IBM defends ECM leadership

Sarah Kittmer, Senior Analyst

IBM, the market leader in enterprise content management (ECM), announced its acquisition of leading enterprise content integration (ECI) provider Venetica for an undisclosed sum on 26 August 2004. This throws the cat amongst the pigeons for a number of ECM vendors for whom Venetica's technology has been the sole foundation of an increasingly important content integration strategy. Sarah Kittmer says this is a great deal for IBM and speculates on the ramifications for other ECM vendors.

Venetica - reducing the cost of adding CM technology

The core CM vendors' proposition is to offer specialised repositories that can handle the differing sizes and formats of content better than relational databases - once in use the cost and effort involved in moving content from such specialised repositories is prohibitive. So vendors are finding that selling new CM technology to clients with existing incumbents in place is only really possible with ECI technology, which leaves existing content where it is, and allows newly implemented technology to manage it as if it was in its own repository. Venetica has been the market leader in the ECI space for a number of years. Many ECM vendors, including IBM, offer it on an OEM basis as a means of making themselves attractive to customers with CM technology in place from other players.

Existing ECM vendors under threat

This acquisition strengthens IBM's domination of the CM market. Winning business in this space is increasingly dependent on being able to integrate with content from a variety of sources, and it is highly unlikely that Venetica will continue to be available outside of IBM. Venetica previously OEM'd its technology to a number of the leading ECM vendors, including FileNet, Stellent and Interwoven. There is a very real prospect of these arrangements coming to a close.

Even if IBM decides that they are of interest from a revenue perspective, FileNet et al will not be enthusiastic about entering into an ongoing partnership with IBM, and will probably have to seek alternatives for offering ECI technology.

Great news for other ECI vendors

While Venetica was by far the leader in the space, there are other players who are likely to be much sought after in light of the gap that Venetica leaves, such as Context Media and Xythos. Venetica is not the first acquisition of an ECI vendor by an ECM vendor - Documentum acquired AskOnce earlier this year and has subsequently announced the availability of their content integration product based on the technology - and it will not be the last acquisition of this type.

Sarah works within Ovum's Information Management group, specialising in content management. She can be contacted directly on shk@ovum.com.