Inference Corp this month unveils the third generation of its case-based reasoning problem resolution software as CBR3 Content Navigator which now includes support for Web- based HyperText Mark-up Language and other Internet- Intranet documents, Standardized Generalized Mark-Up Language, Microsoft Corp’s Word, ASCII and rich text format. Inference applies case-based reasoning – in its case derived from research work at Yale University – to expert system-type environments that help solve problems by pointing to a collection of similar problems, or cases, that it stores in its brain. It is a technique tailor-made for help desk software; indeed Inference’s case-based reasoning engine is embedded as an enabling technology in Bendata Inc, McAfee Associates Inc, Scopus Technology Inc, Utopia Partners Inc, Vantive Corp and Workgroup Systems Inc products. Others, such as Clarify Corp and Remedy Corp will provide case- based reasoning to customers if required in place of their own problem resolution engines – at a premium of course. Inference is offering Verity Inc’s Topic text retrieval engine for use with CBR3 for an additional charge; CBR3 also includes intelligent question generation, automatic document splitting and a wizard. All of the CBR3 application programming interfaces are available to independent software vendors, enabling, the company claims, its help desk OEM partners to implement the new real-time authoring feature in their call-tracking products. It also enables developers to build applications that can generate a search from a network alert. Inference now offers products that at the very basic level store details of experiences, such as how to fix a printer; summaries and extracts, such as technical notes and product specifications; personal and corporate libraries, reference manuals; and public domain and subscription information available on the Web and from electronic mail. CBR3 Content Navigator for content acquisition, navigation and management includes CasePoint search and retrieval applications which are up under Solaris, Windows NT and OS/2, and content maintenance tools called CBR Express. It also comes with an Internet search engine, Lotus Notes integration and a Universal Resource Locator indexing and clustering. CBR3 runs under Windows95, Windows NT, Solaris, OS/2 and HP-UX and supports Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, Informix, DB2/2 and Raima. General ships begin in the fourth quarter. CBR3 comes in at the same price point as the two-year-old CBR2 release – which supports the automatic indexing and generation of cases from documents – at around $1,000 per seat.
High-end competitors
A help desk implementation of case-based reasoning, such as in the Clarify Corp model, costs around $3,500. Inference competitors at the high-end of the case-based reasoning market include Boston, Massachusetts-based Cognitive Systems Inc, Acknosoft Inc and ISoft Inc. Esteem Software Inc, Astea International Inc and TechInno Inc have case- based reasoning products that play lower down. It says it also expects to see more of start-ups such as Molloy Inc and PhD Inc. Looking at the help desk market, Inference says that the majority offer a core set of modules with similar functionality plus a set of specialist add-on techniques on which they compete. Companies such as Astea still require a sales automation module, it observes, which it expects the company to buy rather than build. Inference says the much- hyped process of disintermediation, or cutting out the middle-man by providing sales, support and help services on- line, by-passing switchboard operators and sales people, will happen much more slowly than is currently envisaged, given that many customers do not have Web or keyboard access. Public only since June 1995, Inference reported a profit of $3.8m on a turnover of $29.4m in the year to January 31. Wall Street believes it should do $40m this year. Its partner and OEM business accounts for 27% of turnover, joint sales 30% with direct sales accounting for the rest. It does half of its business in Europe, an operation built around the acquisition of Expertech around five years ago.
