Fetch Gets the Tails Wagging
July 26, 2012
Fetch just learned how to chase and retrieve that data even faster and no treat was necessary. How To Win The Lotto’s article “Fetch Technologies Unveils Breakthrough Web Data Extraction Capabilities and Reports Record Results” tells us how Fetch’s latest upgrade has got tails wagging.
The new version of Fetch, Live Access 4.1 both enhances and expands the web data extraction and:
“Enables clients to easily collect augment and transform data through all available APIs. In addition, Fetch clients can now extract data from Websites that use AJAX and other dynamic content technologies. The release also offers access to completely new sources of data, including PDFs, Microsoft Office documents and images.”
“Every business today needs data from the Web to survive, and by offering the most comprehensive platform available for Web data extraction, Fetch is generating unprecedented results.”
Ironically, Fetch is now part of Connotate. They were acquired in March of this year with the prospect of combining Fetch’s information extraction, integration, and data analytics solution with Connotate’s monitoring, collection and analysis solution technology.
A data Titan was created when combining Connotate’s web data monitoring and data collection with Fetch’s ability to access and transform Web data into actionable information. Both ends of the data spectrum are pretty much covered between the two companies. It looks like Connotate played a good game with Fetch and tails may be wagging for the next decade.
Jennifer Shockley, July 26, 2012
IHS Adds Invention Machine to its Technology Collection
July 19, 2012
In a $40 million deal, Taume announces, “IHS Acquires Trident Capital’s Invention Machine.” The write up also notes IHS’ previously announced purchase of GlobalSpec for $135 million. The company expects the combination of Invention Machine’s Goldfire business intelligence chops and GlobalSpec’s vertical search, product information, and global access point capabilities will combine to:
“. . . transform our existing engineering specifications and standards business to long-term double-digit growth, and accelerate the IHS Product Design business by increasing the value we offer to engineers, researchers and scientists by connecting innovation to knowledge workers,” said Jerre Stead, IHS chairman and chief executive officer. “With Invention Machine’s Goldfire as the front-end, we will bring together all IHS content, insight and tools into an innovative solution that will address many of the unsolved problems facing engineers. This will enable greater productivity, accuracy and design quality, and help customers accelerate innovation and deliver superior products and services.”
Invention Machine makes its home in Boston, with offices in London, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, and Minsk, Belarus. They call their Goldfire “the optimal decision engine,” created to help make clients more productive. Trident Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in 1993 that specializes in business service and I.T. investments.
Designed with engineers in mind, GlobalSpec supplies its customers with domain-specific vertical search engines. The firm is headquartered in East Greenbush, N.Y.
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, IHS operates in over 30 countries and employs over 5,500 workers. This information powerhouse was founded back in 1959 as a provider of product catalog databases on microfilm for aerospace engineers. Wow, who here remembers microfilm? Kudos to IHS for keeping up with the times!
Cynthia Murrell, July 19, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
StreetAccount Added to the Acquisition List of 2012
July 18, 2012
Thomson Reuters may not be too thrilled with this news. Its competitor FactSet added a gem to its information treasure chest.
The acquisitions of 2012 just added some new names to the list. Taume’s article “FactSet Research Buys StreetAccount” explains why FactSet felt StreetAccount complimented their mission and decided to become their sole distributor.
In the company’s opinion, this is a win, win situation for everyone. Those that utilize FactSet currently can now gain access to StreetAccount through the FactSet workstation and iPad applications.
StreetAccount’s Senior Vice President Gregory Jones,stated:
“Institutional investors are challenged by the volume of information they receive. StreetAccount cuts through the clutter to deliver to users the news they need most. We’re delighted to join FactSet as we share a common mission: to transform information into intelligence for our clients.”
FactSet’s Director of Product Development for Market Data explained the reasoning behind acquiring StreetAccount as:
“StreetAccount content is a natural fit for FactSet that will complement our strong partnership with Dow Jones and other news vendors already available on the FactSet platform. This acquisition is right in line with FactSet’s long-term commitment to investing in unique content sets”
FactSet has been around since 1978 and combines integrated financial information, analytical applications, and client services, enhancing the productivity and organization of global investment professionals. StreetAccount opened their doors in 2003 and provide crucial market moving information for corporations involved in buying and selling. As far as acquisitions go, these two companies create a complimentary combination that might end up on the success list.
Jennifer Shockley, July 18, 2012
Yippy and MuseGlobal Get Hitched. Yippy. Er, Hooray.
June 21, 2012
Take a unified search company known for its clustering technology (Yippy) and mix with a leading provider of content integration and data virtualization services (MuseGlobal). The results, according to a recent press release, will be a powerful unified access to a huge data cloud of curated content.
Carnegie Mellon University developed the award-winning deep research engine now known as Yippy.com. Yippy acquired the software in 2010, along with a perpetual license for advanced enterprise software solution Velocity. That’s where Yippy’s patented clustering methods come from.
MuseGlobal claims to maintain the largest and most versatile library of content connections in the world. The company has built a fully documented source factory that monitors, maintains, and updates connectors constantly, boosting sustainability and scalability. Muse Smart Connectors are available out-of-the-box for content federation and harvesting, in any format and across any location.
The press release declares:
“The merger of Yippy and MuseGlobal combines two wholly synergistic companies that bring together an exclusive and vast range of resources and abilities that no other search or information-based company in the world possesses including majors such as Google, Microsoft and HP/Autonomy. The combined companies will create an information cloud that will represent a significant shift in the business of enterprise, vertical and consumer search with unlimited consumer and commercial uses. The Companies’ registered trademark ‘Welcome to the Cloud’ embodies its combined data virtualization initiatives.”
The merger will increase the number of issued and outstanding common shares from 53 million to approximately 67 million. MuseGlobal was founded in the UK in 1998, and became a commercial entity in 2001. The company is now based in San Francisco, CA. Yippy makes its home in Fort Meyers, FL, and prides itself on its strong Web search privacy stance—it neither tracks nor save users’ information, including search history. The merged company will employ about 50 workers in four countries.
Cynthia Murrell, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
More Autonomy Activity at HP
May 31, 2012
Short honk. The addled goose is in London. The management traffic jam at Hewlett Packard seems to be getting worse. I thought London was tangled. I read “HP Names New Software Chief, COO.” The founder of Autonomy will leaving HP, which purchased Autonomy for $10 billion or so about eight months ago. First, an HP software wizard named William Veghte had responsibility for Autonomy. Not if the write up is accurate. The new boss reporting to Margaret Thatcher inspired Meg Whitman is a venture capitalist and former IBM software wizard, George Kadifa. Will there be more changes? Will the management snarl be resolved? Sure. But how will HP recover its $10 billion and keep those Autonomy customers happy? Tough questions. The goose has some ideas, but these are not for the free blog.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2012
Sponsored by Information Today which bought me dinner last night
Big Outfits Buy Search Vendors: Does Chaos Commence?
May 25, 2012
I don’t want to mention any specifics in this write up. I have a for-fee Overflight on the subject. I do want to highlight some of the preliminary thoughts the goslings and I collected before creating our client-focused analysis. This write up was sparked by the recent news that the founder of Autonomy, which HP acquired for $10 billion, is seeking new opportunities after eight months immersed in the HP way. See “Hewlett-Packard Can’t Say It Wasn’t Warned about Autonomy.” This write up contained a remarkable statement, even when measured against the work of other “real” journalists:
Some will say this is a classic case of an entrepreneurial business being bought by a hulking, bureaucratic institution which failed to integrate it and failed to understand its culture. Others will say HP, desperate to do a deal, simply overpaid for a company that was going to struggle to maintain its sales and earnings momentum and was deluded about its abilities. Certainly warnings about the latter were there for HP to see before it handed over all that cash. Here’s what Marc Geall, a Deutsche Bank analyst who used to work at Autonomy, said in October 2010 about the business model: “…investment in the business has lagged revenues… [which] could affect customer satisfaction towards the product and the value it delivers.” He went on to warn that Autonomy’s service business was “too lean” and that it “risks falling short of standards demanded by customers”. All of which prompted Geall to question whether the company needed to change its business model – “traditionally, software companies have needed to change their business models at around $1bn in revenues”.
Yep, now the issues are easy to identify: the brutal cost of customer support, the yawning maw of research and development, the time and cost of customizing a system. The problem is that these issues have been identified. However, senior managers looking for the next big thing are extremely confident of their business and technical acumen. Search is a slam dunk. Heck, I can find what I want in Google. How tough can it be to find that purchase order? That confidence may work in business school, but it has not worked in the wild-and-crazy world of enterprise search and content processing.
Think back to the notable search acquisitions over the last few years. Here are some to jump start your memory:
- IBM in 2005 and 2006 purchases iPhrase (a MarkLogic precursor with semantic components) and Language Analysis Systems (a next generation content processing vendor)
- Microsoft which acquired Powerset and Fast Search & Transfer in the 2008 to 2009 period. Both vendors had next-generation systems with semantic, natural language processing, and other near-magical capabilities
- Oracle acquired TripleHop in 2005, focused on its less-and-less visible Secure Enterprise Search line up (SES10g and SES11g), then went on a buying spree to snap up InQuira (actually the company formed when two weaker players, Answerfriend Inc. and Electric Knowledge Inc., merged in 2002 or 2003, RightNow (which uses the Q-Go natural language processing system purchased in 2010 or 2011), and Endeca, an established search vendor with technology dating from the late 1990s)
- SAP snagged some search functions with its NetWeaver buy in 2004 which coexisted in a truce of sorts with the SAP TREX system. SAP bought Business Objects in 2007, the company inherited the Inxight Software, a text analytics vendor with assorted wizardry explained in buzzwords by marketing mavens.
So what have we learned from these buy outs by big companies? Here are the observations:
First, search and content processing does not behave the way other types of software learns to sit, come, and roll over. The MBAs, lawyers, and accountants issue commands like good organizational team players. The enterprise search and content processing crowd listens to the management edicts with bemusement. Everyone thinks search is a slam dunk. How tough can a utility function be? Well, let me remind you, gentle reader, search is pretty darned difficult. Unlike a cloud service for managing contacts, search is not one thing. Furthermore, those who have to use search are generally annoyed because systems have since 1970 failed to generate answers. Search outputs create more work. Usually the outputs are mostly wide of the mark. Big companies want to sell a software product or service that solves a problem like what is the back log for the Midwestern region or when did I last call Mr. Jones? The big companies don’t get this type of system when they buy, often for a premium, companies which purport to make content findable, smart, and accessible. So we have a situation in which a sales presentation whets the appetite of the big company executive who perceives himself or herself as an expert in search. Then when anticipation is at its peak, the sales person closes the deal. In the aftermath, the executives realize that search just does not follow the groove of an accounting system, a videoconferencing system, or a security system. Panic sets in, and you get crazy actions. IBM pretty much jettisoned its search systems and fell in love with open source Lucene / Solr. Good enough was a lot better than trying to figure out the mysteries of proprietary search and how to pay for the brutal research and development costs search requires.
Second, search is a moving target. I find that as recently as my meetings with sleek MBAs from six major financial firms, search was assumed to be a no brainer. Google has figured out search. Move on. When I asked the group how many considered themselves experts in search, everyone replied, “Yes.” I submit that none of these well-paid movers-and-shakers are very good at search and retrieval. Few of them have the time or patience for old fashioned research. Most get information from colleagues, via phone calls which include “I have a hard stop in five minutes”, and emails sent to people whom they have met at social functions or at conferences. Search is not looking up a phone number. Search is not slamming the name of a company into Google. Search is not wandering around midtown Manhattan with an iPhone displaying the location of a pizza joint. Search is whatever the user wishes to find, access, know, or learn at any point in time and in any context. Google is okay at some search functions. Other vendors are okay at others. The problem is that virtually all search and retrieval solutions are okay. People have been trying for about 50 years to deliver responses to queries that are what the user requires. Most systems dissatisfy more than half their users and have for 50 years. A big company buying a next generation search system wants these problems solved. The big company wants to close deals, get client access licenses, or cloud transactions for queries. But the big companies don’t get these things, so the MBAs, lawyers, and accountants are really confused. Confused people make crazy decisions. You get the idea.
Third, search does not mean search. Search technology includes figuring out which words to index in a document. Search does a miserable job of indexing videos unless the video audio track is converted to ASCII and then that ASCII is indexed. Even with this type of content processing system, search does not deliver a usable output. What a user gets is garbled snippets and maybe the opportunity to look at a video to figure out if the information is relevant. Search includes figuring out what a user wants before the user asks the question or even knows what the question is. One company is collecting millions in venture money to achieve this goal. Good luck on that. Search includes providing outputs that answer an employee’s specific question. Most systems provide a horseshoe type of result; that is, the search vendor wants points for getting close to the answer. Employees who have to click, scan, close, and repeat the process are not amused. The employee wants the Smith invoice from April, not increased risk of carpal tunnel problems. The poobahs who acquire search companies want none of these excuses. The poobahs want sales. What search acquisitions generate are increased costs, long sales cycles, and much friction. Marketers overstate and search systems routinely under deliver.
Who cares?
Another enterprise search train wreck. The engineer was either an MBA, an accountant, or a lawyer. No big deal. Just get another search train. How tough can it be to run a search system? Thanks to http://www.eccchistory.org/CCRailroads.htm
Well, the executives selling big companies a search and content processing just want the money. After years of backbreaking effort to generate revenues, the founders usually figure out that there are easier ways to earn a living. If the founders don’t bail out, they get a new job or become a guru at a venture capital firm.
Autonomy Bomb Shell: Revenue Miss and Lynch to Exit HP
May 24, 2012
Navigate to “HP Cuts 27,000 Workers.” Here’s the passage I noted:
One person who will be leaving HP is Mike Lynch, the founder of big data software company Autonomy, who came to HP through its $10.24bn acquisition of Autonomy in August 2011 in the short era when Leo Apotheker was CEO at HP. Whitman said that Autonomy had a bad quarter and was disappointing, and added that Bill Veghte, the executive vice president in charge of HP Software as well as the company’s chief strategy officer, will take over Autonomy and that Lynch will leave HP after a transition period. Lynch’s exit follows that of Chris Lynch, the boss of HP’s other big data acquisition, Vertica, who left HP back in March. Whitman said that Autonomy was a “smart acquisition” and a “great product” and that the revenue miss was more a matter of execution than anything else and that it would take a few quarters to fix whatever the problem is.
Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Vivisimo Value
April 30, 2012
Okay, azure chip consultants, the goslings and I have completed our review of the Vivisimo information in our Overflight system. We have reviewed the data available to us for the IBM buy outs of Cognos, i2, and SPSS. We have reached some hypothetical conclusions. Keep in mind that this is our own Kentucky analysis, fueled by mine run off and our Overflight data.
First, we think the IBM Vivisimo deal was a pretty good move for IBM. More to the point, IBM gets some technology and some employees. But the amount of dough IBM coughed up for Vivisimo was probably not much above $25 million and may be as low as $18 to $19 million. The reason is that Vivisimo just did not have market traction, a fact I documented in The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, which is now out of print. (We are still doing briefings, so if you are interested, write us at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Second, the Vivisimo technology was not up to the rigors of the enterprise. In fact, we believe that the “big data” public relations spin was one of those deals which reach back through college fraternities and obligations which the Facebook generation do not understand. We hypothesize that this was a “white knight” deal, not a crafty business move to thwart Oracle or SAP, among others in the enterprise game.
Third, the value of the recent spate of acquisitions says more about what a company will pay for customers, consulting opportunities, and ways to extend the life of an existing product line. Lexmark printers anyone? Vivisimo is more of a utility; it is not an Autonomy or an Endeca type of outfit.
How wrong are we? Well, since this is a free blog, you need to do your own calculation. We think our hypothesis is pretty strong and we think the value of the deal is in the range we calculated. Azure chip outfits will want to avoid search. The money days may be over. Hello, big data and analytics. Goodbye, gentle search.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
IBM Buys Vivisimo Allegedly for Its Big Data Prowess
April 25, 2012
Big data. Wow. That’s an angle only a public relations person with a degree in 20th century American literature could craft. Vivisimo is many things, but a big data system? News to me for sure.
IBM has been a strong consumer and integrator of open source search solutions. Watson, the game show winner, used Lucene with IBM wrapper software to keep the folks in Jeopardy post production on their toes.
A screen shot of the Vivisimo Velocity system displaying search results for the RAND organization. Notice the folders in the left hand panel. The interface reveals Vivisimo’s roots in traditional search and retrieval. The federating function operates behind the scenes. The newest versions of Velocity permit a user to annotate a search hit so the system will boost it in subsequent queries if the comment is positive. A negative rating on a result suppresses that result.
I learned that IBM allegedly purchased Vivisimo, a company which I have covered in my various monographs about search and content processing. Forbes ran a story which was at odds with my understanding of what the Vivisimo technology actually does. Here’s the Forbes’ title: “IBM To Buy Vivisimo; Expands Bet On Big Data Analytics.” Notice the phrase “big data analytics.”
Why do I point out the “big data” buzzword? The reasons include:
- Vivisimo has a clustering method which takes search results and groups them, placing similar results identified by the method in “folders”
- Vivisimo has a federating method which, like Bright Planet’s and Deep Web Technologies’, takes a user’s query and sends the query to two or more indexing systems, retrieves the results, and displays them to the user
- Vivisimo has a clever de-duplication method which makes the results list present one item. This is important when one encounters a news story which appears on multiple Web sites.
According to the write up in Forbes, a “real” news outfit:
IBM this morning said it has agreed to acquire Vivisimo, a Pittsburgh-based provider of big data access and analysis tools.
Okay, but in Beyond Search we have documented that Vivisimo followed this trajectory in its sales and marketing efforts since the company opened for business in 2000. In fact, the Wikipedia write up about Vivisimo says this:
Vivisimo is a privately held enterprise search software company in Pittsburgh that develops and sells software products to improve search on the web and in enterprises. The focus of Vivisimo’s research thus far has been the concept of clustering search results based on topic: for example, dividing the results of a search for “cell” into groups like “biology,” “battery,” and “prison.” This process allows users to intuitively narrow their search results to a particular category or browse through related fields of information, and seeks to avoid the “overload” problem of sorting through too many results.
Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne Merge
March 22, 2012
Partners merge as Google goes its own direction in the enterprise. “Top Google and Salesforce Partners Merge, Form Global Cloud Co. Cloud Sherpas,” announces The Wall Street Journal. Valuable Google partner Cloud Sherpas is joining forces with Salesforce top partner GlobalOne Group. The new company will use the colorful Cloud Sherpas moniker. Details of the deal have not been released.
The CEO of the new Cloud Sherpas has reason to believe his company will be successful. The article reports:
“Many vendors claim to sell software that runs in the cloud, but Google and Salesforce have become two of the most significant cloud software platforms for all sizes of businesses, according to David Northington, the former chief executive of GlobalOne who is now chief executive of the combined company.
“Also, traditional IT services companies accustomed to offering expensive software that runs inside corporate walls and may take months or years to deploy are still catching up to the demand for cloud skills, he said, and that should give Cloud Sherpas and its customers a head start.”
Taking to the cloud can provide definite advantages; it can reduce costs and provide finer control over technology. However, because the field is changing so rapidly, businesses look to providers to double as cloudy advisers. With the experience behind both Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne, Northington believes his newly blended company is well positioned to provide such guidance.
No employees were axed in the merger. The new company will retain its 177 workers from GlobalOne and the 84 from the original CloudSherpas. In fact, they are actively hiring. Not only that, but the company anticipates acquiring more businesses and raising more money in the near future.
Now, that’s the way to set your sights sky high.
Stephen E. Arnold, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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