Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Follow Alan on Twitter @alanpelzsharpe

Objective plus Limehouse

7-May-2009

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Marketplace at Large, Objective

A couple of weeks back ECM vendor Objective announced that they had acquired Limehouse, a UK social software provider. Objective is one of the vendors we evaluate in our ECM Suites research, and we find them an interesting vendor (in what can be a very dull industry) under certain circumstances.

The acquisition may or may not work out, and as always it will be time and execution that will determine it's success. On paper at least it has its chances. Objective is best known as one of the leading non-US based ECM vendors, one that has a comparable Web Services architecture to many of its better-known North American rivals. .

Objective is pretty well known in Australasia and increasingly in the UK, but almost exclusively within a couple of industry verticals -- most notably state and local government.  Limehouse on the other hand, is a UK SaaS vendor with an impressive list of government customers.  Quite what Objective will do with the Limehouse's hosted technology I have no idea, but I know what they will try to do with Limehouse's government expertise: sell further into the UK public sector.

Permit a small digression on the marketplace here. Some vendors position themselves as general building-block providers whereby they claim to have all the modules/parts you need to construct your own ECM system regardless of your specific needs. At the end of the day technology is technology, but a deep understanding of a customers needs, based on multiple similar projects and a corporate culture that recruits heavily from the industry it sells to, can represent genuine differentiation. More importantly a focused vendor can typically deliver and configure an ECM system faster and more accurately then a generic "market leader." They can do so because they have vast experience in delivering and configuring ECM systems that meet the needs of highly specific industry environments.

So, when a vendor next tells you Gartner or Forrester lists them as "Market Leaders," you might want to ask "which market?"  because if it is not your specific market then that particular accolade may have very little relevance or value for you the buyer.