Autonomy Corporation

Autonomy

Type	Wholly Owned Subsidiary
Industry	Information technology
Founded	1996 (Cambridge)
Founder(s)	Michael Richard Lynch
Headquarters	Cambridge, United Kingdom San Francisco, United States
Area served	Global
Key people	Michael Richard Lynch (CEO) Sushovan Hussain (President)
Products	Search engine for unstructured information
Revenue	US$870.4 million (2010)
Operating income	US$316.4 million (2010)
Net income	US$217.3 million (2010)
Employees	circa 1,900 (2010)
Parent	Hewlett-Packard
Website	www.autonomy.com

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Autonomy Corporation headquarters at Cambridge Business Park.

Autonomy is a multinational enterprise software company with joint headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and San Francisco, USA and a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard.

The company uses a combination of technologies born out of research at the University of Cambridge. It develops a variety of enterprise search and knowledge management applications using adaptive pattern recognition techniques centered on Bayesian inference in conjunction with traditional methods.

In March 2009, it acquired the enterprise content management firm Interwoven, now Autonomy Interwoven and Autonomy iManage. Formerly an independent company, Autonomy was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in October 2011.

History

Autonomy was founded in Cambridge, England by Dr Michael Lynch and Richard Gaunt in 1996 as a spin-off from Cambridge Neurodynamics.

Autonomy floated in 1998 on the EASDAQ exchange at a share price of approximately 30p. At the height of the "dot com bubble", the peak share price was £30.

In December 2005 Autonomy acquired Verity, Inc., one of its main competitors, for approximately $500m. In 2005 Autonomy also acquired Neurodynamics.

In May 2007 after exercising an option to buy a stake of technology start up, Blinkx Inc, and combining it with its consumer division, Autonomy floated Blinkx on a valuation of $250m.

In July 2007, it acquired Zantaz, an email archiving and litigation support company, for $375M.

In October 2007, Autonomy acquired Meridio Holdings Ltd, a UK company based in Northern Ireland that specialised in Records Management software, for £20m.

In January 2009, it acquired Interwoven, a niche provider of enterprise content management software, for $775m.

In June 2010, the company announced that it was to acquire the Information Governance business of CA Technologies. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Model of 2010 Mercedes GP Petronas Formula One Team car at the Cambridge Business Park Autonomy building lobby.

On 5 May 2011, the Mercedes GP Formula One team announced an $8 million sponsorship deal with Autonomy, and on 8 July 2010 Tottenham Hotspur FC announced a two year sponsorship deal with Autonomy for their Premier League kit. For the 2011-12 season Spurs' Premier League shirt will feature Autonomy's Augmented Reality technology Aurasma.

On 16 May 2011, it acquired Iron Mountain Digital, a pioneer in E-discovery and online backup solutions provider, for $380M.

On 18 August 2011, Hewlett Packard announced that it will purchase the company for $42.11 per share, around $10.2B. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both HP and Autonomy. The Autonomy board of directors also has unanimously recommended its shareholders accept the offer. On 3 October 2011 HP closed the deal with over 87% of Autonomy shares acquired.

Products

Bayes' theorem spelt in neon at the offices of Autonomy in Cambridge.

The main technology, 'Intelligent Data Operating Layer' (IDOL), allows search and processing of text taken from database, audio, video or text files or streams. The processing of such information by IDOL is referred to by Autonomy as Meaning-Based Computing.

Autonomy's technology attempts to understand any form of unstructured information, whether text, voice, or video, and based on that understanding perform automatic operations such as but not limited to, "you like that, you'd like this" on the information.

On 29 November 2011, HP announced a new Big Data Analytics platform - HP Next Generation Information Platform, based on a combination of Autonomy’s unstructured data analytics engine, IDOL 10 and Vertica’s fast-loading, real-time analytics database.This strategic move by HP, is part of its refocus on Enterprise software business and to addresses all three of the Big Data V’s – Data Volume, Variety and Velocity . The platform will combine unstructured data, which comprises about 80% of the data on the web such as video, pictures, emails etc and structured data into a unified workflow.

Customers

Autonomy also has over 400 OEM partners and more than 400 vendors and integrators, numbering among them are companies such as Citrix, EDS, Novell and Symantec.

Offices

Autonomy has twin head offices in Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, USA. They also have major offices in the US, the UK, Canada, France, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Germany and smaller offices in India and throughout Europe and Latin America.

Senior management

The Company's Board includes:

• Dr Michael Richard Lynch
• Richard Gaunt
• Sushovan Hussain
• Barry Ariko
• John McMonigall
• Richard Perle

External links

• Company site
• "The Quest for Meaning" WIRED
• What Is Meaning-Based Computing?
• Michael Lynch On Meaning-Based Computing

Competitors

• List of enterprise search vendors