Acquisitions News & Articles

Apparently Google’s shopping bug wasn’t squashed when it acquired social search startup Aardvark last week. The company has gone and bought up another email-based startup called reMail, but this time the focus is on mobile capabilities.  

After many intellectual property and anti-trust concerns, one of the biggest deals in the technology space has been approved. Sun fans wipe their tears, as Oracle (news, site) chooses a new motto "Software. Hardware. Complete." -- aiming to provide a full stack of storage, hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware and Java.

All of the above are integral parts of the content management industry. Thus, we pondered a bit over what, if any, impact the Oracle/Sun merger will have on thee.

One of the most known analyst firms -- the Gilbane Group (news, site) -- has been on the research and consulting market since 1987. Today marks another historical point for the firm – their acquisition by Outsell, Inc., a younger analyst company that was founded in 1998. The transaction between the two started at a breakfast meeting one day and has been in discussions for the past 5 years. We talked to Frank Gilbane, who gave us some insight into the merger.

So, Autonomy (news, site) had a pretty good 2009. No surprise there, considering the company ate up every bit of Interwoven around this time last year.

With the M&A activity in the content management space not dwindling down despite the economic crisis, it’s only natural to see the content management industry talent hop around. At times, that happens in a fashion resembling the game called “A Cold Wind Blows.”

Recently, web content management system vendor Ektron (news, site) announced that Tom Wentworth joined them as VP of Business Development. Wentworth comes from the Enterprise CMS player Interwoven (news, site), where he was evangelizing various web solutions that fall under the Autonomy Interwoven ECM suite roof for the past 2 some years. Before that, he worked for over 6 years in Interwoven sales engineering roles.

In the new role, Wentworth will report to Ektron’s founder and CEO Bill Rogers, who is counting on Wentworth’s “experience in driving corporate strategy and revenue.” For Wentworth, working for a much smaller vendor should be a welcome change in scenery.

We’ve seen a slew of Interwoven employees leave for other companies before, so this announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. Yet, it does spur a few questions.

Are things that bad at Interwoven that even the most passionate evangelists are looking for the exit sign? Is it the Autonomy acquisition fallout and the inability to effectively use the acquired talent? Is it because of Autonomy’s reportedly far from nurturing corporate culture and the “fear-and-intimidation style of upper management”? Are we about to see Interwoven navigate the CMS waters a la Titanic?

Expect to hear more from Ektron soon. The recently leaked version 8 should officially be making its entrance any day now...though, ahem, some delays there have been raising eyebrows.

Personally, I cannot wait for October to arrive. Open Text Content World will be in the lovely Orlando, and we all should expect to be enlightened on OTEX’s product map and strategy for its two web content management arms: Web Solutions (aka RedDot) and the recently acquired Vignette.

Commenting on my previous post on the Open Text WCM saga, Markus Giesen et al. -- representatives of an unofficial RedDot blog -- raised several worthwhile questions. Not with publicity in mind, but in an effort to get some real, transparent answers I reached out for comments to Open Text. Here’s what we learned.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the news: yesterday, in an acquisition to end all acquisitions style, Adobe (news, site) announced definitive plans to acquire Omniture for US$ 1.8 billion. Most initial reactions involved a lot of whooping over what on the surface looks like the first step towards a complete web solutions package -- design, build, publish and monitor -- but what's really going on here?

As per usual for the speculative bunch, there’s just a tad more to it than cooler workflows and more insights.

No longer rumored in the halls of the ILTA conference, the intent of Enterprise CMS and storage vendor EMC (news, site) to acquire Kazeon (news, site) is now official. The unconfirmed deal size is at about US$ 75 million.

What does that mean for the two companies? How did the eDiscovery industry take the news? Let’s take a look at some first reactions and thoughts.

Since my old company, Document Sciences, was bought by EMC, I have been following the Enterprise Content Management market closely; The Fortune 500 have invested billions of dollars in databases and ERP technologies leading to multi-billion dollar franchises such as Oracle, SAP, etc. focused on the structured data world.

However, the next frontier of productivity will come from the unstructured data that includes your emails, you-tube videos, word document, power point presentations, pictures, etc.

Open Text (news, site) held their third quarter fiscal 2009 investor teleconference yesterday and as was expected there were lots of questions on the Vignette acquisition plans.

Open Text announced their plans to acquire Vignette (news, site) just yesterday morning. The reported deal size was about US$ 310 million -- a tidy sum for a content management systems vendor that has been struggling a bit as of late, with software license revenue in steep decline. Here are some insights as to why the ECM Canadians fell for the WCM Texans.

Everyone said that the Interwoven/Autonomy deal would only be the first in a series of big announcements within the enterprise content management world. And that it is.

Today, Canadian-based enterprise content management vendor Open Text (news, site) has reached a deal to buy Vignette Corporation (news, site) for US$ 310 million.

Vignette is expected to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Open Text. The deal will see Vignette stockholders get US$ 8 per share plus 0.1447 of Open Text stock.

The deal is expected to close the second half of this year. The news saw Open Text shares fall by 85 cents. Vignette's shares however soared US$ 3.32 -- a sign that shareholders see this as good news for the struggling enterprise content management firm.

"Vignette's customers represent some of the world's most powerful online brands and we are excited about the opportunity to expand the relationship with these customers and partners," Open Text Chief Executive John Shackleton said in a statement.

We are waiting on more details. When we get them, we'll be sure to pass them on.

It’s the end of an era for RedDot.

Enterprise content management vendor Open Text has retired its web content management arm RedDot in a recent consolidation/rebranding attack. The Web CMS software is staying put, but it is no longer to be called RedDot.

Say hello to the new Web Solutions family and to Daniel Kraft. Kraft is Open Text’s SVP for Corporate Strategy, and we had the pleasure of chatting with him in pursuit of answers to some red hot RedDot questions.

Big new yesterday -- the acquisition of Enterprise Content Management provider Interwoven by Autonomy. A surprise to many, not so much because Interwoven was snapped up, but more because it was Autonomy that did it.

Regardless, the news has sparked much discussion in the ECM industry. Or wait.. it's the Web Content Management industry that is all a buzz...

Well, didn't really see that one coming, did you? The Wall Street Journal has reported today that Autonomy, one of the leading search providers, has bought Interwoven for US$ 775 million. Is the world of Enterprise Content Management about to take a significant change in direction?

Iron Mountain Europe, a records management and storage services provider, announced the acquisition of Anamnis GDM SAS, a firm specializing in electronic document management solutions.