Well, sometimes an idea is so good that you can't be alone in thinking it. Basically, since December I've been trying to put together a way to acquire the Retrievalware product from Convera. Enterprise Search is going to be one of the key battlegrounds for Enteprise 2.0; Oracle, Google, Endeca, Microsoft, IBM/Yahoo and others are already battling it out to become the dominant provider of Inside the Firewall(IFW) search. Even though Google is the winner Outside the Firewall(OFW), they see the need to create recurring revenue streams from corporate customers.
Without going into details, I wasn't able to get private equity backing in time for a deal. Last week, FAST, the Norwegian enterprise search company did pretty much the exact deal I proposed, for $5M less than I thought possible($23M). With this deal, they're buying a franchise of enterprise search customers in the government/security area, plus the ability to expand into adjacent markets. Details of FAST purchase of Retrievalware
Oh, well, it's like flyfishing. There's always a bigger fish out there somewhere...Download enteprise_2.0 Business Launch Proposal_Feb107.pps
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