Grand View Research Looks at Enterprise Search and Misses a Market Shift
January 7, 2015
Every time I write about a low-tier or mid-tier consulting firm’s reports, I get nastygrams. One outfit demanded that I publish an apology. Okay, no problem. I apologize for expressing that the research was at odds with my own work. So before I tackle Grand View Research’s $4,700 report called “Enterprise Search Market Analysis By End-Use (Government & Commercial Offices, Banking & Finance, Healthcare, Retail), By Enterprise Size (Small, Medium, Large) And Segment Forecasts To 2020,” Let me say, I am sorry. Really, really sorry.
This is a report that is about a new Fantasyland loved by the naive. The year 2020 will not be about old school search.
Image source: http://www.themeparkreview.com/parks/photo.php?pageid=116&linkid=12739
I know I am taking a risk because my new report “CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access” will be available in a very short time. The fact that I elected to abandon search as an operative term is one signal that search is a bit of a dead end. I know that there are many companies flogging fixes for SharePoint, specialized systems that “do” business intelligence, and decades old information retrieval approaches packaged as discovery or customer service solutions.
But the reality is that plugging words into a search box means that the user has to know the terminology and what he or she needs to answer a question. Then the real work begins. Working through the results list takes time. Documents have to read and pertinent passages copied and pasted in another file. Then the researcher has to figure out what is right or wrong, relevant or irrelevant. I don’t know about you, but most 20 somethings are spending more time thumb typing than old fashioned research.
What has Grand View Research figured out?
First off, the company knows it has to charge a lot of money for a report on a topic that has been beaten to death for decades. Grand View’s approach is to define “search” by some fairly broad categories; for example, small, medium and large and Government and commercial, banking and finance, healthcare, retail and “others.”
The $4,700 report performs quantitative analysis on what I see as a slippery fish. But Grand View asserts that it has solid data about these items:
- Market size, estimates, and forecast from 2012 to 2020
- Market revenue estimates for end-use up to 2020
- Regional market size and forecast for end-use segments up to 2020
- Market revenue estimates for enterprise size up to 2020
- Regional market size and forecast for enterprise size segments up to 2020
- Company market share
- Company financial performance.
In my new study CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, we learned that the companies we profile are mostly privately held and do not disclose any financial data. There was one outfit called Blackbird that expressed horror we even knew about their information processing business. There were some big outfits who rolled cyber OSINT into other portions of the balance sheet labeled “government projects.” In short, financial data is tough to obtain. But Grand View asserts that it has that information. Okay. Maybe.
Then the report includes qualitative analysis. That means opinion-based information. That’s fine. I do opinions every day. As long as one does not confuse opinion with facts and marketing, I am good to go.
The news release about the “study” contains a darned interesting item of data:
The global enterprise search market is expected to reach USD 5.02 billion by 2020, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc.
I am interested in how this figure was calculated. My hunch is that it is a guesstimate, and an uninformed one at that.
The conclusions for the report are even more surprising. I quote:
- Banking and financial services accounted for over 30% of the enterprise search market in 2013 and are expected to be a high growth segment. Data sharing and Interconnectivity are expected to be the key factors driving growth across this segment.
- The large enterprise segment is expected to dominate the market over the next six years, which can be credited to the need to search accurate data across a vast database. Small and medium enterprises are expected to grow at a rate higher than the global average over the forecast period.
- North America emerged as the leading regional segment with over 35% share of the global enterprise search market in 2013 Technological advancements along with the presence of key industry players contributed to regional market growth.
- Key industry participants include Coveo Corp., IBM Corp., SAP AG, Oracle, Microsoft, Dassault, etc. Strategic collaborations, in order to provide mass market solutions while serving niche markets, remain to be a major strategic initiative.
Let’s take each of these from my point of view.
First, banking and financial services account for one third of the $5.2 billion. I find that surprising. Most of the financial outfits with which I am familiar use embedded search; that is, the findability function is included in other software. Search and retrieval at banks is primitive. Just visit with your local banker and ask her to look up a check from three years ago. Let me know how that works out for you. “Data sharing and interconnectivity are expected to be the key factors driving growth across this segment.” What? I thought regulations and specific deals fueled spending at banks. Guess not.
Second, “large enterprise segment” is the go-to market. I am not sure if large enterprises are spending for search the way they did during the hay days of Autonomy and Fast Search & Transfer. Search is ill-suited for the information access challenges large companies face. When systems are licensed, are these primarily for search or are these companies looking for tools to deal with challenges that search has failed to meet for more than five decades? According to our research, search is a tough sale. System professionals have been burned by search in the past and want an alternative. I assume we are not talking to the “right” people.
Third, North America is a regional segment. Based on our data, the primary market for search is the US, followed by the UK, and then a handful of other Western European countries. The US market is a good one for certain types of software. I am not sure “search” is at the top of the punch list.
Fourth, the industry participants include some odd bedfellows. For example, Coveo is a decade old traditional search vendor. Dassault owns Exalead, but the company has not become a household word in the US. The inclusion of IBM, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft is nothing more than a reference to big companies struggling to retain relevance. I was surprised to find that Hewlett Packard Autonomy was not on the list. None of these companies has a solid grip on next generation information access. Each of these companies is using technology that is a decade old or even older. SAP is trying to establish that it has a useful search solution for SAP data., Oracle owns almost as many search technologies as OpenText. Microsoft is still trying to figure out to do with the now 20 year old Fast Search technology. If anything, these companies are lost in search space in my opinion. But the big omission? Open source search. Oh, I guess that’s not a factor unless it is included in IBM’s solution in search of a customer.
Should you buy this $4,700 report? Why not? If you are looking for information about old school approaches to information access, you are on the right track. You can even bring in some old school consultants who will cheer as you lead.
For me, the future looks like NGIA solutions. These are not included in this $4,700 report. The failure to reference NGIA is indicative of the usefulness of information intended to have the legs to carry the insights to 2020. Maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, January 7, 2014
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