MC+A

MC+A will be attending the 2010 Chicago Small Business Expo. Come and stop by our booth (K7) to see how MC+A can help your small business stay connected to your information.

We will be on site discussing Google Apps and its benefits to your business.

For more information, including links to directions and registration check out our event page.

Google has just released 6.4 on the enterprise support site and has updated code.google.com’s documentation.  We have yet to install and verify.  But some of the big changes so far:

JavaScript Crawling

The search appliance now can detect links and content generated dynamically.  I wonder if this will help the forms authentication wizard?

Serve Time Authentication

You will no longer need to enable or disable security manager and legacy auth.

Administrative Improvements

There are various administrative improvements and organization.

The documentation is here.

Google introduced Asynchronous Tracking as an “alternate way to track” websites. To recap the benefits of using the new asynchronous ga.js snippet over the older ga.js are:

• Faster tracking code load times via improved code execution
• Improvements in data collection accuracy
• Elimination of tracking errors caused by the ga.js snippet not being fully loaded

A recent Google Analytics script test preformed by Position 2 reveal quantifiable speed increases when using the asynchronous.

Analytics Tracking Code Test Key Findings

Position 2 observed the following results from their test:

1. A 17% speed increase in page load using the asynchronous ga.js over the traditional ga.js code
2. Page placement has little effect on the asynchronous ga.js load time conpared to the traditional ga.js
3. Top of the page placement no longer slows the page load. This is important when tracking clicks is and possible while page is loading content.

Full Position 2 Report

Google released the latest patch to software version 6.2.  Please contact your MC+A customer support contact for information regarding this or to schedule a time for an upgrade to be performed.

Yesterday on their Google Apps Blog, Google announced a web clipboard for Google Docs. This is the first great step in getting similar thick client functionality. My “holy grail” request is to actually get a web clip board so that I can simply paste say an image I’m working on into Google Docs or Google Wave and have everyone be able to see it. Below or some screen shots of it in action.

Google has released a new software update for version 6.2.  The most notable fix in this release is for the GSA mirroring feature.  Additionally, there are about 14 documented updates. 

Our support customers will be contacted by MC+A support to schedule a time to perform the upgrade.  Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

The MC+A team will be hosting a webinar to discuss the new features of the recently released Google Search Appliance version 6.2 software. We will be covering the business impact of these features and making recommendations for upgrading your appliance.

More Information

OpenPipline is an open source software project for crawling, parsing, analyzing and routing documents.  I joined the board of advisors a while back and I’m happy to say that I’ve finally got around some time to put effort into really contributing.  The goal is to develop a standard framework for developing enterprise search applications.  Enterprise search products have similar architectures yet they are typically incompatible with one and another.  Something developed for one…can not be processed by another.

We’ve started out building on a commercial release of the pipeline processor and have begun to integrate it with some of our Google Search Appliance customers.  For them, this tool provides the ability to convert document types that are not support by the GSA or other extraction techniques.  It really depends on the requirements.

Our first contribution to the project is a commercial release of a stage that publishes the item from OpenPipeline to a Google Search Appliance.  By combining the technologies, you get an open text processing framework along with Google’s powerful algorithm.

Stay tuned for some interesting updates!

We believe in the benefits of effective search. At MC+A, search is more than an add-on or after thought. We strongly feel that search should be at the core of your IT efforts to help you work better. It today’s market, even with talk that the worst is behind us, reducing cost of technology investments is important. IT investments need to produce results and justify their cost.

Along these lines we’re proud to announce a new Search Hardware Renewal Program, design specifically to help our current Google Search Appliance users to renew their solution along with the services they need to maximize their return on investment. Effective November 1st we’re offering all renewing Google Search Appliance customer a discount on our renewal hardware packaged with our Search Best Practices service review. We are hoping to help our clients continue their enterprise search initiatives, maintaining a substantial ROI and competitive edge due to less wasted time and resources searching for documents.

What is the Search Hardware Incentive Program?
The program is straight forward. Current customers will have an opportunity to trade in their old end of license GSA for a discount credit toward their renewal.

Simply turn in your old GSA for a brand new yellow box (GB-7007 running version 6.0) and MC+A will provide a 10% discount on renewal hardware with our Search Best Practices package. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

What is in it for you?
Keeping up with the latest Google search technology. There have been three major releases in the past 12 months and a new appliance platform the GB-7007.

MC+A implementation experience. Over 75 implementations in the past two years. We’ll help you maximize your ROI and leverage your search technology so that you’re effectively using it shortly after your purchase.

So, how does it work?

1. Inform your sales rep that you would like to take advantage of SHIP.
2. MC+A will process your hardware renewal and execute the SBP review.
3. Once your new hardware is up and running. MC+A will process your hardware trade in. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

Truly see what the Google Search Appliance can do for you an your business. Renew today.

Google Search Appliance customers typically find value in the product

In August, we published our first public survey here.   Our goal was to explore how many of the basic features of the Google Search Appliance were being implemented by customers of the product.  We promised to share the results of the survey when we completed it.  After 6 weeks, we’ve decided to wrap up this survey and begin to start planning for the next one next quarter.  Here are the results are our observations of the survey.

Summary

At the time of this writing, only 18 responses were received.  The number of responses received makes the survey generally statistically insignificant.  However, the responses fall in line with our previous expectations.  We also feel that most of the responses were from our customers and not of the general population of Google Enterprise customers.  This would mean that that would be mostly in the United States and a systems integrator would have more involvement with them then of a typical Google Enterprise customer.

Overall,

• Customers think the Google Search Appliance provides value
• Customers are typically not investing significantly in their implementation(beyond the cost of the GSA).
• Customers are not using OneBoxes.
• Most customers could be using their appliances to crawl more content.

We’ll begin to create another survey in October, conduct it in November and publish it in December.  If you have input for the survey, please contact us.