Incentives for Active Users

Some of the most successful web sites today are social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These are not only popular web sites; they are also remarkably effective people search tools. For example, I can use LinkedIn to find the 163 people in my network who mention "information retrieval" in their profiles and live within 50 miles of my ZIP code (I can't promise you'll see the same results!).

A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.

First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.

Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.

Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.

Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.

I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.

Conversation with Seth Grimes

I had an great conversation with Intelligent Enterprise columnist Seth Grimes today. Apparently there's an upside to writing critical commentary on Google's aspirations in the enterprise!

One of the challenges in talking about enterprise search is that no one seems to agree on what it is. Indeed, as I've been discussing with Ryan Shaw , I use the term broadly to describe information access scenarios distinct from web search where an organization has some ownership or control of the content (in contrast to the somewhat adversarial relationship that web search companies have with the content they index). But I realize that many folks define enterprise search more narrowly to be a search box hooked up to the intranet.

Perhaps a better way to think about enterprise search is as a problem rather than solution. Many people expect a search box because they're familiar with searching the web using Google. I don't blame anyone for expecting that the same interface will work for enterprise information collections. Unfortunately, wishful thinking and clever advertising notwithstanding, it doesn't.

I've blogged about this subject from several different perspectives over the past weeks, so I'll refer recent readers to earlier posts on the subject rather than bore the regulars.

But I did want to mention a comment Seth made that I found particularly insightful. He defined enterprise search even more broadly than I do, suggesting that it encompassed any information seeking performed in the pursuit of enterprise-centric needs. In that context, he does see Google as the leader in enterprise search--not because of their enterprise offerings, but rather because of the web search they offer for free.

I'm not sure how I feel about his definition, but I think he raises a point that enterprise vendors often neglect. No matter how much information an enterprise controls, there will always be valuable information outside the enterprise. I find today's APIs to that information woefully inadequate; for example, I can't even choose a sort order through any of the web search APIs. But I am optimistic that those APIs will evolve, and that we will see "federated" information seeking that goes beyond merging ranked lists from different sources.

Indeed, I look forward to the day that web search providers take a cue from the enterprise and drop the focus on black box relevance ranking in favor of an approach that offers users control and interaction.

Why Enterprise Search Will Never Be Google-y

As I prepared to end my trilogy of Google-themed posts, I ran into two recently published items. They provide an excellent context for what I intended to talk about: the challenges and opportunities of enterprise search.

The first is Google's announcement of an upgrade to their search appliance that allows one box to index 10 million documents and offers improved search quality and personalization.

The second is an article by Chris Sherman in the Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008 entitled Why Enterprise Search Will Never Be Google-y.

First, the Google announcement. These are certainly improvements for the GSA, and Google does seem to be aiming to compete with the Big Three: Autonomy, Endeca, FAST (now a subsidiary of Microsoft). But these improvements should be seen in the context of state of the art. In particular, Google's scalability claims, while impressive, still fall short of the market leaders in enterprise search. Moreover, the bottleneck in enterprise search hasn't been the scale of document indexing, but rather the effectiveness with which people can access and interact with the indexed content. Interestingly, Google's strongest selling point for the GSA, their claim it works "out of the box", is also its biggest weakness: even with the new set of features, the GSA does not offer the flexibility or rich functionality that enterprises have come to expect.

Second, the Chris Sherman piece. Here is an excerpt:

Enterprise search and web search are fundamentally different animals, and I'd argue that enterprise search won't--and shouldn't--be Google-y any time soon....Like web search, Google's enterprise search is easy to use--if you're willing to go along with how Google's algorithms view and present your business information....Ironically, enterprises, with all of their highly structures and carefully organized silos of information, require a very different and paradoxically more complex approach.

I highly recommend you read the whole article (it's only 2 pages), not only because it informative and well written, but also because the author isn't working for one of the Big Three.

The upshot? There is no question that Google is raising the bar for simple search in the enterprise. I wouldn't recommend that anyone try to compete with the GSA on its turf.

But information needs in the enterprise go far beyond known-item search, What enterprises want when they ask for "enterprise search" is not just a search box, but an interactive tool that helps them (or their customers) work through the process of articulating and fulfilling their information needs, for tasks as diverse as customer segmentation, knowledge management, and e-discovery.

If you're interested in search and want to be on the cutting edge of innovation, I suggest you think about the enterprise.

Call to Action - A Follow-Up

The call to action I sent out a couple of weeks ago has generated healthy interest.

One of the several people who responded is the CTO of one of Endeca's competitors, whom I laud for understanding that the need to better articulate and communicate the technology of information access transcends competition among vendors. While we have differences on how to achieve this goal, I at least see hope from his responsiveness.

The rest were analysts representing some of the leading firms in the space. They not only expressed interest, but also contributed their own ideas on how to make this effort successful. Indeed, I met with two analysts this week to discuss next steps.

Here is where I see this going.

In order for any efforts to communicate the technology of information access to be effective, the forum has to establish credibility as a vendor-neutral and analyst-neutral forum. Ideally, that means having at least two major vendors and two major analysts on board. What we want to avoid is having only one major vendor or analyst, since that will create a reasonable perception of bias.

I'd also like to involve academics in information retrieval and library and information science. As one of the analysts suggested, we could reach out to the leading iSchools, who have expressed an open interest in engaging the broader community.

What I'd like to see come together is a forum, probably a one-day workshop, that brings together credible representatives from the vendor, analyst, and academic communities. With a critical mass of participants and enough diversity to assuage concerns of bias, we can start making good on this call to action.

A Call to Action

I sent the following open letter to the leading enterprise providers and industry analysts in the information access community. I am inspired by the recent efforts of researchers to bring industry events to major academic conferences. I'd like to see industry--particularly enterprise providers and industry analysts--return the favor, embracing these events to help bridge the gap between research and practice.

Dear friends in the information access community,

I am reaching out to you with this open letter because I believe we, the leading providers and analysts in the information access community, share a common goal of helping companies understand, evaluate, and differentiate the technologies in this space.

Frankly, I feel that we as a community can do much better at achieving this goal. In my experience talking with CTOs, CIOs, and other decision makers in enterprises, I've found that too many people fail to understand either the state of current technology or the processes they need to put in place to leverage that technology. Indeed, a recent AIIM report confirms what I already knew anecdotally--that there is a widespread failure in the enterprise to understand and derive value from information access.

In order to advance the state of knowledge, I propose that we engage an underutilized resource: the scholarly community of information retrieval and information science researchers. Not only has this community brought us many of the foundations of the technology we provide, but it has also developed a rigorous tradition of evaluation and peer review.

In addition, this community has been increasingly interested in connection with practitioners, as demonstrated by the industry days held at top-tier scholarly conferences, such as SIGIR, CIKM, and ECIR. I have participated in a few of these, and I was impressed with the quality of both the presenters and the attendees. Web search leaders, such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, have embraced these events, as have smaller companies that specialize in search and related technologies, such as information extraction. Enterprise information access providers, however, have been largely absent at these events, as have industry analysts.

I suggest that we take at least the following steps to engage the scholarly community of information retrieval and information science researchers:

• Collaborate with the organizers of academic conferences such as SIGIR, CIKM, and ECIR to promote participation of enterprise information access providers and analysts in conference industry days.
  
  
• Participate in workshops that are particularly relevant to enterprise information access providers, such as the annual HCIR and exploratory search workshops.
  

The rigor and independence of the conferences and workshops makes them ideal as vendor-neutral forums. I hope that you all will join me in working to strengthen the connection between the commercial and scholarly communities, thus furthering everyone's understanding of the technology that drives our community forward.

Please contact me at dt@endeca.com or join in an open discussion at http://thenoisychannel.blogspot.com/2008/07/call-to-action.html if you are interested in participating in this effort.

Sincerely,
Daniel Tunkelang

Enterprise Search Done Right

A recent study from AIIM (the Association for Information and Image Management, also known as the Enterprise Content Management Association) reports that enterprise search frustrates and disappoints users. Specifically, 49% of survey respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that it is a difficult and time consuming process to find the information they need to do their job.

Given that I work for a leading enterprise search provider, you might think I'd find these results disconcerting, even if the report points the blame at clients rather than vendors:

But fault does not lie with technology solution providers. Most organizations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise search. 49% of respondents have "No Formal Goal" for enterprise Findability within their organizations, and a large subset of the overall research population state that when it comes to the "Criticality of Findability to their Organization’s Business Goals and Success", 38% have no idea ("Don’t Know") what the importance of Findability is in comparison to a mere 10% who claim Findability is "Imperative" to their organization.

As I've blogged here before, there is no free lunch, and organizations can't expect to simply plug a search engine into their architectures as if it were an air freshener. But that doesn't let Endeca or anyone else off the hook. It is incumbent on enterprise search providers, including Endeca, both to set expectations around how it is incumbent on enterprise workers to help shape the solution by supplying their proprietary knowledge and information needs, and to make this process as painless as possible.

Enterprise search, done right, is a serious investment. But it is also an investment that can offer extraordinary returns in productivity and general happiness. Enterprises need to better appreciate the value, but enterprise search providers need to better communicate the process of creating it.

Can Search be a Utility?

A recent lecture at the New York CTO club inspired a heated discussion on what is wrong with enterprise search solutions. Specifically, Jon Williams asked why search can't be a utility.

It's unfortunate when such a simple question calls for a complicated answer, but I'll try to tackle it.

On the web, almost all attempts to deviate even slightly from the venerable ranked-list paradigm have been resounding flops. More sophisticated interfaces, such as Clusty, receive favorable press coverage, but users don't vote for them with their virtual feet. And web search users seem reasonably satisfied with their experience.

Conversely, in the enterprise, there is widespread dissatisfaction with enterprise search solutions. A number of my colleagues have said that they installed a Google Search Appliance and "it didn't work." (Full disclosure: Google competes with Endeca in the enterprise).

While the GSA does have some significant technical limitations, I don't think the failures were primarily for technical reasons. Rather, I believe there was a failure of expectations. I believe the problem comes down to the question of whether relevance is subjective.

On the web, we get away with pretending that relevance is objective because there is so much agreement among users--particularly in the restricted class of queries that web search handles well, and that hence constitute the majority of actual searches.

In the enterprise, however, we not only lack the redundant and highly social structure of the web. We also tend to have more sophisticated information needs. Specifically, we tend to ask the kinds of informational queries that web search serves poorly, particularly when there is no Wikipedia page that addresses our needs.

It seems we can go in two directions.

The first is to make enterprise search more like web search by reducing the enterprise search problem to one that is user-independent and does not rely the social generation of enterprise data. Such a problem encompasses such mundane but important tasks as finding documents by title or finding department home pages. The challenges here fundamentally ones of infrastructure, reflecting the heterogeneous content repositories in enterprises and the controls mandated by business processes and regulatory compliance. Solving these problems is no cakewalk, but I think all of the major enterprise search vendors understand the framework for solving them.

The second is to embrace the difference between enterprise knowledge workers and casual web users, and to abandon the quest for an objective relevance measure. Such an approach requires admitting that there is no free lunch--that you can't just plug in a box and expect it to solve an enterprise's knowledge management problem. Rather, enterprise workers need to help shape the solution by supplying their proprietary knowledge and information needs. The main challenges for information access vendors are to make this process as painless as possible for enterprises, and to demonstrate the return so that enterprises make the necessary investment.