Turning Search Technology on Its Head
Jim Jansen thinks that most of today's search engines have things backward. The assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State University has developed a search engine assist system that actively helps people find the information they need.
The new approach is the direct opposite of conventional search technologies, which require people to actively look for guidance (if any is offered) somewhere on the browser screen. Jansen's Agent Improved Information Retrieval System (AI2RS) uses "implicit feedback" as revealed through the searcher's query patterns. Incorporated into a browser, the software monitors the user's search actions and automatically provides suggestions for structuring and refining queries.
Jansen says AI2RS shouldn't be confused with "Clippy", the much-derided Microsoft Office assistant that many people believe was designed with the sole purpose of irritating users. "We tried to learn from this experience," he says. Jansen notes that he and his co-researchers studied users' search habits and designed a system that interjects only when it knows the user is amenable to receiving assistance. "The goal is to help, not annoy," he says.
And help is what beleaguered Web searchers desperately need. "Research shows that 50 percent of all Web search results retrieved are not relevant," says Jansen. "This technology provides a 20 percent performance increase."
Jansen hopes to follow in the footsteps of earlier university-based search technology pioneers, such as Google (which began life at Stanford University) and Vivisimo (a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off). "We're definitely considering this technology's commercial potential," he says.
Easy Integration Dances
By Christopher Lindquist
Intergration | The siren call of "dead simple integration" has lured legions of software vendors, venture capitalists and CIOs into the icy depths in the last couple of decades, but past failure hasn't stopped adventurous souls from dreaming of future success.
One of the latest attempts is an MIT technology project called DOME, which has been licensed to start-up software company Tambora. Tambora plans to commercialize the integration platform, which it has renamed BreadnButter, in hopes of bringing super-simple integration to the masses. The project started when MIT began working with Ford to create a way to ease data sharing and collaboration among employees who were designing new doors and windows for automobiles. Ultimately, they wanted a technology that would allow the collaborators themselves to quickly and easily integrate data that included some 3000 parameters, rather than involving the IT department.
After seven years and $US4 million, a roll-out is now happening inside Ford. But Bruce Anderson, acting CEO at Tambora, says that the technology is far more generally applicable and could be used to integrate many different types of data and applications. As proof, Tambora has already launched a demo site (www.tamborasoftware.com) in which users can quickly integrate Excel spreadsheets that update in real time whenever someone edits cells. The company announced plans to launch a hosted spreadsheet linking service in May, with additional features - such as the capability to run a Tambora integration server behind a corporate firewall, and removal of the need to upload spreadsheets to the server - coming later this year. Tambora will also offer a number of pre-packaged, pre-integrated spreadsheets that will be available free of charge on the site, with customization available for a fee. Anderson also says that spreadsheets are only the tip of the iceberg for Tambora; the company has plans to introduce other Bre adnButter-based integration options at some point in the future
The ROI of Open Source
Is open source cheaper than commercial?
It all depends on the job at hand
By Bernard Golden
SOFTWARE | The ROI of open source software is a contentious issue. Several recent studies, conducted by Yankee Group, JupiterResearch, Forrester Research and others, have focused on the ROI of upgrading a Windows installation versus switching to Linux and have concluded that it is less expensive to stick with Windows. But the reports miss a critical point: Switching from Windows to Linux is the worst-case ROI scenario. After all, the new platform requires training and perhaps hiring new personnel - always expensive propositions - versus merely paying for licences.
A more important question is, can open source generate real ROI elsewhere? Yes. Oregon State University (OSU), for example, has Web sites that visitors need to search, so the school bought a Google appliance for about $US125,000 per year. Two years later, OSU's IT department, aided by the Open Source Lab, replaced the appliance with an open source search product called Nutch (licence cost: $0). Nutch is not as easy to use as the Google software, so additional administration costs run to about $US10,000 yearly. The overall five-year payback, however, even when you consider additional hardware and engineering time, still produced an internal rate of return of 2300 percent.
As they say in the weight loss commercials, these results may not be typical. But other companies have also found success. ABB, for instance, is an $US18 billion Swiss industrial company. When its Power Technologies Products (PTPR) business needed to integrate new features into its software infrastructure, the PTPR Software Factory Group constructed a J2EE-based "Integration Framework" using a popular open source tool called Jboss. By using open source, ABB estimates it can save $US1.1 million in just its first five factories, with further savings to come as it rolls out to more of PTPR's 52 locations. Interestingly, the Integration Framework runs on Windows and uses SQL Server as its data store, belying the perception that moving to open source is a massive rip-and-replace operation.
The key to success is determining which projects make sense for open source. To get started, treat each product individually. Savvy organizations consider both commercial and open source options for projects, and choose the right product for the given situation. Then make sure you evaluate using the proper time horizon. A single heads-up comparison between a commercial product and its open source counterpart may not offer good open source ROI, because the costs of training and switching can outweigh the cost of a commercial licence. But if you extend the time horizon to the realistic life of the application, it may tip the balance toward open source. Finally, take the entire organization into account. While a specific open source project may not offer great ROI, the cost benefits of pioneer applications often materialize downstream in later projects that are able to adopt the open source package. Even if you purchase enterprise licences for your commercial products so that your marginal cost for a new applica tion is effectively zero, keep in mind that someday, when those licences are up for renewal, that marginal cost may be much higher.
This column hasn't touched on any of the other reasons organizations use open source: flexibility, reduced operational costs through not needing to track licence compliance, and greater control of the organization's software stack, since there are no forced upgrades or product end-of-life announcements. Because ROI is so tangible, however, it is critical to address it explicitly. Just keep in mind that there is no single answer; you need to find the right choice for your organization and your application.
Bernard Golden is CEO of Navica, an open source consultancy, and is the author of Succeeding with Open Source (Addison-Wesley, 2004), and the forthcoming Open Source Best Practices
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