As Predicted...

I'd noted in a blog post on Nov 7 that DELL might purchase a storage hardware or technology within the next 3-6 months. I was right, of course, but didn't realize how soon I'd be proven right. The company is 'The Networked Storage Company' and the founder is a former EMC UK executive.

Their model is brilliant - simple yet very effective. No question that DELL saw the gem and grabbed it. The only thing is, their website (TNWSC.com) states that they are 'fiercely independent' in the sense that they do not owe allegiance to any one vendor. However, with DELL now buying them out, how does that change things?

From their website's FAQ section:

Check out their FAQ here: http://tnwsc.com/faq's.html (I'm not a fan of apostrophes where they DON'T belong, especially in plurals).

TNSWC do not recommend solutions, yes, and they have a methodology called 'Point of Proof' which DELL is going to market, but still the idea of a previously independent entity flaunting its disinterest now getting bought out by a storage vendor is somehow a bit odd, although I'd think it will make no difference in how TNWSC will continue to work or how DELL will treat its old (and new) customers -- because ultimately credibility (and honesty) is everything. As long as they continue to save their clients tons of money and guide them through the labyrinth of storage acronyms and technologies who cares! I look forward to seeing how DELL exploits this to-be-hot-soon market (that of IT Storage consulting). Companies have invested millions (and billions) of dollars in their complex IT (storage) infrastructures, so if they want to see returns who can blame them! As an analogy I'd say such firms are like the patient advocacy firms - they promise results for your investment; no more no less. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_advocacy: another hot trend considering healthcare costs and a seeming apathy towards the very people that fund the system - the patients.

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Another curious thing I read recently related to IBM's release of the semantic search (for email), available on their AlphaWorks site (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/projects/avatar/)

The first thing that'll come to anyone's mind is Google Desktop Search (GDS) - a very powerful and unimaginably quick search tool that I used for a long time before the index became a bit much for the disk (I have a pathetic 12 GB disk). Now, if you had a 100+GB disk with a lot of documents/email etc you'd really want GDS. GDS however does a (I think) strictly string-search approach - no 'intelligence' or 'rule-based search'.

The new tool from the Avatar research team does a lot of similar things -- it mines unstructured information and renders them searchable (albeit in an 'intelligent' fashion -- heuristics, really; so watch out for cognitive biases). So what's new? I know that Stratify (used to be known as Purple Yogi) used to do the same. I think Stratify was funded by In-Q-Tel, apparently the funding arm of the CIA.

The problem statement posed by the researchers/inventors is nothing new - there's a whole lot of information that's just lying there, waiting to be found, associations waiting to be made, text waiting to be indexed. To make the process of digging through the dirt cleaner, quicker, easier, and accessible is an unenviable task. Imagine a corporate website that has individual blogs/mini websites/documents all over the place, containing sensitive, important, and critical material that's probably needed by many others (or they don't know that they need it). An index-and-search tool such as Google's SearchAppliance would be a great thing to have, but only to search for actual strings (again, I think they simply index and search - corrections from the knowledgeable welcome).

With IMB's OmniFind (Omni is overused to the point of being a cliche' now) you could type in, say, 'requirements gathering' and it will search even for something like 'how to create great requirements' or 'the art of successful project management' etc - you get the picture. I'd like to repeat that this is not a new area, but to my knowledge it's also not an area that's been developed very well in the consumer area (including corporate customers). And therefore such initiatives are most welcome as they'll help people do better searches and save a whole lot of time in finding the things they're looking for -- so they can be more productive and efficient.

Not to mention they'll REALLY help trial lawyers when they do e-Discovery (remember, all those rules that you're going to be punching in, creating associations and relationships) could become evidence - not just the results but also the RULES AND THE INTENTION(S) behind the rules as well.

Anyway, I'll give it a try and update this blog sometime next month with my findings on how good it is.