December 27, 2006
Text analytics is finally being used for investment analysis
Jay Henderson of ClearForest tells me that hedge funds are one of their more interesting growth areas. It’s about time.
I think a lot of the reason for investment firms not making more use of text analytics has been structural — Factiva, the (relatively speaking) mammoth joint venture of Reuters and Dow Jones, is forbidden by its parent companies from meeting investment firms’ needs. And that’s kind of a pity, as it’s probably the best-positioned firm to do so. It’s good to hear that the little guys are finally filling the gap.
December 27, 2006
Telling Attensity and ClearForest apart
So far as I can tell, Attensity’s strategy when the company was originally founded was rather like ClearForest’s strategy today – and vice-versa. That said, here’s where they seem to stand at this time:
- Attensity wants to make text analytics very easy to integrate into business intelligence and data mining – at the moment, they’re not too focused on the differences between those two disciplines – and is trying to deliver the best possible fact extraction consistent with that charter.
- ClearForest wants to provide really great information extraction — to the limits of what can be done without excessive knowledge engineering – and is trying to integrate as well as possible with other technologies, the better to serve the customers who need what they offer.
