Until this year ECM vendor Open Text was the gorilla in the ECM market place. It has swallowed up many rivals, whilst other competitors such as Documentum, FileNET and Stellent were acquired by yet larger fish - EMC, IBM and Oracle. This left Open Text as the leading independent player in the ECM marketplace, with a strong focus in this area.
However in the background almost without our notice search vendor Autonomy have been moving towards the ECM marketplace with its acquisitions of various "rivals" such as Verity, Zantaz, Meridio and most recently WCM vendor Interwoven. I say rivals although you would not have thought this as Autonomy has always said it has been in the enterprise search space or rather "Meaning Based Computing" a term which nobody else uses and very few truly understand. Its recent acquisitions belie this however and whether by accident or design Autonomy is now moving firmly into the ECM space.
A contrast between the two companies draws up some interesting similarities - both started as search engine companies, both have grown by acquisition, Open Text having acquired Basis, Capatris, IXOS, Hummingbird (and through them RedDot and Valid) amongst others. Both companies are now addicted to acquisitions (after all it's an easier way to grow) and both will suffer from technology indigestion.
Whilst acquiring another company in the same space with similar technology does offer some attractions it also brings some significant challenges and difficult choices about future investment. It brings a great deal of uncertainty to customers also. Even internally for those company's sales forces the messages become blurred. As of the Hummingbird acquisition Open Text had multiple product lines: 3 web content management systems, 2 document management systems and 3 records management systems. All of these have to be integrated or dropped and if this happens how will the customer base react and be handled? Autonomy is heading the same way.
Is this good for the market? Is it good for customers? You may have different views on consolidation - it reduces competition, but it makes choices easier (obviously there is less to chose from) and the larger companies are more stable and secure. However if I was an Interwoven customer now - I would be worried about my investment.
One can also see this as a further step towards commoditizing the ECM marketplace, in this new world the proprietary companies have to add more value and features to their products lines to compete with open source startups such as Alfresco and Nuxeo.
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