Open Text Rounds Out Offerings With Strategic Acquisitions, Partnerships

Open Text has had a busy couple of months, with certifications, partnerships, and a couple of acquisitions to round out its already robust enterprise content management (ECM) product offerings. These will serve to extend their reach internationally, as well as bolstering the functionality of its flagship ECM Suite.The certification of Open Text's Enterprise Library Services for Windows Server 2008 should be reassuring for Microsoft-centric IT shops. The Enterprise Library Services allow IT teams to create a single repository that draws upon content stores across various disparate systems. Open Text is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, so this certification makes logical sense for it.

On the acquisition front, Open Text has purchased key divisions of two companies to add to its product mix. First, Open Text purchased a division of Spicer with products expected to provide flexible document-viewing options and enhanced document security. This division will form the core of Open Text's Content Viewer Solutions Group, which both continues the development, support, and sale of the Spicer products and rolls some of their functionality into Open Text's ECM Suite.

The other acquisition is the eMotion division from Corbis, which will become part of Open Text's Artesia Digital Media Group. The eMotion offering -- being rebranded as Artesia Digital On Demand for Marketing -- is a hosted software-as-a-service digital asset management (DAM) solution, intended to complement Open Text's existing on-premises Artesia DAM products.

The partnership I mentioned above is with Logica, a well-established European information technology and business services company. This is expected to help Open Text's products gain traction overseas, by taking advantage of Logica's significant reputation and established customer base.

Together, these factors put Open Text in a good position to drive sales and continue building upon a satisfied customer base.