Decisiv Search and SolSearch: Now Unified Search

September 30, 2010

This story in Information World Review interested me: “Recommind and Solcara Collaborate for a Unified Search Solution.” Note: I write a for-fee column for Information World Review. The story concerns Recommind, a vendor which I have traditionally associated with search and content processing for the legal sector. The story also references Solcara, a company that offers what I recall as an intuitive, personalized and integrated search solution across disparate information sources. These include structured information, online services, document management solutions, etc.

Here’s the passage that caught my eye:

Under the partnership, Recommind is integrating its Decisiv Search solution with Solcara’s SolSearch solution. The joint solution is aimed at providing unified access to internal and external sources, saving time and costs. Together, the two technologies deliver an enterprise search solution that unifies access to all internal data repositories, such as document management systems, know how systems and essential online services, such as Lexis Nexis Library, Thomson’s Westlaw & Lawtel and Practical Law Company (PLC).

The tie up of Decisiv Search and SolSearch obviously adds value to both firms’ search and content processing solutions. The questions that crossed my mind were:

Is this type of tie up a variant of the no-cash mergers that Attensity and Lexalytics implemented? On the surface, the merging of two somewhat similar sets of functionality are difficult for me to unravel?
Are customers likely to come from a specific sector like the US legal market or from broader enterprise search sectors such as those server by SharePoint? I am not sure about the functions of SharePoint, but with products from SharePoint add in vendors, SharePoint seems to off unified access.
How will this type of tie up affect open source search vendors? With open source search showing some stamina, I wonder if this new merged service will allow both Recommind and Solcara to jump up the value chain?

This is a relationship that warrants further observation.

Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2010

Freebie

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Aggregation, Enterprise, News, Search, Text processing

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.