Sun Microsystems is ratcheting up its partnership with Interwoven by agreeing to resell the company’s enterprise content management software.
The Santa Clara, Calif., systems vendor will offer Interwoven’s whole Java-based product portfolio, which works with Sun’s Java Enterprise System software, Sun Fire enterprise servers and StorEdge products.
Interwoven makes TeamSite, a platform for corralling all corporate rich media, documents, application code and Web content. The company also makes OpenDeploy content distribution software and MetaTagger, a content search and classification tool.
Interwoven has been a Sun iForce partner for years. Because of Interwoven’s Java code base, the companies are able to use Interwoven’s suites with just about any software stack and hardware from Sun.
For example, Interwoven’s content provisioning collaborative document management and Web content management, software work with Sun Java Enterprise System Portal Server.
Chris Wood, CTO of Sun’s data management practice, said in a statement that in one likely scenario, Sun will entice customers to use content services through integration with Sun’s identity management and storage products.
Calling the deal a validation of Interwoven’s software, Steve Pattison, vice president of strategic alliances at Interwoven, said the deal will enable Sun to round out its service-oriented architecture
“I think Sun recognized that customers would like to procure the full stack from a single vendor so we took the relationship to the next level to accommodate that,” Pattison said.
The pact, which calls for the two companies to create sales and marketing activities, should also grant Sun access to more customers. Interwoven sells to Ford, General Motors, Jones Day, Motorola and Yamaha, among others.
The deal is another indication that customers are asking for software to corral their data from its creation until its destruction.
Content management software has gotten quite a boost since stringent government regulations were created to curb accounting improprieties.
Compliance rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA dictate how long a corporation or organization must keep records on clients.
With regs as the catalyst, companies — especially storage vendors — who didn’t originally offer software to manage content began hitting up companies to license or resell the applications.
Interwoven, FileNet and Hummingbird have benefited from such needs. In Documentum’s case, EMC came calling
with a $1.7 billion acquisition to pad its information lifecycle management portfolio.
Sun is trying to offer a broader array of products and services to show customers it sells more than just servers and enterprise infrastructure software.
To reflect that, Sun has been on an acquisition tear of late, acquiring NAS assets from Procom, software maker Tarantella, storage company StorageTek and integration player SeeBeyond since the beginning of 2005.
Sun to Resell Interwoven’s Software
