PolySpot: Usability Fuels Growth
May 19, 2008
Olivier Lefassy, an investment professional turned business intelligence executive, is on the fast track. His firm–PolySpot–is growing at a double-digit pace. The company packages a suite of content processing technologies that “snap in” to licensees’ existing infrastructure. You can read this exclusive interview at http://www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak/polyspot.html.
The idea is to provide powerful information access methods without the costly hand coding and months of tedious work that many vendors impose on their customers.
Instead of displaying a laundry list of results, the company delivers answers to system users. One of the system’s most interesting features, he told ArnoldIT.com for its Search Wizards Speak series, is:
…a Document Collaboration module. You are in a research team for a large financial organization. You locate a useful analyst report about a company. You can open the document and add a comment to it, appended to the original document. You can then put this into a public folder and forward it on to a colleague for his or her comments. We think this is like “document blogging” or annotating. These comments or additional information payloads are indexed “on-the-fly”.
He said, “Usability is key today. For too long the ‘large’ vendors ignored user needs at this level and tried to brainwash the market with talk of algorithms.”
To see the sharp contrast between PolySpot and a long-time player in search, take a look at “Up to Speed on Search” by Phil Muncaster. In that article Mr. Muncaster summarizes Autonomy’s view that some systems are “planes” and others “mere bikes”. The comparison underscores PolySpot’s approach to the market: power without undue complexity. PolySpot’s approach stands on one side of the usability argument and Mr. Muncaster’s essay makes clear that their is another, more complicated side to the argument that appeals to some vendors. In his essay, Mr. Muncaster uses the delightful phrase “particularly keen”, which struck me as quite telling. Could some of the established vendors feel pressured, not just by PolySpot, but the dozens of up-and-comers in information access who offer options to some organizations?
PolySpot’s managing director states clearly that there is a need for a different way to approach information access. The firm’s strong growth in the first three months of 2008 underscores that some European organizations are eager to put euros to work addressing content challenges. You can read the complete interview at ArnoldIT.com here.
Stephen Arnold, May 19, 2008
Vivisimo’s Founders Interviewed: Raul Valdes-Perez and Jerome Pesenti
March 21, 2008
In mid-March, Vivisimo received an infusion of $4 million from North Atlantic Capital. Vivisimo has emerged as a full-scale “behind the firewall” search provider. The company landed the high-profile search-and-retrieval deal with the US Federal government for USA.gov, the public-facing portal for government information. Then, the company inked a deal with Interwoven, the content management company, to provide search and content processing system for the Interwoven CMS system.
Some pundits see Vivisimo as specialist vendor. That view of the company is incorrect. My sources tell me that Vivisimo is finding itself invited to bid on a range of commercial, government, and association projects. Executives at some well-known, high-profile search firms have asked me about Vivisimo. In my experience, this means Vivisimo is doing something right.
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