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Tony Byrne

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Beware the Open Text synergizer bunny

4-Sep-2009

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, Web Site Management

ECM mega-vendor Open Text has a successful track record of acquiring smaller competitors, then absorbing their revenue streams and selectively improving certain "winners" going forward. In the wake of an acquisition, however, no one really knows which products (incumbent and acquired) will thrive and which will linger on only as maintenance cows.

It's tempting to follow vendor drumbeats about promised "synergies." But always be wary of that particular marching bunny.  Mature software products almost never get usefully combined in the real world. You have to be particularly careful with Open Text here, because the company has a track record of generating more powerpoint than code in this regard.

Consider this speculation by Open Text CEO John Shackleton in a quarterly earnings call.  He was responding to an analyst query about the prospects for customers moving to a "single platform" for web content management in the wake of the company's acquisition of Web CMS / Portal vendor Vignette. Shackleton:

On the Web Content Management side what we are basically seeing is that the Vignette has the e-commerce very strong robust enterprise wide product. Where they had weaknesses, and one of the key concerns for customers was very difficult to customize, not user friendly. Whereas the web content product that we had, mainly the RedDot product easy user interface, easy to use, easy to customize.

So as we see putting the two together, we see some significant synergies in that area. We also see from the Vignette Portal product that that's going to help us in our social media product. So we are seeing some very interesting synergies that we hadn't been thinking about, that we can use that product with our social medial Livelink product.

My prediction for Open Text customers: this is not going to happen. RedDot and Vignette are built off completely different platforms and cannot be reasonably amalgamated in a productized way during our lifetimes. Sure, it's possible that RedDot and Vignette could come to share some trivial UI techniques, or perhaps offer some common optional modules for things like archiving -- but I really doubt you'll see much more.

To be clear, I'm not dismissing either product out of hand. Our Web CMS customer research points out the pros as well as cons to both of Open Text's Web CMS platforms. However, as a RedDot or Vignette licensee or prospective customer, you need to gauge Open Text's real commitment to each product as it stands today, and then watch carefully for actual development activity rather than vague pronouncements.

Similarly, the Vignette Portal and the (still-beta) Open Text Social Media platform are apples and oranges that make no more sense together than, say, Oracle Portal and SharePoint. Sure, you can connect the two -- if you must (and you have sufficient money, time, and ibuprofin). But why would you want to?

After any acquisition like this, avoid the synergizer bunny, and instead focus on the depth of ongoing vendor commitment to your platform of choice.