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HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

ft.com

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Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#11

Post by AlexMuir »

I've always thought that Autonomy had a strong whiff of fraud about it. I never hear anyone talk about working there, their financial reporting is often shadier than Groupon's, there's a Madoff-esque figure at the top (in the sense that he seems to be treated as almost godlike), and no-one seems to use its products.

I know it powers the FT's search facility and they joke about how useless it is.

My only explanation has been that it perhaps has a heavy focus on intelligence work.

I hope HP are prepared for some lengthy due diligence.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#12

Post by cubicle67 »

sceptre wrote: post #7

As an ex employee of Autonomy, i must say that its actually good news for the employees. I spoke to my ex-colleagues and they sounded upbeat. Autonomy was a sweat shop. You were paid pittance and employees outside cambridge were hardly recognized. It was one of the worst companies to work for.

I left EDS just before HP bought them out. Shortly after HP laid off a heap of my (former) colleagues. Anyone know how the HP/EDS thing is going now?

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#13

Post by paulsilver »

AlexMuir wrote: post #11

I've always thought that Autonomy had a strong whiff of fraud about it. I never hear anyone talk about working there, their financial reporting is often shadier than Groupon's, there's a Madoff-esque figure at the top (in the sense that he seems to be treated as almost godlike), and no-one seems to use its products. I know it powers the FT's search facility and they joke about how useless it is. My only explanation h…

I've met a couple of people who've worked there, one was quite bitchy about working conditions but you could get that at any company.

About 2000-2001 the company I was working for tried to buy a license to use their search software on our internal documents. It all fell apart for various reasons, including a price tag that was well in to six figures (Sterling) may even have been almost £1,000,000 my memory fails me as it wasn't going to be a good fit for our project anyway (long story.)

The tech they had then was very impressive when demoed, and I've heard even more amazing things about it since, but again, all in demos. I've not used the software direct, partly because I haven't worked for companies that could afford to use it.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#14

Post by jgmatpdx »

teyc wrote: post #2

Has anyone here used Autonomy? It seems to be used in call centres to detect nuances in a person's words. What other type of data mining does it do?

The call center tech was acquired; I don't suspect much of it ever had anything to do with their core product.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#15

Post by jgmatpdx »

paulsilver wrote: post #13
AlexMuir wrote: post #11

I've always thought that Autonomy had a strong whiff of fraud about it. I never hear anyone talk about working there, their financial reporting is often shadier than Groupon's, there's a Madoff-esque figure at the top (in the sense that he seems to be treated as almost godlike), and no-one seems to use its products. I know it powers the FT's search facility and they joke about how useless it is. My only explanation h…

I've met a couple of people who've worked there, one was quite bitchy about working conditions but you could get that at any company. About 2000-2001 the company I was working for tried to buy a license to use their search software on our internal documents. It all fell apart for various reasons, including a price tag that was well in to six figures (Sterling) may even have been almost £1,000,000 my memory fails me a…

Autonomy is very good at selling demos for prices at and above what you're listing there.

I spent some time there in consulting, which amounted to attempting to convince customers that the demos they'd bought actually existed. In general, the demos were mixes of Perl and JavaScript that barely held together for the length of the demo, let alone scaled. Autonomy did have some internal large-scale success stories, but they tended to involve heroic (and large uncompensated) work after the sale and customers who were willing to repeatedly threaten to sue until said work was done.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#16

Post by adamt »

rorrr wrote: post #6

Even after today's surge (+75%), its market capitalization is $6.11B. Yesterday's market cap: $3.5B. Why would HP pay 3X its market value?

Those figures you quote are sterling prices. E.g. yesterday it was £3.7Bn. It's about an 70% premium over market not a 3x

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#18

Post by adamt »

AlexMuir wrote: post #11

I've always thought that Autonomy had a strong whiff of fraud about it. I never hear anyone talk about working there, their financial reporting is often shadier than Groupon's, there's a Madoff-esque figure at the top (in the sense that he seems to be treated as almost godlike), and no-one seems to use its products. I know it powers the FT's search facility and they joke about how useless it is. My only explanation h…

They have a big building here in Cambridge where they employee 170+ people. The Company has been public for a long time (first floated on EASDAQ back in about 1999). I don't think there's anything shadier about it compared to any other enterprise software company.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#19

Post by d4nt »

teyc wrote: post #2

Has anyone here used Autonomy? It seems to be used in call centres to detect nuances in a person's words. What other type of data mining does it do?

They implemented it at my last employer - a professional services business with lots of documents to search. I don't think we were really using it to its full potential though.
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