IBM announces they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire FileNET.
Hat tip to Jesse Wilkins on the Records Management Listserv. I had not even had a chance to look at the RSS feed I watch and his email hit my inbox.
Anyway, I knew FileNET was ripe for being acquired and have said as much for the last year or so. So I was right! Where I missed the mark was that I thought Oracle or Sun Microsystems would be the one acquiring FileNET.
So, what does this mean to the ECM marketplace and will this move by IBM make ECM better?
Well, on the first question, here is the tier one-tier two ECM leader board as I currently see it:
- IBM
- Microsoft
- EMC (Documentum) Oops - left them off earlier today. Thanks for the heads up Mark
- Oracle
FileNET- Open Text
Hummingbird- Stellent
- Interwoven (may or may not belong on this list)
- Vingette (may or may not belong on this list)
The marketplace continues to shrink and I think either Stellent or Interwoven are next to get swallowed up although I really cannot think of a good reason why.
As far as the second question, here is an excerpt from the press release:
“Following completion of the acquisition, IBM intends to:
- Combine FileNet’s operations with IBM’s Content Management business in the Information Management unit led by General Manager Ambuj Goyal.
- Preserve and enhance customer investments in both FileNet and IBM Content Management platforms, leveraging IBM’s market-leading Information Integration technology to develop broader ECM solutions.
- Integrate IBM’s BPM and Service Oriented Architecture technologies with the FileNet platform.
- Train IBM and FileNet partner and services teams on both IBM and FileNet technology.
Through this acquisition, the thousands of customers using IBM and FileNet solutions will now have a more powerful base of industry-leading content management products to build upon as they explore next-generation information management solutions.”
Right now the IBM ECM offering is still many moving pieces that have been picked up by acquisition and still have not been completely absorbed or integrated into a cohesive single architecture. Adding FileNET to this mix will only prolong this effort and make thing more complex thereby adding to the implementation costs for customers.
Bottom line: I do not think this will make ECM better for FileNET customers and the value to IBM customers is questionable.
Russ,
I think that there is a good chance that this will end up being a great opportunity for IBM/FileNet customers. Although it may require some serious courage to follow it through.
FileNet gives IBM enough of a footprint in many organizations to aim for a wholesale re-engineering effort by pulling BPM/SOA/ECM together. This could allow organizations to solve a range of problems that they had otherwise been addressing a chunk at a time.
With FileNet and other recent acquisitions, IBM has built a platform for massive systems re-engineering. If you want to see how I envision it, take a look at: http://improving-nao.blogspot.com/2006/08/ibm-platform-for-massive-systems-re.html
As for the remaining guys on the ECM list… I’m an employee of Vignette (http://vignette.com) and I haven’t heard a thing - no surprise there though!. The new CEO is dynamic and is pushing change (which the org badly needs). I came in from the acquisition of Tower Technology, which gave them their document imaging / doc management/ workflow/ records management capabilities. Integration of the products with the traditional Vignette suite looks great. Who knows what happens next!?
Good luck on the guessing game!
Phil
Phil,
Thanks for the comments.
Read your post and you make some interesting points. I have some insight into how the pilot of the IBM content management stack including records management went for the Air Force recently
and I base some of my observations of how painful any additional gulping down of another set of technologies might be.
It should be interesting to see how this shapes up. Maybe I will be surprised.
I predict that Oracle may acquired Open Text in the first half of next year.
Cheers