.

But Mullen later says he sees IBM using the technology to cull smaller data sets, which is a bit confusing.

"While I understand this process, it leads me to still have a couple of questions about this strategy; Isn't the point of Big Data that it purports to allow you to analyze data sets at a magnitude that wasn't previously possible? [Yet] Vivisimo is to be employed to build reduced data sets prior to Big Data analysis? Has IBM just invented 'Slightly Smaller (and maybe better quality) Data'?" Mullen asked.

Tony Byrne on Amazon CloudFront & CDNs
16-May-2012 | Fierce Content Management | "Amazon introduces dynamic content to CloudFront"

Tony Byrne of Real Story Group thinks this is an interesting addition to CloudFront, but it will present some challenges in his view.

"Amazon is clearly taking on CDNs here, and that is a marketplace ripe for more competition, but customers need to remember that to take advantage of dynamic delivery their applications have to be AWS-enabled. Very few packaged applications are, today," he said.

He adds that Amazon is clearly hoping more developers will create native-AWS services that will leverage dynamic content. "And that is possible," he says, "but remains largely in the future." Byrne says it's also important to understand that traditional CDNs have a lot more experience in this area.

"CDNs have learned some hard lessons about dynamic content. Challenges like cache invalidation and editorial integration with a WCXM represent very hard problems. Amazon may find that they are not so easily abstracted," Byrne said. 

Tony Byrne on Enterprise 2.0 and the challenges ahead
16-May-2012 | Document Magazine | "Options & Challenges in the 2012 Collaboration & Social Software Marketplace"

Every enterprise wants to succeed at "Enterprise 2.0", but industry research suggests that many initiatives remain experimental.

Irina Guseva on Customizing the Online Experience
08-May-2012 | Fierce Content Management | "Customizing the Online Customer Experience"

Irina Guseva, an analyst at the Real Story Group, puts CEM in the context of a larger web content management strategy. “In simple terms, CEM is a multi-channel strategy and practice with the goal of keeping customers happy. This strategy is supported by a set of tools that includes WCM, analytics, CRM, marketing automation, social media management (with things like sentiment analysis and big data intelligence).”

Guseva points out that despite many other plausible definitions, the challenge is not only in defining CEM, but in effectively implementing and practicing it.

One thing is clear though: It still comes back to content in the end. As Guseva puts it, “Content is still King. Context is the Queen.” That’s because providing content in context of what you know about the visitor is so important

Tony & Kashyap at Enterprise 2.0 in 2012
03-May-2012 | E2.0 Blog | "The Architecture track at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference"

Tony will kick off the track with a pre-conference workshop, "Insider's Guide to Evaluating Architectures and Selecting Vendors." As a customer, you have more choices than ever, in terms of architectures, delivery and license models, functional breadth, and integration alternatives; this session will help you sort it all out.

For the conference itself, Kashyap Kompella leads off with "Social as a Layer, Not a Place: Are We There Yet?" This session critically assesses a emerging architectures that posit social and collaboration services as a layer (rather than a place) to apply over diverse workstreams within the enterprise.

Matt Mullen on Amazon Web Services CloudSearch
19-Apr-2012 | Fierce Content Management | "Amazon Web Services releases search product"

Matt Mullen, who covers search for Real Story Group doesn't think it's necessarily a big threat to enterprise search vendors, at least not yet, and he believes it could require more work than Amazon claims. "First impressions is that it is a set of basic search functionality for public facing documents, suited to relatively tech-savvy small and medium enterprises," Mullen said.

Getting into the technical details a bit, at least based on Amazon's description of the service, Mullen said it could require a fair amount of work to prepare the documents for the service. Although, that could be said about a lot of search products--but not all products are claiming you can be up and running in an hour.

Real Story Group on UK Gov's Cloudstore
01-Mar-2012 | Computer Weekly | "Cloudstore succeeds in easing bidding process for suppliers"

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, analyst at Real Story Group said: "From what I can gather 250 firms submitted information on a total of 1500 services they could deliver to the public sector, and all of them have gotten duly listed on the site. That was the first red flag, and indeed further investigation reveals that as of now not one of those services has been tested or certified in any way at all; the claims have just been taken as verbatim. Even so, Cloudstore allows you to circumvent thorough tendering processes through the Official Journal of the European Community (OJEC), yet cannot guarantee whatsoever the quality or fit of the services it promotes."

Alan Pelz-Sharpe talks about the iPad
28-Feb-2012 | TechTarget | "Microsoft iPad Office app coming soon?"
The longer Microsoft waits to release an iPad Office app, the more businesses will come to realize work can be done without Office, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst for the Real Story Group, a buyer’s advocacy group based in Maryland. "[Apple] iPad users have had a couple of years now to work without Office."

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on CloudStore
24-Feb-2012 | Channel Register | "Gov CloudStore critics: 'Rollout too fast, contracts too short'"

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal analyst at The Real Story Group, told El Reg: "I can't say I was too impressed. Getting a web app connected to what essentially is a spreadsheet in four weeks is fine, but this should never have gone live at this stage."

"It's the quality and veracity of the information delivered that matters most. That information is nowhere near ready for consumption right now."

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on IT consolidation
01-Feb-2012 | Real User Monitoring | "IT Should Consolidate with Caution"

As we all know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so when you attempt to reduce duplication across systems in IT, you have to keep this in mind.

We’ve all seen through departmental purchases or sprawl or mergers and acquisitions, companies can be saddled with a dozen content management systems, multiple customer relationship management packages and so forth. What’s more, when users get frustrated by overly complex enterprise software, they sometimes take matters into their own hands and use simpler cloud services instead.

What’s an IT Pro to do?

This morning on Twitter, Alan Pelz Sharpe from the Real Story Group suggested that consolidation might not be as clear cut as you might think, and in fact, even if you sucessfully combined systems, what would stop them from proliferating willy-nilly all over again.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on the ECM industry
01-Feb-2012 | CMSWire | "The ECM Industry Continues to Grow"

The enterprise content management and document management industries have turned the corner, according to Real Story Group principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe. CMS Wire talked to Pelz-Sharpe, whose group recently released its annual report on the enterprise content management industry. The growth and movement in the industry is going to bring some new trends for 2012 and on.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe: Enterprise Search is not easy
01-Feb-2012 | Information Management | "Enterprise Search Is Not Easy"

We've heard cries that the enterprise search market is dead, that thefight is over and that it is now a two-horse race between Microsoft and Google. There may be some truth in this, but it's certainly not the whole story. The enterprise search market continues to move forward, albeit with a few major challenges. The downside is that these challenges can make what seems like a simple search product selection and implementation project for the enterprise more complex and costly than expected.

As of mid-2011, the search market is dominated by three big names, Google, Microsoft and Apache Lucene. The Google appliance continues to sell well at the departmental level within organizations. Microsoft, via its dominance with Office and SharePoint, has become the de facto search application for many back-office needs. And Lucene has become ubiquitous as an embedded search engine in many products and applications. With these three very different dominant search engines in the market, it can be hard to make a mark as an independent search vendor today.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on industry changes
01-Feb-2012 | KMWorld | "Tracing the ancestry of a product"
When organizations buy knowledge and information management technology, they often do so from trusted and preferred suppliers. On the surface, that approach makes a great deal of sense, but a closer look at what is being sold will occasionally make you think twice. Information and knowledge management technology offerings would appear to have evolved in terms of complexity and breadth over the past decade. Yet, some offerings on sale today have long and sometimes infamous heritages, even though their branding and marketing may suggest they are shiny new and "cutting edge." Gaining an understanding of a product's ancestry is essential work to undertake for any technology buyer in today's market.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on The Future of Enterprise CMS
18-Jan-2012 | CMSWire | "The Future of Enterprise CMS: Interview with Real Story Group's Alan Pelz-Sharpe"

The Real Story Group published its annual report on the enterprise content management industry last week. We talked to Real Story Group (RSG) Principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who outlined some of the main findings and who argues that the industry has already passed a turning point which will result in some established and newer trends gaining ground in the year to come.

The first thing to be said, apart from the fact that it has turned a corner, is that the document management industry is growing, says Pelz-Sharpe. The RSG research shows that far from hitting the industry, the current recession has seen many enterprises sticking with traditional vendors.

Pelz-Sharpe also points to the level of activity in and around newer cloud-based offerings. Enterprises looking for solutions that provide efficiencies to carry out their business dealings with reduced work forces see the cloud-based offerings as one possible solution.

Irina Guseva on Lots of talk, little movement toward cloud Web content management
04-Jan-2012 | Search Content Management - Tech Target | "Lots of talk, little movement toward cloud Web content management"

Despite all the hoopla surrounding Software as a Service (SaaS), organizations are taking the slow path to migrating to cloud web content management (WCM) systems, according to analysts, who say there’s more talk about the move than action.

“In general, there’s no big shift toward the cloud when it comes to WCM,” said Irina Guseva, an analyst with Real Story Group in Olney, Md. “I wouldn’t say companies are transitioning away from traditional on-premises software to the cloud even though the cloud has major impact, especially as it relates to open source software. It’s more of a complementary option for organizations, but the liftoff hasn’t happened.”

Like any SaaS software, cloud-based WCM promises advantages inherent in the delivery model, including quick time to deployment, reduced investment in hardware and infrastructure to run the system and the option for scaling to accommodate the ebbs and flows of business. While the ability to be up and running quickly is one of the more heralded aspects of cloud-based WCM, some experts say the ease-of-management promise has far greater appeal, as companies look for more efficient ways to administer and update burgeoning content stores to support a multichannel, global delivery strategy encompassing mobile, apps and the Web. 

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on Oracle's Endeca Purchase
19-Oct-2011 | TechWorld | "Oracle boosts enterprise search with Endeca purchase"

Oracle 's purchase of Endeca is not surprising, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst with the Real Story Group. Autonomy, which is Endeca's biggest rival, was in talks with Oracle before Hewlett-Packard acquired Autonomy , Pelz-Sharpe wrote, in a blog post.

"Though financial details have not been disclosed, it is safe to assume that Oracle paid far less than the $10 billion-plus that HP spent on Autonomy," he said. The Endeca acquisition fits neatly with Oracle's growing interest in the online retail space, Pelz-Sharpe noted.

"Endeca has carved out quite a niche in providing unstructured data analytics in the retail sector, with decent -- albeit broadly mimicked -- guided navigation capabilities," he said. "Additionally Endeca has a pretty good reputation for customer service and for investing in ongoing research and development, in sharp contrast to Autonomy."

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on Oracle purchasing Endeca
18-Oct-2011 | Computer World | "Oracle boosts enterprise search with Endeca purchase"

Oracle's purchase of Endeca is not surprising, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst with the Real Story Group. Autonomy, which is Endeca's biggest rival, was in talks with Oracle before Hewlett-Packard acquired Autonomy, Pelz-Sharpe wrote in a blog post.

"Though financial details have not been disclosed, it is safe to assume that Oracle paid far less than the $10 billion-plus that HP spent on Autonomy," he said. The Endeca acquisition fits neatly with Oracle's growing interest in the online retail space, Pelz-Sharpe noted.

"Endeca has carved out quite a niche in providing unstructured data analytics in the retail sector, with decent -- albeit broadly mimicked -- guided navigation capabilities," he said. "Additionally, Endeca has a pretty good reputation for customer service and for investing in ongoing research and development, in sharp contrast to Autonomy." 

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on Enterprise Search
12-Oct-2011 | Information Management | "Enterprise Search Is Not Easy"

We've heard cries that the enterprise search market is dead, that thefight is over and that it is now a two-horse race between Microsoft and Google. There may be some truth in this, but it's certainly not the whole story. The enterprise search market continues to move forward, albeit with a few major challenges. The downside is that these challenges can make what seems like a simple search product selection and implementation project for the enterprise more complex and costly than expected.

As of mid-2011, the search market is dominated by three big names, Google, Microsoft and Apache Lucene. The Google appliance continues to sell well at the departmental level within organizations. Microsoft, via its dominance with Office and SharePoint, has become the de facto search application for many back-office needs. And Lucene has become ubiquitous as an embedded search engine in many products and applications. With these three very different dominant search engines in the market, it can be hard to make a mark as an independent search vendor today.

We could add a fourth name to list in the form of Autonomy, the U.K. tech giant currently being acquired by HP. Though they remain a formidable force, Autonomy has lately been known for acquiring myriad companies and products linked together via the IDOL platform, and not a major enterprise search vendor.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe on Box.net's Salesforce Chatter integration
29-Sep-2011 | Fierce Content Management | "Box.net announces Salesforce Chatter integration and Salesforce funding"

Box.net held its first Boxworks user conference this week. It was like a coming out party for the growing cloud computing company. They made a splash by giving away a Motorola Xoom to every attendant, but the real news was a new cash infusion by Salesforce.com and a deal with Salesforce to integrate Box content in Salesforce Chatter.

Unfortunately details about the funding were scarce and Ashley Mayer, Box spokesperson, said they weren't really prepared at this time to provide any additional information on the amount or timing of the funding.

As for the integration with Salesforce Chatter, this is a big step as Box teams up with one of the giants of cloud computing around enterprise social computing. Chatter will be able to access Box content from within the Salesforce application.

Analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe, of Real Story Group, says these and other announced enhancements make a lot of sense. "Announcements beefing up security (cloud's key perceived weakness) and adding more and more collaboration functions are to be expected," he said.

He added, "Most SharePoint deployments are about basic file sharing, storage and collaboration rather than hard core ECM (aka process management) so why not promote the likes of Box as low cost but very functional alternatives you can integrate with? SharePoint is a threat or at the least a perceived threat to big ECM/Data Management players, Box is not."

At least not yet anyway. If Box keeps growing as it has been, it might become a threat sooner than these companies expect.