Autonomy Launches New Knowledge Management Products To Help Companies Leverage Employee Expertise, Late-Breaking News and Existing Information Archives
San Francisco, Calif. (February 17, 1998) - Autonomy, Inc. today announced its new knowledge management solution, a set of uniquely powerful software products designed to help companies gain competitive advantage by automatically leveraging the knowledge base of individual employees, exploiting late-breaking industry developments and 'mining' unstructured information for insight, regardless of the format or source.
According to Autonomy President and CEO Dr. Michael Lynch, Autonomy's knowledge management solution was developed to help companies bypass some of the cultural barriers to knowledge management. "Frankly, it is unrealistic to expect employees to spend a lot of time categorizing or tagging documents that others might find useful, or filling out elaborate questionnaires identifying their areas of expertise," explained Lynch. "Our goal was to make the processes so 'automatic', that effective knowledge management becomes almost a byproduct of normal business functions."
Autonomy's knowledge management solution is also the first enterprise-wide product offering that automatically helps employees identify and take advantage of their colleagues' expertise. "We designed our knowledge management products to make it easy for employees to find not only relevant documents, news articles and email messages, but the contact information of colleagues with the right expertise as well," Lynch said. "After all, to gain and maintain competitive advantage, you need to know whose brains are worth 'picking', whether they are in the office next door or thousands of miles away," said Lynch.
The Autonomy Knowledge Server, the core engine of Autonomy's knowledge management solution, uses advanced pattern recognition technology to automate the categorization, cross-referencing, hyperlinking and presentation of information, virtually eliminating the need for manual labor in the process. The Knowledge Server also can summarize documents and recommend related articles and documents via hypertext links. Because these links are automatically inserted at the time a document is retrieved, they can include references to documents and articles written long after the original document was published. Developed for the defense and intelligence industries, the technology matches ideas or concepts and does not rely on keywords. As a result, it can work in any language.
Thanks to a special visualization applet, the Knowledge Server can automatically present a unified view of disparate data sources across the enterprise. A single query can launch a comprehensive search across multiple sources -- including email messages, word processing files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, Lotus Notes archives, intranet file servers, SQL/ODBC databases, live chat/IRC, newsfeeds, and the expertise profiles of other employees -- and then present the results in an easy to navigate two-dimensional insight "map."
Most important, the Knowledge Server's visualization applet works directly from unstructured data to present results automatically in an intuitive, visual representation. Lynch pointed out that many companies are currently developing data visualization products. "But there's a dirty little secret behind some of the 'whizzy' demos we've all seen of futuristic data visualization products," said Lynch. "Prior to 'visualizing' the data, someone has to prepare it by tagging, sorting or inserting meta data --- a tedious, labor intensive, and therefore expensive task. Our Knowledge Server works automatically."
To make each employee's knowledge base accessible to others, the Knowledge Server uses a profiling system that automatically identifies an employee's area of expertise based on the issues they research on the intranet, the ideas in the documents and email messages they submit to the system and the topics they follow in their Knowledge Update (another component of Autonomy's knowledge management solution). This helps facilitate the creation of virtual workgroups, encourages communication and reduces duplication of effort.
Autonomy's knowledge management solution also has a component aimed at helping employees stay on top of the latest developments. The Autonomy Knowledge Update monitors hundreds of specified Internet and intranet sites and newsfeeds to create a personalized report informing individual employees of developments that are relevant to their specific jobs. The product also can be used to monitor internal documents in many formats, including Lotus Notes, HTML, word processing files, PDF files, and many others. An alarm function can be used to continually monitor specified information sources and alert the user, via email, fax, pager, channel definition format, or push technology as soon as information of specific interest appears.
According to Mel Earp, technical director for Sema Group, a company that provides systems integration, outsourcing and consulting services worldwide, downsizing, mergers and acquisitions have led to changes in working practices, a more fragmented workforce and a subsequent growth in knowledge gaps. "Tacit knowledge retrieval, concept analysis, and automatic tagging are fast becoming essential components of a technical strategy to address the knowledge management issues that businesses face," said Earp. "Autonomy is the only company positioned to effectively meet all of them."
Pricing and Availability
Autonomy's knowledge management solution is in the final stages of beta testing and scheduled to ship this Spring. The product runs on Windows NT and most versions of Unix. Pricing for the Knowledge Update starts at $5,000 while Knowledge Server pricing ranges from $50 to $100 per seat.
The Technology
Autonomy's knowledge management products employ Adaptive Probabilistic Concept Modeling (APCM) algorithms to analyze, sort and cross-reference unstructured data. The method is based on Bayesian statistical probability theorems, Claude Shannon's principles of information theory, and neural networks. Autonomy's APCM-based software identifies key concepts in text along with the associated frequency and relationship of terms most closely correlated with the ideas. Referred to as Concept Agents, the software abstracts can then be used to locate other instances of the pattern of terms and contextual relationships that represent a given concept.
The effectiveness of Concept Agents improves over time as their focus on a specific topic becomes more comprehensive and sophisticated. The agent will actually become skilled at recognizing a relevant topic independently of the language used to describe it, identifying articles on the same topic that might have appeared in a tabloid and a scholarly journal.
The Company
The intelligent pattern recognition technology that fuels Autonomy's software was originally developed by founder and CEO Dr. Michael Lynch's first company, Neurodynamics, for use in intelligence and defense applications. Founded in 1991 by Cambridge University researchers, Neurodynamics quickly attained profitability by creating technologies that could match fingerprints, determine the handwritten amounts on checks, or even read license plates.
One of Neurodynamics' biggest challenges was in helping a key defense customer develop software to sort through huge volumes of documents written in different languages or employing intentionally deceptive coded statements. To solve the problem, Neurodynamics developed high-performance, pattern-matching algorithms. These algorithms, based on Claude Shannon's principles of information theory, Bayesian probabilities, and the latest research in neural networks, became the foundation for an approach called Adaptive Probabilistic Concept Modeling (APCM). The technique was used to create Concept Agents--bits of software capable of understanding the main idea in a text and then finding similar documents simply by analyzing the patterns of symbols and context.
The APCM technology is at the heart of the British police force's Holmes2 system, named after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective. The Holmes2 system helps the police solve crimes by matching fingerprints or by finding similarities and connections in disparate crime witness statements or police reports. The same technology is now being used to find connections in commercial data.
Autonomy was founded in March, 1996 and remains a privately held company. Autonomy is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in Roseland, New Jersey, and Cambridge, England. Its current customers include News Corp., Barclays Bank, Virgin and Sweet & Maxwell.
Summary: ...in differences in look and feel, navigation, and information. A customer might see one price on television and another one on a BT.com website, and have to sort things out by phone with a customer service agent. Each step of the way, customer satisfaction suffered and transaction costs rose. Behind the...
Summary: ...Vertica Case Study: Glassbeam. The database uses 30 database objects, and queries typically involve an average of 14 foreign key references or 15 tables in a join (up to 38). Once Glassbeam runs the data through SPL, it becomes about 500 tables in the data warehouse. The three largest of the 500 tables...
Summary: ...media. The Precise forward planning database is used by the media to plan editorial content and by the PR community to improve message pick-up and campaign effectiveness. The Need As the media becomes increasingly diverse and social, with the news cycle being replaced by a continuous news flow, Precise...
Summary: ...Consultant, AXA Group Solutions As a result, specifc versions of work-in-progress could be harder to track down. “A senior attorney might not be able to fnd the version a client is referring to; inevitably, it would turn up later in an associate’s e-mail folder,” says Wilson. Beyond making a bad...
Summary: ...document faster. IDOL K2 capabilities have transformed the way lawyers use information across the firm. For example: • Integrated Retrieval and Browse: Using parametric selection, lawyers can sort and filter information intuitively by selecting from a list of attributes such as author, business sector...
Summary: ...secure message retrieval. IDOL K2’s document-level security feature permits only authorized individuals to retrieve confidential messages. “Security is essential in this process,” says Masters. “Our system must provide both content and organizational segregation to control access to selected messages....
Summary: ...and the ability to meet KPMG’s e-business goals in the years ahead. IDOL K2 helped KPMG LLP (UK) reduce the size of its intranet to a more manageable 100,000 documents—growing at a modest rate of only 10% per year. “We used K2 to help us identify and locate content that was either out-of-date or...
Summary: ...InfoMedia Case Study - Media Monitoring and Publishing. Case Study Company Background InfoMedia is Denmark’s largest digital media search and monitoring company. InfoMedia aggregates more than nine million articles from the most important media sources in Denmark and across the world, including nearly...
Summary: ...how to classify our own material, but because it’s very labor-intensive for us,” Graves says. Technical Information Platform Windows NT Content Aggregated More than 360,000 bibliographic citations from books, journals, proceedings and Master theses, as well as 90,000 full-text articles Public Web...
Summary: ...locate and uncover critical information quickly, precious time is wasted—further multiplying the urgency of their engagements. “Softlab’s collection of knowledge consists of hundreds and thousands of files in different formats and languages,” says Dr. Claudia Salazar Dorn, Softlab’s project...
Summary: ...1 2.5 sec. 283 sec. 113x 2 0.005 202 40,400x 3 6.9 301 44x 4 10.8 1270 118x … 154 5.5 357 65x For example: for a disease-management firm, hMetrix runs state-of-the-art, customized predictivemodeling algorithms to identify those patients that could most benefit from a targeted management program. hMetrix...
Summary: ...data from Autonomy Optimost helps us make a more credible argument for things that might seem counter-culture or against typical standards, and to evaluate how necessary or desirable they might actually be.” Another key lesson: “This isn’t a one-shot thing.
...
This is a small selection of the Autonomy case studies available, please visit our publications site at http://publications.autonomy.com/ for more information.
Summary: ...a robust set of dependency management services that allow for content items to be associated or related to other content items. By tracking asset relationships, TeamSite provides centralized control for brand and core messages, its adaptations, and the ability to accommodate local content in a multisite...
Summary: ...While legacy technologies will likely continue to serve as the predominant stores for structured information, the methods for analyzing this businesscritical information is changing. With IDOL SPE, probabilistic modeling surfaces patterns in the data without prescriptive prior knowledge, and enables these...
Summary: ...case by analyzing, understanding and identifying data in-place, without the need to collect; IDOL’s advanced analytics and visualization capabilities provide automated clustering, message tracing and communications link-maps to quickly identify relevant information and custodians, evaluate case validity...
Summary: ...Autonomy Document Management Server Technical Brief. Relevance Ranking In evaluating all types of queries, IDOL Server employs complex algorithms based on a combination of Information Theory and Bayesian methods to automatically weight and rank the document returns by statistical relevance. Automatic...
Summary: ...Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) to understand the meaning of all enterprise information, no matter its language or format. In use by over 20,000 organizations, IDOL uses probabilistic modeling and advanced pattern-matching to form a conceptual and contextual understanding of all information...
Summary: ...probabilistic modeling and advanced pattern-matching to form a conceptual and contextual understanding of all information and deliver an unprecedented level of compliance to web interactions, desktop activity, email, instant messages and audio What Meaning Based Computing Does for Social Media Governance:...
Summary: ...storage and pan-enterprise lifecycle management, Autonomy customers gain the power of Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) as part of the archive. In use by over 22,000 organizations, IDOL uses probabilistic modeling and advanced pattern-matching to form a conceptual and contextual understanding...
Summary: ...With EAS Storage Manager, you can create intelligent policies based on any combination of file or message content and attributes. These policies control the retention and disposition of files and messages from your archive, as well as the migration of messages and files between document stores and the...
Summary: ...fax, MFP, image archive, scanner • Thin client, intuitive and customizable webbrowser interface • Power-user, feature rich user interfaces Identifcation • Only handful of rules required to automatically sort and classify 1000s of uniquely formatted invoices • Single and multipage invoices, and...
Summary: ...to conceptually similar documents. Conceptual querying includes: • Query by example • Query refinement by example • Keyword search • Wildcard search • Query language specification • Soundex algorithm • Result restriction by date, source, conceptual relevance and fields • Result sorting...
Summary: ...connects transparently with MOSS to provide information governance, pan-enterprise search and analytics for SharePoint. At the heart of Autonomy’s solution lies the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL). Using complex pattern-matching algorithms and probabilistic modeling, IDOL forms a conceptual...
Summary: ...Autonomy Language Support Data Sheet 0506. Languages Data Sheet Language Support Information Autonomy IDOL server is based on probabilistic modeling and therefore does not require any form of language dependent parsing, dictionaries or translation modules. Treating words as abstract symbols of meaning...
This is a small selection of the Autonomy Product Briefs available, please visit our publications site at http://publications.autonomy.com/ for more information.
Summary: ...agent profile technology. Users can create agents to automatically track the latest information related to their interests, and IDOL determines the relevance of a document based on the model of the agent. Adaptive Probabilistic Concept Modeling (APCM) algorithms are also used to analyze, sort and cross-reference...
Summary: ...be traced to Bayesian Inference and Claude Shannon¹s Principle of Information. Bayes Theorem has become a central tenet of modern statistical probability modeling. Autonomy’s advanced pattern-matching technology exploits high-performance probabilistic modeling techniques and extract a document's digital...
Summary: ...agnosticism at a fundamental level. The Intelligent Data Operating Layer that lies at Autonomy's heart uses a unique combination of Bayesian Inference and Shannon's Information Theory to apply a technique known as Adaptive Probabilistic Concept Modelling* to the problem of understanding unstructured information....
Summary: ...which can be performed on any digital content, including hyperlinking, agents, summarization, taxonomy generation, clustering, eduction, profiling, alerting and retrieval. Autonomy’s IDOL server is built upon the seminal mathematical works of Thomas Bayes and Claude Shannon, as well as on a range of...
Summary: ...security to Fortune 500 companies. The Foundations of IDOL Autonomy's strength lies in a unique combination of technologies that employs advanced pattern matching techniques, using Bayesian Inference and Claude Shannon's principles of information theory.
...
Summary: ...performance requirements. Adaptive Probabilistic Caching Two of the key factors in any deployment are query and index performance. Autonomy’s Adaptive Probabilistic Concept Caching algorithm ensures that frequently used concepts are maintained in memory caches and that query results are returned as...
Summary: ...Media Solutions for SharePoint 9 P(W) is the probability of word string W – the Language Model P(A/W) is the probability of an acoustic sequence A given W – the Acoustic Model By combining these models and using Bayes’ principles, Autonomy identifies the word string W as having the highest probability...
Summary: ...and structured data be it visual, auditory or alphanumeric in character. At its core, the technology uses a combination of Bayesian Inference and Shannon’s Information Theory to automatically extract the key concepts from any piece/s of information. As a mathematical platform, it is not constrained...
Summary: ...Audio Governance and COBS 11.8 - Autonomy Whitepaper. It specifically noted “recorded communication may increase the probability of successful enforcement . ” 2 The Policy Statement went onto note, “Crucially, the evidence that might be obtained from taped recordings may not be available by other...
Summary: ...Based Computing Infrastructure At the heart of Autonomy’s technology lies the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) Server. Using complex pattern-matching algorithms and probabilistic modeling, IDOL forms a conceptual and contextual understanding of all content in an enterprise, indexing and automatically...
Summary: ...coordinated management and retention strategy that ensures the timely destruction of content to conserve storage costs, while preventing the premature deletion of content that might put the enterprise at legal or regulatory risk. To ease adoption, the solution gives end users simple and intuitive ways...
Summary: ...a statistical “pool” from which queries can draw key conceptual information, as well as an overlying Bayesian network in which apparently unrelated pieces of information are automatically linked via dynamic probabilities. The second reason is that the documentmatching algorithm itself within IDOL...
This is a small selection of the Autonomy White Papers available, please visit our publications site at http://publications.autonomy.com/ for more information.
Related Case Studies
