IBM dives deeper into corporate search

IBM is promoting a new standard to allow interoperability between software that helps corporations search for and analyze unstructured data across their corporate networks, including e-mails, Word documents and anything that is not formatted in columns and rows.

The company was set to release on Monday a new version of its WebSphere Information Integration OmniFind Edition corporate information management tool. It integrates technology called Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) that IBM designed to improve the processing of text within documents and other unstructured content sources to help find relationships and meaning beyond just keywords.

IBM, a longtime supporter of the open-source movement in which developers freely write and modify software and share code, also is presenting UIMA to the Open Source Technology Group, a network of online technology resources. The updated software tool is available from IBM now and is expected to be available through the SourceForge developers Web site by the end of the year.

"IBM has been investing in a huge initiative since 2001 in information integration to help companies integrate and find any information that exists across the enterprise," said Nelson Mattos, IBM's vice president of Information Integration.

"That's the number one problem in the enterprise world," he said, adding that studies show that workers spend on average 30 percent of their time looking for relevant information. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that about 85 percent of corporate data is unstructured and thus not easy to find, Mattos said.

More than 15 companies already have said they plan to support UIMA as a framework for search and text analysis of unstructured data, IBM said.

Projects currently using IBM's WebSphere Information Integration OmniFind include a quality-control early-warning system for the automotive industry to process warranty claims, repair requests and call-center logs that can help identify problems, and an advanced intelligence system for antiterrorism and law enforcement.

"There are lots of different ways to skin a cat when it comes to analyzing unstructured text, but all those ways only give you a sneak peak at what you might get," said Dana Gardner, an analyst at Interarbor Solutions. By using UIMA, companies get a more comprehensive extraction of the information they seek, he said.

"It probably will take some time for the various commercial products to put this software developers' kit to use and allow for their products to take part in the interoperability process," Gardner added.

[newerawisp]

IBM HAS A LOT OF TIME TO BURN

IBM used to be a leader. When you talked of business machines you talked of Main Frame Computer and you talked of IBM. It led IBM into hot water with the federal Government. It sued IBM for Monoply. IBM hired an unknown Attorney David Bowie (I think it was David Bowie that took the gore presidential voting issue all the way to US Supreme Court and Lost). And You know IBM won and Government lost. But IBM has not been the same thereafter. Instead of pursuning Main Frames it has been following other Companies ever since. Like first it followed Apple into Personal Computer. It was driven out of the Chip Business by Intel. It was driven out of the Personal Computer by Compaq (most people think it was Dell. But Dell came much later and Chased Compaq, not Compaq. Then it announced it'll not retail personal computers. Finally it sold the personal Computer business to one Chinese Company.

So it had to do some thing. It got into server business. And now into software business. Analyzing emails or other data. What is the big deal with it. Like any data is contained in E-mail whatsover. Most emails get deleted wiythout being opened. Only a week ago (on August 2) IBM rival Microsoft got a spammer to fork over more than $7 Million to it for persistent spamming. Now comes the word that IBM was analysing those E-mails. What a way to make a business.

IBM can only regain its lead by financing a server based method of surfing the net so that the server is no longer required to send any data to the clients. Instead it only recieves the data from the clients and processes it. When this is done there would be no need for Personal Computers. The cellphones could be used to surf the web as described at

http://www.newerawisp.blogspot.com

What IBM needs is a drive. The drive to be number 1 again.

[newerawisp]

IBM HAS A LOT OF TIME TO BURN

IBM used to be a leader. When you talked of business machines you talked of Main Frame Computer and you talked of IBM. It led IBM into hot water with the federal Government. It sued IBM for Monoply. IBM hired an unknown Attorney David Bowie (I think it was David Bowie that took the gore presidential voting issue all the way to US Supreme Court and Lost). And You know IBM won and Government lost. But IBM has not been the same thereafter. Instead of pursuning Main Frames it has been following other Companies ever since. Like first it followed Apple into Personal Computer. It was driven out of the Chip Business by Intel. It was driven out of the Personal Computer by Compaq (most people think it was Dell. But Dell came much later and Chased Compaq, not Compaq. Then it announced it'll not retail personal computers. Finally it sold the personal Computer business to one Chinese Company.

So it had to do some thing. It got into server business. And now into software business. Analyzing emails or other data. What is the big deal with it. Like any data is contained in E-mail whatsover. Most emails get deleted wiythout being opened. Only a week ago (on August 2) IBM rival Microsoft got a spammer to fork over more than $7 Million to it for persistent spamming. Now comes the word that IBM was analysing those E-mails. What a way to make a business.

IBM can only regain its lead by financing a server based method of surfing the net so that the server is no longer required to send any data to the clients. Instead it only recieves the data from the clients and processes it. When this is done there would be no need for Personal Computers. The cellphones could be used to surf the web as described at

http://www.newerawisp.blogspot.com

What IBM needs is a drive. The drive to be number 1 again.

[zdavatz]

Nice thoughts, but already implemented in InfoCodex.

Thanks for the interesting article. Once again IBM is giving us a great vision about the future and how unstructured information can be searched.

InfoCodex already does all this today with the help of a linguistical database and synonym and/or similarity search across 5 languages (German, French, Italian, English and Spanish). With InfoCodex you can search for a block of text in one language and it will find you all the similar documents in the other languages as well. All of this is done without one single minute of training - because of the linguistical database that contains 2.9 Mio words and terms (i.e. "European Court of Justice" or "The President of the United States" are terms and reconized as such).

See the following links:

http://www.ywesee.com/pmwiki.php/Ywesee/InfoCodexProcedure

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Ywesee/archimag-e.pdf

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Ywesee/Evaluationsentscheid-e.pdf

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Main/USP_e.pdf

[zdavatz]

Nice thoughts, but already implemented in InfoCodex.

Thanks for the interesting article. Once again IBM is giving us a great vision about the future and how unstructured information can be searched.

InfoCodex already does all this today with the help of a linguistical database and synonym and/or similarity search across 5 languages (German, French, Italian, English and Spanish). With InfoCodex you can search for a block of text in one language and it will find you all the similar documents in the other languages as well. All of this is done without one single minute of training - because of the linguistical database that contains 2.9 Mio words and terms (i.e. "European Court of Justice" or "The President of the United States" are terms and reconized as such).

See the following links:

http://www.ywesee.com/pmwiki.php/Ywesee/InfoCodexProcedure

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Ywesee/archimag-e.pdf

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Ywesee/Evaluationsentscheid-e.pdf

http://www.ywesee.com/uploads/Main/USP_e.pdf