Chris Modzelewski, Founder/CEO of ChartSearch came to see the Boulder BI Brain Trust and explain why ChartSearch can be Google for your Data.ChartSearch sees its opportunities in the market in between two segments, the Enterprise Search providers and the conventional Business intelligence solution providers. The product has been in the market since April of 2008. The company spent 3 year building the technology.
They see themselves as a supplement to more conventional BI solutions doing analysis where these companies may struggle. They don't search unstructured data they excel in the world of search over structured data that can be represented numerically. The difference between ChartSearch and companies that are in the Enterprise search world is that they understand search but also bring the data analysis part putting them between the unstructured search suppliers and what a conventional BI suite does.The issue with Enterprise Search is that many solutions tried to offer it as a replacement to BI but it fails in the analysis arena. No drill down, no ah-ha moments just a directory of stuff ChartSearch combines both search and analytics.
The tricky part for ChartSearch is making sense of the meta data layer so they can apply the right data to the query. They do have a solid four step process for both automating the process as well as expected manual interfaces to provide access and constructs around the meta data.
I found myself wondering if ChartSearch could supply the answer for the growing question around serving the needs of new and up and coming data/knowledge workers who demand access to information through an interface that makes them comfortable such as a search interface.
Overall I am impressed with what they are doing and the niche between enterprise search and standard business intelligence is greatly undeserved.
