Custom Information Portals and the Delivery of Real-Time Intelligence

by Michael Gallagher

Michael Gallagher is VP-Sales & Marketing with Hoover's Media Technologies, a division of Hoover's Inc. He may be reached at mgallagher@hoovers.com or mgallagher@worldnet.att.net.

A new Knowledge Age is emerging. In this era, Application Service Providers (ASPs) are building information portals that deliver specialized, relevant data in real time.

Over the past decade, the new Information Age has intertwined itself with the Internet to bring about the most expansive collection of data ever compiled. Today's knowledge workers are drowning in the sea of data streaming at them from disparate sources. It has taken the Internet to bring together content from television, radio, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, books, and miscellaneous other publications and papers.

Custom Information Portals

Sorting through this cyber data-field has become a daunting task. Companies seeking intelligence data have sought relief from knowledge specialists who have the necessary resources to comb the traditional sources, like books, newspapers and trade magazines, to generate specialized reports. Most of these firms have brought their services into the Internet age and are still a good source of specialized data for a price. The dawn of the Internet also unleashed the concept of free information. From this idea, several search engines were born. These engines, supported by rising dot-coms, generally returned long lists of data where at least half of the list completely missed the requested mark.

From these two extremes, a new Knowledge Age is emerging. In this era, Application Service Providers (ASPs) are building information portals that deliver specialized, relevant data in real time. This paper discusses the evolution of intelligence solutions and outlines the various options and solutions available to knowledge workers in today's marketplace.

The Polarization of Solutions

Most intelligence solutions can be broken down into two major categories ­ premium specialty solutions and widely available, public solutions. To keep pace with the millennium's business demands, these two solutions have evolved from brick and mortar, hard-copy delivery models to Internet-based digital delivery models. This trend is discussed in the next section.

Premium Solutions

The first category includes powerful, content-rich, and expensive solutions that are geared toward use by specialists. Included in this group are such companies as Dialog ­ a Thomson Company, Factiva, and MarkIntel.

Each of the solutions in this category boasts itself as a one-stop solution for all information needs. Among these three companies, they have more than three million documents spanning more than twenty-five years of historical data accumulated from greater than 36,000 sources, which is more than three times the amount of information available on the entire World Wide Web. These premium services offer several pricing plans, all of which are based on how much access you will have to their respective databases. These services carry lofty price tags. In fact, a simple market research paper from MarkIntel can range from $6.30 per page to $18.30 per page. This pricing structure is beyond the reach of most small to midsized companies.

Public Solutions

This second type of solution is widely inclusive. Generic free search engines from Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Excite, as well as hybrid solutions providers like Individual.com, Company Sleuth, and Northern Light, fall into this category.

The public solutions offer a less expansive list of sources. They tend to concentrate on published stories, public filings, and press releases. Generally, the results returned are in list form, which may or may not have a similar look and feel and may or may not pertain to the specific inquiry. These engines and services rely heavily on keyword and industry searches to locate and return data based on user input.

Some of the hybrid service solutions offer special reports that are priced reasonably (i.e., Northern Light at US$1.00 to $4.00). The risk is that the reports may or may not have the needed information and users may have to procure several reports before finding one that actually meets their need.

Another hybrid, Individual.com touts that they deliver true personalization of services as defined by Forrester. They call this Smart Personalization. Through this service, users create a custom logon, define news topics, and a homepage. Still, with only forty domestic and international news sources in their repertoire, they cannot provide the comprehensive returns of their premium service counterparts.

Trend to Internet Based Delivery

In the '70s, centralized applications were stored on mainframe computers. Users at terminals requested and fed transactions to mainframes. This application-centric architecture served as the standard in configuring work environments. The centralized application housing kept application hosting and development costs in check and relatively manageable.

In the late '80s and early '90s, the PC became commonplace, bringing about a distributed client/server computing architecture. As applications began being stored on individual workstations instead of on the server, costs associated with writing, developing, and managing applications skyrocketed.

The Web browser was introduced in the early '90s. Developers soon recognized it as the way to bring centralized management to a distributed environment. As Internet access speed increased due to higher bandwidths, ActiveX and Java applets became commonplace starting in 1998, bringing about a new standard for application delivery. With these technologies and other open e-business platforms, Web communities are becoming more prevalent and vertical information portals are populating the Internet.

Hosted Applications vs. Software Solutions

Applications have become one of the most critical resources to business success. Integrating those applications into the business model is critical. Workers in all areas of the company need access to the same applications. Considering that organizations are competing in a worldwide marketplace, the complexities can multiply overnight.

Finding software solutions that support the variety of devices, operating platforms and connectivity protocols utilized throughout an organization can be costly. These expenses include both hard and soft costs. Hard costs include equipment, software, and services and soft costs include downtime, increased time to market and maintenance costs. Hosted applications give a five-fold benefit to customers in terms of reach, speed, predictability, cost, and flexibility.

Hosted applications are able to reach out to the entire world around the clock. The Internet Age has brought about the need for access to current, historical, relevant, and comprehensive information at lightening speed. Complex software application deployments can take months or years to complete. With the shortage of skilled IT workers, it can take longer and cost more by becoming obsolete even before fully deployed. The Gartner Group estimates seventy percent of enterprises will outsource small applications and small to midsized companies will soon rely on application hosting as their primary delivery model.

Hosted applications offer a level of predictability that is hard if not impossible to duplicate in a distributed application environment. Advances in fail-over protection and physical security measures, such as diesel backup generators, biometric scanning devices, and perimeter guards, can be cost-effective when applied to centric services but are not cost-effective or often implemented in distributed application environments. Further, hosted applications give users familiarity. If they log on in Tokyo or in New York, they can expect the same service level, the same interfaces, and the same version support.

Cost analysis of hosted vs. non-hosted applications includes determining the real cost associated with applications. The Tolly Group estimates that recurring costs of providing non-hosted applications can exceed $10,000 per user per year. The break-even point between hosted applications and a non-hosted application is beyond the one-hundred users point. The optimal hosted-application customer is the small to midsized business with twenty to one-hundred employees. Larger companies can benefit from targeted, hosted applications that are departmentally or geographically specific, thus creating small/midsized businesses within businesses.

Hosted applications can offer a flexibility of pricing that cannot be easily mirrored by traditional distributed application software. For instance, only in a hosted-application environment can companies truly have a pay-per-use management method. The ability to subscribe to services with usage-based pricing is very appealing when relating to intelligence solutions.

Distributed vs. Centralized Content

Intelligence solutions need to pull data from several disparate sources in order to provide a useful service to clients. There are two ways to accomplish this ­ pull all sources together into one centralized database or send out agents to pull data from individual source databases and compile that data for each individual request.

Solution providers who manage to compile a centralized database will be able to provide their customers with faster return times for search requests and thus would be better able to satisfy the need of real-time intelligence access. Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Excite are all examples of distributed content intelligence sources. Dialog and Nexis are examples of intelligence solutions that offer a centralized database.

Content Integration vs. Content Aggregation

Hosted intelligence services can be distributed as an aggregated product of combined data from disparate sources or as an integrated list of disparate sources that contain the data requested. Integrated content can be thought of as just-in-time compilations of consolidated search results or content sets that are distributed directly to the end user (i.e., AltaVista.com). Content aggregators such as Bell & Howell Learning & Information and COMTEX consolidate the content as products and then distribute those products to customers who may be either resellers or end users.

Making Sense vs. Making Lists

There is a trend in intelligence and research products to provide some overarching analysis of search results or other findings. To date, most research or intelligence products have simply listed raw search results or findings, leaving it up to the user to make sense of those results, analyze patterns, and draw conclusions. Within the past two years, some services have branched out to provide the next level of service, including analyst reports and trend alerts. All intelligence solution providers will eventually need to provide the higher service level in order to remain competitive.

Real Time vs. Old Time

Real-time solutions are becoming the mainstay of business. Information on mergers and acquisitions, product launches, and SEC filings is available more quickly than ever. The age-old tradition of waiting weeks for a comprehensive competitor analysis is just not a viable option to be competitive. Hosted applications offer intelligence with a mouse click. They serve the market by providing immediate access to relevant information.

Issues and Concerns in Portals and Intelligence Solutions

With new Web sites popping up all over, employees are finding it harder than ever to get their hands on information that is relevant to their jobs. Couple this with the learning gap that exists in the workforce between Internet-savvy and neo-Internet users, people are looking in all the wrong places and getting more and more frustrated. The solution lies in successfully combining intelligence sources with a virtual portal.

Collaboration and content are the components of a successful portal venture. Portals are massive automated directories of vertically aligned products or services. These virtual directories can be programmed to understand what you are looking for and then going out and seeking it. Collaboration between partners that provide Internet content and database applications is critical. The next generation of intelligence solutions will need to go beyond pure vertical portals and address concerns of individualization, customization, and personalization.

Interface Standardization across Heterogeneous Content Sources

Another important facet to consider when discussing real-time intelligence is the distribution and presentation of collected materials. When compiling information from several disparate sources, it can be difficult to sort out the important pieces within the content. New hosted-application providers are beginning to favor a standardized method of displaying information gathered from multiple sources to make discovery and analysis easier for users. Hoover's Intelligence Monitor is a good example as it takes information from thousands of sources and presents it in a standard, user-friendly browser format.

Content Management ­ Indexing and Storage

Using intelligence solutions to find current information is typical. Using intelligence solutions to find historical data is more complex. Premium services that warehouse their data in centralized databases are typically better able to provide historical data services. The ability of any service to manage their content and make it accessible over time is a true measure of their longevity in terms of usefulness. The ability to refine data searches via indexes is a good indicator of an evolved intelligence solution. Search and indexing capabilities by source and date are two of the most widely sought functions of real-time intelligence solutions.

Authentication and Permission

Internet application security is of utmost importance to any successful intelligence solution deployment. At a minimum, security requirements should include allowing administrators to manage user passwords and access levels to ensure that information is kept at a need-to-know level. Optimal security measures include encrypted transmissions, Point-to-Point Transport Protocol (PPTP), Virtual Private Networks (VPN), and firewalls.

Information Currency and Alerting

Real-time intelligence providers know that the right information in the hands of the right person in a timely manner can result in a financial windfall. Proactive providers have turned to automated Web-bots that can be customized and automated to search data sources for user-defined keywords and proactively alert users about their hot topics via e-mail or pager.

Customization vs. Personalization

Many intelligence solutions say they can tailor their results to fit specific criteria. This is accomplished on two levels. The top level is customization. A solution with customized offerings can tailor its deliverables to meet the needs of a single organization. The organization as a whole can define standard criteria that will be used by all users regardless of relevancy to the individual worker. The better option is a solution that focuses on personalization, the other level. Personalized options allow for both top-level organizational customizations and individual work-related requests, news feeds, and information requirements.

Customization and Personalization

All intelligence solutions need to be able to be customized to some degree. The depth of customization depends largely on what the organization is trying to accomplish and what the expectations are of the workers who are using the tool. Due to its centralized architecture and thin-client requirements, hosted applications are able to provide levels of customization and personalization faster, better, and more manageable than any distributed server/client application.

Customization

Customized solutions are client driven. This is the most basic level of accommodation that a service provider can offer and still claim to serve unique needs. Customized solutions are founded on common features needed by all users within an organization. This is a sufficient solution for workers who need only to gain broad access to intelligence information.

Personalization

Personalized solutions are user driven. These service providers realize that each worker may have a need to explore different areas within the intelligence arena. Their offerings can be individually tailored to include both the common features required at the organization level and the user level. Personalization is the key to successful portals and company-wide intelligence solutions.

Personalization Requirements

Once a service provider has committed to the idea of providing personalized intelligence solutions, they need to consider the requirements. These requirements range from selectable data sources to flexible filters and interfaces.

Selectable Data Sources

There are three main data sources ­ Internet, proprietary, and premium/licensed. The Internet offers a wide variety of distributed information that is publicly available to those who are willing to search. Proprietary databases can be locally stored intelligence sources or remotely hosted databases that are owned in whole or in part by the organization doing the searching. Premium/licensed databases are owned or compiled by one or more companies and can be sold in parts or as a whole. Premium/licensed databases may be hosted remotely or in-house. An excellent intelligence solution provider would have the ability to combine all three disparate data sources to provide the most comprehensive solution offering.

Flexible Filters

Along with providing great content, personalized solutions offer users the ability to define, manage, and edit several information filters to ensure that they are able to retrieve relevant information and tweak the filter when necessary to get a more concentrated or broad selection. Additionally, intelligence solutions providers need to accommodate easy addition, modification, and deletion of search criteria as needs change.

Flexible Interface

Not all users want to receive information from all sources or need all services from a particular solution provider. Therefore, it is important that intelligence service providers offer the ability to select among their services to enable a user-by-user service offering that speaks to the needs of the individual as opposed to just servicing their corporate culture.

Options and Solutions

So, what are the choices? It all comes down to choosing between an ASP or software solution. There are pros and cons to each option and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Suffice it to say, weighing the options is a good start for any company looking for an intelligence solution.

Software Solutions

Among the many software solutions are enterprise information portals (EIPs) and traditional document and knowledge management (KM) applications. EIPs such as Sybase, Plumtree, Hummingbird, and Sagemaker, offer push-pull technologies that transmit information to users through standardized interfaces. They integrate content management, business intelligence, and data warehouse information and are often packaged applications that target their content toward a particular function or industry. Traditional document and KM applications such as Verity, Documentum, Open Text, and Convera (formerly Excaliber) help unlock the value of proprietary, digitally stored information. The downside of software solutions includes high costs, maintenance upkeep, the need for IT resources, and sometimes complex interfaces that limit the ability to customize and personalize intelligence searches.

Service Solutions

As discussed above, ASPs and hosted application servers such as Hoover's Intelligence Monitor offer great flexibility, reach, ease-of-use, predictability, and speed. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits offered by the hosted applications is the ability to customize and personalize intelligence search solutions to deliver real-time, current, and relevant data to the person who needs it most. Easy to use and maintain, service solutions fit well into organizations of all sizes. The downside to using an ASP service lies in the language of some licensing structures that may not favor larger organizations. Licensing language is unique to each ASP or hosted service provider and may just as easily benefit a larger organization.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right intelligence solution for an individual company comes down to one thing ­ what is the cost associated with not having the right information in the right hands at the right time? Intelligence solutions can be used throughout an organization to enhance sales, follow up on competition, research fiscal status, and conduct industry trend analysis. The use for structured data on relevant topics is limitless. The future of any industry relies on business leaders knowing who is doing what at any time.

Hosted applications are poised to offer the best of both worlds ­ they are able to deliver on the promise of collaborative interaction that will enable people to work together, share information, and redefine the way business is done.

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