Open source's next frontier | CNET News.com

Open source's next frontier | CNET News.com

pen-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.

Individual open-source database and other applications are already popular. Now two open-source projects have launched efforts to assemble "stacks" of software applications that offer an open-source equivalent to commercial software from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, BEA Systems and others.

Last week, a company called Gluecode began selling technical support and maintenance services for a package of infrastructure tools from the Apache Foundation, which oversees and develops some of the most popular open-source software. The package includes portal and database software, and an application server.

News.context

What's new:
Open-source projects from the Apache Foundation and the ObjectWeb consortium are creating a full suite of open-source server software components, a field dominated by industry heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft.

Bottom line:
Open-source represents a fraction of the overall infrastructure software market and products require significant integration. But some companies are stepping in to provide commercial support and challenge the incumbents, if even only on the low end.


Then ObjectWeb, a French nonprofit consortium of companies and research bodies launched six years ago, said it will release the eXo Platform. The package includes a corporate Web portal and a content management application, in addition to the connectivity, grid computing and enterprise messaging software the consortium already offers.

Commentary: Smoothing the way for open source | CNET News.com

Commentary: Smoothing the way for open source | CNET News.com

By Forrester Research, Special to CNET News.com, November 22, 2004, 6:45AM PDT

by Henry Peyret, senior analyst

After a period of testing by early adopters, companies are beginning to use open-source software in the low levels of the integration stack--the transport and transformation levels--in critical projects.

The success of open-source application platforms like JBoss, Apache and Jonas will boost open-source integration products as long as two things occur: first, the fragmented open-source integration community consolidates to compete more effectively with commercial application platform leaders; and second, commercial integration products remain expensive.

What drives the market?
Forrester observes the following critical-change drivers that will affect the market for open-source integration products during the next 12 months:

• Fragmentation remains a problem within the open-source community. Partly as a result of this, efforts to employ open-source integration products in the enterprise have not yet generated the same enthusiasm that surrounded the adoption of application servers, for example.

• The price list for commercial integration products remains high. Pure or platform players' integration offerings remain expensive for large deployments--in terms of initial purchase and, more importantly, for maintenance. Even after negotiations that can achieve price reductions of up to 50 percent, these costs look forbidding to many buyers.

• IT shops are starting to rationalize infrastructure integration. Large companies are starting to choose strategic platforms that include integration functions. Even so, software groups will still need to fill integration gaps using niche integration products.

• Packaged applications deliver Web services connectivity. Web services will help solve one of the weaknesses of open-source integration products: last-mile connectivity to either packaged applications or mainframe applications (at the connectivity level, but not yet at the semantic level).

• Web services standards continue to mature. There is broad adoption of business process execution language (BPEL) and emerging WS-Security standards. However, open-source integration products will continue to suffer gaps in standards, limiting their appeal in the enterprise market.

Trends for 2005
Because of these key drivers, six significant trends will unfold in 2005:

• Low-level integration products will emerge in critical deployments. In some particular cases--those requiring substantial custom coding even with commercial products--customers will prefer to work with open-source software, such as implementations based on the Java Message Service (JMS) standard. Open-source integration products will also help the process of rationalizing integration infrastructure, by filling gaps and meeting niche requirements.

• Open-source integration products will keep attracting customer interest. Because of the high purchase and maintenance costs of proprietary products, the perceived low cost of open-source integration offerings will keep buyers interested in taking the open-source option.

• Convergence of the open-source community will accelerate. The community developing open-source integration products will overcome its natural fragmentation and converge around application server communities like JBoss, Apache and Jonas. These communities, such as ObjectWeb, currently act as facilitators between sometimes overlapping market participants. But even with this greater coordination of open-source integration, systems integrators will still be required to integrate the different building blocks in 2005.

• Open-source integration products will continue to move up the stack. BPEL-compliant business process management products will overtake players like BIE and Open Wide, which are not compliant. ActiveBPEL is open-source software that is provided free in its light version by a commercial company, Active Endpoints, to boost sales of its enhanced commercial product. JBPM, developed by JBoss, is another example.

• Lightweight enterprise service bus (ESB) products will start to appear. ESB offerings provide a structured basis for connectivity and Web services deployment across heterogeneous infrastructures. Emerging open-source software products include Mule ESB.

• Successful integration projects will still include commercial products. Despite Web services, Java Connector Architecture (JCA) and JMS support from application vendors, last-mile connectivity for packaged application adapters remains difficult in open source. Openadaptor and Open3, for example, provide mainly technical connectivity and not packaged-application or much mainframe connectivity. To overcome these limitations, user companies will increasingly combine open-source and commercial integration products and turn to tools like Librados; while this isn't a fully open-source product--the source code is available but not royalty-free--it helps companies that want to deliver end-to-end interface projects.

© 2004, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change

Take control of your desktop chaos

Take control of your desktop chaos | CNET News.com
By Stefanie Olsen, Staff Writer

Dragging and dropping files into organized desktop folders can be a chore for everyone but the most fastidious. A new technology, however, aims to do most of the work for you.

Upstart Blinkx on Monday introduced version 2.0 of its software for searching the desktop. The cornerstone to the downloadable application is "smart folders," technology that probes the PC and Web for files related to a designated topic. Users can name a folder or describe a topic of interest with a few keywords, and the software will collect related e-mail, music, Web pages, PDFs or text documents based on an analysis of their content and concepts.

"You can also train it by adding one or two documents. It reads those and adds related information, be it e-mail, attachments, Word documents," Blinkx CEO Mark Opzoomer said.

Blinkx is a nascent player in a market being eyed by all the major Internet portals. Desktop search is seen as the next frontier in jointly navigating the Web and the operating system for its utility to PC users, who typically have only rudimentary search and find functions on their computer. Desktop applications could also deliver a competitive advantage for Internet search companies that can gain loyalty from visitors.

America Online, MSN and Yahoo all plan to introduce a desktop-search application in the coming months, and Google recently began testing its own. Many smaller companies including X-1 Technologies and Copernic are also trying to gain traction with Web surfers for competing desktop-search tools.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Apple Computer are also developing improved tools for searching the operating system and Web simultaneously. Both companies have talked about smart-folder technology, but have yet to introduce it.
Digital agenda

Blinkx, a privately held company based in San Francisco, introduced its first-generation software in July. The free application indexes files on the desktop and lets users search for information contained in more than 200 types of files. The search technology also automatically finds information or links associated to content a user is viewing, both from the Internet and the PC.

The new version also includes a feature called "Stuff I've seen," a folder with cached, or previously seen Web pages. Blinkx 2.0 also connects users to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Opzoomer said the company protects users' privacy by not sending personally identifiable information to its servers; data sent back and forth to its servers is encrypted.

The company has yet to make money, however. It eventually plans to place contextually relevant advertisements into its tool, but it has yet to do so.

"All of a sudden, desktop search is a pretty crowded market and it's going to be hard to compete with the big guys," said Jupiter Research analyst Gary Stein. "With smart folders, I think they have a shot."

AOL looks to its parent to outwit Google

AOL looks to its parent to outwit Google | CNET News.com

By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com

America Online is tapping the vast media assets of parent company Time Warner to outdo rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the search wars.


Unlike competitors that are investing heavily in new search technologies, AOL is instead focusing on providing Web surfers with quick access to news and entertainment while navigating the Web.

The Internet company will make several enhancements to its Internet search service this week. Those include introducing a new feature called "Snapshots"--categories of popular information, such as movie times, news and sports scores, which will appear in the body of related search results. The content is drawn from AOL and its parent company's vast media assets. It includes 2.2 million "widgets," or categories of information.

"AOL has decided in the search space to focus on what we do best and partner with others that can do better in other areas," said Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of search for AOL.

"Google powers our search and paid listings," Campbell said. "We're cutting our own path in the way that AOL users can find information on the Internet. We're putting the icing on top."

The company also expects this week to unveil the "AOL Search Toolbox," which details how to use Snapshots and other new shortcuts for searching the Web, including finding local information, using a calculator and booking a hotel room.

AOL has largely been an also-ran in Web search over the last several years, continuing its licensing agreement with No. 1 search provider Google as its own search traffic has dropped off. In contrast, competing portals Yahoo and Microsoft have committed many resources to building or buying homegrown search technology that could ultimately win back market share lost to Google in recent years.

Despite popular thinking that AOL is not in the game, Campbell said the company has been working on its Snapshots feature for the last two years and only this week officially branded it. The Snapshots feature, which Campbell calls a combination of "rocket science and smart editorial," is controlled by a team of highly trained editors and library scientists, who create business rules for placing targeted answers at the top of search results.

For example, a search for "Arafat" might call up news items from CNN News, a Time Warner company. Search results for "Polar Express" might show local theater and show times, a movie trailer and a review from "Entertainment Weekly," a Time Warner publication.

Rivals such as Yahoo and Ask Jeeves have built similar quick answers into their search results.
Digital agenda

Other AOL Snapshot categories include Yellow Pages listings, recipes and audio and video clips from AOL unit Singingfish, which it bought last year.

Snapshots will be delivered with approximately 20 percent of the search queries at AOL, Campbell said. He added that AOL's search traffic has risen as the company has begun testing this feature in recent months.

"AOL, more so than anyone else, is a media company. We have the ability to...get assets, from health to sports to research, and pack them into search results," Campbell said

Commentary: MSN Search--just good enough

Commentary: MSN Search--just good enough | CNET News.com

By Forrester Research -- Special to CNET News.com -- November 11, 2004, 9:30AM PST -- by Charlene Li, Principal Analyst

After two years of development, Microsoft's MSN service debuted a new version of its search engine Thursday. It won't beat Google, but that's OK--it doesn't have to.

Owning a proprietary search algorithm will give MSN the flexibility to innovate in key areas like desktop, local and personalized search--all prerequisites for being competitive in the upcoming search battles that will be waged against players like Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and America Online.

With its own search engine in hand, Microsoft can now be considered a serious player in the search wars. While MSN is a long way off from usurping Google's lead in search, it has built a solid foundation on which to innovate in the future. Here's a quick overview:

• The technology: It's just good enough. In initial testing, MSN's new search engine delivers search results that are as good as other engines. With 5 billion documents, the index is in range of its competitors. The engine also has a few innovations in the interface that give users more control--such as its Search Builder feature, which narrows search results by freshness and popularity. These are interesting features, but ones that will be quickly copied by other players.

• The impact: It keeps MSN users loyal. While Microsoft generates significant traffic from its MSN.com portal and Hotmail users, only 40 percent of online consumers who use MSN at least weekly also use it most frequently to search the Internet. The company's primary goal will be to persuade non-MSN searchers to come back into the fold. Once the new algorithm comes out of beta and is integrated into the site, look for extensive marketing and promotions to encourage people to give it a try.

• The potential: MSN can now innovate in crucial search areas. Competition in the search field will be a battle for the loyalty of each site's core users--and all of the search engines will use desktop search, local search and personalized search to tie in users. Having its own search algorithm will allow MSN to finally innovate in these areas that will define the future of search.

© 2004, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

MSN Search Beta Allows Relevancy Tweaking

MSN Search Beta Allows Relevancy Tweaking

Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division officially launched a beta of its new search engine Thursday as it attempts to make inroads into Google Inc.'s dominance in the search market.

The beta offers a peek into MSN's approach for competing in Web search with its own technology. It provides advanced features for searchers wanting to alter the relevancy of results and expands the connections back into MSN's other services, specifically the Encarta encyclopedia and MSN Music.

"It's got a little bit of bells and whistles, but in terms of the actual index, there's nothing I've seen there that's better than Google or Yahoo," said Andy Beal, vice president of search marketing at WebSourced Inc., a Internet marketing company in Morrisville, N.C.

MSN's search beta returns results from the same Web index of about 5 billion documents that MSN first launched as part of a second technology preview last month. The index has grown considerably since the company began crawling Web sites with its MSNBot in June 2003 and first offered a glimpse into the search engine this summer.

MSN will continue to expand its index and already has increased the frequency of index updates, refreshing portions every day or week, said Justin Osmer, an MSN product manager.

Not to be outdone, though, Google immediately responded to MSN's search launch with an expanded Web index of its own. On Thursday, Google said on its Weblog that it has doubled the size of its index to about 8 billion pages.

Collectively, Google, Yahoo and MSN account for 87.3 percent of search referrals, the process by which search engines send traffic to other sites, according to Web analytics provider WebSideStory Inc. Google leads with 48.4 percent, followed by Yahoo with 25 percent and MSN with 13.9 percent.

Creating custom searches.

MSN's Search beta in many ways follows the approach of Google and Yahoo's search engines. Its design is simple, and it provides a series of tabs above the query box to search the Web, news or images.

"The search engine itself is very vanilla and designed to be similar to Google and Yahoo, so if people switch over to it, they won't be shocked," Beal said.

But an advanced search feature called Search Builder stood out to Beal and other search watchers. It allows users to create custom searches, where they can change the importance of various search criteria. They can specify domains or countries to be searched and construct more complex queries.

They also can adjust relevancy based on the timeliness of content and can link popularity using a dial-like interface, Osmer said. Users can save the advanced queries as bookmarks in their Web browser, he said.

"It puts control into the hands of the users and lets them add a touch of personalization into the search experience," Osmer said.

MSN also delved slightly into local search in the beta. Instead of clicking the "search" button when entering a query, users can click a "Search Near Me" button. It returns results bases on users' locations. By default, MSN uses the location of a searcher's ISP, but users also can enter their specific location.

But unlike local-search offerings from Google and Yahoo, the feature returns Web results and does not include business-directory information. Osmer said MSN has added geo-location tags to the Web pages in its index to return local results.

The beta also tied search more closely to MSN's other online sites to return more than a Web link. Specifically, MSN Search displays excerpts of Encarta entries above its algorithmic results for queries about common facts, definitions and calculations.

Searches about a musical artist, album or song return a highlighted section of information from MSN Music and include links to hear an audio clip or buy music.

"Those are our first crack at getting questions immediately answered for people and to help them get through their search experience as fast as possible," Osmer said.

The approach appears similar to Ask Jeeves Inc.'s "Smart Search" strategy, where it will return information about everything from movies and local weather to travel and famous people atop Web results using data from its network and partners.

MSN plans to add more features to its search technology before the full launch, Osmer said. The company has publicly discussed plans for a search service for blogs, called Blogbot, and a natural-language search service called AnswerBot. Neither is part of the search beta.

Next month, MSN is expected to launch a desktop-search product for tying in hard-drive data, such as e-mails and Office documents, with Web results.