Reimagining SharePoint for 2011
SharePoint as an Information Discovery
and Retrieval Powerhouse
SBAs can present information in dashboards and reports that combine charts and tables with textual information. SBAs can integrate diverse data sources with significantly less effort and cost so that broader sets of data sources can be accessed and designs iterated without the usual time-consuming and costly planning, design and QA efforts needed for BI systems.
Because SBAs leverage a “data abstraction layer” between the information sources and the applications being constructed, application development cycles are dramatically shortened. Developers spend their efforts on the presentation of information, not on the underlying logic. As a result, tailored, information-rich applications can be deployed in weeks instead of months or years.
Moreover, semantically enabled SBAs can extract informational elements such as key numbers or names or concepts from unstructured text and organize them into categories, metrics, lists, word clouds and other distilled information presentation forms. SBAs can simultaneously serve ad hoc discovery, workflow automation and management oversight functions within a single instance.
In the case of GEFCO, a transportation and logistics provider to manufacturers, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of PSA Peugeot Citroën, they needed to replace an aging track-and-trace system. With the advent of bar codes, RFID, GPS and other technologies, GEFCO was receiving real-time supply chain updates at a very detailed level. However, the current tracking system was not only cumbersome to use, it could not keep pace with thousands of users making location queries while it processed continual event updates.
The use case was very straightforward. At the car showroom, a dealer wants to know where the nearest red coupe with the sport trim is located in the supply chain. In other words, when could he promise a new car to a buyer? In the old system, the dealer was presented with a complex query screen where he was forced to enter most of the car’s VIN and then scan through thousands of results to locate the particular vehicle he was searching for.
With the new SBA that was built and deployed in less than 6 weeks, he could simply type the model, color and trim type into the search box, and he is presented with a sorted list showing exactly where the identical matches are located and their expected delivery dates.
At the end of the day, end users are driving the movement toward adopting SBAs. Information consumers want to access information from internal systems in the same way that they discover and utilize information on the Web. They are demanding easy-to-use, simple, ergonomic tools to help them unlock information, make connections, and gain insights for better decision making. SBAs are delivering on that end-user demand today.
Exalead’s Solution
Flexibility and ease-of-use
- Rapid deployment—software-based solution;
- Robust integration with SharePoint;
- Works with your security model—active directory, LDAP, etc.; and
Scalability
- Familiar and intuitive Web interface requires little training.
- More than 100 million documents processed on a typical Intel-based server;
- No storage limits—access billions of documents and other data sources; and
- Predictable costs—linear scaling with commodity hardware.
To learn more about semantic search or search-based applications, visit www.exalead.com. Exalead, a division of Dassault Systemes, is a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search markets. Founded in 2000 by search engine pioneers, Exalead’s worldwide client base includes PSA Peugeot Citroën, ViaMichelin, GEFCO, Worldbank, Yellow Pages, American Greetings andmore than 100 million unique users a month who use Exalead’s technology for search.