Open Text Moves into European ASP Market

Open Text Corporation and KPNQwest this week announced a joint services agreement at the ASP Summit Conference in London that will place Open Text in the European ASP space.

The agreement between provider of collaborative intranet, extranet and e-business applications Open Text Corporation and pan-European data-communications provider KPNQwest offers Open Text’s Livelink software through KPNQwest’s(KQIP) macro-capacity fiber-optic network and European Cybercenters.

When asked why Europe, Dan Latendre, vice president product marketing, told ASP-News, “This is the first deal we struck. We are talking with two other telecos to do this in North America and hope to make that announcement by third quarter of this year.”

Open Text Corp. (OTEX) introduced Livelink, a scaleable platform with fully Web-based and open-architected servers to ensure rapid deployment and easy access to its full functionality through a standard Web browser, two years ago.

“The idea was right but the time wasn’t,” said Latendre. “Now the network infrastructure is there and Web applications are more secure, and while analysts are saying the ASP market is for small and medium sized companies, we are seeing growth in the area of collaboration in terms of becoming a key applications. And that is where Livelink fits in.”

Latendre pointed out that the big question now revolves around security. “Once that is handled, it will be ‘Am I going to get the same performance if the application is hosted elsewhere?’,” he said. “Then, everyone will focus on an application’s integration ability.”