Pinpoint Decisions

Pinpoint was started with the conviction that search engines are a very large market opportunity both for horizontal as well as vertical markets.  We feel that our combined technical, marketing, and management background matches the development and marketing needs of a search engine company addressing this large market opportunity.

Other search engine companies have spent a lot of money developing the market.  Press exposure is huge.  Marketplace awareness for the need of a search engine is at an all time high.  Timing for a search solution is now.

We also feel that the search engine will become the next operating system. The operating system provides file services, but retrieving the appropriate and relevant file becomes more difficult with every file addition.  If you built a file, you must find it.  File name, date, and file type searches just do not make it anymore.  The user has a large number of files, but the actual content is not searchable.  Multiple this effect across an entire office, and companies have a problem.  Content is effectively lost.  File content searches are now important.  Our conclusion: everywhere an operating system is used, a search engine will be required. And we mean everywhere!

However, we soon discovered that a search engine or even a search appliance was not sufficient for companies like ourselves competing in today's search related marketplaces.  A search engine by itself requires operating system and database integration and the involvement of the IT department. The integration of the search engine and a hardware appliance solved the operating system and database problem, but too much vertical market specific additions were also required; a generic search engine-based product all by itself would not sell in large volumes. Mounting the search engine inside an appliance is a good step towards universal acceptance and volume sales, but this solution approach was not enough also.

A vertical market solution was required with interfaces to reduced function, enterprise level tools and the addition of vertical specific applications and plug-ins. Pinpoint needed to describe this new search market segment, and the term "search management" was coined. What is a search management solution? Search management is a search engine mounted inside an appliance with management software; reduced function, enterprise level application software (both horizontally and vertically oriented); and vertical content plug-ins.

Pinpoint Vision

I. We want Pinpoint products to provide a universal interface to all data types and content regardless of where they are found.
II. We want to provide enterprise level tools and some of their capabilities to small and medium sized businesses.

Pinpoint Mission

Pinpoint plans to provide search management solutions that interface to all major platforms, and enable content extraction from all popular file types. Pinpoint will provide solutions to access content on the local hard disk drive, any hard disk drive on the LAN, and targeted domain content on the Internet. Content will include both unstructured and structured content types.

In addition, Pinpoint plans on providing interfaces to reduced function enterprise tools - document management systems, paper-to-text systems (both OCR software only solutions as well as integrated OCR solutions found in copier systems), knowledge management systems, and data wharehousing systems. We will form partnerships with the major enterprise players that want to move aggressively into the small and medium sized businesses.