Marketer Links Open Source and Autonomy for Shock and SEO
August 25, 2010
I saw a link that someone sent me from a post on LinkedIn. I have a person pay attention to LinkedIn for me because I am not particularly social nor am I interested in looking for a “real” job. The write up pointed me to a blog post called “What Exactly is IDOL, Anyway?” The blog post is “real”; that is, part of the new positioning from the Silver Spring based content management information service called CMSWatch. You can read the original post “What Exactly is IDOL, Anyway?” and decide if my observations are on track or off track.
Interestingly, the write up cites an open source search vendor’s definition of Autonomy IDOL. I think the snippet is okay, but the snippet comes from a firm that is looking at commercial services in a particular way. There is nothing wrong with the viewpoint, but I think it is often useful to acknowledge that there are other angles from which to examine a technology or a company. For example, I think that a link to Lucid Imagination would have been helpful, but, hey, that’s my opinion. I am beavering away on the open source search conference, The Lucene Revolution, and I know how challenging it is to maintain a balance between the community-centric model and the commercial model. I have tried to create an endnote session that allows both commercial vendors and open source supporters an opportunity to discuss the market as open source becomes more of a force. On the panel are open source experts, the president of a commercial search vendor who used to run an open source company, and a UK-based open source vendor’s president. I hope to make the endnote an engaging, interactive discussion about this very issue: open source search and commercial search.
What caught my attention, however, is the consulting firm’s use of an open source vendor to help pitch a new, for-fee study about search and information access. This is a marketing technique that I wanted to document in my Web log.
Is the method clever?
On one hand, the notion of using an open source vendor to describe one of the best known, most widely used company’s products stopped me in my tracks. I don’t know too much about open source and I probably know even less about commercial companies, but I expected a description of Autonomy IDOL from [a] either Autonomy’s own Web site, [b] a person who has experience working with IDOL in one of Autonomy’s tens of thousands of installations, or [c] a competitor who has had to cope with Autonomy eyeball-to-eyeball.
On the other hand, this juxtaposition is sound search engine optimization type writing.
Here’s a passage that I found particularly interesting:
Now, there are plenty such cowboys around, and they’re perfectly happy with the software. But unfortunately, quite a few of Autonomy’s other customers weren’t quite prepared for it, and ended up unhappy with what they bought. Of course, it’s tempting to blame the vendor’s marketing and sales force for this; but that’s a bit like accusing a tiger of hunting deer. You can’t really blame them for trying.
With open source now gaining momentum, I find it amusing that a consultant is looping open source into a discussion of Autonomy. My hunch is that this type of blog post is a way to get traffic to a Web site and probably make sales of a study about a market sector that is no longer “about” search and information access.
Search has moved on. Information access has changed. The enterprise is a vastly different place from what it was when I wrote the first three editions of “The Enterprise Search Report.” The top five vendors have undergone considerable change. Convera is history. Fast Search & Transfer is a SharePoint component.
Most traditional search vendors struggle to get Web traffic. In my opinion, many consultants are concerned first about generating revenue for themselves and secondarily about helping organizations cope with the business issues tied to digital information. I learned the other day that one of the second tier consulting firms has pulled the plug on its somewhat crazy “map” of enterprise search vendors. This consultant’s efforts reminded me of a knock off of Boston Consulting Group’s work, but maybe I am just confused. Why did the second tier vendor’s map of enterprise search get nuked? The map did not make sense and did not yield what consulting firms need to keep the ship in shape.
My observations are:
- Hooking open source into commercial content processing is an important analytic task and one that warrants additional research and study. The world will no longer be one color. Think Joseph’s Technicolor dream coat.
- The sources of information for such a study are the companies’ own documentation, individuals with hands on experience using the companies’ systems, and observations from clients. Comments from competitors about another company’s products are interesting, but not the “meat and potatoes” which I seek. The “hands on” part is particularly important because technical expertise is needed, not the blathering of the azurini. Sponsored research is lucrative, but I wonder about its objectivity. Most “white papers” are printed on sheets of paper of different colors.
- Marketing presented as “real” information is fine. Weaponized information is something I know a bit about. If one wants to use information to put digital bullets into another company, no problem from me. But more than blanks are needed. Fluffy marketing and odd juxtapositions are digital misfires in my opinion, contributing to the confusion about search and content processing.
To wrap up, the economic pressure on publishing and search vendors is going to go up in the period between September 1, 2010, and March 31, 2011. In this period, I anticipate many interesting marketing methods, new products and services from the azurini, and even greater churn in the search sector. You may see the search world differently. My blog documents my point of view, and the blog is free unlike some of the work from second and third tier consulting firms.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2010
Freebie. This means that no one paid me to write my thoughts into this blog. I am not even selling a report. Ads appear at the top of this blog above the masthead. I am working on a search conference for open source systems and at the same time I am working on a conference for commercial vendors. Works for me because the addled goose makes explicit what provides bread crumbs for the goslings. Irritating, right?
Comments
3 Responses to “Marketer Links Open Source and Autonomy for Shock and SEO”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Thanks Stephen; but you give me way too much credit 😉 I wish I were that cunning. Jay Hill’s concise description of IDOL just caught my eye since it’s spot on and I thought that would be helpful to those trying to understand what IDOL is, at its core.
By the way, I did in fact link to Lucid — via the blog post “Startup offers commercial support for Lucene,” which I would think makes it immediately clear what Jay Hill’s affiliations are. That wasn’t a clever ploy to juxtapose IDOL and open source. And, of course, neither Autonomy nor Lucid paid us for the blog post, since as you point out, we make our money selling independent research.
But, thanks again for your careful analysis, and linking back to my post — just goes to show that the best SEO can’t be bought 😉
Hi all, I’m surprised that there is any controversy over thia thread. Having worked with both IDOL and Solr and implemented both in production sites (only one with IDOL, many with Solr) I certainly have no ax to grind with Autonomy. I was looking forward to working with it, and, as I mentioned, it is a quality product, and it will do the job in most cases. I enjoyed working with it – up to a point. It was very hard working with IDOL due to the dependencies on needing Autonomy support and/or consultants to make things work. It’s great if you have a very straightforward implementation, but I have yet to see a “straightforward” implementation. When the company I was working for “signed the papers” purchasing IDOL, it was almost as if Autonomy folded their tents and moved on. They “assigned” us a third-party firm that were supposed to be IDOL experts, but they were very weak and not all that helpful, although they tried hard. I spent a lot of 12 and 16 hours days for a few months trying to get things to work.
I love search technologies, and have always refused to get “religious” about any one approach, But I do speak honestly and technically about my direct experience, when asked. I’m a “geek”, man – I am not for or against anything. Just enjoying the technical discussions and the opportunity to share experience with colleagues.
I know from experience that sales and marketing folks like to stir things up and promote their own products, but I have absolutely no interest in that kind of thing. I like it when we can compare notes and learn from one another.
Thanks to all for the feedback, and cheers.
-Jay
Jay Hill,
The blog is not news. The blog is marketing. I found the juxtaposition more about marketing one of the azurini than about open source or the commecial search vendor. I have an opinion. You have an opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2010