OTEXF has moved into a different market space.
Open Text shifted strategies more than a year ago from providing search technology to enterprise document management. The big difference between the VRTY and the doc management customers (most of whom are VRTY OEM customers) is that Verity is agnostic as to documents storage (file servers, Web servers, databases, etc.), while a document management system, as the name implies, actually stores the documents themselves. Verity has never crossed that line and I'd be shocked if they did.
Open Text was noted for having a very fast search engine, based on Patricia Tree technology. However, that approach doesn't inherently include some essential search features, such as proximity. The story I heard was that they would have lost their speed advantage if they added the sophisticated features needed to be a real search technology player. I think they made the smart move by going upstream into a more vertical enterprise solution.
OTEXF just announced a business-oriented Internet search site, so apparently they're hoping to play both sides of the game -- services and software. Successful penetration of business could translate into a lot of advertising revenue for the service -- IF the model works, which no one really knows. InfoSeek was trying to do that with InfoSeek Industry Watch, which has spun out into an independent company called News-Real. For at least 10 years or so, starting with David Bunnell's biotech newsletter that he hoped to distribute on corporate LANs, a lot of people have hoped to capture the eyeballs of the corporate desktops, so to speak. It'll be interesting to see if Open Text can make it fly. In the days when Verity had a lot of money, we considered a search service many times, but I could never support it -- the software company and service would compete for scarce MIS resources. (Little-known fact: Verity tried to buy Excite when it was still five guys in a house in Cupertino. Verity wanted their search technology; they opted for the service approach and took money from KPCB. The rest is history, though much is yet to be written.)
As for FORMF, they are a long way from VRTY's market, even more in the document business than OTEXF. They're not on Verity's radar screen. |
