Enterprise Search Is a Growth Industry: No, Really
October 16, 2015
I noticed two things when we were working through the Overflight news about proprietary vendors of enterprise search systems on October 14, 2015.
First, a number of enterprise search vendors which the Overflight system monitors, are not producing substantive news. Aerotext, Dieselpoint, and even Polyspot are just three firms with no buzz in social media or in traditional public relations channels. Either these outfits are so busy that the marketers have no time to disseminate information or there is not too much to report.
Second, no proprietary enterprise search vendor is marketing search and retrieval in the way Autonomy and the now defunct Convera used to market. There were ads, news releases, and conference presentations. Now specialist vendors talk about webinars, business intelligence, Big Data, and customer support solutions. These outfits are mostly selling consulting firms. Enterprise search as a concept is not generating much buzz based on the Overflight data.
Imagine my surprise when I read “Enterprise Search Market Expanding at a 12.2% CAGR by 2019.” What a delicious counterpoint to the effective squishing of the market sector which husbanded the Autonomy and Fast Search & Transfer brouhahas. These high profile enterprise search vendors found themselves mired in legal hassles. In fact, the attention given to these once high profile search vendors has made it difficult for today’s vendors to enjoy the apparent success that Autonomy and Fast Search enjoyed prior to their highly publicized challenges.
Open source search solutions have become the popular and rational solution to information access. Companies offering Lucene, Solr, and other non proprietary information access systems have made it difficult for vendors of proprietary solutions to generate Autonomy-scale revenue. The money seems to be in consulting and add ons. The Microsoft SharePoint system supports a hot house of third party components which improve the SharePoint experience. The problem is that none of the add in and component vendors are likely to reach Endeca-scale revenues.
Even IBM with its Watson play seems to be struggling to craft a sustainable, big money revenue stream. Scratch the surface of Watson and you have an open source system complemented with home brew code and technology from acquired companies.
The write up reporting the double digit comp9ound growth rate states:
According to a recent market study published by Transparency Market Research (TMR), titled “Enterprise Search Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2013 – 2019”, the global enterprise search market is expected to reach US$3,993.7 million by 2019, increasing from US$1,777.5 million in 2012 and expanding at a 12.2% CAGR from 2013 to 2019. Enterprise search system makes content from databases, intranets, data management systems, email, and other sources searchable. Such systems enhance the productivity and efficiency of business processes and can save as much as 30% of the time spent by employees searching information.The need to obtain relevant information quickly and the availability of technological applications to obtain it are the main factors set to drive the global enterprise search market.
TMR, like other mid tier consulting firms, will sell some reports to enterprise search vendors who need some good news about the future of the market for their products.
The write up also contains a passage which I found quite remarkable:
To capitalize on opportunities present in the European regional markets, major market players in the U.S. are tying up with European vendors to provide enterprise search solutions.
Interesting. I do not agree. I don’t see to many US outfits tying up with Antidot, Intrafind, or Sinequa and their compatriots. Folks are using Elasticsearch, but I don’t categorize these relationships as tie ups like the no cash merger between Lexalytics and its European partner.
Furthermore, we have the Overflight data and evidence that enterprise search is a utility function increasingly dominated by open source options and niche players. Where are the big brands of a decade ago: Acquired, out of business, discredited, and adorned with jargon.
The problems include sustainable revenue, the on going costs of customer support, and the appeal of open source solutions.
Transparency Market Research seems to know more than I do about enterprise search and its growth rate. That’s good. Positive. Happy.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2015
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