Rivet Pounds OpenText

April 1, 2010

OpenText—a content management, data management, collaboration, and search vendor—made headlines with its acquistions of Vignette (content management system) and nStein (asset management and content processing vendor). OpenText, once the playground of Dr. Tim Bray (now at Google) has evolved over the last decade. The company has reached nearly $250 million in revenue in the period ending December 31, 2010. That’s getting close to $1.0 billion in revenue, which makes it one of the big dogs in the information space. Among the firm’s search properties are BASIS, the SGML system, Fulcrum, and BRS Search. The products has strong adherents, My last brush with OpenText required some sniffing around RedDot and its embedded Autonomy search stub. Interesting work. Complex too. Great for consultants in my opinion.

A reader sent me a copy of a newsletter / report document from an outfit called Rivet Logic. I was not familiar with the company. The company’s Q1 2010 “report” carries the title “Recent Developments in Cotent, Collaboration and Community.” That document contains some information about OpenText. The Rivet Logic story contained a quote from an analyst named Seth Gottlieb, founder of Content Here. He allegedlysaid:

“Open Text is in the business of buying and then bleeding software products to death, and this is the software customer’s worst nightmare.” -Analyst Seth Gottlieb, founder of Content Here, on FierceContentManagement

The idea is that OpenText’s proprietary approach is part of a “lock in” approach.

The Rivet Logic write up points out that open source “presents the most vialble altrnative to this foreboding trend of gorilla takeovers.”

My view is that some companies’ core strategy is to buy companies with customers and then build on that base while seeking synergy and upsell opportunities. I am not sure “gorilla” is an approrpiate adject. Just my opinion.

Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2010

Free and no April Fools’ story.

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Financial, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.