A British Google?

22nd Mar '09 by Betasurfer

2 comments 1363 reads

Autonomy is a leading provider of enterprise software enabling organisations to understand and process information critical to their business. At the heart of the company are algorithms developed by CEO Mike Lynch that enable people to search the increasing volume and complexity of information and data stored by large organisations in both the public and private sectors. Its software searches “unstructured information” such as documents, e-mails, phone conversations and multimedia.
Its share price has steadily increased from recent October lows of 730p to over 1280p, taking its market cap to over £3,000m. Now the largest company by market capitalisation headquartered in the Cambridge Cluster of high tech firms.
Announced very strong results in 2008 - http://www.stockopedia.com/news/announcement/AU./090121au.9753l.htm

Record revenues, up 47% from 2007 including strong organic growth
Record profit from operations (adjusted) at $207.5 million, up 91% from 2007
Fully diluted EPS (adjusted) of $0.68 (versus consensus $0.64), up 81% from 2007

Growth driven by regulatory changes such as amendments to the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which changed the way companies are required to account for electronically stored information.
Recentlly completed the $775m (£561m) acquisition of content management firm Interwoven in order to expand its portfolio of enterprise search, business process management, e-discovery and archiving products. "With this acquisition we will redefine how global 2000 corporations interact with the web, and how leading law firms and government regulators will discover, analyse and manage information and interactions," said CEO Lynch.

A British Google or just a wannabe? For what it's worth, my fund is filling its boots.

Unlock with Email

Unlock with Google

Already have an account?
Login here

MrT

22nd Mar '09

Google and Autonomy appear to have been slapping each other for a while.. This is from an article back in early 2008. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/24/google-blasts-autonomy-over-white-paper

Google is firing back at enterprise search vendor Autonomy, saying the company recently distributed a white paper that contains "significant inaccuracies" about Google's Search Appliance. The white paper, according to Google, states that Search Appliance "does not index all your critical content."

Impressive to be regarded by Google as a sufficiently serious threat to be worth rebutting! Having said that, Google's brilliance has been integrating consumer search and advertising - I can see the entreprise search market being massive/attractive but it's a very different market dynamic, so calling Autonomy a British Google is a bit of a meaningless analogy, IMO. If the question is whether Autonomy has serious prospects, then absolutely - even at the racy current multiple!

Another good one from back in 2005- http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39152405,00.htm

Mike Lynch, founder and CEO of Autonomy, has accused Google of dumbing-down user expectations of search functionality, arguing there is far more to it than simply typing a word in a box and hitting 'enter'. Lynch said companies such as his own have moved on from such notions and that discerning users are looking for far more than keyword searches.

As such Lynch said he is more intent on developing broader capabilities for search which will see users searching the content of phone calls and television programmes, as well as far more intuitive network searches within the enterprise."Google has very little impact on our end of the market. The one thing it has done is dumb-down how people search, which is a shame." Lynch said users are still doing too much legwork for Google, searching with simple terms and then clicking through the hundreds or thousands of results returned looking for the content which best matches their needs. "Say I'm interested in the effect of oil pollution on the penguin population of Alaska," said Lynch. "Although that's the idea someone is looking for they will walk up to a search engine and type 'penguin'." "They would never walk up to a librarian and just say 'penguin' and that's the Google effect. We've been trained to assume the search engine is dumb and that takes a little un-training in enterprise.

A British Google?

Unlock the rest of this article with a 14 day trial

About the Author

Betasurfer

2 comments

Unlock the metrics for all these stocks and more...

Unlock the metrics for all these stocks and more...