DocPoint and Concept Searching: The ONLY Choice. Huh?

March 24, 2016

DocPoint is a consulting and services firm focusing on the US government’s needs. The company won’t ignore commercial firms’ inquiries, but the line up of services seems to be shaped for the world of GSAAdvantage users.

I noted that DocPoint has signed on to resell the Concept Searching indexing system. In theory, the SharePoint search service performs a range of indexing functions. In actual practice, like my grandmother’s cookies, many of the products are not cooked long enough. I tossed those horrible cookies in the trash. The licensees of SharePoint don’t have the choice I did when eight years old.

DocPoint is a specialist firm which provides what Microsoft cannot or no longer chooses to offer its licensees. Microsoft is busy trying to dominate the mobile phone market and doing bug fixes on the Surface product line.

The scoop about the DocPoint and Concept Searching deal appears in “DocPoint Solutions Adds Concept Searching To GSA Schedule 70.” The Schedule 70 reference means, according to WhatIs.com:

a long-term contract issued by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to a commercial technology vendor.  Award of a Schedule contract signifies that the GSA has determined that the vendor’s pricing is fair and reasonable and the vendor is in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Purchasing from pre- approved vendors allows agencies to cut through red tape and receive goods and services faster. A vendor doesn’t need to win a GSA Schedule contract in order to do business with U.S. government agencies, but having a Schedule contract can cut down on administrative costs, both for the vendor and for the agency. Federal agencies typically submit requests to three vendors on a Schedule and choose the vendor that offers the best value.

To me, the deal is a way for Concept Searching to generate revenue via a third party services firm.

In the write up about the tie up, I highlighted this paragraph which is a single paragraph with an amazing assertion:

A DocPoint partner since 2012, Concept Searching is the only [emphasis added] company whose solutions deliver automatic semantic metadata generation, auto-classification, and powerful taxonomy tools running natively in all versions of SharePoint and SharePoint Online. By blending these technologies with DocPoint’s end-to-end enterprise content management (ECM) offerings, government organizations can maximize their SharePoint investment and obtain a fully integrated solution for sharing, securing and searching for mission-critical information.

Note the statement “only company whose solutions deliver…” “Only” means, according to the Google define function:

No one or nothing more besides; solely or exclusively.

Unfortunately the DocPoint assertion about Concept Searching as the only firm appears to be wide of the mark. Concept Search is one of many companies offering the functions set forth in the content marketing “news” story. In my files, I have the names of dozens of commercial firms offering semantic metadata generation, auto-classification, and taxonomy tools. I wonder if Layer2 or Smartlogic have an opinion about “only”?

Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2016

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