CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

18 February 2011

Acquisitions

OpenText Completes Acquisition of BPM Leader Metastorm Inc.

OpenText said today it has completed its acquisition of global Business Process Management (BPM) leader Metastorm, adding complementary software solutions in the BPM market. Metastorm is a key addition to OpenText's Microsoft partner strategy and will help the company create a new generation of process improvement solutions that demand a combination of content and process management capabilities.

"With Metastorm, OpenText moves into the BPM market allowing customers to purchase leading solutions in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and BPM from a single vendor which ultimately helps them improve their business in the most comprehensive way," said John Shackleton, Chief Executive Officer at OpenText. "We see a lot of customer demand for solutions involving content and process improvement and Metastorm is the perfect fit, presenting a tremendous opportunity for OpenText."

Baltimore, Maryland-based Metastorm is known for its leadership in BPM, but also provides Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) software—all will play a role in OpenText's product plans. Just like BPM, Metastorm's BPA and EA capabilities are complementary to OpenText's and bring together comprehensive views of an organization—from the strategy and goals that drive the business, to the day-to-day systems, processes and people that run it, to the content needed to make the best business decisions.

Many processes involve content and thus require content management. With Metastorm, OpenText can now address any type of business process, whether the focus is content-centricity or process centricity. OpenText's strategy is to add to existing solutions with new, powerful case management solutions used in areas such as customer on-boarding or claims processing, where the effective delivery of knowledge and content are a critical part of the overall business process.

"The demands for these solutions are in major industries such as financial services and insurance, energy, government, life sciences and healthcare, and that's where we see the opportunity," said Shackleton. "Metastorm brings an experienced team of employees and a global footprint to help us deliver solutions worldwide."

Strategic Fit with Microsoft

A key strategic benefit of the acquisition is that Metastorm's BPM solutions integrate with the Microsoft environment and in particular with Microsoft SharePoint. OpenText is a leader today in providing ECM solutions that integrate with SharePoint and Microsoft Office. For SharePoint, OpenText offers compliance and content lifecycle management solutions that help customers centralize the management of their SharePoint sites across the enterprise. Together, the combined companies can provide a mix of process and content management solutions that integrate with Microsoft, continuing to add to OpenText's position as a leading Microsoft partner and a key provider of solutions that support and extend SharePoint.

Metastorm is the third major announcement in the last few months that shows OpenText is making major strides in its ecosystem strategy to build strong partner relationships with the three largest enterprise software vendors—Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. The goal is to deliver solutions that help customers manage content across of all their key enterprise systems. In October, OpenText acquired StreamServe, a provider of customer communications solutions and a major partner to SAP (http://www.opentext.com/2/global/press-release-details.html?id=2422). In November, Oracle and OpenText announced an agreement in which OpenText will create archiving, compliance and eDiscovery solutions for Oracle technology (http://www.opentext.com/2/global/press-release-details.html?id=2426).

To find out more, listen to an OpenText News Podcast about the acquisition released today.

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