Enterprise Search Vendors’ Taglines
May 16, 2008
A colleague in San Francisco asked me on May 14, 2008, “How do the search engine vendors position themselves?”
I told him that I would think about the question on the luxurious red-eye flight from SFO to Detroit. I did. I worked through the files on my trusty laptop and compiled a list of the taglines for some of the vendors whom I monitor. The list is not exhaustive, but I had data about a couple of dozen companies in the behind-the-firewall search business.
The table below provides a summary of the taglines. These are quite interesting, and I was surprised at the different approaches taken to explaining the companies’ systems. For example, I liked the taglines that echoed Caesar’s I came, I saw, I conquered (Vini, vidi, vici). SchemaLogic says, “Find. Use. Protect.” Thetus asserts, “Find. Assess. Fit. Understand.” Lexalytics crafts, “Discover. Understand. Act.”
Several of the companies use active or instrumental catchphrases. Brainware, a spin out from a German content management company, uses, “Intelligence unleashed.” I thought of a tiger pursuing me through the Louisville Zoo. And InQuira says, “Harvest knowledge.” Nstein, a company that has undergone accelerated evolution,
Less creative influences put a damper on marketing passion in these slogans. Panoptic (now Funnelback) gently offers, “Internet and Enterprise Search.” Almost matching the Australian’s tagline is Fast Search & Transfer’s “The business of search.” Clearforest matches these in understatement with its “Text Analytics Solutions.” ZyLAB comes close too, saying, “Infomation Access Solutions.”
Other companies use the tagline as elevator speeches on a diet. For example, Endeca, flush with investments from Intel and SAP, states, “Innovative Software to Help People Explore, Analyze, and Understand Information.” Not to be outdone in the pitch department is ISYS Search Software’s “Enterprise Search Solutions for Real People Doing Business in the Real World.” (I like the “real” part of this statement because some of the taglines are a bit abstract.) Stratify (formerly Purple Yogi) stikes a Zen-like note: “Focus on the Matter of eDiscovery with Peace of Mind.” When I repeat this five times, my heart rate slows and my blood pressure drops.
Other vendors assert that their system is Numero Uno in the search-and-retrieval sector in a nice way, of course. Open Text, a company with as many search technologies as Microsoft, declares themselves “The Content Experts.” And, Dieselpoint opines, “The Leader in Search & Navigation Technology.”
A small number of vendors drift into the poetic. Exegy uses repetition and alliteration to explain its super-fast appliance: “Extreme Speed. Extreme Insight.” Or, SurfRay (owner of Mondosoft and Speed of Mind) and its rhytmic “We Move People to Discover.” Note that SurfRay itself, a relative newcomer to search, describes itself this way, “Pioneers in Enterprise Search and Behavior Analytics.” Strong stuff and sure to cat catch the attention of Autonomy working overtime to catch up with the “Don’t be evil” Googlers.
The tagline that I relished was Vivisimo’s “Search Done Right.” These three words made me salivate–nifty on-the-fly clustering and a niggling memory of a properly-prepared cut of Kobe beef. Coveo spoke directly to me with its catchphrase, “People with Knowledge Drive Business.” Yes, yes.
Here’s the table in its entirety.
|
Company |
Founded |
Tagline |
|
2000 |
Voice of the Customer |
|
|
1996 |
Meaning-Based Computing |
|
|
2006 |
Intelligence Unleashed |
|
|
2005 |
Unlocking the Potential of Unstructured Data |
|
|
Clearforest (Now Thomson Reuters) |
1998 |
Text Analytics Solutions |
|
2004 |
Giving Technologies New Meaning |
|
|
2000 |
The Vertical Search Company |
|
|
2004 |
People With Knowledge Drive Business |
|
|
1978 |
Transforming ‘Search’ to ‘Found’ |
|
|
1999 |
The Leader in Search & Navigation Technology |
|
|
1991 |
Instantly Search Terabytes of Text |
|
|
1999 |
Innovative Software to Help People Explore, Analyze, and Understand Information |
|
|
2003 |
Extreme Speed. Extreme Insight. |
|
|
1997 |
The Business of Search |
|
|
1988 |
Enterprise Search Solutions for Real People Doing Business in the Real World |
|
|
2002 |
Harvest Knowledge |
|
|
Intelligenx (formerly i411) |
1996 |
The Evolution of Search |
|
2003 |
Discover. Understand. Act. |
|
|
2001 |
Intelligent Answers From Text |
|
|
1997 |
Challenging problems. Flexible analytics. Superior Results |
|
|
Mondosoft (now SurfRay) |
1998 |
We Move People to Discover |
|
1999 |
Powering Online Publishing |
|
|
1991 |
The Content Experts |
|
|
Panoptic (Funnelback) |
2005 |
Internet and Enterprise Search |
|
2001 |
Guide Your Search |
|
|
2000 |
Sophisticated Search Review and Analysis Made Simple |
|
|
2001 |
Find >> Use >> Protect >> |
|
|
2001 |
Navigation for the Digital Universe |
|
|
1999 |
Focus on the Matter of eDiscovery with Peace of Mind |
|
|
2000 |
Text Intelligence |
|
|
Teragram (now SAS) |
1997 |
Practical Solutions to Monstrous Amounts of Information |
|
2002 |
Find. Assess. Fit. Understand. |
|
|
1981 |
Innovative Solutions |
|
|
2000 |
Search Done Right |
|
|
2003 |
Unified, Actionable Search |
|
|
1983 |
Information Access Solutions |
What I noticed was that I was able to calculate an “average” age for these search engine systems–long in the tooth. Keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list. What struck me is that some of these companies have been in business long enough for the IRS to round up my neighbors for cooking up moonshine and sending them off to Paducah to age like fine bourbon in the State Pen. Did you know that ZyLAB set up shop a quarter century ago. The newcomer Funnelback (né Panopticon) had a llengthy gestation. A surprising number of companies date from the “search decade”; that is, 1991 to 2001. The intense interest in search and content processing has been building over a much longer period of time than I realized.
What are your thoughts on search engine taglines? Which one do you like best? Think. Suggest. Argue.
Stephen Arnold, May 16, 2008
Comments
7 Responses to “Enterprise Search Vendors’ Taglines”
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Hi Stephen nice list,
we came up with another tag line for our product Knowledge Plaza : “the place beyond search”.
Hi, Antoine, thanks for the post. Put your company name and search or content processing system in your post. If you send it to me, I will add it. No context for your tag line makes it hard for a reader to find your site.
Stephen Arnold, May 17, 2008, 1 10 pm Eastern
Hi Stephen,
Whatever is a Belgian start-up launching a truly innovative enterprise 2.0 solution: combining pioneering technology namely their Knowledge Plaza platform and a new knowledge management methodology, Enterprise Social Search. This methodology uses the expertise of colleagues’ to access relevant information and which enhances those individuals who share their knowledge, facilitating access to other’s valuable information and capitalizing it for the benefit of the group. Knowledge Plaza offers the sharing and management of bookmarks, documents (with full indexation), files (with peer-to-peer distribution), e-mails, contacts, and each user’s expertise. All this information is categorized and tagged. Facetted navigation enables a variety of access possibilities and keyword search is contextual.
Who can help you find relevant information and nothing but relevant information? Your colleagues, of course. And thanks to Enterprise Social Search, they can do so even when they are not available for you.
Find out why on http://www.enterprisesocialsearch.com.
Olivier, thanks for adding the explanatory information. I will take a closer look at your site. Don’t hesitate to disagree with my views on search. I just put up a bad report card for The Big Name vendors. The post includes a photo of me wearing bunny rabbit ears. I don’t take myself too seriously so thoughtful comments are helpful to me. Plus, I live in rural Kentucky. Our commonwealth needs all the intellectual help it can receive.
Stephen Arnold, May 18, 2008
[…] used by vendors of information retrieval and content processing systems. You can see the lengths here to which some organizations go to avoid using the word “search”, which has been […]
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