ECM Report

The Vignette and Tower acquisition poll is closed and the results are in. This is a bit interesting…Good for everyone [ 58% ]Bad for everyone [ 16% ]Good for Vignette, Bad for Tower [ 12% ]Bad for Vignette, Good for Tower [ 14% ]Totally everything together, the numbers could also be looked at like this.Good for Vignette - 70%Bad for Vignette - 30%Good for Tower - 72%Bad for Tower - 28%Obviously, most agree this an equally good deal for both the Vignette and Tower communities.I kept this poll open longer than normal for a couple of reasons. First, until Mobius acquired eManage, there hadn’t been another notable deal to track. But more importantly, I was a bit curious to see if opinions of the deal would skew over a period of time. There is frequently an initial optimism that disapates after a period of time. My poll did not reflect this nearly as much as Vignette’s share price.There was a bit of an upswing near the announcement, but it has come crashing down since. On January 2, about a week prior to the announcement, the share price was at $2.29. Between then and January 21, about a week after the announcment, the price rose to $2.82. Since then, the price has steadily declined to where it is now in about the $1.50 range setting a new 52 week low in the process.What does it mean? I certainly don’t have a clue, nevertheless, it doesn’t necessarily have to relate directly to the acquisition. Markets and tech in general are also seriously down over that same period. And while ECM is considered to be a hot technology, over this period of time, none of the primary players have done particularly well.