Services
EARLEY AND ASSOCIATES ACQUIRES LEADING TAXONOMY SOFTWARE VENDOR, WORDMAP
Needham, Massachusetts, February 6th 2007
Earley and Associates, a leading consultancy firm in information architecture, content management and taxonomy, today announced its acquisition of the business of Wordmap Limited, a vendor of enterprise taxonomy management software, for an undisclosed sum.
Seth Earley, Earley and Associates’ Principal, commented: “For some time we have seen Wordmap as a point of technical excellence in this field. Earley and Associates can strengthen that capability with the knowledge and experience we have of designing and compiling taxonomies. Wordmap’s customers have some of the most advanced taxonomy integrations we have seen. They are already using the software in sophisticated and highly granular indexing applications, as well as in search and navigation. Making taxonomies operational in content management and search is a focus for Earley and Associates, and we look forward to working with existing Wordmap customers as well as other large enterprises looking for a holistic approach to taxonomy – a solution rather than just a product.”
Bill Hutchison, Wordmap CEO commented: “This is a very exciting opportunity for Wordmap to make the most of its innovative technologies. Our colleagues at Earley and Associates will allow us to bring together an outstanding software product with some of the best taxonomy consulting skills in the market, and these will complement each other and help our customers achieve a much better result, more quickly. Taxonomy is about much more than technology, and we think that we now have the mix of software and skills to make taxonomy work for the enterprise.”
Adds Seth, “An interesting aspect of the Wordmap suite that differentiates it from many products on the market is the integration with content tagging and search. After all is said and done, taxonomies are only useful if they are presented to the user in a meaningful way. Wordmap modules have the ability to do that without a lot of API level coding. The tagging module overcomes many limitations of content management tools in presenting and applying taxonomies for tagging. The navigation module is an easy way to add faceted search (also called guided navigation) without having to acquire additional faceted search tools. In these ways, Wordmap adds value to existing search and content management environments.”
When asked about whether Earley & Associates, Inc will now become a product company, Seth replied, “We intend to keep a separation of church and state here – we will still focus on solving customer problems and not just selling them a tool. If the tool is appropriate, then there is a terrific synergy. But no tool is appropriate for every circumstance so we intend to remain a consulting firm and bring in Wordmap as appropriate. Since we are self funded and profitable, there is no undue pressure to make product quota, etc. This way we can objectively look at client situations and recommend the most appropriate solution.”
Wordmap Incorporated will continue to develop and support the Wordmap range of products, which now includes:
Wordmap Designer – a system dedicated to the management of enterprise taxonomies. Available since 2000, and based on Oracle 9/10, Wordmap provides a range of important features not available in other systems. Multiple users are supported with a full range of features, from control over editorial privileges, to the publication and use of taxonomy views based on group membership. Wordmap is exceptionally flexible in the modelling of metadata, and allows editors to define their own sets of attribute-value pairs to apply to concepts in the taxonomy, as well as to define relationship types between taxonomy concepts. Unlike many other systems, Wordmap fully supports ISO localization of taxonomies, and is Unicode UTF-8 compliant. Wordmap allows for the simultaneous editing, cross-mapping and archiving of multiple taxonomies, and retains a complete audit trail of all taxonomy operations. Yet Wordmap Designer is also considered one of the easiest to use systems on the market.
Wordmap Content Tagger – Wordmap Content Tagger provides a bridge between the taxonomy and the enterprise’s content management systems, by supporting detailed tagging of documents by reference to the taxonomy, as they are uploaded into third party repositories. Content Tagger provides enterprises with a fully operational tagging environment which is web based and which is already integrated with Wordmap and its taxonomies. There, the taxonomies can be published to objects and to metadata fields, browsed visually and searched.
Wordmap Intelligent Text Classifier – Wordmap ITC is an advanced statistical text classifier based on Support Vector Machine algorithms. Already integrated with Wordmap Content Tagger, ITC can provide users with suggested categories, the number of which can be controlled by administrators. ITC uses a learn-by-example system which has been shown in many studies to be much more effective than older approaches based on complicated linguistic rules, especially when applied to general content. Wordmap ITC combines the speed and accuracy of leading edge statistical techniques with the precise, human control of the taxonomy design and compilation allowed by Wordmap Designer.
Wordmap Navigator – Wordmap Navigator takes published taxonomies from Wordmap Designer and converts them into HTML browsing interfaces. Using Wordmap Navigator, enterprises can quickly and easily develop search interfaces which help users to narrow down quickly and focus on the information that is relevant to them. Wordmap Navigator allows an enterprise to develop contextual side menus with suggested categories, drill down directories, and dialogs with users in which generalised and ambiguous search queries are clarified.
For further information on Wordmap’s products, please see www.wordmap.com.
About Wordmap
With US offices in Needham, MA, Wordmap has been a leading vendor of taxonomy solutions since its systems were launched in 2000. A number of the world's most advanced knowledge-based enterprises have joined the ranks of Wordmap's customers, including AstraZeneca, Harvard Business School and Hewlett Packard. Wordmap also has a significant customer base in UK government, where its users include City of Edinburgh, Hertfordshire County Council and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. In 2006 Wordmap has introduced a wide range of new products which allow its customers to manage the whole information lifecycle, from the creation and upload of material, to search, navigation and access. Wordmap has offices in Bath, UK, and Needham, Massachusetts.