Search-based applications support critical decision making

Abstract

L ike quite a few enabling tech- nologies for knowledge man- agement, search solutions have shown remarkable resilience through the economic downturn. According to IDC (idc.com), the market grew about 19 percent in 2008, to just over $2 billion, and preliminary figures for 2009 indicate a 6 percent to 8 per- cent increase. “Several factors are at work,” says Sue Feldman, research VP for search and discovery tech- nologies at IDC, “including the ongoing information explosion, compliance requirements and the growth of e-commerce.” Autonomy (autonomy.com) held the largest share for search and dis- covery software in 2008, with 14 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft (microsoft.com), with 9 percent, according to IDC. Both of those companies showed double- digit growth for their software prod- ucts in 2008. Google (google.com) 16 KMWorld April 2010 and Endeca (endeca.com) are next in sales revenue, and they also showed healthy growth. Interestingly, the “Other” category, which accounted for nearly 60 percent of total rev- enue, grew at over 20 percent. According to IDC, “other” is made up of the hundreds of privately held companies that do not disclose rev- enue. Most of them are small, but some have revenue of more than $20 million.