How CM acquisitions are set to change

How CM acquisitions are set to change "The top end of the content management market has had a very turbulent summer with repeated acquisitions all aimed at expanding product range. Interwoven is acquiring iManage to add document management and collaboration, Open Text has announced its intentions to acquire Gauss to add document management and web content management, and in the latest move this week Vignette announced the acquisition of Intraspect to add collaboration.
The one thing that all these developments have in common is that they are primarily technology acquisitions intended to broaden the offering from the acquiring organisation. This is still a domain where the vendors are fighting for the ultimate goal of a fully comprehensive Enterprise Content Management suite. It is also one where the big vendors are getting bigger and squeezing out the smaller organisations.
However, acquisitions of software technology often fail to deliver because of the difficulties of effective integration. The increasing use of Java platforms certainly makes the technical problems easier but the cultural issues remain. Major mergers like that of Interwoven and iManage make sense at a high level, but both organisations will have to change significantly to create an organisation that can successfully operate over the whole technology spectrum that they now offer.
While the components of the expanded technology are all logically related, they require significantly different mindsets to be implemented effectively since they address different sections of an organisation. This is not a challenge that is easy to meet."

Via Analyst Views