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Posted by Eric Brégand

I’ve been asked many times why I was not more talkative on our blog. I used to answer I would start the day I would find the right topic. The recent acquisition of Exalead by Dassault Systemes is a case in point and I have no more excuses for not not blogging.

First, let me say this is a delightful transaction. When the news became public, it was a ray of sunshine in a freezing month of june. Without knowing all the details of the transaction, my first thought went to Exalead’s investors and management team. This event rewards their talent, it proves their strategy was right and their execution perfect. Beyond everything, it shows that ambition pays back, it shows that risk taking also leads to success, it shows that the value of a company is not related to how much revenue (or losses) is generated yearly but how its technology and vision can impact the market and the next generation of business applications. So, Alain, François and all the others who teamed up to reach this success, Congratulations, this is an outstanding achievement. And not just for Exalead, not just for Dassault Systemes, but for Innovation in France in general…

Happy ending. Is it really? No! Of course everyone is happy, but it’s not an ending, it’s just the beginning. As many others, I attended the launch of Exalead’s Search Based Applications in a nice and classy venue, the Marceau Auditorium in Paris. Smiles were on every face : Exalead’s management, team members and investors, as well as Dassault Systemes’ strategists. Bernard Charles, the charismatic CEO of the Worldwide leader in PLM solutions, explained with delight how strategic this acquisition is for his company, both to reach out to new markets and to enrich  its current product line. But he also clearly stated how much he expects from his brand new SBA business unit. Dealing with information is key and deserves a highly scalable solution, improving business processes is crucial and requires a new agile architecture and an innovative technology stack. As stated by Morgan Zimmerman when time came to close the show, that’s what Exalead is about, Agility, Usability and Performance, and this is why Bernard Charles predicts a bright future to his recent division.

There’s clearly a path. Beyond the testimony of 4 selected customers who factually and clearly demonstrated the benefits of such Search Based Applications, the best proofs were in the presentation of Sue Feldman, the well-known Research Vice President, Search and Discovery Technologies at IDC. Sue started by explaining the challenges – for IT, business users and managers – of dealing with information. Speed of change, accuracy of information, the “do more with less” syndrome and never-ending growth of information sources, whether in volume or in language, … Then, Sue guided the audience through a series of high value Search Based Applications, out of which I was pleased to see Luxid® – the TEMIS solution for Enterprises –showing up at first. That was clearly an enjoyable moment ! But what was equally pleasant was the next section of Sue’s talk – she lectured on two topics:  1)  the importance of semantics in providing ‘Intelligent” solutions and 2) the emerging trend of Unified Access Platforms (UAPs). I won’t comment on the first point, it’s so obvious to me and demonstrates the value of TEMIS. I liked the second a lot too. UAP is definitively a shift in information system architecture, reviving what ETL brought to the structured data world, to apply it to any content, structured, unstructured and semi-structured. And the benefits are immediate: agility in building applications that can rapidly adjust to business change, speed of deployment, ability to really focus on usability rather than plumbing and then deliver enterprise applications matching the Web 2.0 consumer experience. A new era of applications is emerging, the testimony of La Poste was a living example of Sue’s vision!

And at TEMIS we share this vision. Back in 2005, I remember building a slide deck with TEMIS strategists around the use of Text Mining, especially in the light of the ultimate game between the ERPs, the BI tools, the now so-called traditional Search Engines and the ECM/WCM tools. At that time, BI tools still had a small chance to win the battle as long as they would consolidate with Search Engine. Search and BI were a natural fit and there were still a few shops to acquire (Verity, FAST, …). The shift happened the other way around and BI tools got acquired by ERPs, dissipating that dream, making them join the ‘information silos’ club rather than the entry point for information. But the game is not over and Microsoft is coming back with SharePoint (ECM) integrating FAST (Search). Who will win? That’s hard to predict, but what’s certain is that the winner will be the one who makes the best use of Text Mining technologies. Performance and usability are key, information quality is crucial. And this is where we fit. By performing 1) Content Annotation {‘Actin’ is a protein}, 2) Content Enrichment {‘Actin’ is a member of Globular 42k-DA class}, 3) Content Networking {more on ‘Actin’ available on UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot P80428 ARP4_YEAST}, TEMIS becomes a ‘must-have’ technology not only to deliver relevant information to business users but also to build the information network powering these UAPs. Two must-haves for the Search Based Applications in fact.

Net-net, it was a great event. Eric Rogge, Senior Director of Marketing at Exalead, sitting next to me, asked whether these kinds of events were common or not in France. I did my best not to disappoint this pleasant guest from the Californian coast, arguing that we are now very familiar with the software industry best-practices imported from America! But I also confessed that having simultaneously on-stage the CEO of a multibillion dollar company, the leading research analyst in Search & Discovery coming from the United States, tremendous references and the management team of a recently acquired company for a 10x ratio was not all that usual but was a great example for many of us. When ambition, vision, talent, and money come altogether. Just connect the dots…