The HP Autonomy Enterprise Search Epic Continues
September 26, 2015
I don’t play baseball anymore. I did. I was okay, but one of the fellows who lived in my neighborhood in central Illinois played very well. He played everyday. After a stellar high school career, he became a fielder in the major leagues. The pressure was too much. He made bad decisions. He tried to claw back to the starting rotation. Instead of swinging with the relaxed, fluid motion I recalled from our days of playing together, he tried to hit a home run every time at bat. His confidence dwindled away, and he became a person who did not perform. Last I heard, he had fallen victim to his inner demons and was searching for a panacea. But, in my opinion, he struck out. Bad management.
Definition of panacea:
noun 1. a remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all. 2. an answer or solution for all problems or difficulties:
I thought about this person when I read “Deal Divided H-P Leaders” in the September 26, 2015, Wall Street Journal. You may need to pay to access this article which is available at as “Hewlett Packard’s Then Chairman Ray Lane Tried to Quash Autonomy Acquisition.”
The main point of the write up is that HP wanted a panacea, and the senior management of HP thought Autonomy, a search and content processing company, was the answer to HP’s revenue challenges.
The Wall Street Journal points out that the Chairman of the Board of Directors was supportive of the multi billion dollar deal and then wanted to kill the deal.
Also, the WSJ identifies what I would call a “management” problem; to wit:
HP missed other red flags in assessing the Autonomy deal. In 2013, the Journal reported that outside auditors for Autonomy had noted that an Autonomy executive had alleged improper accounting practices at the company [Autonomy]. However, HP executives briefed on the allegations hadn’t passed them along to HP’s Board or to Mr. Apotheker [president and Autonomy deal supporter].
The Wall Street Journal article includes a point I made in my 2003 analysis of Autonomy, a version of which appeared in the first edition of the Enterprise Search Report.
Revenues from software which allows employees to locate information germane to work activities has for decades faced a major hurdle; namely, making sales and keeping customers. The problem, which persists today, is that enterprise search vendors have a tough time making basic key word search command the type of license fees and corporate commitment which enterprise resource planning, accounting, and compliance-related systems demand.
Enterprise search vendors have, again for decades, explained that search and retrieval was something more than finding a needed document. The buzzwords used for decades invoke “knowledge management,” “business intelligence,” and “customer support.” Each of these is baloney, but enterprise search vendors trapped. Making search work in the fast changing content environments in which organization operate was a tough technical problem. The costs of engineering fixes was uncontrollable, and, not surprisingly, enterprise search vendors layered on additional functions in an effort to make sales, charge more, and stay in business.
Autonomy, along with IBM and OpenText, were firms which grew search via acquisition. Autonomy was perhaps the most successful of the roll up tacticians. The firm acquired Verity, a system which dated from the 1980s and added it to Autonomy’s earlier video management acquisitions, document management acquisitions, and other bits and pieces accumulated since Autonomy opened for business in the late 1990s.
Each acquisition added revenue to Autonomy’s financial reports and the customers of these acquisitions became candidates for other Autonomy products. At the time of the HP purchase decision, Autonomy had about six or seven times the revenue of Endeca, another late 1990s search vendor. (Oracle bought Endeca for $1.1 billion in 2011. Other search vendors sold in the 2008 t0 2014 period traded from much lower purchase prices; for example, IBM bought Vivisimo for $20 million, a figure which was equivalent to one year Vivisimo revenues.)
HP did not, in my opinion, understand that search and retrieval was a business that broke the backs of many bright MBAs and whiz kid engineers. HP assumed that its management team would triumph in generating billions from Autonomy’s core technology. I think some of Autonomy’s innovations are important, but I know that Autonomy was able to generate six or seven times the revenue of the number two search vendor in 2011 because it managed a portfolio of content processing companies and did a pretty good job of generating revenue from lines of business ADJACENT to search and retrieval.
HP wanted the 1990s technology of Autonomy to generate billions. HP quickly learned that its view of Autonomy did not match what Autonomy’s management team built.
I am not sure how bright folks at HP could not look at the failures of Convera, Delphes, Entopia, Siderean, and other search vendors and not ask, “What’s different about search?”
HP wanted a panacea. HP demonstrates the type of problem my friend who became a major league player had and still has. In the big leagues, swinging for the fences, seeking a silver bullet, and looking for a quick fix is easy. Finding a fix for a company with problematic business models and conflicting management views is very difficult.
What does the HP experience suggest? After decades of enterprise search hyperbole, reality is different from the word picture sales professionals create in the minds of those whose desperation clouds their thinking.
My view is that HP has struck out. Bad management in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2016
Comments
3 Responses to “The HP Autonomy Enterprise Search Epic Continues”
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Hey Stephen..
As with my last post I’m sure you will delete this one..
You are nothing but negative on this space… I saw you at Enterprise Search Summit Manhattan saying SAP TREX is gonna dominate.. Then Google..You’ve got it wrong time and time again..
I saw you in California.. or whatever… Talk about Internet Seach at an Enterprise Seach conference… Oh.. you remember me now… Cause I set you straight…”This is Enterprise Search”… You were enamored with Google at this point.
What is consistent is your negative attitude….
Why not create something rather than tear it down. Do you know why now body comments on your blog. Cause you delete negative comments.
There is not a single response on any blog post on Arnold IT… He deletes them!!! LOL
Eiether you are boring… or you delete them!
Steve… let me save you some time… I know you’ll spend the next three days crafting some clever response that is a mile long and no one will read.
Here is my advice…. Drop the negative commentary and just focus on the news. That is the value of this blog. You are the Donald Trump of Enterprise Search…I would not be proud of that. Vacuous and angry. Your goose is cooked far too long.
As the Pope would say… Go in pieces…