Open Text added another piece to its broadening
enterprise content management (ECM) puzzle when it agreed to acquire Artesia
Technologies for an undisclosed sum.
Open Text of Waterloo, Ontario, described the transaction close as “imminent”
in a statement. Privately held Artesia of Rockville, Md., specializes in
managing digital assets, one of the many components experts believe is
necessary to make a complete ECM platform.
Open Text spokesman Rich Maganini, who said his employer will retain the
Artesia office in Rockville, noted the purchase will go
a long way toward helping the company improve its ability to offer content
management and collaboration for all kinds of media.
As a leader in the so-called digital asset management (DAM) space, Artesia
has more than 120 global customers Open Text can cater to, including HBO,
DreamWorks and several government agencies, Maganini told
internetnews.com.
Artesia applications drive content reuse and collaboration for digital media
content; control over and reuse of the digital media elements used in
marketing campaigns; and enhance content management and collaboration by
extending search, retrieval, viewing and analysis to digital media content
and its metadata.
Open Text will integrate these applications to fill in its LiveLink ECM
platform, which it fleshed out earlier this year by acquiring
e-mail archiving heavyweight Ixos Software for $250 million.
Analysts say rich media comprises a large and increasing portion of the
intellectual capital. Artesia’s software should help Open Text better serve
companies challenged by compliance requirements, including Sarbanes-Oxley,
SEC17a-4 and HIPAA.
In the content and document management market, Open Text ranks fourth behind
IBM, FileNet and Documentum/EMC, posting revenues of $80 million in 2003,
according to Gartner. The research company said the total market will top
$1.7 billion by 2008, due in large part to the growth of unstructured data,
such as e-mail files and audio and video clips.
“Most of the information that exists in organizations is unstructured, and
there is an ever-growing imperative to manage this unstructured content,”
said Tom Eid, principal analyst for Gartner. “Over the past two years, there
has been greater acceptance of an integrated content and document management
suite, and many content and document management vendors are now providing
focused solutions.”
EMC created a stir in the ECM space earlier this year by acquiring
Documentum for $1.7 billion. The storage systems vendor is looking to manage
content throughout every step of its lifecycle, which promises to be a
lucrative market in light of the government regulations.
Open Text Nabs Artesia for Asset Management
