Overview: Autonomy

Autonomy, A UK-based corporation, has grown significantly since its founding in 1996 through a combination of solid products and technology, aggressive marketing, and acquisitions. Their initial search offering, the Dynamic Reasoning Engine, or DRE, went beyond keyword search to provide conceptual search which could provide related results for any user query. Since then, Autonomy has introduced the Intelligent Data Operating Layer, or IDOL, as the core of its search architecture.

With its acquisition of Verity, its largest competitor, in 2007, Autonomy became the undisputed leader in enterprise search - until Microsoft acquired FAST Search and Transfer in 2008. But along the way, Autonomy has changed itself into a risk management and compliance company by adding products where IDOL search is a key component, but which are not "enterprise search" products.

Products

Autonomy IDOL server is the core of the entire Autonomy product family. Like most search technologies, IDOL maintains a binary index of all content for rapid retrieval. The secret sauce is in how IDOL distributes index and search activity across multiple systems, and how it can connect to so many different data sources and document formats transparently.

At the heart of most search technologies is the ability to convert proprietary formats like Microsoft Office, or even audio from a video track, into a stream of words that can be indexed by the core technology. With the acquisition of Verity, Autonomy acquired KeyView filters, which can process wide range of formats. Of course, the other important part of indexing is being able to access content no matter where it is stored, and Autonomy has an impressive list of repositories and formats it supports.

Another product Autonomy acquired in the merger with Verity is Ultraseek, a great search engine and management interface originally created in the 1990s by InfoSeek. There is little information on the Autonomy site about Ultraseek, which they continue to enhance. More about Ultraseek can be found at www.ulktraseek.com.

Risk Management

As we mentioned, Autonomy has positioned itself well over the last few years as far more than en enterprise search company. Through development and acquisition, Autonomy has moved into a solid position in corporate governance with products like eTalk, Answer, Echo, Zantax, and Virage. Is Autonomy the leader in search? They have solid search at the core of all of their products; but we'd propose that Autonomy has grown beyond search to solve much more strategic problems for the clients - only one of which is traditional enterprise search.

Pricing

Like many other companies marketing enterprise search capabilities, Autonomy has very little to say about its pricing. To be honest, most high-end environments require extensive analysis to scope a solution.

Summary

Autonomy, as a compliance company, offers a broad range of search-based solutions for companies around the world. And if your search requirements demand high performance and fine control, the Autonomy IDOL platform may be the technology you need. The trick is to get all the functionality you need without technology - and cost - you will not need. We recommend a 'neeeds analysis' by an independent firm like New Idea Engineering, so we invite you to contact us.