Open Text ECM

Open Text said it’s a done deal. The planned acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of Vignette (worth approximately US$ 321 million) has been completed late yesterday following a shareholders’ meeting where the voting and approval took place.While Vignette is busy nostalgizing, Open Text says it’s working on the strategic aspects of what may come next. Let’s not forget that Open Text already has a WCM-centric group called Open Text Web Solutions. Offering an even broader range of (quite similar) products is going to take some brain activity. Then again, this would not be the first quilting exercise for Open Text.

It's always good to get recognition from the analyst firms because many organizations pay attention to what these guys say. In the ever evolving area of records management, this recognition can help a lot.According to the report: The Forrester Wave(TM): Records Management, Q2 2009, a number of key enterprise content management vendors lead the wave for records management including Open Text, IBM, EMC and Oracle. Autonomy and CA are also leaders, with Interwoven and HP noted as strong performers.

It would be an understatement to say that social media is a hot topic nowadays, including in the enterprise. You may be terrified of using it in your organization, but you really have no choice. Social media is here to stay, and you may as well embrace it rather than fight it. Open Text watches this trend closely and acts accordingly, in its true “candy and aspirin” fashion. Today, the vendor has announced a new addition to the Enterprise CMS platform — Open Text Social Media, which may help conservative organizations to (safely) warm up to social media.

Nearing the end of its Content World 2008 Conference, Open Text announced new plans for its eDOCS product line that will give customers the flexibility to leverage the latest ECM technology. The plan includes new enhancements for eDOCS, more integrations with the Open Text ECM suite and more play time with Microsoft. eDOCS Overview Over the last year, Open Text has been working hard on several new solutions and integrations for records management product eDOCS, including the U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2-STD certification last October, integration of BPM capabilities and with Enterprise Connect, an Open Text Content Service which allows customers to provide customized views of business information to users in familiar applications.

Open Text kicked off its global Content World conference today in Orlando, Florida. The ECM giant expects it to be the largest conference in history with more than 1500 participants registered to attend. Pre- and post-conference workshops, breakouts, training, GlobalStar awards, partner schmoozing, showcasing its ECM solutions, Universal Studios trips… Open Text is going to be busy in the next few days. The event features a conference-within-a-conference program. Attendees tailor their conference experience: product/technology-specific tracks are available in the morning, with broader enterprise views offered in the afternoon.

Now that the acquisition of Captaris by Open Text is no longer an intention but a fact, what does the Enterprise CMS giant plan to do with this Washington-based provider of document management and delivery solutions? Captaris Acquisition is Final The merger was completed last week. Captaris is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Open Text Inc. Shares of Captaris’ common stock, which prior to the merger traded on NASDAQ under CAPA, are in the process of being delisted from trading.

Enterprise content management provider Open Text has announced a “first-of-its-kind” records management and archiving capability for Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system Windows Azure. Azure is Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system. Open Text will incorporate these cloud-based capabilities into its Enterprise Library Services offering early next year. As you may recall, last year, Open Text released its Enterprise Library Services as apart of their Open Text Content Services — a “next generation” attempt at streamlining workflow and managing compliance. Enterprise Library Services lets customers integrate and extend ECM technology across their organizations.

Open Text has announced today the release of “next generation” Web Solutions. The fancy name is, in essence, a new release of the company’s Web CMS child — RedDot. It’s a name change and a total rebranding makeover. With all the underlying RedDot WCM technology still in the backbone, it is now called Web Solutions. The focus of this new release is on intranets, extranets, Enterprise 2.0 solutions and Web 2.0 tools that come armed with greater security and control over social media initiatives.

Open Text Corporation, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), recently announced the release of Version 2.0 of its Open Text Employee Information Management (EIM) solution. Highlights of the new version include improved user navigation, tighter integration with the SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution, as well as a new feature that allows guest users to temporarily access content in personnel folders, subject to security policies.

Open Text Corporation, an enterprise content management vendor, pledged its support for the new Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The standard’s development is led by three major Enterprise Content Management (ECM) providers — EMC, IBM and Microsoft. Recap on CMIS CMIS is a new, open standard that will offer new ways for content applications to “talk” to content repositories. With the new standard, developers can write applications that can work with multiple repositories from different vendors, allowing users to access and organize information stored in different repositories through a single application and interface.

Just yesterday, some major enterprise content management industry heavy weights — Microsoft, IBM, EMC, Alfresco, Open Text, Oracle and SAP, announced the first ever Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification draft enabling interoperability across content repositories. By creating a common API, companies can develop write-once, run-anywhere, content and social applications.

In the November edition of Harvard Business Review, senior editor Gardiner Morse writes a brief forethought on information graphics. He critiques the snappy-looking, oh-so-convenient virtuous circles, which of course are frequently used to demonstrate process and content life-cycles in the ECM community. “Business communications are lousy with circle-and-arrow diagrams that range from the dumb to the deceptive,” Morse argues. One example used from an unnamed Canadian enterprise content management company (actually Open Text) causes Morse to conclude: “Maybe the intent of this diagram is to make prospects too dizzy to ask questions.”