HP Autonomy: A Twist?
August 26, 2014
I read “U.S. Judge Casts Doubt on HP-Shareholder Settlement in Autonomy Lawsuit.” The write up seems to point to another chapter in the Hewlett Packard Autonomy litigation. If the article is spot on, I learned:
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the settlement contained a “potentially fatal” provision, under which HP would hire shareholder attorneys to pursue claims against ex-Autonomy executives. He said that provision may prevent his approving the deal.
Assume this is correct. HP would have to go back to the drawing board with regard to a shareholder allegation about the deal. Instead of putting Autonomy on the hot seat, HP may have to deal with shareholders who see HP management as having some flaws.
Instead of reading about Mike Lynch, we would be getting some insight into what the HP board and folks like Meg Whitman were thinking about search and content processing.
My view is that enterprise information retrieval is shadowed by a somewhat gray cloud. If search is the Big Thing, the value of these systems should be evident. Instead we learn that search is a contentious issue. I am curious about the reasoning HP used to justify buying an enterprise search and content processing system that was 15 years young? Once that decision was made, what MBA magic was at work to produce the purchase price? What was Meg Whitman’s contribution to this deal when it took place?
Do other search vendors benefit from the notoriety of this search deal? My hunch is that the flailing many search vendors’ marketing demonstrates is that search is not an Emmy winning solution.
Search is easy to misunderstand and difficult to covert into a money machine. The HP Autonomy matter is a living, breathing case study of that does call attention to the challenges search presents. For those seeking cases studies about search, the HP Autonomy matter is a headliner.
The matter is a reminder that search which everyone thinks he or she understands may not be quite so simple.
Stephen E Arnold, August 26, 2014
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