Don’t believe the hype

When rapid consolidation hits a software market, customers are typically bombarded with positive affirmations by suppliers. Two of the most common ones are, ‘Yes, we know consolidation is occurring, but unlike some we could mention our company intends to remain as an independent vendor,’ and, ‘Yes, we might have just acquired your supplier, but we intend to continue supporting its products.’

In the majority of cases, the customer later gets a nasty surprise: its supplier is snapped up by a hungry competitor soon afterwards, or support for the product in which they have invested so much time and effort is discontinued by an acquiring company.

The enterprise content management (ECM) market is no different and, as a result, this summer has been a tricky time for organisations looking to invest in technology that will help them capture, manage and store vital enterprise content.

Yes, a software salesman may tell you that the company has no intention of being acquired – but ultimately, that is a purely financial decision made by the board and company shareholders, based on what will reap the best possible returns for them.

And yes, you may be told that an acquiring company will continue to support your product, but consider this: ECM software is based on proprietary repositories. It costs a software company a great deal of money and effort to support multiple repositories that don’t interoperate, and while they may make the right noises about commitment to your product in the short-term, the long-term outlook may not be so positive. Just ask any IT director that bought a relational database management system (RDBMS) in the late 1980s or early 1990s: many of them went on to see their vendor acquired by another supplier, who allowed the product to languish for several years before quietly axing it.

This summer, announcements of ECM acquisitions have come thick and fast. If you’ve been affected, or have an opinion to share on the future of the ECM market, we’d love to hear from you. As usual, you can contact me at jtwentyman@ark-group.com.

Jessica Twentyman

Consulting editor

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