Open Text Corp. continued its recent acquisition spree Wednesday, with the acquisition of portal vendor Corechange Inc. for $4.2 million in cash.
The move demonstrated continuing consolidation in the content management, portal and collaboration software spaces and was Open Texts third acquisition in the past four months.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Open Text completed the acquisition of messaging software developer Centrinity Inc. in November and acquired Eloquent Inc. which develops collaborative add-ons for sales force automation applications, in January.
The acquisition of Boston-based Corechange will give Open Text Corechanges Coreport portal software framework for deploying intranet and extranet portals.
Open Text plans to use Coreport to enhance its Liveline Unite and Doorway products, which are currently used to bring content together for collaboration teams, said company officials. The Livelink/Coreport combination will allow Open Text to offer what the company calls “application integration at the point of access.” It will provide collaborative interaction with any enterprise application, officials said.
Coreport customers will gain integration with Open Texts collaboration, knowledge management and content management applications, according to Corechange officials.
In other acquisition news this week, Overture Services Inc., just one week after buying AltaVista Co.s Web search business, added to its search capabilities with the acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer [FAST] Inc.s Internet business unit.
Under the terms of the agreement, Overture will acquire the FAST Web search technology for $70 million in cash, as well as performance-based cash incentive payments for up to $30 million over three years.
For that, Pasadena, Calif.-based Overture gets FAST Web Search, AlltheWeb.com, and FAST PartnerSite plus related intellectual property rights, as well as data centers and equipment in Sacramento, Calif., and London. The FAST Internet business unit personnel will become Overture employees.
The agreement is expected to be completed by April. FAST, an Oslo, Norway-based company with U.S. offices in Wellesley, Mass., and Foster City, Calif., will now focus exclusively on the enterprise search business with its FAST Data Search product.
Lastly, on Wednesday, Atlanta-based Witness Systems Inc. announced an all-cash offer for Eyretel, a UK company which provides compliance and recording software for customer contact centers. Witness plans to add the products to its own contact center performance management and e-learning software products.
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