HP, Autonomy, and a Context Free Expert Output about Search: The Bet on a Horse Approach to Market Analysis
May 4, 2013
I don’t think too much about:
- Azure chip consultants. You know, these are the firms which make a living from rah rahs, buzzwording, and pontification to sell reports. (I know. I labored at a non-azure chip outfit for what seems like decades. Experience is a good instructor. Oh, if you are a consultant, please, complain about my opinion using the comments section of this free blog.)
- Hewlett Packard. I recall that the company used to make lab equipment which was cool. Now I think the firm is in some other businesses but as quickly as I latch on to one like the Treo and mobile, HP exits the business. The venerable firm confuses my 69 year old mind.
- Autonomy. I think I did some work for the outfit but I cannot recall. Age and the lifestyle in rural Kentucky takes a toll on the memory I admit.
Nevertheless, I read “HP’s Autonomy Could Face Uphill Battle In Data Market.” There were some gems in the write up which I found amusing and illustrative of the problems which azure chip consulting firms and their experts have when tackling certain business issues.
The main idea of the write up for “investors” is that HP faces “challenges.” Okay. That’s a blinding insight. As you may recall, HP bought Autonomy for $11 billion and then a few months later roiled the “investors” by writing off billions on the deal. That was the mobile phone model, wasn’t it?
The write up then pointed out:
HP wanted Autonomy to jump-start its move into software and cloud-based computing. Autonomy is the No. 1 provider of search and retrieval software that companies use to find and share files and other information on their websites and document management systems.
Okay. But that too seems obvious.
Now here comes the kicker. The expert outfit providing inputs to the reporter doing the bull dog grip on this worn out bone is quoted as saying:
“Software license revenue (in this market) isn’t growing at the same rate as before, and we are beginning to see the rise of some new technologies, specifically content analytics and unified information access,” Schubmehl said. These new types of software can be used with types of business analytics software, business intelligence software and other software to help enterprises do a better job of locating specific information, he says, which is the job of search retrieval software.
I don’t know much about IDC but what strikes me from this passage is that there are some assertions in this snippet which may warrant a tiny bit of evaluation.
Will context free analyses deliver a winner? Will there be a Gamblers Anonymous for those who bet on what journalists and mid tier (second string) consultancies promulgate? For more about Gamblers Anonymous navigate to http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/
Here goes:
Vaporware Does Not Make You Rich
January 20, 2013
HP bought Autonomy in hopes to turn a profit from the company’s software, but upon delving into Autonomy’s records HP discovered they had invested in vaporware. Read Write focuses on the “Vaporware Allegation Latest HP/Autonomy Twist.” Stanley Morrical is suing HP, because he does not believe the software exists and all HP has to do is prove that it bought $10.3 billion worth of marketable software. To cover a possible blunder, HP claims that Autonomy fooled them with creative accounting and information misrepresentation. Morrical states that HP is doing this to cover its own tracks for making a foolish purchase or a nonexistent purchase.
“While claiming to have IDOL 10 ready, HP actually had nothing to sell, Morrical is accusing. Essentially, he claims, IDOL 10 was vaporware.
‘You go out in the market and say it’s available and it’s not,’ Aron Liang, an associate at the San Francisco law firm Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing Morrical, said. ‘So either they knew it and they’re lying or they don’t even know what they’re selling, which in some ways may even be worse.’
David Schubmehl, a tech analyst for International Data Group, said he was briefed on IDOL 10 in June. However, Schubmehl says he hasn’t talked to any companies using the software.
‘I can’t confirm that anyone is actually using IDOL 10,’ Schubmehl said. ‘However, I have had briefings about that back in June and it certainly seemed to be part of their big data offerings.’”
Nobody has used IDOL 10 it seems, so how could a company have $900 million in revenues from vaporware? Somebody here is lying, but HP and Autonomy are pointing the finger at the other person. Whose nose is really growing?
Whitney Grace, January 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google Search Appliance Updates for the Enterprise
November 2, 2012
The shiny new 7.0 version of Google Search Appliance has been updated for the enterprise, now allowing administrators to add information to the cloud, various social media outlets, and other online storage sites. According to the article “Enterprise Tools Added to Google Search Appliance” on PC Advisor, the upgrade includes a new Entity Recognition feature with auto suggestions for searches as well as a document preview feature.
The article tells us why the need for such an update is necessary for the enterprise:
“IDC analyst David Schubmehl said users would like enterprise searches to be as easy as Web searches, noting that slow searches can hurt productivity. A 2009 IDC study found that the time spent searching for data averaged 8.8 hours per week per employee, at a cost of $14,209 per worker per year.”
We believe Google Enterprise offers some great features, including the option for employees to add their own search results to existing results. However, if secure search and access is an enterprise priority for your corporation, then we would recommend a careful examination before opting for Google Enterprise. A company such as Intrafind offers a secure option for searching structured and unstructured enterprise data.
Andrea Hayden, November 2, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IDC Publishes Polyspot Vendor Profile
August 22, 2012
IDC published “Polyspot: Unified Information Access Vendor Offers Flexibility and Performance.” The vendor profile is part of IDC’s open source search series. The document includes IDC’s opinion of the vendor, an overview of the company, its management, and its strategy. The profile explores the future outlook for the company and provides essential guidance about the privately-held firm. Earlier in August 2012, IDC published a vendor profile about LucidWorks.
The report was written by Sue Feldman and Stephen E Arnold with additional assistance provided by Dave Schubmehl, Constance Ard, and Dr. Tyra Oldham.
Stephen E Arnold said:
The emergence of open source search is one of the more notable developments in information retrieval. In the last two years, acquisitions of proprietary search vendors have created an opportunity for open source search solutions. Traditional vendors of closed search systems now face innovators such as LucidWorks and Polyspot. These and a dozen or more other commercial firms offer the cost and technical benefits of open source software as well as robust professional services. Open source search vendors provide viable alternatives to such solutions as HP Autonomy and Oracle Endeca. The many small, Independent vendors of proprietary search technology now face the formidable task of competing with with such companies as IBM Vivisimo and Microsoft Fast as well as solutions from fast-growing open source search providers.
He added:
IDC has licensed ArnoldIT’s exclusive research about open source search and content processing. In addition to the profiles created for IDC, ArnoldIT offers an open source sector analysis which compares the functionality of open source search technology with that of proprietary search vendors. In addition, ArnoldIT maintains a competitive matrix which allows a procurement team or investor to compare market strategies of each vendor with the firms’ actual technical capabilities.
Stephen E Arnold’s publications AppRapids, Beyond Search and Open Search News provide up-to-the-minute coverage of business and technical developments in open source search and content processing.
The new IDC open source search reports represent an important milestone in coverage of this disruptive sector of information retrieval. For more information about ArnoldIT’s open source research, write seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Stuart Schram, August 21, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
IDC Open Source Search Reports Announced
July 23, 2012
IDC has released the first of a series of analyses of open source search vendors. The subject of the report is LucidWords Platform. Lucid Imagination has become one of the key open source search vendors. Data for the IDC “situation overview, future outlook, and essential guidance” is a result of a painstaking process. The IDC research team interviewed principals of Lucid Imagination, conducted a technical analysis of the Lucid technology platform, and used a range of data analysis methods to pinpoint key information from open source content. In addition to detailed, jargon-free information about the Lucid Lucene/Solr approach, the report provides an unvarnished analysis of the firm’s business model.
Order the full report at tp://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236086.
One of the important facts uncovered in the course of the research is the strong uptake of Lucid technology in specific market sectors. Also, Lucid, unlike some proprietary and other open source search vendors, has strong venture backing, revenue growth, and a full-time professional open source search technology team. Each of these issues is explored in the IDC report number 236086. You can get additional information about the for-fee report from IDC’s “Get Doc” online service.
The team working on this project included Sue Feldman, who specializes in research on information access technologies including, including search engines, text analytics, categorization, unified access to structured and unstructured information, Big Data, visualization, and rich media search. Her research analyzes the trends and dynamics of the search and discovery software market and also quantifies the costs of information work to the organization. Ms. Feldman won IDC’s James Peacock Research award for her work on modeling and forecasting the search and retrieval technology markets, and an Innovation Award from IDC in 2007 for developing a new research program on the digital marketplace. She is a frequent speaker at industry events, and has won several national and international awards for her writing. She wrote the chapter on search engines for the 1999 volume of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science and was the first editor of the IEEE Computer Society’s Digital Library News. She is currently writing a book, The Answer Machine concerning the future of technology for information access. Before coming to IDC in 2000, Ms. Feldman was President for twenty years of Datasearch, an independent technology consulting firm, where she consulted on new retrieval technologies such as natural language processing, search engines, usability of online systems, and digital libraries.
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