It's All in the Positioning

At times, what comes across as a subtle nuance in corporate positioning makes all of the difference.

That was my take-away from a sit down earlier this month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, DC with Paul Billingham, European Sales Director at Concept Searching.

I’ve done a fair amount of work in the enterprise search market on behalf of clients like Convera and Intelligenx (formerly i411).  So, I was intrigued about Concept Searching and how its software platform might be different.

Billingham was quick to correct me.

“We are an intelligence engine that makes the Sharepoint search experience more relevant and meaningful,” he said.  “Our product is called conceptClassifer and its unique differentiator is what we refer to as fuzzy phrase match.”

Billingham explained that a search in Sharepoint for documents about artificial sweetener using Microsoft’s FAST engine might not uncover content about glucose.  That’s where conceptClassifer steps in.  It identifies relevant concepts in a document set to enhance the search experience.

Is this search technology or an intelligence engine?  The latter positioning earns Concept Searching a high value place at Microsoft’s partner conference.   

Regardless, Concept Searching is another example of an innovative company improving the user experience in the Microsoft ecosystem.