Search Roll Up with CMS and eDiscovery
March 14, 2009
Two roads once diverged in a yellow wood. Now three roads merge into one muddy path. Why? Read on.
I read Barb Mosher’s “The Converging Paths of Search, eDiscovery and Enterprise CMS” here. My first pass through the article was swift. Then I went back through the write up thought about the Autonomy approach to growth: acquisitions, most recently in the eDiscovery sector. The article tackles end to end plays practiced by Open Text. The conclusion stressed that convergence is the path forward. On the surface, this view is supported by received wisdom and the actions of some high profile companies.
My view is somewhat different. First, I think search for some companies is indeed a dead end. The search technology is growing long in the tooth, and companies looking for solutions want to try newer approaches. One example is Google’s success with its Google Search Appliance, a system that certain large vendors find easy to criticize. The system may be simplistic, but the GOOG provides a potent way to make the GSA sit up and roll over. Furthermore, with about 25,000 appliances sold, the GOOG is the largest vendor of search solutions in the world. Other systems with newer technology that some big name vendors are selling in a lousy economy at a steady pace; for example, Coveo, Exalead, and ISYS Search Software.
Putting search, content management and eDiscovery in one system means a miserable path forward for the organization taking such an approach.
So what do big guys with no organic do to grow? Answer: buy promising opportunities. The fuel behind some of the acquisition activity is an inability to grow within a core market in an organic way. A short cut is needed. With some PR spin and a boatload of journalists looking for an angle, the notion of convergence gets a new lease on life.
Enterprise software is a complicated business. No company wants to have one system handle multiple tasks. The complexity of information and the context for certain content functions requires some granularity.
A good example is eDiscovery. Get this wrong and there’s a financial penalty or maybe jail time. eDiscovery is a hot area because of the risks associated with litigation. The fact that a savvy company spots a hot market and buys into it is good business. It is not search or convergence. A general purpose search system cannot easily be retrofitted to deal with spoliation, email chaining, and automated court ready report output. Sorry. This takes a specialized system, not a 20 something writing a marketing brochure.
Another example is content management. In a regulated business like nuclear power, CMS sucks. The documentation system must perform specific rigorous functions; otherwise, a plant shut down, a fine, or other penalties will apply. A system that makes a Web page is inappropriate for certain types of records management functions. The naive don’t understand this, but if a system can roll back a Web page, that’s something that a 20 something does understand. As a result, the lack of knowledge creates a false confidence that in clinical trials, power generation, and law enforcement CMS is going to mesh with search to make everyone’s lives better. Baloney.
A third example is search itself. I am amazed when people point out that search is a slam dunk or simple. Today we spent 45 minutes explaining the importance of dealing in a consistent way with company names to a search customer. Why? Get the name wrong and you probably won’t retrieve some important information about a company. Search systems involve many issues, some larger and smaller, when it comes to thinking about a behind the firewall search system. Ignoring these issues can lead to disaffected users and as one pharma company learned a year or so ago, a Federal investigation and loss of revenue.
Suggesting that three systems are converging sounds great. The result is a muddy, probably impassable way forward. Just my opinion. Bring facts to knock my arguments down, please.
Stephen Arnold, March 14, 2009
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One Response to “Search Roll Up with CMS and eDiscovery”
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Your blog reminded me of my experiences with the consolidation of BI. BI isn’t simple either. Of course I’m referring to the benefit of BI – useful information – not analytic software products. I would suspect that every major corporation out there has its fill of BI tools. And now the incremental cost is actually using them. And of course, using them is expensive – even more expensive than buying them.
This whole issue with the Google Search Appliance reminds me of my days at Adobe in the early 90’s. They had a nice business going selling fonts at a great margin to folks who wanted cool looking collateral. Then Microsoft stepped in with Windows 3.1 and offered a ‘font pack’. It was $49 and had a 44 fonts. They reputedly sold $250M in the first quarter of its availability and then the market died down for that product the following quarter. At that point, Adobe’s plans for expanded sales of fonts into SMB front offices was dead. But Adobe continued to have a nice business selling unique, impactful fonts to folks who cared about cool looking collateral. Adobe continued on as a well-run very profitable software business. I wonder to what degree Google’s appliance market will dry up soon. And the rest of the high-end search vendors like Exalead and others just continue on, albeit focused on folks who care about cool working search.