Autonomy: The Big Winner
December 11, 2008
I now have three or four readers. One of these fine people said that I am “easy” on Autonomy. I am not “easy”; I just point to interesting information related to moving beyond key word search. If you want to hassle me about Autonomy, stop reading. I want to call your attention to a December 8, 2008, news release with the headline “Autonomy Has Won the Enterprise Search Wars Declares Computer Business Review” here. I found this story intriguing because it is a bold assertion by a company that is a unit of Datamonitor, a research firm. CBROnline, according to its Web site, is:
…a leading technology website, delivering a wide variety of daily news, reports and analysis on the global technology industry. The website delivers a wide range of content which is updated throughout every business day, attracting users from the corporate technology market.
The core of the story is this passage:
“[With] sales in its latest quarter up 42% to $127.1m, [Autonomy] is clearly doing something right – especially considering the current climate,” says Jason Stamper, editor of CBR, citing Autonomy’s support for over 1,000 different data types as one of the company’s key differentiators. “Besides, analysts agree that its Meaning-based Computing takes it further than search alone, and its vast array of OEMs should help it ride the downturn better than most.”
My thought is that some vendors–possibly Google or Microsoft Fast–might assert that they are the winners of the search war. My thought is that Autonomy does clever public relations. Note: I am pointing to an article and making an observation. I am not easy, just amused.
Stephen Arnold, December 11, 2008
Comments
7 Responses to “Autonomy: The Big Winner”
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Sorry Stephen, I can’t find the story at either of those links.
Your readers may also be interested in an Autonomy pricelist I found at
https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F4003D/GS35F4003D_online.htm
Stephen, as one of thise who commented on your previous utterings about Autonomy I don’t want to stop reading, because I respect your opinions. Maybe you need to identify opinion from simple blogging of something you found….
My comments were based on work I did with clients who had spent not inconsiderable money (wow! what a price list….) on Autonomy and were less than satisfied.
I appreciate that your mentions are not based on actual experience of the package and, as you say, they must be doing something right if you look at their sales. On the other hand theirs is a widely commented solution and may be it is the best of a bad lot??
Barry: I don’t think it’s the best of a bad lot: it’s just a search engine, much like a lot of others. There are plenty of valid alternatives.
Hi Stephen,
Autonomy, in my opinion, benefits hugely from a home-court / hometown hero advantage with the UK press and the UK public in general. Just as every Norwegian wanted to own a share of Fast, and every French person a share of Business Objects, so does every English person want to own a share of their hometown tech hero, Autonomy. (Among other things, this helps to explain Autonomy’s high multiple as Fast’s one back when they were independent and public.)
This effect includes the press as well, including CBR, a UK publication, which you cite above.
I’ve seen this effect over and over again in my career whether working at Business Objects, competing against MicroStrategy (where the DC press gave them a free ride for a long time), or acquiring Crystal Decisions (the big hometown tech hero in Vancouver).
I suspect in the French press you’d be reading exciting stories about Sinequa and Exalead.
In my estimation, the enterprise search wars are over because a shark jumped in the water (the Google Appliance) and all the vendors then jumped out: Fast sold to Microsoft, Endeca is repositioning as (something like) a BI solutions vendor, and Autonomy bought Zantaz and is seemingly turning into a compliance vendor.
Remember the 1960s Another Mother for Peace bumper sticker: what if you had a war and nobody came?
Happy holidays.
Dave
Well Dave, I’m English and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not 🙂 Interesting point though, and you’re probably right about national bias.
I’m not sure about your point about Google though. The search appliance, no matter how many APIs it has, is still a black (well, yellow) box, and this will always limit users’ deep control over indexing and searching. Google’s prices are also still linked to the number of documents indexed, which is at best a primitive measure of system complexity – we have customers indexing 20 or 30 million documents who have needed less customisation work than some indexing 2 million, due to their differing business requirements.
The interesting thing about marketing as a compliance vendor is that it is based on fear – it’s “what would happen if you had no way of finding XYZ when the lawyers arrive”. I’d counter with “what will happen if you have no way of knowing exactly how XYZ is being stored, indexed or searched for”.
Charlie: I agree.
Two words: Lucene, Solr. I know lots and lots of happy Lucene and Solr users. I know some unhappy GSA owners.
May a GSA owner sell his yellow box on eBay or elsewhere once he decides he’d rather switch to, say, Solr, because he’s hitting the yellow box’s limits and doesn’t have another $250,000 to buy a bigger yellow box?
I’d agree with Dave regarding the British press.
Autonomy does get a favorable press but overall, I’ve found British business reporting to be a bit naive compared to that in the US.
They love the really positive (Autonomy) and really negative (Woolworths), but the analysis of it seems to be often lacking and somewhat casual. As a Brit that has lived in the US for a dozen or so years, I put this down in part to broader share ownership; US citizens are much more likely to be shareholders and as such demand – or at least get – a bit more analysis of the companies that they own in their press (what’s left of it, anyway!)
There’s only a couple of truly successful horizontal UK enterprise software companies: Autonomy and Sage (sure there are others especially in games & a whole load of mobile success stories plus some vertical market specific ones). But as such, those charged with following the UK tech industry inevitably focus on those too to a degree that is perhaps disproportionate to their overall place in the enterprise software industry.
Not that any of that has anything to with enterprise search per se, I just thought I’d say it anyway.
Nick