The Bayesian haze
- Article 1 of 25
- Infoconomist, March 2001
Knowledge management is an area in which Europe has been doing very well. The star of the sector is Autonomy, but is its heady valuation deserved?
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Smartlogik, in fact, pours scorn on Autonomy's classification system. ”If you speak to Mike Lynch,“ says Challis, ”he'll tell you that if you've got a really good search engine, you don't need classification. The reason he says so is because his categorisation isn't very good. It's based on stored queries, which isn't a smart way of doing classifications.“ What companies really need, says Challis, ”is a rules-based architecture to capture the vocabulary that makes a document and to then attach weights to that vocabulary.“
Fletcher says that the idea that Autonomy doesn't do categorisation is nonsense. ”Not only is initial categorisation mandatory, but the system can automatically create sub-categories on the fly.“ Mostly, however, Autonomy's strategy is to try to avoid such arguments. It is, after all, the incumbent leader, is growing fast, and is executing well. But while that strategy may work against SmartLogik, Autonomy will find itself forced to prove its worth on all kinds of fronts if Microsoft does enter the market. That is why Merrill Lynch's note had such an impact.
David Johnson, of investment bankers Beeson Gregory, says arguments over the technology, however, are pointless. ”Software companies' products are seldom as good as they claim to be. So I'd put Autonomy in there with every other software vendor on the planet. Their technology's pretty good, but it's not the only way to skin that cat. I'm sure other companies will develop better technology, but it'll probably never see the light of day.“
Johnson goes on to say. ”Autonomy has a good product range and a very, very aggressive sales and marketing team. There is high brand recognition and it's perceived to be the market leader. It's difficult to see something the size of Autonomy [it has more than 400 customers and 40 OEM partners] going horribly wrong. That is why it is on a meaty rating.“
Even Snyder agrees with that. ”People buy a product based on the quality of the vendor, not on how brilliant 'the mousetrap' is. It's all down to marketing.“
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