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Autonomy IDOL™
Platform for Processing Unstructured
Information
Autonomy delivers a complete software
infrastructure solution that forms an
understanding of the actual content of any
type of information, text or voice-based,
unstructured or structured, regardless of
where it is stored, format it has been
created with or applications associated with
the data. This is why the technology
provides "Integration Through
Understanding", allowing applications to
communicate with each other without any
manual effort involved in setting up
complicated connectors or using metadata.
Autonomy's unique infrastructure technology
solves a fundamental problem that affects
every industry and can be used in virtually
any application that handles unstructured
information, including E-Commerce, CRM,
knowledge management, business
intelligence
and enterprise information portals.
IDOL™ Server is Autonomy's flagship product
and the foundation of its products.
It is a platform for understanding the
meaning and significance of information:
additional functionality can be seamlessly
integrated with IDOL™ Server in order
to
perform advanced operations on that data.
Using this off-the-shelf solution,
organizations can quickly process digital
information automatically and communicate
with multiple applications without the need
for manual processing or meta-data.
IDOL™
Server has a completely open architecture
and is entirely data agnostic
and scalable
thereby allowing large organizations to
manage vast quantities of
information
regardless of format or storage location.
IDOL™ Server can be used in virtually any
application that handles structured,
semi-structured and unstructured
information, including E-Commerce, CRM,
Knowledge Management, Business Intelligence
and Enterprise Information Portals. The
extensive functionality includes hyperlinking, agents, summarization,
taxonomy generation, retrieval, channels,
clustering, eduction, profiling,
collaboration and alerting.
IDOL™'s modular design ensures that the
enterprise is able to match the benefits
of
Autonomy's technology to the organization's
needs. This is essential because each
organization is different. Even parts of the
same organization work in different ways,
which demands a flexible technology that can
be continuously adapted to local
requirements. It is no wonder then that
global customers like Shell, Philips and AstraZeneca have divisional deployments
focused on specific functionality and
distinct information repositories as well as
enterprise-wide deployments to thousands of
users and containing millions of documents
in multiple languages.
This functionality is available through a
range of applications focused at delivering
immediate benefits and ROI to business,
technical and organizational challenges.
These are detailed below:
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IDOL™ Enterprise Desktop Search |
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IDOL™ Enterprise Desktop Search
automatically analyses operations a user is
performing on the desktop and constructs
automatic links to suggested related
documents or colleagues with relevant
expertise
IDOL Enterprise Desktop Search runs on any
PC in order to make the corporate
desktop
entirely searchable. A secure, enterprise
version of desktop search, IDOL Enterprise
Desktop Search integrates with all other
Autonomy modules making
content from secure
corporate networks, intranets, local data
sources, the Web
as well as information on
the desktop, such as email, office documents
readily
and easily accessible
Autonomy Answer
Autonomy Answer an automated CRM system that
automatically responds to common customer
queries.
Collaboration and Expertise Networks (CEN)
CEN enables organizations to foster a
collaborative network. Autonomy
automatically profiles how users interact
with information building a profile of their
interests and
areas of expertise.
Retina
An out-of-the-box web interface application
combining Autonomy's pattern
matching technology with traditional legacy
methods to provide an extensive
range of retrieval options.
Portal in a Box
A fully automated Information Portal
Infrastructure for Internet and Intranet
sites.
Functionality modules for IDOL™ Server
include:
Retrieval
Autonomy Retrieval offers a wide range of
retrieval methods, from simple legacy
keyword search to highly sophisticated
conceptual querying.
Hyperlinking
Automatic hyperlinks connect users to a
range of pertinent documents, services or
products that are contextually linked to the
original text.
Summarization
Autonomy's IDOL™ Server accepts a piece of
content and then automatically
returns a
summary of the information.
Taxonomy Generation
IDOL™ Server's automatic taxonomy generation
feature provides an 'information landscape'
allowing users to see the spread and type of
information.
Categorization
IDOL™ Server automatically categorizes data
without the need for manual intervention.
Categories can also be imported from
existing XML files, legacy topics and legacy
Autonomy Agents.
Channels
Relevant information is automatically fed
into a set of hierarchical channels. Channel
hierarchies are customized and can be edited
by the users.
Clustering
Autonomy automatically clusters information
based on an understanding of its content.
Eduction
Phrases and numeric values in documents are
automatically tagged when the document is
stored in IDOL™ Server.
Agents
IDOL™ Server can be configured to monitor
information on Intranet and Internet sites,
news feeds, chat streams and internal
repositories and alert users to information
that is relevant to their specific
interests.
Profiling
Autonomy monitors the way in which users
interact with information and automatically
forms profiles of their interests. These
profiles are then used to alert users to
existing material, and where appropriate,
deliver highly relevant new information.
Collaboration
Autonomy automatically analyses users'
explicit interest agents and implicit
profile agents and then creates virtual
groups of experts.
Alerting
Automatic alerting facilities allow users to
be instantly alerted to new pertinent
content.
Core IDOL™ Features
Language Independence
Autonomy is based on advanced
pattern-matching technology (non-linear
adaptive
digital signal processing) that
exploits high-performance probabilistic
modeling techniques to extract a document's
digital essence and determine the
characteristics that give the text meaning.
As this technology is based on probabilistic
modeling, it
does not use any form of
language dependent parsing or dictionaries.
Words are treated as abstract symbols of
meaning deriving its understanding through
the context of their occurrence rather than
a rigid definition of the language grammar.
Learning Ability
Autonomy software is able to continuously
develop and learn, thanks to its unique
combination of Bayesian Inference and
Shannon's Information Theory. This learning
ability significantly reduces the manual
input required by other solutions and
translates into large savings in time and
money for the company.
Where other solutions need to be taught new
words, phrases or concepts and shown
how to
categorize them, Autonomy can automatically
deduce the significance of these new units
of meaning, add them to relevant categories,
and create new categories
where necessary.
Autonomy's technology can also learn about
its users by dynamically monitoring the
content they view, and then deliver new and
relevant content as it is added to the
environment.
Format Agnosticism
Autonomy handles all types of data,
providing a range of highly scalable
components
that automatically aggregate more
than 300 different content formats,
including voice
and video content, from the
most comprehensive range of repositories.
Autonomy
allows enterprises to exploit their
knowledge resources as effectively as
possible,
offering them immediate access to
a wide range of data sources, including:
Unstructured data such as HTML pages, word
processing documents, spreadsheets,
e-mail and rich media such as voice and
video content
Semi-structured data (XML)
Structured data such as Oracle, Lotus Notes
and ODBC compliant material
Unstructured Query Language (UQL)
UQL is the syntax used by IDOL when running
queries and is unique to Autonomy. Unlike
rigid Boolean search protocols, UQL is
entirely flexible and can support even
the
most complex syntax, including natural
language queries. Using UQL IDOL can
run
conceptual searches of all forms of data in
the enterprise in any depository,
including
unstructured data such as emails, web-paged
and audio and visual files.
Security
Building secure applications in the
enterprise software domain is a
multi-faceted
problem. Competing standards,
varied and numerous sub-systems and
differing
policies all vie with each other
in an environment marked by heterogeneous
networks
and underlying hardware. Autonomy's
Intellectual Asset Protection System (IAS)
meets this challenge by approaching the task
of securing enterprise applications from an
architectural aspect. IAS prescribes
security at every required stage, with each
separate security sub-system aware of its
role within the wider context. IAS thus
provides organizations that deploy
Autonomy's technology with the confidence of
a system that is secure throughout and not
just at selective points through the
dataflow.
Manual or Automatic - It is not an either/or
choice
Autonomy enables an entire range of
information processing options, both manual
and automatic. It's not an "either/or"
choice. If circumstances arise when users
want to apply traditional manual techniques
to an information processing operation,
Autonomy technology supports this choice.
For example, Autonomy provides application
administrators with a full workbench to
control and tune the relevancy of search
results.
In addition, Autonomy's legacy application
handling enables the manual investment in
such applications to be captured, and the
results to be seamlessly integrated into
Autonomy's automatic solution.
Architecture
IDOL™ Server has an open architecture and is
entirely data-agnostic and scalable, thereby
allowing large organizations to manage vast
quantities of information regardless of
format or storage location.
Connectors
Using Autonomy connectors, IDOL integrates
information from over 300 different
repositories through an understanding of
content and access rights, delivering a
real-time environment in which operations
across applications and content are
automated.
About Autonomy
Autonomy is the acknowledged leader in the
rapidly growing area of Meaning Based
Computing (MBC). Founded in 1996 and
utilizing a unique combination of
technologies borne out of research at
Cambridge University, the company has
experienced a meteoric rise and currently
has a market cap of $1.5 billion and offices
worldwide. Autonomy's position as industry
leader is widely recognized by analysts
including Gartner Group, Forrester Research
and Delphi, which calls Autonomy the fastest
growing public company in the space.
Autonomy's revenues are twice that of its
nearest rival.
http://www.autonomy.com/
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