Endeca Pursues Publishers
October 3, 2008
MarkLogic has been making headway in the world of publishing. I know that I have predicted the demise of traditional newspaper, magazine, and book publishers, but there is life in a number of publishing sectors. Publishers–spurred by amateur journalists like this addled goose and fast changing Web companies like Google–have been increasingly open to new technology. Nstein, a former content processing vendor, has worked hard to reposition some of its technology specifically for the publishing industry. Now Endeca is hopping on the bandwagon. One of the early entrants from the search and content processing sector was Fast Search & Transfer. The company acquired a company in Utah and created a remarkable PowerPoint presentation showing Fast ESP (enterprise search platform) as the foundation of a next-generation newspaper. I’m not sure what happened to that initiative since Microsoft gobbled up Fast Search and turned Oslo’s engineers into the heart of Redmond’s search innovation effort.
Endeca, therefore, years ago made a well considered move to tailor its technology to the needs of publishers. I heard that the company has more than 150 publishing clients. You can read about the services in the company’s news release here or a boiled down version from Customer Interaction Solutions here. According to Endeca’s Steve Papa:
Media and publishing represents one of Endeca’s largest and fastest growing areas of focus. Web and mobile platforms, once seen as a required complement to traditional print and broadcast mediums, have rapidly become the primary area for new product creation and revenue growth. We’re working closely with our most innovative clients and partners to develop next-generation offerings that deliver a differentiated cross-medium experience, simplify the re-use of content across media platforms, and create new opportunities to monetize text, audio and video assets.
The question becomes, “With more search and content processing vendors chasing publishing companies, will the vendors be able to deliver enough value to warrant the high license fees some vendors charge?” What may happen is that price competition may force some of the smaller, less well known vendors to park on the side of the information highway hoping another ride comes along. “Value”, as I use the term, means that these potent systems scale economically, deliver good performance, and accommodate change without requiring a Roman legion of programmers. In my experience, publishers often lack a good understanding of the problems their own content creates for them. Publishers often don’t want search; publishers want the ability to create new information products from existing content. The ideal system delivers what publishers call “content repurposing” without requiring expensive, vain, and erratic human editors. Publishers would prefer life without equally expensive, vain, and erratic authors if possible. Publishing looks like an ideal market, but in some ways it is a difficult sector in which to gain traction and make sales. Sci-tech publishers want to “own” a solution so competitors can’t enjoy the benefits of a level playing field.
You can learn more about Endeca here.
Stephen Arnold, October 3, 2008
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2 Responses to “Endeca Pursues Publishers”
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Hi Steven,
They’ve got so many different initiatives going on that I wonder if this isn’t throwing a bone to publishers to let them know they’ve not been forgotten in the melee of manufacturing, distribution, financial services, retail, public sector, supply chain and web analytics solutions.
Cheers,
Dave
Dave Kellogg,
Good point. Keep sharing your insights. By the way, congratulations on the two big wins against one of the highest profile outfits in the search and content processing space. Are you sure MarkLogic is an “XML database”? Seems like a much harrier beast to me. Anything new coming down the trail that you can share with my two or three “Beyond Search” readers.
Stephen Arnold, October 3, 2008