Endeca and Business Intelligence
June 14, 2010
We are ready for a long vacation here at the goose pond. Most search and content processing companies are plotting their fall marketing campaigns. For Endeca, the time is right for cranking the knob on the firm’s marketing activities. A recent example is “One on One with Paul Sonderegger”. Mr. Sonderegger is an Endeca executive who makes frequent appearances at conferences and in some cases represents the public face of the company.
There were several interesting points that emerged in the interview. Let me highlight several and urge you to read the original interview.
First, Endeca has more than 600 customers, including Boeing, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Ford Motor Company, Texas Instruments, and Walmart. (I had heard that Walmart was using Google search technology. That’s not surprising since most organizations have five or more search systems each working happily away.)
Second, Endeca like Attivio and a number of other search vendors are doing what the 20 somethings call “up leveling”. The idea is that selling search is less lucrative than selling an enterprise solution that the Board of Directors, the CEO, and the CFO perceiving as delivering “value” to the organization. Mr. Sonderegger said:
Traditional BI tools are very good at reporting on structured data and answering questions the company knew to ask ahead of time. But today there is a greater need for information discovery so that people can answer the questions they just discovered mattered, in the moment, and make it part of the decision-making process. Endeca’s search capabilities facilitate this type of self-service discovery on both structured and unstructured or jagged data sources – such as documents or e-mails, empowering users to ask and answer questions of all types of data.
Third, the notion of “dashboarding” is now a hook on which Endeca and other vendors hang licensing deals. A “dashboard” displays essential information in one interface. When I hear the word “dashboard” I think of the crazy information system in a big BMW, but I get the idea. Mr. Sonderegger noted:
Our technology complements existing BI systems. Every one of our customers already has at least one reporting platform in place and it reliably publishes valuable reports. However, each of those reports inspires follow-on questions. And those questions change depending on what matters to that person right then. The convergence of BI and search technologies reveals relationships in the data that lead to unanticipated answers or new insights – even if no one knew ahead of time those exact questions would be asked.
The idea is that Endeca does not require a rip-and-replace approach. Endeca’s method adds value and delivers a dynamic dashboard.
When I think of Endeca, I think about eCommerce. The business intelligence capability of Endeca, as I seem to recall, have been part of the system for a number of years. In today’s market, Endeca may be reminding prospects that it has more capabilities than powering online shopping.
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2010
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>When I hear the word “dashboard” I think of the crazy information system in a big BMW…
Who knew blogging could be so lucrative!