Documentum Buys Bulldog

Enterprise content management software vendor Documentum Inc. is looking to make a move into digital asset management with the acquisition of the privately held Bulldog Group.

Terms of the acquisition, which was announced late Monday, were not disclosed.

Bulldogs software is used to manage multimedia content, such as video and audio, in addition to image or text documents. With the acquisition Documentum plans to integrate that technology with its own content management products so that organizations will have one management system for all types of content—documents, Web and multimedia, officials said.

Documentum will sell, service and support Bulldogs software through its worldwide channel, then will introduce four new enterprise content management offerings starting in the first quarter of 2002.

Those four offerings include Rich Media Server, a product designed to enable current Documentum customers to marry rich media with content already managed by the Documentum ECM platform and with applications built on the Documentum platform. The Rich Media Server will work with all Documentum editions, including Web Content Management, Portal Content Management and Compliance Editions, officials said.

A second offering, the Media-Enabled Web Content Management Edition, will extend Documentums Web Content Management capabilities to include Digital Asset Management, enabling companies to bring together the management of all multimedia and image-rich Web site content.

The Marketing Content Management Edition will be used by marketing organizations to organize, manage and publish marketing content and assets. It will offer capabilities such as brand management, collaboration and process automation for integrated management of all marketing assets and will integrate with marketing automation tools for personalized marketing campaigns.

Lastly, the Digital Asset Management Edition will be targeted toward media organizations that produce and distribute broadcast-quality digital assets. It will allow them to manage, package, distribute and repurpose all rich media assets. Documentum plans to further integrate the deep digital asset management capabilities of the Bulldog technology into its platform, enabling rich media to be part of all content-rich applications, company officials said.

Documentum, based in Pleasanton, Calif., will also establish a Canadian headquarters at Bulldogs former headquarters in Toronto.