Open Text News & Articles

It would be an understatement to say that social media is a hot topic nowadays, including in the enterprise. You may be terrified of using it in your organization, but you really have no choice. Social media is here to stay, and you may as well embrace it rather than fight it.

Open Text (news, site) watches this trend closely and acts accordingly, in its true “candy and aspirin” fashion. Today, the vendor has announced a new addition to the Enterprise CMS platform -- Open Text Social Media, which may help conservative organizations to (safely) warm up to social media.

You may be one of the many organizations who uses SharePoint on a daily basis for collaboration and document management. But not everything you need to do your job is located in the SharePoint content repository, nor should it be.

The days of a single content repository are over. Now come the solutions that enable you to leverage a central interface to manage and work with content from multiple repositories. ASG Software Solutions (news, site) provides you this ability using SharePoint as that central interface.

Competition in the Web CMS market is cutthroat. Not a single weakness goes unnoticed. Not a single slip goes unattacked. But it’s just business as usual, right? We all seize opportunities, especially in tight times.

FatWire (news, site) is no exception. Demonstrating as much, the web content management vendor has launched a "rescue program" for Interwoven and Vignette customers who are apparently plagued by their recent acquisitions by Autonomy and Open Text respectively.

What is FatWire offering as bait? Free licenses and "proven migration tools" valid until the end of September. Should you consider?

The Forrester Wave for Web Content Management For External Sites, Q2 2009 is out and there are 10 web content management vendors on the list that we all know and love well. SDL Tridion (news, site) took the top honors this time with Interwoven and FatWire close behind.

Why are these three vendors at the top and who else is on the list? Let's take a look.

It hasn’t been an easy year for anyone in the Content Management industry, so it really wasn't too much of a shock that earlier this month it was announced that Vignette (news, site) was being taken over by Open Text (news, site) and that they had a year-on-year first quarter drop off in revenue of 24.2% to US$ 33.9m.

Everyone’s feeling the pain and Vignette’s Q1 results were just a continuation of a trend that saw their total 2008 revenues drop-off by 11.6% over 2007.

But its not how you behave in the good times that marks you out as a market leader, its how you respond to difficulties and Vignette appears to be tackling the current economic downturn head-on.

Asked once what makes a great movie, Alfred Hitchcock replied ‘script, script, script’. Ask someone in legal or financial organizations what makes a great Enterprise Content Management system, chances are ‘compliance, compliance, compliance’ will figure in the answer.

Today’s announcement by Open Text (news, site) that it is entering a partnership with Sydney, Australia-based StoneBridge Systems, a specialist solutions provider of document and web content management, responds to that as compliance pressures in the land-down-under mount.

StoneBridge said it will now be reference selling services for Open Text’s solutions specifically targeting a number of vertical markets including financial based services organizations.

Open Text -- who's web content management strategy has been in the news lately -- also has a busy, busy enterprise content management arm, in case we needed reminding.

Recently the company was acknowledged by SAP via a Certified Integrations award. The nod is meant to give customers the confidence to use SAP's applications in tadem with the Open Text ECM Suite as the basis for enterprise-wide information lifecycle management.

It's no secret that SharePoint (news, site) is one of the most widely used platforms for collaborative document management. It has enjoyed an impressive grassroots growth pattern that has pleased Microsoft, but made many IT managers a little nervous -- especially in light of ongoing regulatory compliance pressures.

Open Text (news, site) has spent a great deal of time looking at how SharePoint functions in typical Enterprise CMS scenarios. Understanding both its strengths and weaknesses, their Microsoft Solutions Team focuses on differentiating fact from fiction when it comes to what SharePoint can do.

In a conversation with Lynn Elwood, Open Text's Microsoft Solutions Product Manager, we picked up some insights worth sharing.

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.

When SharePoint first came to market it was called an Enterprise Content Management System. Since then, its actual use has varied widely. Many say it's not a complete ECM platform because it lacks a number of important Enterprise CMS capabilities.

ECM provider Open Text (news, site) has built a strong partnership relationship with Redmond. Drawing upon that and broad field experience their latest analysis aims to separate fact from fiction.

In a content management world obsessed with the dual goals of cutting costs and maintaining -- or improving -- quality in an ever tightening marketplace, the latest partnership between Open Text (news, site) and Endeca (news, site) should help achieve both.

Announced during the week, the two have teamed up to deliver Endeca’s Digital Asset Navigator solution on Open Text’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform.

Content may be king, but unless its secure, it will behave like more like the Joker in your Enterprise CMS rather than the King.

And with the number of security threats on the web growing, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) companies like Open Text (news, site) are working hard to see what solution they can develop to close the back-door on their systems.

This week, Open Text has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of their security solution -- Open Text SOCKS Client -- an enterprise-grade SOCKS V4 and V5 client.

In a positive and delicious way, that is... In an effort to extend the reach of its regulatory compliance and document management offerings, Open Text (news, site) has partnered with Lionbridge (news, site) to provide joint customers with development services of the aforementioned solutions.

Led by Lionbridge, the alliance is specifically targeting the pharma industry, but it seems that other industries can take advantage of it as well.

Today, Open Text (news, site) announced yet another acquisition. Not as material as some of the previous ones, this one falls in a different category -- a quest for "sizzling technology."

This time around, it's the Toronto-based Vizible Corporation, a maker of 3D technology and digital media interface solutions.

We talked to Scott Bowen, president of Open Text's Digital Media Group, to get the scoop on this deal.