New Spin for OmniFind: Content Analytics
May 2, 2011
IBM has dominated my thinking with its bold claims for Watson. In the blaze of game show publicity, I lost track of the Lucene-based search system OmniFind 9.x. My Overflight system alerted me to “Content Analytics Starter Pack.” According to the April 2011 announcement:
The Starter Pack offers an advanced content analytics platform with Content Analytics and industry-leading, knowledge-driven enterprise search with OmniFind Enterprise Edition in a combined package. IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search empowers organizations to search, assess, and analyze large volumes of content in order to explore and surface relevant insight quickly to gain the most value from their information repositories inside and outside the firewall.
The product allows IBM licensees to:
- Find relevant enterprise content more quickly
- Turn raw text into rapid insight from content sources internal and external to your enterprise
- Customize rapid insight to industry and customer specific needs
- Enable deeper insights through integration to other systems and solutions.
At first glance, I thought IBM Content Analytics V2.2 was one program. I noticed that the OmniFind Enterprise Edition 9.1 has one set of hardware requirements at http://goo.gl/Wie0X and another set of hardware requirements for the analytics component at http://goo.gl/5J1ox. In addition, there are specific software requirements for each product.
The “new” product includes “improved support for content assessment, Cognos® Business Intelligence, and Advanced Case Management.”
Is IBM’s bundling of analytics and search a signal that the era of traditional search and retrieval has officially ended? Base image source: www.awesomefunnyclever.com
When you navigate to http://goo.gl/he3NR, you can see the different configurations available for this combo product.
What’s the pricing? According to IBM, “The charges are unchanged by this announcement.” The pricing seems to be based on processor value units or PVUs. Without a link, I am a bit at sea with regards to pricing. IBM does point out:
For clarification, note that if for any reason you are dissatisfied with the program and you are the original licensee, you may obtain a refund of the amount you paid for it, if within 30 days of your invoice date you return the program and its PoE to the party from whom you obtained it. If you downloaded the program, you may contact the party from whom you acquired it for instructions on how to obtain the refund. For clarification, note that for programs acquired under the IBM International Passport Advantage Agreement, this term applies only to your first acquisition of the program.
Without an attorney to help me unzip this message, I am not sure what a “first acquisition” means. OmniFind has been made available widely under the Yahoo IBM tie up. Since this “new” product was recently announced, you will need to work with your IBM rep to figure out the costs and the rules.
| Content | Location |
| Version 2.2 Fix Pack | http://goo.gl/592mF |
| Reseller pricing | http://goo.gl/JiLs0 |
| Publications | http://goo.gl/VC2jM |
| Roadmap | http://goo.gl/5OCU6 |
These documents have dates scattered over the period from January 2011 to April 2011. The information about Version 2.2 has not been normalized across these IBM resources.
Several observations may be warranted.
First, this is a package of existing products. One of the components is based on open source; namely, the search component. Other components are based on technologies acquired by IBM. My question, “Is this a shotgun marriage for the convenience of differentiation and marketing?”
Second, the need for IBM services jumped off the page at me. The various tasks associated with normalizing structured and unstructured data and then processing in a manner that makes results meaningful may generate significant fees for IBM professional services. Nothing in the cited IBM pages indicate that this bundle is a plug-and-play solution.
Third, the packaging of the two components in the guise of content analytics is one more data point in my ledger of vendors who are trying to find a way to generate revenue from search-and-retrieval technology. When IBM cannot make enterprise search a revenue busting business, what does this presage for smaller vendors of enterprise search? In a different market context, what does IBM’s shift mean for mid-sized enterprise search vendors whose technology is less of a platform and more of a keyword approach given a bright coat of paint?
Like Oracle’s SES11g, IBM’s OmniFind search system seems to be probing a path in which search is no longer the main event. The spotlight has shifted to analytics. The actions of Oracle and IBM are less of a “beyond search” move than an attempt to find a way to convert ageing technology into a different thing altogether.
Worth watching. I excluded both OmniFind 9.1 and Oracle SES11g from my forthcoming Landscape of Search report for Pandia.com because these two giants of enterprise software have been keeping a very low profile in the search sector wearing ghillie suits instead of carnival barker outfits. The IBM consultants wear the easily noticed outfits, however.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2011
Freebie unlike Fortune 100 firms’ consulting services to their clients.
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