Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2015-04-07 20:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
I love it when my search engines turn up evidence that the left hand rarely knows what the right is doing. This morning brought me contrasting articles with the HP press release announcing ‘Gartner again names HP Autonomy a leader in eDiscovery software’ and the NY Times blog indicating that HP is ceding the public cloud market to Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Of course, it is very easy to misconstrue even a media-trained executive’s statements instead of just echoing them without a bit of diligence. The first distinction to draw is the difference between HP’s attempts to convert their physical hardware business into a direct competitive offering to Microsoft Azure/Amazon S3 VS. HP Autonomy software-as-a-Service offerings such as cloud backup, HP LiveVault, etc. Not directly competing with Amazon S3 is very different from shutting down their relatively nascent Autonomy-as-a-service offerings. HP’s quick clarifying press release trying to make it clear that ‘not competing head-to-head with the big public cloud players’ does not mean that HP is leaving the public cloud market. With HP hardware due to split with Autonomy enterprise software later this year, the HP play in the cloud infrastructure market does not really matter that much to the typical eDiscovery/IG consumer.
Statements like the following help me understand why the HP/Autonomy acquisition fared about as well as a Kardashian marriage.
“We had a lot of guys who knew how to sell boxes, and they’ve had to learn how to have conversations about downloading apps and developing software,” Mr. Hilf said. “Meg has put out a charter that will make truly engineered systems that we build top to bottom for customers.”
After the lawsuits started up, I stopped seeing Autonomy products in RFP engagements. The company acquired far too much good IP and code to count it out of our market, but how can anyone call them a market leader until there is more clarity around the size and portfolio of the new Autonomy? All of this makes me glad that we are back to consulting and out of the analyst business.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. His active research topics include analytics, mobile device discovery, the discovery impact of the cloud, Microsoft’s 2013 eDiscovery Center and multi-matter discovery. Recent consulting engagements include managing preservation during enterprise migrations, legacy tape eliminations, retention enablement and many more.
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