HP Autonomy Intelligent Universal Search (discontinued) vs. IBM Watson Content Analytics

It does a decent job at its core functions (that other free software does just as well or better).

IBM Content Analytics is well suited for organizations with the resources to invest a significant amount of energy in an advanced analytics engine. The software improved the productivity of analysts and programmers. The software is not suitable for companies that just want Excel-type analyses or that lack the capabilities of doing advanced analytics.

Incentivized

• It adheres to traditional Microsoft standards such as: fact-dump documentation with no coherent story or 'best practices' information, inability to automate common tasks, intentional obfuscation of its basic operations.
• It provides OK search results. Not great, but OK.

• Impressive and efficient indexing system.
• Rarely does the indexing have issues that need to rebuild/reindex.
• Searches are almost instantaneous and end users can move on to the next task.

Incentivized

• There are about a dozen different config files to maintain, and the most important one is dynamically modified by Autonomy itself while it runs. Which means that it is impossible to automate the configuration or keep the configs in versioned source control. Even `cp *.cfg ~/cfgbak/` won't help you roll back a change, because it is never safe to restore a previous config. You'll be using `diff new.cfg old.cfg` a lot.
• The Linux port is poorly thought out. The binaries are named *.exe. The StartService.sh scripts contain both `echo 'Are you sure you want to start the service? Hit ctrl-C to cancel''; read dummy` and, I kid you not, a `chmod a+x /path/to/my/binary.exe`.
• Many features are poorly documented, leading to lots of back and forth with the support department just to answer basic questions like "what does this error code in my logs signify?"
• It seems to reinvent the wheel, poorly, everywhere. E.g. the scheduled backup feature rolls through a user-defined finite list of directories in which to store backups. On day 0 it uses directory 0, on day 1 it uses directory 1, and after day N it rolls back and overwrites directory 0. Why would this be preferable to using a single directory and naming zip files based on the current timestamp?

• It would be better if its available for cross platforms.
• Pricing could be adjusted better.
• More number of third party add-ons required.

Incentivized

Management wants to see ROI on the (hefty) cost of purchasing this software, and has mandated that we continue using it. We would prefer to switch immediately.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of IBM Watson Content Analytics is the IBM feel. I think IBM puts lots of resources into developing products that even sociologists can use. It's so easy, that to professionals wanting customized analysis, it might be kind of offensive. The drawback is that Content Analytics is not as fast as its competitors.

Incentivized

• I have learned to tack a zero onto the end of any estimate I make for how long an Autonomy change will take in both planning and implementation.

• Organized, easy to produce search results.
• Never lose a document again.

Incentivized