Open Text Corp. has added to its enterprise content management platform by acquisition once again, announcing plans to buy German Web content management software developer Gauss Interprise Wednesday.
The cash acquisition is valued at $11 million and is expected to close during the fourth calendar quarter.
The deal will add Gauss Web content management, and high-throughput business process management solutions as well as ERP connectors for IBM eSeries [AS/400] applications to Open Texts Livelink product for integrated content management and collaboration.
While Open Text has offered Web content management within Livelink for the past three years, the company has focused mainly on internal Web sites, not high-interactivity external sites such as Web retailers and publishers, which Gauss and other companies like Interwoven Corp. and Vignette Corp. have specialized in.
“Weve always focused on internal publishing inside companies and collaboration, not so much on the Web content management side,” said Tom Jenkins, CEO of Open Text.
Jenkins said the two companies have little cross-over in their customer bases, which should allow for a lot of cross-sell opportunities. Hamburg, Germany-based Gauss has more than 1,100 customers worldwide.
“Its a reminder of how large and how new our industry still is,” Jenkins said.
Open Text plans to demonstrate a client-side integration of its technology and Gausss at Open Texts Livelink Up customer conference in Orlando in November. Full server side integration likely wont happen until sometime next year, Jenkins said.
The acquisition is Open Texts fourth in the past year. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company previously acquired portal software vendor Corechange Inc. in February, salesforce collaboration software developer Eloquent Inc. in January and messaging software developer Centrinity Inc. last November.
“None of these deals are particularly earth-shattering, but theyve all made the Livelink suite broader,” Jenkins said.
