Autonomy puts Verity out of its misery

Autonomy acquires Verity for half a billion dollars. Here is a good analysis of the Enterprise Search market.

Eventually, someone will need to put Autonomy out of its misery too.

IBM may be best-positioned to do so, with its incumbent interest in Enterprise Search applications. On the other hand, both Microsoft and Google have their eyes on Enterprise Search, have made steps in that direction already, and may buy their way into it via the Verity-Autonomy combination in a more full-blown way.

Culturally, however, IBM will have the best fit, since there will always be professional services needed to get to the highly complex, domain-specific search solutions, and that is not in the DNA of Microsoft or Google.