Speculation on who will buy OpenText has been a consistent pastime for content management market analysts for at least the last three years. The latest reported on some of the financial wires is that Autonomy has amassed a $1bln war chest for a large buy with OpenText offered as a possible target. Who would have thought back in the day that technologies from Open Text, Interwoven, Vignette, Red Dot, Zantaz, PC Docs, Hummingbird, Artesia, Media Bin et.al. could all end up under the same corporate banner. Yeah – me neither.
The feature overlap within the two companies respective portfolios is well known but this deal would turn the Venn diagram of their products into a bubbly frenzy reminiscent of the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment. Pondering further as I look at market caps and the amount of cash in play, OT may not be the best target. For less money Autonomy could potentially acquire both Kofax and/or SDL.
Kofax is probably better positioned to be acquired and doesn’t significantly augment the overlap problem. SDL has overlap particularly in the WCMS space but brings its consolidated translation acquisitions and high-end publishing to the mix. Both SDL and Kofax are UK based like Autonomy with OT being Canadian. One might not think location matters much but it makes for a much easier transition from a corporate governance standpoint.
These are purely my own musings and I haven’t seen anything else tipped or timeline so guess I’ll go and buy some popcorn and wait for the show to start.
Lee Dallas
Marko Sillanpää
I’m not sure Open Text or SDL makes sense. I would think that even Autonomy with its muli-platform approach wouldn’t go down the duplicate competing platform path like Open Text has and would bring with them. SDL at the end of the day is a services company that happens to have products. I have never heard of a deal where they have sold in and not bundled their translation services. But Kofax is a different story. It fits well with their approach to offer market leading point solutions.
I offer another candidate, StoredIQ. If you look at Autonomy’s acquisition of Zantaz for email archiving but they’re still missing the eDiscovery piece. StoredIQ would add this to their mix. Another hole in Autonomy’s platform is true Business Process Management. Cardiff only goes so far, they need business process modeling and analysis. Then there’s XML. Interwoven’s not enough here. I see MarkLogic as a candidate.
My bet is Autonomy’s starting a buying cycle and the prime targets are MarkLogic, StoredIQ, Kofax, and a BPM vendor.
I can see StoredIQ – fits into their other eDiscovery wants and wishes but given they just acquired tech in that space from CA i am not sure this is as attractive at the moment.
MarkLogic ? I think someone will snap them up – either IBM or SDL but I don’t see where they are as good of a fit into the overall autonomy mix.
About a year ago there was a lively discussion around all of these companies. Interesting to see how positions have (and have not) changed in a year.
It’s fun to see what you guys think “we” might do. I wonder if Lubor turned purple at the thought of the acquisition.
Purple? – really? How cool would that be. My favorite book is Dr.Seuss “If I Ran The Zoo” – I play the same game where I work but can’t always write about it 🙂