An Introduction to Autonomy


Founded in 1996 and utilizing a unique combination of technologies borne out of research at Cambridge University, Autonomy has experienced a meteoric rise. The company currently has a market cap of $4 billion, is the second largest pure software company in Europe and has offices worldwide. Autonomy's position as the market leader is widely recognized by leading industry analysts including Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC and Delphi, with the latter referring to Autonomy as the fastest growing public company in the space.




Autonomy's Vision


Autonomy was founded upon a vision to dramatically change the way in which we interact with information and computers, ensuring that computers map to our world, rather than the other way round.

Human-friendly or unstructured information is not naturally found in the rows and columns of a database, but in documents, presentations, videos, phone conversations, emails and IMs. We are facing an increasing deluge of unstructured information, with 80% now falling into this category and, according to Gartner, the volume of this data doubling every month. As the amount of unstructured information multiplies, the challenge for the modern enterprise is trying to understand and extract the value that lies within this vast sea of data.





"The essence of Autonomy's software lies in its ability to extract the core concepts of unstructured data. The way in which it achieves this is arguably some way ahead of any rival product."
Peter Whiting, UBS, 2007



Many companies believe that access to information is the answer to dealing with the unstoppable spread of information of all forms " if people can find information, they can process it themselves. Autonomy believes that although access to information is important, there is far greater value in forming an understanding of data and automatically processing it, freeing up people to focus on higher-value activities that computers are unable to do.



Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications including pan-enterprise search, proactive Information Risk Management, information governance, eDiscovery, consolidated archiving, call center solutions, rich media management, security applications, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM) and BPM. Autonomy addresses the challenges of information within any vertical market or application.