2008: Best or Worst of Times?
January 8, 2008
For search system vendors, it’s a Dickens’ “best of times, worst of times” business climate. Some companies like Autonomy have diversified, acquired competitors, and marketed effectively. Others have rushed from crisis to crisis, smothering bad news with excuses.
There are some up and comers in the “behind the firewall” search market. Companies to watch include the surging ISYS Search Software. It’s reliable. It’s speedy. And it sports some “must have” bells and whistles, including entity extraction and on-the-fly classification. Also worth watching is the semantic technology vendor Siderean Software. For companies wanting assisted navigation and slicing and dicing semantic metatags permit, Siderean’s system is worth a long, hard look. There are dozens of others making customers happy and reducing the hassles associated with finding information in an Intranet.
There are some companies struggling to keep their revenue in growth mode and leaping over rivulets of red ink. In 2007, Mondosoft, a Danish search system, floundered. It’s now part of the burgeoning SurfRay technology holdings. Entopia (Belmont, California) died quietly. Fast Search & Transfer survived some financial challenges and then with little warning withdrew from the Norwegian stock exchange. Is this a positive signal or a more ominous one.
The point is that many traditional search-and-retrieval vendors look one way and see the success of a Google. A look in another direction, there are warning signs that the “behind the firewall” sector is ripe for consolidation or an increasingly stringent shake out.
The best strategy for 2008 is to look for companies that can deliver a solution that works without a huge balloon payment for technical support and customization. A second tip is to look outside the US. ISYS has its technical roots in Australia. Exalead is a Paris-based company. Little-known Bitext operates from Madrid.
Procurement teams have a tendency to use what’s available. IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle offer search systems, often as a bonus when another enterprise product is licensed. Lucene beckons because some believe it’s free–as long as the licensee has open source savvy engineers on tap. Many enterprise systems such as content management systems include a search-and-retrieval system. When budgets are tight, the CFO asks, “Why pay again?”
My recommendation is to look at the up-and-comers in “behind the firewall” search. The brand names are safe, but you might be able to save money, time, and technical headaches by widening your horizons.
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