Are acquisitions of Day, FatWire, Autonomy shrinking your shortlist?
When a vendor acquires another, there is always some amount of uncertainty since employees as well as customers become anxious about the platform's future. In the last few months, we have seen many acquisitions in the marketplaces we cover. Among the major ones, Adobe acquired Day, Oracle acquired FatWire and now HP has acquired Autonomy.
All the acquired vendors have reasonably long standing Web Content Management Products, among others. But because you never know how an acquisition turns out (case in point OpenText's RedDot acquisition), many prospective customers become hesitant to include those products on their shortlists. They raise concerns about products' future road map, support quality, pricing, and many other issues.
To be fair, all these products are certainly not going to die anytime soon. However, many of these fears are indeed genuine, and you should carry out additional due diligence when considering these products. It takes some time before clarity emerges.
In any case, there is no dearth of products in the Web Content Management marketplace. We cover more than 40 such vendors in our Web Content Management Report.
We also provide specific advise for these acquisitions, supplemented with additional guidance via phone or web meeting for our subscribers. In particular, please check:
- HP plus Autonomy equals Buyers Beware
- Customer perspective on Oracle acquiring FatWire
- A First look at Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (Subscribers only)
- Adobe To Acquire Day - First Take-ECM Perspective
We'll have some additional comments about the Autonomy acquisition shortly...