Autonomy: Compliance Initiative
September 22, 2008
Autonomy bought Zantaz in July 2007 for $375 million. The company continues to enrich its compliance line of services. For example, Autonomy has been quick to roll out services that need information management, search, and content processing. Examples include the firm’s Zantaz bundle described here in April 2008, and its recent compliance with the UK’s FSA Conduct of Business Sourcebook (COBS) requirements. Competitors in the search, content processing, and records management markets will want to pay close attention to what Autonomy is doing. I’ve been convinced for several years that Autonomy is one of the quickest reacting search vendors. New opportunities appear in Autonomy’s marketing collateral and news releases with greater precision than in the mid range consultants’ reports about industry trends. Autonomy has a nose for trends and beats many of its competitors to these markets.
As I was thinking about Autonomy, I recalled an article that appeared in Silicon Valley Watcher in April 2008. I was able to locate a copy of that article here. Written by Tom Foremski, the write up had the zippy title “A Policeman Inside Your Commuter and Inside Your Corporate Blog. Autonomy Releases Software that Flags Illegal Communications and Other Corporate Content.” For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
There are some good and bad aspects to this software. The bad is a big brother type use for it…It could be used to restrict blogging. A lot of people tell me that large corporations are scared of blogs violating a regulation and so every corporate blog entry has to be run through lawyers– it has to be “lawyered.” This can take time, days, even weeks. Paradoxically, I think AIG could be used to clear a blog post in real-time and could thus increase the amount of good, legal information that company workers can share in public. Either way, it automates some of the tasks of a lawyer…. Less lawyering, means lower operating costs, which maximize share holder value, and that’s what corporate officers are required to do.
With the great concern about Google I heard in my various meetings in Europe last week, I was surprised that most of those Google critics were blissfully ignorant of vendors such as Autonomy who have robust tools for monitoring available and in use. I suppose the difference is that an organization can monitor in order to comply with regulations. In the next month or so, I want to profile some of the companies with content monitoring systems. I will pick a handful of representative companies. Google’s not the only game in town, not by a long shot.
Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2008
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