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HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

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Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#31

Post by jgmatpdx »

benjamind wrote: post #23
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 worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat. To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so…

As corroboration, my first assignment at Autonomy basically amounted to writing (on-site) a component that had been sold without the existence of a single line of code.

I think the obstacles for a startup wouldn't come from Autonomy's core techology---more the amount of stuff they've acquired around the edges. Pieces like KeyView (which is fairly good at reading just about any file format you care to mention) make the whole Autonomy package much more attractive than their search tech would be on its own. Plus, as you said, you have to be willing and able to compete with their sales force, and that seems like a soul-selling endeavor from the beginning.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#32

Post by sunchild »

benjamind wrote: post #23
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 worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat. To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so…

I've negotiated against Autonomy before, on behalf of a customer. I've also used their products at various jobs. The company conducts itself like most enterprise vendors – everything is about making the sale while limiting the hard commitments that they make to their customers.

I hated using the product (specifically, iManage) because it was clearly not designed by or for users. It's just another slapped-on solution to shortcomings in the Microsoft platform (closed/obscure document format, lack of public APIs, etc.) I was not impressed by the product in any way whatsoever.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#33

Post by bradleyland »

_b8r0 wrote: post #21

For a company to buy an OS for $1.2 billion, then spend a fortune on developing a new class of device only to ditch it a month after launch along with it's entire infrastructure business, to then pay a massive premium for a software company in one particular space says an awful lot about the thought processes in HP. I can only assume that whoever makes the decisions has been prescribed something very, very powerful.

It's important to remember that there was some significant change in leadership during this sequence of events. Mark Hurd was CEO of HP at the time they bought Palm. The current CEO, Leo Apotheker, wasn't all that crazy about the product, and from what I've read in other places, was looking for a reason to can it. IMO, webOS devices didn't get a fair shot at HP. I believe that in hindsight, webOS will go down in history as one of those great operating systems that died for reasons not related to it's quality as an OS.

You also have to consider that making $1.2bn back on the Palm purchase wouldn't be all that difficult right now. HP has the straight forward option of simply selling the Palm patent portfolio of 1,600 patents from a company that was in the handheld device space long before most of the current players.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#34

Post by defen »

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…

Oh man, Autonomy. I know some people who worked there after the Interwoven acquisition. They uniformly described it as a disaster. Million-line codebases with no unit tests (and a UK dev office that didn't care). Routine selling of non-existent features, followed by dev getting shit on because they had to work over the weekend to make a proof-of-concept for it. High-priced sales-engineers who spend 6-8 weeks on site installing stuff, upselling on hardware and software the whole time.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#36

Post by benjamind »

jgmatpdx wrote: post #31
benjamind wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat. To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so…

As corroboration, my first assignment at Autonomy basically amounted to writing (on-site) a component that had been sold without the existence of a single line of code. I think the obstacles for a startup wouldn't come from Autonomy's core techology---more the amount of stuff they've acquired around the edges. Pieces like KeyView (which is fairly good at reading just about any file format you care to mention) make th…

Yes, the complete package is what they can offer big business. There are so many pieces to it now that they can turn it to a huge range of different uses.

The problem they have (well at least had when I was there a few years ago) is that nobody understands it all anymore. They've acquired so much technology and have such a high turn over rate of developers (barring a few extremely well rewarded key seniors) that its a constant uphill struggle to change anything or improve significantly, so developers have to just patch things up as best they can.

That burden will eventually catch up with them I would think, but I'm always surprised at how long a bad code-base can be kept alive.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#37

Post by benjamind »

madeinindia wrote: post #35

HP... Autonomy... really? http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Autonomy-Reviews-E11045.htm

Haha! Never saw that site before, but man are those some upset employees!

It certainly is a hell of a place to work as a developer. I was almost grateful for it in a way, it was my first professional developer job (they tend to hire fresh meat). But it taught me a lot about what not to do, and was a proving ground for my ability to work under pressure.

I'd almost recommend doing a stint in a place like it, makes you appreciate all your jobs afterwards. :-)

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#38

Post by jordan0day »

bradleyland wrote: post #33
_b8r0 wrote: post #21

For a company to buy an OS for $1.2 billion, then spend a fortune on developing a new class of device only to ditch it a month after launch along with it's entire infrastructure business, to then pay a massive premium for a software company in one particular space says an awful lot about the thought processes in HP. I can only assume that whoever makes the decisions has been prescribed something very, very powerful.

It's important to remember that there was some significant change in leadership during this sequence of events. Mark Hurd was CEO of HP at the time they bought Palm. The current CEO, Leo Apotheker, wasn't all that crazy about the product, and from what I've read in other places, was looking for a reason to can it. IMO, webOS devices didn't get a fair shot at HP. I believe that in hindsight, webOS will go down in hist…

"I believe that in hindsight, webOS will go down in history as one of those great operating systems that died for reasons not related to it's quality as an OS."

Yes. I would say that webOS will more than likely be the beOS of the mobile world. Not that the two OS's are similar technologically, but in that they're both generally held in fairly high esteem but no one actually uses them.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#39

Post by Duff »

benjamind wrote: post #23
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 worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat. To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so…

That's hilarious. We kicked them out when the Brit super-salesman in a $10k suit made it clear that they are the most expensive product in the space.

Very old-school approach. Fancy books, etc. We have a stack of beautifully produced product viewbook things from propping up our fax machine.

Re: HP to buy Autonomy for $11 billion

#40

Post by StephenJ »

benjamind wrote: post #23
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 worked for them for a couple of years as a developer. They do have an underlying core technology developed in the very early days of the company which they have exploited to the absolute maximum possible. It works fairly well, but Bayesian analysis of documents is beginning to feel a little old hat. To be honest I've been waiting for a startup to come around to attempt to disrupt this field, but none has arrived so…

Yeah, I have had similar experience. The start-up that will disrupt the space you speak of is PureDiscovery up north in Dallas. I assisted in a Purediscovery implementation in place of Autonomy and the client will never look back. First, they clearly do not have all the bells and whistles Autonomy has (that dont work that well), but on a side by side basis, I had a Purediscovery Index up in 4 hours and the results are light years better than Autonomy. We do not have to re-index our existing data either which is what I think makes the Purediscovery solution so unique. Its funny for me to see all of the comments now about Autonomy. I have been there! Where have all of these people been the past few years? Spinning plates...love it
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