The Business Intelligence Blog

An interesting analysis from PC World -

…the search market has fragmented into a few distinct size classes, analysts say: offerings from major vendors like IBM, Oracle and with its recent acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer, Microsoft; larger independents such as Autonomy; and smaller, specialized vendors.

Arnold recently wrote a nearly 300-page study for Gilbane Group, “Beyond Search,” that takes a deep dive into the facets of the enterprise search market. While in terms of size, search-focused companies are spread among only a handful of categories, but they vary widely in terms of their technological focus. These are among the sub-segments Arnold identified:

Database-centric systems, such as Teratext and Intelligenx. “Because of this, these systems are adept at handling data management, content repurposing, and generating reports from the content that reside in the system’s database,” he wrote.

Companies involved in “deep analysis” of content, which include Attensity and Siderean Software. “The use of multiple processes in iterative cascades point to the direction search and content processing is moving. Simple key word indexing is a Model-T Ford to these vendors’ finely tuned machines.”