Canadian enterprise content management (ECM) solution
builder Open Text is to merge with German ECM provider IXOS
Software to form what is claimed to be the world’s largest
pure-play ECM provider.
IXOS will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Open Text and will
act as the European division of the company.
Open Text has, historically, operated in the people management,
collaboration and content management side of the equation,
explained David Glazer, vice-president of product management for
Open Text.
The company initially began life as a mechanism to connect
people to information by providing the tools to manage content
created through collaboration.
IXOS’ heritage has been focused on the archiving and the
long-term resting-place aspect of content as the information
becomes storage.
"You put these together and you have the entire information
lifecycle covered," Glazer said. "Any piece of unstructured data
that anyone in the organisation touches from womb to tomb...all of
that can be unified into one enterprise content management system.
You couldn’t have designed a better global leader in ECM than by
taking these two pieces and putting them together."
Under the business combination agreement, Open Text’s North
American division will focus primarily on the collaboration and
knowledge management offerings, while the European division, based
in Munich, will concentrate on content management and archiving
capabilities.
Open Text’s merger with IXOS puts the company in direct
competition with the likes of EMC and IBM. However, despite the
economies of scale, Glazer is confident Open Text will not
flounder.
"We are seeing a customer push and pull. The...push is as people
recognise how critical ECM is to their IT and operational plans,
they know that cannot purchase (solutions) from a hodgepodge of
vendors or from small vendors," he said.
"The pull that we see is as customer realize that ECM...really
is an enterprise capability, they recognizs the value in one-stop
shopping."
This recognition may indeed be the key to survival for the
"world's largest ECM vendor", according to Nick Wilkoff, senior
analyst with Forrester Research. He explained that the combined
entity is definitely designed to go after the large companies and
will help Open Text compete as more of an enterprise-scale content
management supplier.
"I think, for a while, companies will be continuing to look for
the best-of-breed, pure-play vendors in this market," Wilkoff
said.
"In a three- to four-year period, I think it’s pretty safe to
say that the very large vendors, the software giants, will take a
leadership role in this market. Still, I think there will be a
little bit of room for these pure-plays and Open Text, with this
additional functionality may indeed be one of those."
The Open Text-IXOS deal is expected to be completed within the
next 90 to 120 days.
Carly Suppa writes for ITWorldCanada.com