Jul 2005
Text-aware applications: the endgame for unstructured data analysis

Organizations that want to maintain competitive advantage in an already advanced enterprise IT environment increasingly must be able to extract hidden intelligence and value from their unstructured data – i.e., from traditional 'text' and other non-categorized and ad hoc information sources that reside in numerous documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the hard drives of file servers, desktops and laptops. This means in part that their information handling must become more sophisticated, but it also means that their business applications – such as ERP and CRM – must become 'text-aware.'

The 451 Group believes that enabling this type of text-aware application intelligence is a key forthcoming battleground for software vendors in a variety of market segments. These vendors include those that explicitly focus on unstructured data analysis as well as search, database, business intelligence and business application suite vendors.

This 451 Special Report points to how the dominant application vendors, particularly those that supply business intelligence and customer-facing applications, are facing a critical period of opportunity and competition. The report examines a set of companies The 451 Group calls next-generation business intelligence vendors, which are leading the charge in delivering text analysis technologies as applications. The report also takes a close look at the strategies of the unstructured data analysis, search and database vendors, which will need to adapt their strategies over the next 18 months. The 451 Group also identifies four other areas that will have a more indirect influence on the way the industry handles text knowledge extraction in the future: content management, smart metadata-aware file systems, application- and user-generated metadata, and unstructured data scrubbing and schema enforcement.

The report includes competitive assessments of numerous vendors focusing on this space, complemented by technology gap analyses, market taxonomies and an in-depth look at the role M&A activity may play in the development of the market for text-aware applications.

This report is more than 150 pages in length and was written by Nick Patience, Sector Head for Enterprise Software of The 451 Group, with support from Martin Schneider, Business Applications Software Analyst, as well as Chris Noble and Steve Wallage, both Directors of Research.

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About The 451 Group

The 451 Group is an independent technology industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company’s analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company – at vendor, investor, service- provider and end-user organizations – rely on 451 insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, London and Boston. For additional information on the company or to apply for trial access to its services, go to: www.the451group.com