Open Text Connects ECM & CMS Dots

The fruits of consolidation are ripening as Open Text announces ECM integration plans for the RedDot Web CMS.

A little over a year ago, Hummingbird acquired RedDot. In August, Open Text acquired Hummingbird. And now this week Open Text have announced their strategy to integrate RedDot Solutions' software with Open Text's Livelink ECM - Web Content Management Server.

Sounds good, but how will it hammer out? In an effort to maximize the strengths of the acquired assets, the integration will bring together RedDot's WCM and delivery capabilities with Open Text's Livelink ECM suite, using the backend server capabilities of Livelink ECM.

As CMS Watch points out, Open Text is not the most adroit in the Web CMS world and as such these ventures should be regarded with a touch of suspicion.

A key part of the Open Text's announced strategy is to give enterprise managers the ability to control both web and enterprise content.

As Mark R. Gilbert, Research Vice President at Gartner, Inc. has points out, “With more content and more sites to manage, Web content will become increasingly tangled with the broader information management demands in large organizations. In order to be successful, companies need solutions that can scale for the enterprise and they need tighter integration with ECM capabilities.”

Open Text aims to address those pains by bridging repositories and interfaces in their existing assets. Will they succeed? Possibly, but it will take some months and existing RedDot customers should stand by for the actual “test drive” to see just how well they untangle those overlapping info management needs.

In the short run Open Text will present an initial version of the solution at its “LiveLinkUp Phoenix 2006” global user conference in November, and plans to ship the first version of the product in early 2007.

This is the “first phase” of Open Texts integration strategy — the ability to access and publish content maintained in Open Text's broader Livelink ECM suite using RedDot. Moving forwards RedDot customers should also be able to integrate Livelink ECM collaboration modules, such as discussions or opinion polls.

According to Open Text, the “second phase” includes a complete, single server platform with enterprise scale clustering and distribution, and simplified server configuration. That is something we'll wait to comment on.

Open Text Connects ECM & CMS Dots

The fruits of consolidation are ripening as Open Text announces ECM integration plans for the RedDot Web CMS. \n\nA little over a year ago, Hummingbird acquired RedDot. In August, Open Text acquired Hummingbird. And now this week Open Text have announced their strategy to integrate RedDot Solutions' software with Open Text's Livelink ECM - Web Content Management Server.

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