EMC to Buy Documentum

EMC Corp. will acquire Documentum Inc. for approximately $1.7 billion, officials announced Tuesday.

After two years of buying startups, todays deal is EMCs second billion-dollar acknowledgement to users in three months that EMCs own software cant do it all. Its the biggest acquisition in EMCs history, topping the $1.3 billion spent on Legato Systems Inc., officials noted.

Documentum makes enterprise software for content management. “Customers will be able to better align their content with their information infrastructure based on its value over time,” officials said in a statement released this morning. The companies are already partners for EMCs object-based storage technology, Centera, which launched in April 2002.

Documentum has built itself through acquisition into one of the top players in the enterprise content management software space. In the past year and a half, the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company has acquired the Bulldog Group for digital asset management, eRoom Technology Inc. for team collaboration and TrueArc Corp. for electronic records management. Documentum also offers technology for document and Web content management.

Documentum stockholders will get 2.175 shares of EMC stock for each share of Documentum stock, with the deal slated to complete in the first calendar quarter of 2004, officials said. EMC will operate Documentum as a software division led by current CEO Dave DeWalt.

Past large EMC acquisitions included the purchase of Conley Corp. for an undisclosed sum in 1998; Softworks Inc. for $192 million in December 1999; Data General Corp. for $1.1 billion in 2000; CrosStor Software Inc. for $300 million in 2000; and Terascape Software Inc. for $50 million, also in 2000.

For the third quarter of 2003, Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC has approximately $1.51 billion in revenue; full results will be announced Thursday, officials added.

Editors note: This story has been updated to include additional information about Documentums past acquisitions.