Last week I posted two aiimALERTs regarding individual search solution provider’s performance in the search market – FAST in Q2 and Autonomy in Q1 & 2. While FAST’s numbers were “disappointing”, to quote CEO John Lervik, Autonomy had a record breaking first half of the year. One of the points of the second blog was to offer a perspective on the growth of the search market overall. FAST had no one to blame but themselves for poor performance. The market was ripe with opportunity for search solution providers in the first half of this year. This observation was further fortified by the announcement of yet another search solution provider, Endeca, who achieved record revenues with 83 % year-over-year revenue growth in Q2. This was Endeca’s 18th consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth.
Bottom line, the search market is hot (which is why AIIM Market Intelligence has targeted search – findability – for our 2008 Q1 Market IQ report). Despite FAST's poor performance of late, this is actually good news for FAST, in that as they get their house in order, the market is actively ready to respond. Indeed, today FAST announced the results of its internal operational review and detailed plans to streamline operations in order to achieve profitable performance.
Part of this plan is to target vertical markets, namely financial services, retail, government, media/entertainment and communications. (OK - no applauds for this move FAST. You only left out Healthcare it seems - hardly a "highly focused" vertical market campaign.) The more aggressive and potentially fruitful part of the plan is a hard look and restructuring of internal processes - promised to yield a $12 million reduction in costs. This included a reduction in headcount, in the end shrinking the company to approximately 730 - ouch.
