Thomas Kas Thomas

EMC plus Fatwire - the DAM perspective

19-Feb-2010

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, Documentum Digital Asset Manager

The other shoe has finally dropped in the EMC-FatWire saga. EMC announced in will acquire a (minority) stake in Mineola, NY-based FatWire, who will remain one of few privately held pure-play WCM vendors in the over-$20 million-per-year end of the market (Ektron being the only other private WCM vendor roughly comparable to FatWire in headcount and revenue).

Under the strategic partnership between EMC and FatWire (which includes reciprocal reseller agreements, and joint efforts around innovation, sales, marketing and services activities), EMC will resell FatWire's WCM and FatWire will resell EMC's digital asset management software (including Documentum Media WorkSpace and Documentum Content Transformation Services) as its DAM offering.

What does it mean if you're a FatWire customer? It'll mean you have the opportunity to buy a lightweight, Flex-based DAM offering (similar in capabilities to Adobe Bridge and Version Cue) that can run atop the Documentum repository, but whose ability to run atop the FatWire repository infrastructure is not well proven.

I see the deal as giving FatWire a leg-up in selling DAM solutions as part of its overall set of WCM capabilities in new-business deals against Day Software (an important competitor in North American business), although the integration between DAM and WCM is much smoother in Day's offering and will likely remain that way for the forseeable future. 

To get a better handle on these technologies, you'll of course want to consult our Web CMS Research, which covers the FatWire and Documentum offerings in depth. And if your needs include DAM, you'll want to consult our Digital Media and Asset Management Research as well.

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