Funnelback Sucked Up by Squiz
July 7, 2009
Funnelback, an Australian vendor of enterprise search, has been acquired by Squiz, a content management vendor.
When I questioned Brett Matson, the managing director of Funnelback, I learned that Squiz will offer hosted and on premises installations of Funnelback. I learned:
Funnelback and Squiz already share a large number of very satisfied customers so we all agreed that this would make sense for the two Australian based companies. Funnelback will continue to run as an independent company.
Funnelback had built some traction in Australia, the United Kingdom, and in Canada. Funnelback has a long history, which I summarized in one of the Enterprise Search Report encyclopedias i wrote for a published in Maryland. CMS systems have a love – hate relationship with search. Some vendors have licensed search technology from mainstream vendors of enterprise search. The customers who use these CMS systems – for example, RedDot – learn that in order to index content that does not reside in the CMS realize that an upgrade is needed. Some CMS vendors like Interwoven prior to its sale to Autonomy would ink deals with vendors like Vivisimo. Customers using these systems learn that they too often need to upgrade to get the features they need. Will Squiz find search heaven and crank out happy licensees?
The addled goose thinks that most users of enterprise search systems are not too thrilled, but my research data may differ from that available to Funnelback and Squiz. I also find it interesting that news of these small scale roll ups continue to drift down to the goose pond in Harrods Creek. My hunch is that the economic climate for some software vendors is harsh, and the financial mavens behind these deals work on the 1+1=3 premise. Autonomy, of course, bought a CMS company. Other firms have different strategies. In my view, consolidation and survival figure prominently in the Excel models that underpin these deals.
Stephen Arnold, July 7, 2009
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