Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of business productivity solutions at Adobe, did little to cushion the blow when he said to attendees at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference: "Enterprise software is failing." Too many companies are neglecting the needs of the users and are unable to deliver solutions that support and encourage customer-driven collaborative and social experiences. As a result, years of failed promises, failed integrations, and costly implementation have also made consumers reluctant to move from traditional methods onto the web. "It's a high cost problem anyway you look at it," Tarkoff said.

Companies have historically been based on a system-out rather than a user-in approach. In other words, they've taken the "internal constraints of [the] businesses, masked the complexity, and served it out to users as a next-generation platform." What companies should be doing instead, Tarkoff said, is understand how users-"not fictitious users," he warned, but "real users"-prefer to work and how they want to incorporate new technologies into their applications. Only then can companies achieve the complexity and diversity that is required for new capabilities to take root. These new problems are changing the way companies measure and customize, but by thinking about the needs of every person in the value chain, Tarkoff said, "we're able to transform [the customer] experience, and serve better."

Companies are forced to redefine what Tarkoff called "the moment of truth"-that is, the moment the customer and service provider come together. This calls for, among other things, designing features that previously existed only in silos and, more broadly, define expectations as it applies to the user and the world they live in. According to Tarkoff, there are three key enablers that will evolve the individual work experience into a highly-connected, conversational one: client and cloud; social computing; device and desktop.

Adobe, Tarkoff said in a final plug for his company, is working with developers and users to create "customer interaction solutions."

For consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, making the shift to an enterprise 2.0 culture wasn't easy, but Walton Smith, senior associate, and Art Fritzson, vice president, at the firm would argue that it was well worth the effort. "If we're going to be a better consulting firm," Fritzson told the audience during the afternoon presentation, "The Secret Sauce of Enterprise 2.0: Success at Booz Allen Hamilton," "then we have to be giving the best of what Booz Allen has to offer, not the best of what an individual has to offer." The concept took five years to take root, then another 10 before it was in full swing, resulting in the company's Hello.bah.com social enterprise platform, which earned the Open Enterprise Award for 2009 at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference's east coast event this past June.

The problems at Booz Allen Hamilton were typical of most businesses: Information was floating around in systems with authors unknown; search was inadequate; and conversations between employees were trapped in emails, telephone calls, or in-person meetings. The goal was to move everything into an online environment so it was not only searchable, but searchable by the entire company.

Fritzson recalled how people were wary of the getting rid of a widely-used system like Outlook, but he reassured, "we're not trying to get rid of outlook. We're trying to make those emails more intelligent." Eventually, he said, people will see the value of sharing messages in a public space, rather than locking it into a long "reply-all" chain.

Half of the company's budget is aimed toward change management, explained co-speaker Walton Smith. For the next generation of employees, there's a disconnect when they're forced to work in an environment where their cell phones with more computing power than their work computers. "Our big effort is to get folks to being from hoarders of information and get them into the conversation." However, Fritzson emphasized that it's not a generational difference, such that he sees older generations just as eager to participate.

Currently, Booz Allen Hamilton has accumulated around 480 communities that contain anywhere from five to 5,000 people. These individuals are talking about what they're passionate about, which, in turn, gives the company situational awareness about what its consultants are excited about. When higher-ups expressed concerns about mixing work and pleasure, Fritzson stood firm. "I would not make concessions that this was all about business," he said. "It had to be fun."

(www.e2conf.com)

A series of recent moves has focused attention on search and social networks. Social networks have turned their attention to enhancing search features on their sites, but what they really may be searching for is the way to effectively monetize their services.

MySpace has long recognized the potential value of its search functionality, hinting that it might like to auction off its search function to the highest bidder. In 2006, MarketWatch.com reported that "Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin, speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom Conference in New York, said that such a move would be one of the most lucrative ways to monetize MySpace."

This summer, things heated up. In August, Twitter quietly hired search industry veteran Doug Cook as its director of search-a move much commented on in the blogosphere. According to his LinkedIn profile, Cook has served as VP of engineering at Yahoo! and Inktomi. This addition to the team followed Twitter's VP of operations Santosh Jayaram's May discussion of the possibility that Twitter would not only index tweets but would also index the links included in tweets.

In an effort to improve its search features, networking giant Facebook acquired FriendFeed in August. FriendFeed originated many of the most popular aspects of Facebook's News Feed function, such as the "Like" function.

Why all the emphasis on improving search on these sites? "It's really pretty simple actually. ... They can't find stuff," says Susan Feldman, research VP of search and discovery technologies at IDC. Turns out it's a bit more complicated than that-but not by much. Like most things, it all boils down to money. According to Feldman, "You can't do ad matching unless you've got some sort of ability to match an ad to a query and to appropriate material. ... That requires that you have search technology." In other words, these sites need good search technology to make target advertising better and to build successful business models.

Any old search algorithm won't cut it because, as Feldman puts it, "Basic keyword search can only go so far." In an environment where all the content is user-generated, many problems can present themselves; not the least of which is the ever-changing language of cyberspace. "There are a lot of different ways to say the same thing," Feldman says, adding that keyword search will almost certainly have to give way to meaning-based search to really enable users to find what they are looking for when querying a site such as Twitter or Facebook.

Even with some of the difficulties facing social search, it has some advantages over a generic search engine query. Feldman says, "Looking in a smaller collection of information, you get better results." For instance, she says, conversations can be helpful. A user can find the answer he or she is looking for; but the user can also find some context. The original post may have good information, says Feldman, "but the remarks may offer a more-balanced view on that topic."

In essence, the real value to the searcher is the wisdom of the crowds. But Feldman also sees promising developments coming out of some of the old search staples. She says Yahoo! is worth keeping an eye on when it comes to the future of social search. Yahoo! allows users to opt in to a program that allows the service to troll your email, Flickr account, chat history, and other related data to better inform its search. As an example, Feldman says, Yahoo! could use her husband's information to realize that he is a coffee connoisseur and to know that when he searches "java," he means coffee and not the software. With all of the information available through user profiles on services such as Facebook, that kind of capability can only be a hop, skip, and a jump away.

(www.idc.com; www.facebook.com; www.twitter.com; www.myspace.com)

Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search applications company, has expanded its relationship with business intelligence company SAP AG. Under the terms of the agreement, Endeca will integrate Xcelsius software and SAP BusinessObjects software into the Endeca Information Access Platform.

Endeca has also announced a partnership with Informatica Corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, Endeca will integrate Informatica's PowerCenter and PowerExchange the McKinley release of the Endeca Information Access Platform.

(www.endeca.com; www.sap.com; www.informatica.com)

Attivio reports that Traction Software has chosen its Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) to replace Traction’s legacy enterprise search solution for easier indexing, retrieval of content and an enhanced user experience in its Enterprise 2.0 social software. As part of the selection process, Traction evaluated several solutions before choosing Attivio’s unified information access engine for its single, flexible API, full Java support, as well as its sophisticated and secure permissioning model, Attivio says.

In addition to needing a secure and flexible solution with granular permissioning that could extract and index text, including attachments—regardless of document form, Traction also needed multilingual support for its large overseas customer base, especially in Japan. Another factor in selecting Attivio was its ability to provide real-time field updates and dynamic facet generation, which improves the ability of users to quickly find what they need. AIE is 100 percent Java and runs in its own JVM, so it offers broad platform support for both Java and .Net APIs.

The AIE platform enables users to integrate content and data from internal and external sources to support information-driven solutions such as Web portals, e-media, customer experience, data privacy, e-discovery and data analysis. AIE features simple integration, true incremental scalability and a tiny footprint, and can be easily embedded in other products and applications. AIE’s flexible design reduces risk and speeds innovation through rapid prototyping and deployment. It is said to be the first Unified Information Access platform designed to push data to users and to other systems as new content matches saved queries, leading an evolution from finding information to effectively using information.

Safari Books launched Safari Books Online 6.0, the latest iteration of its online reading platform featuring dynamic content categorization, collaboration features, and improved search functionality. This new release will allow users to categorize topics of interest and share folders and notes with other users, as well as providing the ability to write reviews of particular books to share opinions with fellow readers.

(www.safaribooksonline.com)

U.K.-based search developer Simplexo is releasing an enterprise search app for Apple, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile 6 devices. Named Simplexo Mobile, the app can simultaneously search enterprise environments such as SharePoint, archival email, CRM and SAP implementations, and spreadsheets, delivering de-duplicated search results directly to a user's mobile phone. While not currently available for download, Simplexo indicated that the application will be available within the next month.

(www.simplexo.com)

Swedish Cloud OS developer icloud has released a new version of its desktop, with a Super Search capability and an updated start menu. Super Search integrates many online services with simultaneous search of your private files in the cloud. This version of icloud also introduces Universal Sharing, which allows users to connect and share files.
The free service, launched only 6 months ago, is now available in 26 languages and boasts 200,000 users in 170 countries.

(http://icloud.com)

Enterprise video search software is said to have saved a large storage and data management solutions provider $1.5 million in the course of a three-day sales event. NetApp used a solution from Altus to stage the formally live sales training event "virtually." The virtual event cost 90 percent less than the live event, Altus reports in a recent news release.

Jim Coleman, system engineering project manager at NetApp, says, "To streamline our sales process, we determined that the most efficient method was through enabling our systems engineers, resellers and OEM partners to be more knowledgeable and more productive so they can deliver the best presales guidance possible ... We had to empower our partners’ employees with the same product knowledge and ongoing support that we gave our internal people. Altus vSearch provides us with the knowledge, technology, accountability, security and control to do that. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to support our resellers and partners as aggressively and successfully as we do."

Altus says its solution enables NetApp’s in-house systems engineers, as well as several hundred of its partner companies that employ thousands of technical sales engineers, to become better informed, stay technically skilled and sell more effectively.

While Net App has organized many technical sales enablement events in the United States and in other countries, the company decided in 2006 that it could use the software-as-a-service-based Altus solution to combine the advantages of live sales events with the virtual benefits of fully searchable, referenceable, reusable media files, presentations and expert-based knowledge.

ISYS has launched its new 2009 Enterprise Access Suite, which is comprised of a core set of powerful embedded search, infrastructure and information access solutions. The company especially highlights the ISYS Anywhere mobile enterprise search server.

ISYS Anywhere is said to be the first mobile enterprise search server to enable secure "anywhere" access to data that resides across all information sources, including individual desktops, e-mail stores, file shares, external sites and enterprise applications. Using the ISYS Enterprise Server as its backbone, ISYS Anywhere is capable of delivering secure, immediate access to any browser-enabled device, from an iPhone to a BlackBerry and beyond.

The ISYS 2009 Enterprise Access Suite and ISYS Anywhere are available immediately.

Additional information on ISYS Anywhere, ISYS Enterprise Server, the ISYS Integration Kit for Embedded Search and the entire 2009 Enterprise Access Suite is available here.

Boston Litigation Solutions will use a scalable information management and discovery platform from Digital Reef to power its e-discovery and early case assessment (ECA) services.

The e-discovery and litigation support service provider will use the platform to provide advanced filtering and analytics capabilities to clients. The deployment will benefit Boston Litigation Solutions’ customers by reducing document review costs and by enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions on legal matters, according to a recent press release from Digital Reef.

Kevin Glass, managing partner of Boston Litigation Solutions, says, "Providing value-add analytics to our customers is a must, and to do so at the scale that Digital Reef provides gives us a huge competitive advantage with clients looking for smarter information management and streamlined e-discovery services."

Digital Reef says that its solution employs sophisticated analytics to remove duplicate and irrelevant content, significantly reducing the amount of information that has to be reviewed manually. By paring datasets into manageable volumes, businesses can make better use of internal resources for legal review.

Jive has released Social Business Software (SBS) 4.0, which the company calls its largest, most ambitious release since it introduced its integrated SBS platform for enterprises.

Jive SBS 4.0 enables organizations to extend SBS across every level of an enterprise to literally transform how people work, partner and address the marketplace. The enhancements and new capabilities in Jive SBS 4.0 reflect the increasing transparency between users' work and social networking habits and amplify the strategic advantages inherent in bringing those worlds together.

Highlights include:

iPhone and BlackBerry support—a new module allows users to create content and participate in active discussions from the iPhone and/or BlackBerry, or any mobile or desktop device with access to e-mail.

Jive Bridging Module—allows users to let employees capture relevant conversations taking place in their public communities, share them internally, collect and consolidate responses and go back out across the firewall to post a response.

Microsoft Office Connector—enables Jive SBS 4.0 users to work on any Microsoft Office document, spreadsheet or presentation in Jive or on their desktop. When users create and save Office content on their desktop, it is automatically published to Jive where the content is rendered for viewing and commenting directly from the browser. Additionally, users can view and reply to comments made in the browser directly from the plug-in in Microsoft Office.

Analytics—the module provides a powerful set of tools for community managers to quickly quantify and characterize the growth and success of their communities.

Foundational improvements—added enhancements to the core Jive SBS functionality that address evolving enterprisewide SBS usability, scalability, security and privacy requirements.

Microsoft showed off several new features for its Bing search engine, including Bing travel and improvements to healthcare results. Bing travel allows users to access information related to ticket pricing and flight schedules by entering information about destination and travel time, while similar functionality gives users access to prices for entertainment vendors and consumer items. The company also announced improvements to the Preview feature, and the ability to display e-mail addresses and phone numbers from the search interface.

(www.bing.com)

Connotate has announced Agent Community GEN2 Developer Edition, a new addition to the Agent Community GEN2 platform that adds developer functionality to its existing offering. Developer Edition features tools that developers and programmers can use to customize agents for their particular needs. Developers will be able to add scripts, loops, and API calls to the agents generated by the platform.

(www.connotate.com)

Explorys has announced an equity partnership with Cleveland Clinic that brings together a network of researchers and clinicians spanning millions of patient visits, diagnoses, procedures, and outcomes. Financing was led by Cleveland based 23Bell LLC and included Austin- based Genesis Inventions. The funding for Explorys was led by 23Bell LLC and included Genesis Inventions. Explorys was formed with the intention of accelerating data exploration and research collaboration. Explorys is designed to provide instantaneous search, tagging, and collaboration. Explorys will be led by president and CTO Charlie Lougheed, as well as CEO Stephen McHale.

(www.explorys.net)