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Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Autonomy buys Meridio

23-Oct-2007

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Search, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, , IDOL Server, SharePoint 2010

Major enterprise search vendor Autonomy announced today that they will acquire Meridio, the Northern Ireland-based Records Management vendor which had originally hitched its wagon to Microsoft SharePoint.

It's an intriguing move and one that may make a lot of sense. Then again, it could just be a mistake, and advising existing Meridio customers how to approach this deal is tricky to say the least.

On the plus side, Autonomy took search to a whole new level when they launched, and remain a leader in that space. They have carved out a strong niche for themselves in Government and Intelligence particularly, and Meridio -- along with the Verity tools Autonomy picked up a couple years ago -- could potentially add to a strong e-discovery, risk, and compliance platform. Autonomy was already selling heavily into e-discovery scenarios, but the logical prophylactic step after any discovery episode is better information management in general, and records management in particular.

Where I have my doubts is in how this might be executed. The cultural differences between the two firms are huge. Autonomy still revolves almost entirely around its founder Mike Lynch, a brilliant but at times very divisive figure. Meridio on the other hand has long been a more collaborative and transparent firm (though with strong strategic leadership), so time will tell how that works out. Perhaps more importantly, in re-architecting the Meridio solution into a broader platform offering, I fear many existing customers may get left behind in the process. Verity itself tried a broader information management roll-up strategy, without good results, only to hit a dead-end and get acquired by (the smaller) Autonomy.

This does make strategic sense for Meridio, since being reliant on Microsoft (SharePoint in particular) to deliver you a business stream is a dangerous situation for any partner. Meridio clearly pined to be acquired by Redmond, but the SharePoint team simply built their own RM capabilities instead. Microsoft is already getting much more aggressive about going after deals alone, and it was only a matter of time before Meridio would find the door shut to them. But if you bought Meridio as an enterprise-ready records management system to support SharePoint, well you will certainly want to talk to your account reps quickly to get some firm guarantees about future development and support.