Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Microsoft's Bing for Business Aims to Make Companies More Productive

Yahoo is now giving away the crucial technology powering its internal searches. Vespa, the search engine used by the tech company for internal queries, is now open-source and available to everyone.

Oath Inc., the Verizon company that acquired Yahoo in June, announced that Vespa is now available as open source on GitHub. According to a <a href="http://blog.vespa.ai/post/165763618906/open-sourcing-vespa-yahoos-big-data-processing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">company blog post</a>, making the Big Data processing and serving engine open source is a step further in Oath’s commitment to opening up its infrastructure to developers.

“By releasing Vespa, we are making it easy for anyone to build applications that can compute responses to user requests, over large datasets, at real time and at internet scale – capabilities that up until now, have been within reach of only a few large companies,” Jon Bratseth, a systems architect at Yahoo, explained via the blog post.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Vespa, Yahoo's big data processing and serving engine, available as open source on GitHub!<a href="https://t.co/InVSKoSlZY">https://t.co/InVSKoSlZY</a></p>
— Arkaitz Etxezarreta (@arkaitzo) <a href="https://twitter.com/arkaitzo/status/913790813607464960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Vespa powers Yahoo network’s internal search feature and is used to determine what recommendations to display as well as the company’s ad targeting system. Currently, Vespa is used in around 150 apps such as Yahoo’s main search engine, Yahoo Mail, and Flicker, <em><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/26/yahoo-open-sources-vespa-for-content-recommendations.html">CNBC</a></em> reported. The search tool is also responsible for serving around 3 billion native ads daily.

Vespa traces its roots back to AllTheWeb, a Norwegian search engine which was acquired by Yahoo in 2003, according to <em><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/verizon-reveals-the-faded-secrets-of-yahoo-search/">Wired</a></em>. Since then, the tool has been modified as a general purpose engine that Yahoo could use internally in a host of different applications.

This is not the first time Yahoo released some of its technology as open source. In 2009, the company released Hadoop as open source which became a hit when it was adopted by big tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and eBay. Apparently, the plan is to replicate the benefits of making Hadoop publicly available which allowed Yahoo to easily recruit programmers as it became widely used.

But Vespa’s reach has the potential to overshadow that of Hadoop. As Bratseth puts it, “Vespa is larger in scope and lines of code than any open source project we've ever released,” adding that it has already been battle-proven in Yahoo’s largest and most critical systems. It is attractive both for its scalability and versatility while it is touted to be better than Hadoop in serving results to end users.

However, there are doubts that Vespa could be successful outside of Oath. According to <em>Wired</em>, Hadoop became a success because it was born open source and arrived at a time when businesses needed it most. This time, however, most large companies have already addressed web search issues that Vespa is designed for. In addition, there are already other open source engines available.

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[Featured Image via Yahoo]

Bing is often seen as the underdog of search engines, but it recently held center stage at Microsoft's recently concluded Ignite conference. Held in September in Orlando, Florida, the conference allowed the company to disclose how it plans to proceed with the enterprise software.

With that goal in mind, Microsoft introduced Bing for Business, a novel intelligent search service that focuses on enterprise users. The software is not available to the general public yet but users with existing subscriptions to Office 365 will be able to take advantage of a private preview.

This special version of the search engine will reportedly offer an “intelligent search” feature that combines several data sources to help companies become more efficient. It will also allow company employees to find information that is relevant only to the organization. If properly utilized, Bing for Business can become the technology that many companies would be using in the future to disseminate company knowledge.

Bing for Business will provide businesses with more than the usual web results. The software can scan for information across a company's shared files, emails, recent documents, and team sites, turning it into the central hub of all information gathered from Office 365.

Instead of providing each app with a distinct search bar, users won't have to go to another page or site to get particular information about the business. Instead, they can just do a normal web search and have the relevant content delivered. Said content will be presented as cards after the result is finished, with the business data set at the forefront.

System administrators will also reportedly benefit from Bing for Business. The software can integrate with current admin controls so it can be managed by IT enterprise managers. Search traffic will also be protected so that business listing won't reach the Internet and custom branding options will be provided as well. This will allow companies to keep their identity unique and protected.

 

Image credit: Microsoft

The upcoming service will be powered by AI and Microsoft's centralized API, Microsoft Graph. This combination permits for search to collate data from all corners of Office 365, from SharePoint team sites to specific words in office documents. The software will also be linked to the company's available data analytics tool, like Delve and Power BI.

Users of Office 365 Enterprises, Business and Education can avail of Bing for Business' private preview by requesting an invitation.

[Featured image via Microsoft]

The post Microsoft's Bing for Business Aims to Make Companies More Productive appeared first on WebProNews.



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