Intelligent search company San Francisco, California-based Autonomy Systems Inc has added the ability to search a company’s internal e-mail, spreadsheet, word processing, PDF, SQL database, Notes and other applications when using its pattern recognition and data visualization software. The software already enables users to automatically search the web and other news and information sources for information based upon ideas and concepts represented by agents which represent a user’s activity. It can search unstructured text and doesn’t use keywords. Autonomy says the new facilities in its Knowledge Server enable employees to utilize a company’s knowledge base without spending vast amounts of time categorizing or tagging documents or filling out elaborate questionnaires identifying areas of expertise. After all a company’s main knowledge is between its employees ears, observes CEO Mike Lynch. The Knowledge Update software costs from $5,000 and up and $100 per seat.
Pivotal player
Autonomy, a UK start-up spun out of pattern recognition specialist Cambridge Neurodynamics in June 1996, says it’s re- packaged its software as a knowledge management product as that’s the current marketing term attached to this kind of technology. Lynch says Autonomy is still waiting for the market to develop to the point where this kind of software is essential but will soon announce a raft of new partners, OEMs and users. It’s working with ISVs such as Verge Software to develop vertical industry packages which come pre-configured with, for example, all the feeds and sources that pertain to the oil industry. With the traditional search engine business pretty much commoditized and ready to have forks stuck into it in Lynch’s view, he says no more than 10% of Autonomy’s business is now done in that space. Indeed with Microsoft Corp reportedly set to debut its own search engine within a new home page with personalised services and free email designed to rival sites such as Yahoo! and Excite, that process is set to accelerate. One suggestion is that Microsoft might just buy up one of the search engines like it did with HotMail for free email and give the search technology away for next to nothing from its web site, in the process laying waste to the search engine business (although we’re not sure that would necessarily go down well with the US Department of Justice, whose anti-trust division is already crawling all over Redmond). However as the engine market matures and personal information sources such as my.yahoo seek to differentiate their services to attract more income from advertisers and other sources Lynch thinks Autonomy will become a pivotal player. Expect OEM deals in this space. He claims there’s still not much in the way of competition around bar a nod in passing to HNC Software’s Aptex subsidiary. Autonomy plans to file for an IPO expected to raise $100m to $150m, but won’t be more specific than sometime this year. It’s been hiring marketing and OEM people away from other search engine companies and has 50 staff in total, the majority in the UK although some development is now done in the US. Autonomy, which raised $45m in venture capital in 1996 but none since claims it’s profitable on an operating basis and revenue is growing 30% each quarter.
