Autonomy Business Details: Are These Relevant to Search- and Content Processing Type Outfits Today?
May 31, 2022
I read “Judge Details Lynch’s $700k Signoff via iPhone Text in Full Autonomy Judgement.” The main idea is that Autonomy — an early entrant in the smart software for search and content processing — engaged in some business practices which a British judge finds suggestive. How suggestive? I am not sure, but the idea of using resellers and transactions to amp up revenues is interesting.
Another search and content processing outfit called Fast Search & Transfer (which Microsoft acquired more than a decade ago) found itself subject to some scrutiny for financial fancy dancing. One of the firm’s founders was found guilty and may have spent some time in the custody of a government. Maybe the fellow was cross country skiing and shooting a rifle at snow bunnies.
The relevance of the cited story and the reference to skis and weapons reminds me that the financial reports of high-flying search and content processing companies have to be scrutinized. I mention this because some of the more interesting search and content processing centric companies are publicly traded. Palantir Technologies comes to mind because I have seen a couple of semi-optimistic write ups about the company.
If I were a more youthful 77 year old, I would muster the energy to:
- Investigate the US government and UK government contracts for term, sunset dates, and contracting officers (what’s the background of these individuals)
- Research the question, “What’s bundled into the basic commercial and the basic government deal?”
- Explore the question, “How is cost of sales reacting to the economic climate since Palantir went public?”
- Try to determine answers to these questions: “What’s the ratio of sales people to programmers? The ratio of full time equivalents to contractors? How has the ratio changed since the firm went public?”
- Interview some people at LE and intel conferences to get a sense of the chatter related to this question: “Is Palantir bundling Amazon cloud services or doe the licensee have a choice?” and “Has there been talk of Palantir providing a “system in a box” to licensees with this requirement?
Why think about these types of questions? Oh, I am just curious about search and content processing outfits.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2022
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[…] A pursuit of money sparked some actions at other search and content processing centric companies. I mentioned this idea in my recent essay “Autonomy Business Details: Are These Relevant to Search- and Content Processing Type Outfits Today?” […]