Content Intelligence: 2003 and the Next Big Thing

December 13, 2013

I have been working through some of the archives in my personal file about search vendors. I came across a wonderfully amusing article from DMReview. The article “The Problem with Unstructured Data.”

Here’s the part I have circled in 2003, a decade ago, about the next big thing:

Content intelligence is maturing into an essential enterprise technology, comparable to the relational database. The technology comes in several flavors, namely: search, classification and discovery. In most cases, however, enterprises will want to integrate this technology with one or more of their existing enterprise systems to derive greater value from the embedded unstructured data. Many organizations have identified high-value, content intelligence-centric applications that can now be constructed using platforms from leading vendors. What will make content intelligence the next big trend is how this not-so-new set of technologies will be used to uncover new issues and trends and to answer specific business questions, akin to business intelligence. When this happens, unstructured data will be a source of actionable, time-critical business intelligence.

I can see this paragraph appearing without much of a change in any one of a number of today’s vendors’ marketing collateral.

I just finished an article for about the lack of innovation in search and content processing. My focus in that essay was from 2007 to the present. I will keep my eyes open for examples of jargon and high-flying buzzwords that reach even deeper into the forgotten past of search and retrieval.

The chit chat on LinkedIn about “best” search system is a little disappointing but almost as amusing as this quote from DM Review. Yep, “content intelligence” was the next big thing a decade ago. I suppose that “maturing” process is like the one used for Kentucky bourbon. No oak barrels, just hyperbole, for the search mavens.

Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2013

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Consulting, Marketing, News

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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.