I have been really busy with on-site client work for a few weeks, and have numerous clients with 31st of March deadlines, busy busy, but I have been wanting to respond to Pie's posting: Documentum and the Search for Search for over a week now.
However then we get the "IBM to buy Sun" bombshell...... :-)
All good fun eh. So I thought I would tackle both issues with one posting. Why ? Well as you can see from the 'provocative' title, I don't think EMC should buy a search engine, I think they should buy Sun Microsystems.
Firstly in direct response to Pie, EMC don't 'need' to buy a search engine, they can put some resource and investment into the open source Lucene search engine, which Pie does mention in his post. Now having said that there are a lots of search engine vendors out there, so there is bound to be some good technology to snap up if they wanted to.
But why not invest more strategically - and buy Sun ? What would they get, well lots of synergistic product lines, and things they dont currently have;
- Storage: Not just the Sun storage hardware, which may or may not have technology which could add value to EMC's storage products (I am not a storage geek so I don't know), but also software - even Solaris and its ZFS file system
- Server hardware: Why shouldn't EMC have a line of servers including some serious CPU technology to go with their storage hardware? Sun could be regarded as the progenitor of current cloud computing and its 'big iron' would be great for Mozy and other EMC cloud initiatives.
- MySQL: All future versions of Documentum developed to run on their own RDBMS platform ? Again I am not a database geek either, but I do know that Oracle is generally considered as the best platform for Content Server, so would MySQL cut the mustard?
- Java: Well, EMC are "the worlds sixth biggest software company" so why not own Java ?
- Portal: Either Sun Portal or LifeRay (OK, LifeRay) - a great investment for a full 'soup to nuts' information management environment, a portal to sit over Content Server and CenterStage
Well, I know its probably got a 'cat in hell's chance' of happening as we say in Yorkshire, but its fun to postulate the theory. I did see a tweet yesterday suggesting the author had a good source which had sugested Oracle and HP might put in a joint bid for Sun, HP for the hardware and Oracle for the software. Personally I think it would be better for the industry if Sun's tech was not swallowed by either IBM or HP. As for the software, many are suggesting IBM would not be a good owner for Java - I am not so sure on that front, but you can see why Oracle might want to get its hands on both Java and Solaris.
So, come on EMC, get your cash and impress us all, buy the company and do innovative things with the tech !
..... but will it choke on it ?
Hopefully not.... UPDATE - see this CMSWatch post: What next for Interwoven?
Kas asks some good questions in this post, so I wont regurgitate it here - I note my comments to his posting though - A big part of Autonomy is its Virage 'rich media management' product offerings. To me this would seem to fit very nicely with Interwoven's MediaBin Digital Asset Management (DAM) offering. So if you can manage, and search rich media assets, what else do you need, yep a Web CMS so that you can publish them. So, while agree that Autonomy might not leap right pouring money into updating the rather ancient underpinnings of the Interwoven WCM line, hopefully it will 'do the right thing' and update it as part of a 'full lifecycle' digital asset / rich media product line up - which pretty much answers my own question at the bottom of the original post below - yep Autonomy may well become a fully blow ECM vendor.
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Since I heard about this early this morning, I have been trying to find time to do some analysis and blog on it, but to be honest Alan Pelz-Sharpe pretty much nails it (as per usual) with his commentary over at CMS Watch here: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1481-Autonomy-acquires-Interwoven---A-first-take
Some others I have chatted with today make the same point as Alan, that Interwoven's TeamSite has always been big in the legal sector, and thats a key 'discovery' market for Autonomy, so in some respects the deal makes sense. However in others it does not; e.g. Autonomy picked up Meridio last year, and there is considerable overlap with between their EDRM facilities and some of the features provided by Interwoven.
Sometimes Autonomy appears to be the British IBM - I am fairly sure it makes more money on its consulting and services revenue stream than it does on the licences for the IDOL platform, indeed Alan characterises it as a 'holding company'.
However with enterprise search, e-discovery, EDRM and now Web Content Management and Digital Asset Management solutions in its pocket, do we reqard Autonomy as one of the main ECM players, challenging EMC, IBM and OpenText ?
For sure it will be interesting to keep an eye on this......
Autonomy press release
Interwoven press release
