----- Forwarded by Marie Hejka/Corp/Enron on 01/16/2001 05:32 PM -----

	Marie Hejka
	01/16/2001 12:05 PM
		 
		 To: Melissa Becker/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Anthony Mends/Enron Communications, 
Andrea Yowman/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Joe Wong/enron@enronXgate@enronXgate, Debbie 
R Brackett/HOU/ECT@ECT, Pegi Newhouse/HOU/EES@EES, John 
Gillespie/Enron@EnronXGate, Kathleen Pope-Sance/HOU/EES@EES, Steve 
Woods/EPSC/HOU/ECT@ECT, Georgeanna Hoiseth/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Judith 
Schlesinger/HOU/ECT@ECT, Allan Sommer/Corp/Enron@Enron
		 cc: Beth Perlman/enron@EnronXgate, George Wasaff/Enron@EnronXGate, Kent 
Morrison/NA/Enron@ENRON, John Simmons/NA/Enron@Enron, Paul 
Timberlake/ET&S/Enron@Enron, Allen Elliott/HOU/ECT@ECT
		 Subject: Your thoughts required by 3 :00 p.m. 1/17 meeting.

Please read and be prepared to discuss at tomorrow's task force meeting.  
(Paul is scheduled to speak to us to help us make a decision.  FYI - I plan 
to circulate the agenda before the meeting.)

Below are Paul Timberlake's notes from Friday morning's Software Selection 
Team meeting.  

You may remember in the beginning of this project we discussed piloting 
Autonomy or an unstructured data management tool in order to reach 
qualitative and quantitative information.  

Some discussion was lent to finding a product perhaps which would search 
email to identify experts.  
Further, we discussed the value in finding a product which could help us 
identify experts within Enron.  

Since these discussions, we hired a Business Analyst who interviewed some 29 
people and surveyed 30 additional people who concurred finding experts in 
Enron would be useful.  

However, only 50% of those interviewed suggested they would tag email for 
others to search regardless if it could help identify experts.  
But, over 90% of those surveyed agreed an Enterprise Search Engine would be 
useful.  

Based on what we now know, the Software Selection Team will be evaluating 
three Enterprise Search Engine vendors (Inktomi, Autonomy, and Verity).  
These vendors DO NOT search email like the vendor TACIT.  Autonomy provides 
some feature/functionality to search email (the full extent of which will be 
evaluated by the SST).  

Are we prepared to invest in a much more expensive search engine with 
categorization feature/functionality which may provide a more robust search 
platform of the future or should we decide to invest in the best value for 
our current needs?  Categorization is the classification of information 
sources, such as documents or Web pages into a taxonomy.  With some products, 
the taxonomy must be determined beforehand and rules specified (both manual 
operations) to tell the product how to classify information sources it 
encounters.  Other tools claim they create the taxonomy using a proprietary 
method.  See Paul's "Issue" section below.

----- Forwarded by Marie Hejka/Corp/Enron on 01/12/2001 05:52 PM -----

	Paul Timberlake
	01/12/2001 04:16 PM
		 
		 To: Marie Hejka/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Kent Morrison/NA/Enron@ENRON, Allen 
Elliott/HOU/ECT@ECT
		 cc: John Simmons/NA/Enron@Enron
		 Subject: KM/IM Meeting Notes 1/12/2001

Meeting Notes
From the 1/05 weekly meeting, it was decided that the tool being sought was 
best classified as an Enterprise Search Engine (ESE) solution.  This 
distinction was arrived at after reviewing the characteristics described in 
the charter and associated survey as to what was meant by an unstructured 
data management tool.
Three leading vendors in this market are Inktomi, Autonomy, and Verity.  To 
stay within the time frame of the overall project, the scope of the search 
tool evaluation will focus on these three vendors.    Evaluation criteria 
have been developed to compare the tools.  This criteria focuses on the 
tools' indexing and search functionality
At present the criteria excludes categorization functionality.  The reason 
for this is categorization is expected to involve manual effort from various 
groups who own content that will be categorized.   This characteristic is at 
odds with the project charter requirement that the tool be unobtrusive to 
current processes and culture.  
Because indexing and search functionality is becoming similar among ESE 
tools, it is expected that the ESE evaluation will boil down to a price 
decision with Inktomi being the winner.  
The three ESE vendors are being lined up to visit Enron and present their 
products beginning next week through the week of January 22nd.  All 
interested parties are encouraged to attend. 

Issue
At issue is whether categorization functionality should be included in the 
ESE evaluation - or continue to focus only on indexing and search 
functionality.  All three vendors being evaluated include a categorization 
component.
By not including categorization, we run the risk of selecting a vendor whose 
categorization capabilities may not be as robust as another's.  Integrating 
another vendor's solution later on may prove difficult and costly.
By including categorization functionality, the evaluation criteria become 
ambiguous.  This is because the requirements around categorization are not 
well defined at present.  Consequently, we run the risk of selecting an 
over-enginneered and most costly product whose perceived benefits may never 
be realized.
We need more direction from the project sponsors as to what priority to place 
on categorization functionality.  If it is considered a priority then we also 
need end user groups with specific problems identified that, if solved, could 
effectively evaluate the tool and justify any additional costs.