OpenText makes its big move into AI

WATERLOO — OpenText launched an artificial intelligence platform Tuesday that combines big data and human language analytics to help companies better understand the needs of customers.

The AI platform is called OpenText Magellan and is designed to compete directly with the well-known IBM Watson, said Adam Howatson, chief marketing officer for the specialist in enterprise information management.

It was unveiled at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre where OpenText is hosting Enterprise World, its annual showcase of new software and applications for users of its products.

It is the first time OpenText, the largest software company in the country, has held that event in Canada.

Howatson said 90 per cent of the information used by big companies is human language, both spoken and written. OpenText Magellan was designed to analyze words and text, known as “unstructured data” in the lingo of software developers.

“What’s different about Magellan, and something we think is going to be really key, is our deep expertise in being able to process human language, and gain insights from that unstructured data,” said Howatson. “We do this through text mining and semantic analysis.”

Any large business produces vast amounts of information, including reports, memos, notes, contracts, case studies and requests for information. With OpenText Magellan, a company can analyze that material for trends and themes to gain insights into what customers want.

Howatson said OpenText has received tens of thousands of requests for proposals during its 26-year history. A room full of people reading those documents for trends and insights would never finish the job because more arrive every day. But that’s exactly the kind of job OpenText Magellan is designed for.

The new platform will analyze all of the documents and report on what the customers have been asking for, what problems they need to solve, timelines they have for finding solutions, the titles and positions of the people seeking information, the language they use and how OpenText should position its products.

“And that’s going to inform all sorts of things about the way I go to market,” said Howatson. “But I would not be able to do it with humans because there is simply too much information there.”

The AI platform is powered by OpenText Analytics and Apache Spark. The Waterloobased company pulled together technology from open sources and from acquisitions that brought text mining and semantic analysis into the company.

“Three years ago we acquired a corporation that brought to us predictive analytics, big data analytics and we started building Magellan itself, and combining those components a year-and-a-half to two years ago,” said Howatson.

OpenText, a University of Waterloo spinoff founded in 1991, employs 12,000 people had sales of US$1.8 billion in the 2016 fiscal year.