We are all familiar with Staples and their “easy” button. What a great commercial! It depicts office workers who are in dire office needs (file organization, inkjet cartridges, etc.)  and find refuge in this easy button. One press of the button and voila, problem is solved. Of course, this is too good to be true.

How does this relate to illumin8? In a previous post, we described an illumin8 user who was able to find a solution provider in 3 minutes using illumin8 compared to a year’s worth of searching using other search products. This user might very well describe illumin8 as an easy button. So the question…Is it possible to create a product where a simple click of the search button will yield the next ipod? Can illumin8 be the beginnings of this product?

It is very interesting that as soon as a search product is not free, folks expect miracles to happen. In many previous engagements, I’ve had the opportunity to help companies hunt for the next innovation holy grail whether it be a new kind of packaging material or miracle household cleaner. At the end of some of these hunts, the members of the project teams found themselves looking at each other trying to figure out what to do next. These project teams were suffering from the money button syndrome. They expected “the answer” to simply surface to the top. The really good project teams understood early on that they needed to ultimately make the necessary intermediate and final decisions. They recognized that the information coming back from our hunts was just the beginning.

It is also true that one searcher’s garbage is another searcher’s treasure. This is the same for search results. The exact same search and output could be interpreted in so many different ways depending on the searchers point of reference. Why do I bring this up? Although I work for a technology company that is building an “intelligent” search tool, the bottom line is we can only strive to bring a searcher the most relevant information out there. A search tool cannot make a partnership happen nor facilitate a licensing agreement - there is no money button, sorry.

It still takes people to make business happen. Search and relevant information can only help to speed up the process. In the case of our user finding solution provider, he had to make initial contact and get the ball rolling. Yes, obvious, but I still see a lot of reluctance here. I guess even with all the technology around us today, picking up the phone is still required.

So back to the money button. Unfortunately, illumin8 will never be the omnipotent search tool to end all search tools, but maybe we can move past the just calling illumin8 a search engine. How about “opportunity engine”? Here’s the opportunity button. Give it a push. If that doesn’t work, log into illumin8. Who knows, maybe you find the solution to world hunger.

For some fun summertime reading check out IDC’s white paper on the “Digital Universe” (http://www.emc.com/digital_universe). This vendor-sponsored study boldly estimates and forecasts what IDC calls “The Digital Universe” — essentially the total quantity of digital information created, captured and replicated worldwide. It is measured in exabytes (one exabyte= 1 billion gigabytes) and is forecast to grow rapidly, reaching 1,800 exabytes by 2011.The study notes that

The tools are in place–from Web 2.0 technologies and terabyte drives to unstructured data search software and the Semantic Web–to tame the digital universe and turn information growth into economic growth.

illumin8 is a good example of a tool designed exactly for this purpose: converting masses of raw content into business value. This is a critical task for those of us in the information industry and it’s not an easy one. As IDC notes: “searching for meaning in the content of unstructured data….is the rocket science of the digital universe”. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

On July 7 we went live with our second major release this year! Kudos to the development team for once again delivering a major product enhancement release in an extremely compressed time frame. The highlight of the release is a new Result category: Authors and Inventors. Now, when you enter a search, we will display the leading authors and inventors drawn from our vast journal and patent content. Our customers have asked for this, and it is a great start on pinpointing experts associated with a query. With this addition, any illumin8 search will display an even more powerful overview covering technical approaches, companies, organizations, products and now, authors/inventors. Besides the author/inventor output, we’ve also made some significant usability improvements, including a redesigned tabbed profile view and a new, more informative welcome page.

Stay tuned: there will be more exciting product enhancements to come throughout the year.

Since launching illumin8 back in February, we’ve had a lot of memorable moments while making customer presentations. We have heard quotes like “this is amazing!” or “how did you do that?” or “i love this product”, but none was as rewarding as what happened last week. Right before we got into presenting illumin8 at a Fortune 100 company, a current illumin8 user at the company interrupts the meeting to let his colleagues know they should pay attention to the presentation. Why? Well, the fact that he spent a year looking for a solution provider that illumin8 was able to uncover in 3 minutes and are currently utilizing the solution provider’s services. Imagine his excitement…that’s awesome! Is this the result of every illumin8 search? Probably not and we can’t guarantee this result (nor can anybody actually in reality), but it is NICE when it happens.