Sinequa’s Jean Ferré Interviewed
April 21, 2008
Sinequa, based in Paris, provides search and content processing systems that straddle traditional search, business intelligent, and data management. The company has a strong customer base, primarily outside the United States. I reacquainted myself with the company at the International Online Meeting in London, England, in December 2007. Curious about the new features in the system, I was successful in getting the firm’s managing director to speak with me.
The positioning of the company is different from some search vendor’s approach. Mr. Ferré said:
We are a search-and-retrieval system focused on the enterprise promoting our “Connect to Knowledge™” approach. What’s different is that our technology is a self-contained packaged delivered in two formats: First, we offer a flagship solution called Sinequa CS. I’m delighted to say that our sales doubled in 2007. Sinequa CS consists of a full fledged packaged platform including connectivity, navigation and obviously the core engine deployed in a large number of enterprises such as Bouygues, Arkema, MBDA, the French Army, EADS, Eurocopter, LCF Rothschild, the French Police, etc. Second, we have what we call the OEM offer (original equipment manufacture license). Another software company licenses our technology an uses it in their enterprise system. Some OEMs embed our technology in enterprise applications, Web sites, or inside Intranets.
The complexity of search systems has been the subject of some discussion. Mr. Ferré told Beyond Search:
I think Sinequa falls in between a “search toaster” and a box of technical parts you assemble. We resolve the complexity of exhaustive secured connectivity, profile based interface and yet best in class relevancy but delivers much faster at a much lower cost and complexity…. We are now offering a turnkey deployment for enterprise content. If the client wants to search and process information in file systems, relational databases, Microsoft SharePoint, the Web crawling, RSS and enterprise content management–no problem. We can have the company up and running in four days. As an example; we recently were chosen in replacement of Autonomy by one of the largest global IT integrator for its worldwide internal search. We had to compete with what the IT director wanted–Google. We won this important contract…
You can read the complete interview on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. This interview is part of the exclusive series “Search Wizards Speak”, which allows you to learn first hand about some of the most interesting companies in the behind-the-firewall (enterprise search or Intranet search) market.
Stephen Arnold, April 21, 2008
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