Author Archives: X1

July 1, 2014 · 8:39 AM

Why the “Google Paradigm” Has Damaged Enterprise Search

by Barry Murphy

In last week’s post about what we are looking for with enterprise search, I mentioned what we call the Google paradigm.  A reader asked me to be more specific about what the Google paradigm actually is and it’s a worthy request.  The Google paradigm is actually a summation of the resulting perceptions based on the popularity of Google; those perceptions are that enterprise search is as easy as Google web search, and that a central index of an enterprise is the right way to do enterprise search.  The result of these perceptions is an approach to enterprise search that has not solved the problem of allowing business workers to easily and quickly find the information they are looking for.

It is important to note that web search is not the same as enterprise search, and therein lies the major problem with the perceptions caused by the Google paradigm.  Google is an excellent tool for informational web search – I use it frequently when researching various topics that I need to learn more about.  The point is that Google is for Web search, which uses organic linking (looking at the number of sites that link to a particular page) to determine the rank order of results.  That approach provides zero value in the enterprise because the users typically have more than an inkling of what they are looking for, and perhaps have specific criteria they know are relevant, and thus require an interface that allows them to quickly filter the result down to a manageable number.

But, in reality, enterprise search is often synonymous with Google – the web search paradigm.  There is a tendency to think of search as easy.  After all, Google completes search queries for users; it is easy to assume that technology will eventually just know what users are looking for and offer it up to them.  This message is reinforced in the age of Big Data and business intelligence.  There is a fascination with the stunning dashboards we see in CRM and SFA applications.  There is a belief that analytics will replace any need to search and find information.

While analytics will certainly help many business processes, its biggest impacts will be in feeding structured data into business processes and informing those responsible for the process of performance.    There is much value to be had in that and the Big Data market prospers as a result.  Despite the availability of advanced business intelligence tools, though, business workers still struggle to find the one email or document necessary to complete the next urgent task.  People waste hours looking for it, only to most likely recreate all that work when they can’t find what they need.  Organizations lose millions of dollars per year to this lost productivity and typically don’t even know it.  Companies implement traditional enterprise search to help employees, but only make searching more frustrating because those solutions do not leverage the power of the business worker’s brain.

Web search – the Google paradigm – has allowed us to take search for granted.  When doing a web search, however, users are typically searching for something authored by someone else and the system is using programmatic analysis to conduct the query.  For a business worker, though, search is very different.  The worker has a sense of what they are looking for because it is very specific to them – the method of analysis is personal, not programmatic.  Web search is inquisitive in nature.  But, the web search approach – which has been pushed on users by IT for years – does not work well for business workers looking for the information needed to do their jobs.

The Google paradigm also ignores the challenge of scalability.  Indexing the enterprise for a centralized enterprise search capability requires major investment.  In addition, centralization runs counter to the realities of the working world where information must be distributed globally across a variety of devices and applications.  The amount of information we create is overwhelming and the velocity with which that information moves increases daily.

 

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Google Data Center (Click to enlarge)

 

The image above is of a Google Data Center (one of more than several dozen that power the internet).  Look at the sheer magnitude of just what it takes to power those Web searches we are all so used to.  This illustrates exactly why it is so hard to “Google the enterprise.” And yet many people, and even CIOs, think doing so should be easy.  Such has been the approach to scaling traditional enterprise search solutions in the enterprise.  And while Google obviously has solid software to drive its web search, hardware and sheer computing power on a massive scale are essential components of Google’s success.

The only “successful” enterprise search deployments – as judged by customer references – tend to exist only in a very specific type of organization: highly regulated, with deep pockets.  These organizations can make enterprise search work because, due to regulatory and Legal drivers, they have unlimited budget for hardware to make the solution scale.  They are also able to invest in double digit FTE’s to implement and maintain the system over time.  But, these organizations represent “the 1%.”  Most organizations do not have the budget or human resources needed to make traditional enterprise search work.

There will always be hardware investments required to make productivity search work, but such investments do not need to be heavy in the way that traditional solutions have been.  Rather, organizations should look at more flexible options that mirror the realistic IT environment they live in.  That environment typically includes a hybrid of on-premise, virtual, and cloud-based infrastructure and content spread across multiple repositories.  Rarely – if ever – is content centralized.  As such, a good productivity search solution will allow access to the content that business workers need the most while leaving as little footprint with IT as possible.

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June 24, 2014 · 9:49 AM

With Search, What Are We Looking For?

by Barry Murphy
Needle haystack

Recently, I was contacted by an X1 user and fan and he asked me, “why isn’t X1 more famous?”  His point was that X1 Search 8 solves a problem that every company has – people can’t find their information.  They are unable to find that one email or document that they know exists, but that they just can’t remember where they put it.  This X1 fan happens to be a consultant that works with many, many companies and reported that, no matter what client he visits, all have workers that constantly complain about not being able to find what they are looking for.

It can be a marketer’s nightmare to have someone ask why your product is not more famous, but it was a question I had already been giving some thought to.  Part of the challenge when it comes to the “search market” is that most people think of Google when they think of search.  Google is easy to use and helps everyone navigate the Internet much more efficiently.  But, web search is a much different beast than search within a company.  The reality is that 80% of what business workers are looking for exists in their email, file shares, desktop folders, or SharePoint sites.  The worker knows the content exists, has an idea of what he/she is looking for, but simply doesn’t know where it is.  But, when enterprise search solutions were first rolled out, they were built like web search solutions – as if someone wasn’t really sure what they were looking for.

The misperception that the Google search paradigm can apply within the enterprise resulted in enterprise search solutions improperly conflating several search use cases.  But, web search and big data analytics – the new search du jour – are very distinct search types that require features and functions specific to their own unique workflows and use cases. Refashioning big data analytics or web search tools for enterprise search is a recipe for failure and certainly not an end-user driven requirement.

Big Data and the business intelligence (BI) tools built to address Big Data are hot topics.  And BI can deliver some very good information to workers that are managing structured processes.  Every company has deployed some kind of BI tool, but – as our consultant fan let us know – every company still has the problem of business workers not being able to find information.  That is because, when it comes to business worker search, the human brain is the most powerful analytical engine for business productivity search.  Other search solutions have sophisticated algorithms that try to predict things like document taxonomy classifications.   That can be useful at times, but not to enable search for the business worker because the interface and workflow are not designed for business productivity search.  Additionally, analytics-driven solutions require a lot of hardware to make those algorithms churn.

There is a more cost-effective way to solve the problem and ensure that business workers will stop complaining – deploy a search solution with a user-friendly interface that allows humans to use their brain to filter and sort through their information assets.  X1 Search 8 can do that – and do it in today’s virtualized and Cloud-heavy environments.  It is time to realize what business workers are really looking for when they turn to search tools – the one document they know exists that has the information necessary for them to do their jobs in any given moment.

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June 17, 2014 · 9:15 AM

Social Media Discovery is Game-Changing, and The Smart Practitioners Get It

by John Patzakis

Last week we featured guest blogger Mark Lanterman, Chief Technology Officer of Computer Forensics Services, Inc., who discussed how he performed innovative and cutting-edge social media investigations. The key takeaway is that social media evidence is very often publically available, opening up a whole new world in terms of litigation tactics. Imagine if you could have extensive, instantaneous and legal access to the Plaintiffs’ file cabinet and hard drive at the outset of every case? Well, that is more or less the situation with publically available social media evidence, which can be quite extensive.

Social media discovery efforts can clearly make the difference in, or at least greatly assist your clients’ case, especially if one moves quickly and proactively at the outset of the litigation, or even a claim at the pre-litigation stage. This is why Lanterman and his team often act proactively in their social media investigation and collection efforts, resulting in game-changes results for their clients.

And this is no longer lost on legal experts and the likes of the American Bar Association and State Bar Associations who draft ethics rules governing attorney’s general duty of competence. The New Hampshire Bar Association recently published Opinion 2012-13/05 providing that lawyers “have a general duty to be aware of social media as a source of potentially useful information in litigation, to be competent to obtain that information directly or through an agent, and to know how to make effective use of that information in litigation.” And the ABA recently published Comment [8] to Model Rule 1.1, which provides that a lawyer “should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” (See also: California Proposed Formal Opinion Interim No. 11-0004, “Attorneys who handle litigation may not simply ignore the potential impact of evidentiary information existing in electronic form.”)

In this context, Lanterman’s compelling case study is something that every litigator and eDiscovery professional must heed. Lanterman’s assessment that social media evidence is relevant and important in over 70 percent of the cases he handles is consistent with our tracking of case law. It is also consistent with our discussions with many of our other service provider partners who use X1 Social Discovery on a daily basis, on behalf of their law firm in insurance company clients. The smart practitioners who understand this and embrace social media and website discovery are getting ahead by providing their clients a very powerful and effective service. In some cases, they are single handedly winning cases for their clients.

Earlier this month my colleague Barry Murphy wrote about the 80/20 rule when it comes to social discovery. Among the 20 percent you have eDiscovery professionals like Mark Lanterman who see social media evidence as a huge tactical advantage for their clients resulting in a rapidly expanding practice and gained credibility with his clients. The 80 percent consist of firms that have a handful of copies of X1 in their toolkit and employ them a few times a month in response to being specifically told to do so by their law firm clients. This is surprising as eDiscovery consultants are technical experts, who by definition are supposed to be ahead of the curve or at least abreast with developments in the field. They certainly should not be laggards.

But the 80/20 rule doesn’t apply just to eDiscovery service providers, we see some very savvy attorneys who utilize social media evidence in a highly strategic fashion. In fact, in some cases we see the attorneys ahead of eDiscovery service providers on this issue. There is one particular story that stands out from a big firm litigator, lamenting that one eDiscovery service provider he spoke with included floppy disks on their ESI preservation checklist, but not social media. And with social media discovery now essentially mandated as a matter of professional competence and ethics, a serious eDiscovery practitioner or attorney does not want to be on the wrong side of the 80/20 rule.

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June 10, 2014 · 8:43 AM

“Elephant in the Room” – Case Studies of Social Media in Civil and Criminal Cases

Editor’s Note: We are pleased to welcome a guest blogger Mark Lanterman, Chief Technology Officer of Computer Forensics Services, Inc, (CFS) a Minnesota-based eDiscovery and computer forensics services firm. CFS features an innovative and cutting-edge practice supporting social media investigations.

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Social media is now a very public extension of an individual’s life.  Its widespread appeal and ease of use has given rise to new digital profiles that share extensive and mostly publically available information. However, despite being a treasure trove of potentially relevant information, social media is often overlooked in litigation.

In my practice — involving matters performed on behalf of law firms and law enforcement agencies — social media is, more often than not, a crucial stone to upturn for key evidence, and in many cases proves to be the “smoking gun”.  In fact, social media evidence is relevant and important over 70 percent of the cases we handle. And thanks to the public nature of social media evidence and the automation and scalability of X1 Social Discovery, we are able to proactively collect social media evidence in our cases, which has been a game-changer in several instances.

For instance, I recently received a call from the local sheriff’s office regarding a series of threatening Twitter and Facebook posts being made against public figures.  The mentally ill man responsible for the posts included updates and photos from his visits to the pubic figures’ homes.  The up-to-the-minute captures we obtained with X1 Social Discovery gave law enforcement the opportunity to catch up with the suspect before he was able to elevate his threats and/or delete his threatening posts.  Furthermore, X1 Social Discovery’s collections are easily delivered to the necessary parties in a timely manner, which allowed law enforcement to charge the man with terroristic threats and stalking.

Social media is also extremely valuable for eDiscovery investigations in civil cases.  For example, in a recent intellectual property theft suit, I used X1 to collect the publicly available LinkedIn profile of a disgruntled employee, who left her company for a competitor.  The woman’s LinkedIn profile disclosed that she began her tenure with the competitor nearly three months before she officially quit.  Using the date provided, I was able to determine that same week she copied thousands of confidential electronic records to a USB thumb drive from her work-issued laptop.  The evidence collected by X1 Social Discovery proved to be extremely valuable, and when used in conjunction with other evidence, a settlement was reached in a matter of hours after the analysis results were produced.  In this way, social media provides important context to other aspects of discovery.

In fact, it is now a routine practice for us to proactively preserve social media evidence, even if not explicitly requested by our clients.  Earlier this year, I was working on a civil case and, immediately upon being retained, collected the opposing party’s public Facebook and Twitter profiles using X1 Social Discovery.  A few weeks later, I brought to the attention of my client the fact that this person’s Facebook and Twitter accounts had been deleted shortly after the Court had entered a preservation order.  Thankfully, we had collected these accounts ahead of time; which contained relevant information, including incriminating posts that weakened her case. The matter was settled within a week.

Often, lawyers are uncomfortable about social media collections given its newness and bad experiences when relying on screen captures. It’s true that social media collections can present unique challenges when best practices are not utilized. But as it is now essential to nearly all digital investigations, I am always sure to advise my clients about collecting it, something that would otherwise be very burdensome and would not scale without X1 Social Discovery.  With the ever-changing nature of computer forensic investigations and e-discovery, it is important for attorneys and investigators to keep an open mind, as well as stay current on social media’s growing capabilities, which are expanding goldmines for potentially relevant information.  Once litigation has started, it is important to preserve everything that could be deemed relevant.  With the ease of access afforded to users and the semi-volatile nature of social media data, X1 allows for an efficient and admissible collection method.

 

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June 3, 2014 · 8:11 AM

Social Discovery’s Time Is Now

by Barry Murphy

social discoveryThe 80/20 rule tends to apply in all aspects of life, and it is certainly applying to social discovery, at least in terms of who “gets it” and who doesn’t.  I say that because, when I talk to folks about social discovery, about 80% of them feel that it is a fringe issue that will be something to deal with in the distant future.  Only 20% realize that social discovery is happening now and that getting ahead of the curve presents a huge opportunity.

On the surface, it would seem problematic that so few embrace the realities that social media is here to stay in the business world.  According to Forrester Research’s The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2013, US, “consumers of all age groups use social networking. From the 85% of Gen Zers to the 57% of the Golden Generation who visit Facebook at least monthly, social networking is ingrained in the Internet experience for all generations. Consumers use social media to interact with companies, too. The average US online Facebook user “likes” 14 brands on Facebook, while almost seven out of 10 social networkers engage with brands on social media.”  That social media content is discoverable is not up for debate; the argument tends to be around whether actual social discovery is mainstream yet.

The proactive management (e.g. archiving) of social media is not yet a mainstream practice in US enterprises.  In talking to a colleague at an archiving vendor, the primary reason for this is cost.  Yes, there is a lack of maturity in policies (both usage and retention) and a fear that simply journaling social media into an archive will just bloat digital landfills, but the primary issue is cost.  This is because most of the solutions for capturing social media into an archive are hosted and have recurring subscription and storage fees.  As a result, the starting cost – just to add social media to an archive – is over $25,000.  For most enterprises, that additional cost is a non-starter.

Just because proactive management of social media is not mainstream does not mean that social discovery as a practice is not.  I can look at the sales numbers for X1’s Social Discovery (X1SD) product and tell you that the growth rate is such that it is clear the practice is widespread.  I have also heard from service providers that are doing over 30 Facebook collections per week.  To me, that indicates that social discovery is a mainstream practice.  With X1SD, the cost issue is averted because the starting cost is less than $1,500.  Plus, the filtering capabilities allow investigators to only pass potentially relevant content downstream in the eDiscovery lifecycle.  And, being a desktop install means that no custody or control issues will pop up (especially important in the law enforcement use-case).

Most of the coverage of social media tools focus on the marketing use-cases – for example enterprise listening platforms and social relationship platforms.  Those use-cases serve important business functions, but discovery platforms need to meet a higher standard.  They need to show defensibility and have great control over custody of the data.  With such capabilities in place and in use today, it is only a matter of time before enterprises connect the dots and begin addressing social discovery with as much discipline as they do collection of email and other enterprise content.

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