ECM Report

The announcement that OpenText and IXOS will merge is simply a continuation of the events set in motion last week by the EMC/Documentum acquisition. Make no mistake, the lines have been drawn. Either merge to become big, or become big on your own, but it is obvious that the perception in the industry is that you must have more than a niche offering to compete going forward.

Between Gauss and IXOS, OpenText has acquired a very robust set of tools to integrate into their stack. The IXOS products are technically sound and should have very good synergy sitting next to OpenText’s existing offering. There is quite a little bit of overlap in core functionality so it will be interesting to see how that is accounted for. IXOS has been known as a strong integration player. Translation: they speak well to some of the other traditional applications in play such as ERP and CRM. This alone will help OpenText be a force in large-scale, mission critical applications where that integration is requisite.

While this seems to be a really nice fit, I still wouldn’t be surprised if OpenText wasn’t done. It appears as if OpenText is trying to make a go of it on their own but a deal like this might ultimately make them more attractive to the very partners that they now integrate with. Time will tell.