Filenet Gets Acquired : One More Knock !!

Filenet gets acquired. The US$1.6 Billion deal, is said to be IBM’s biggest in three years and fourth-largest to date. It is the latest in a string of acquisitions to boost software sales, the most profitable of IBM's three main product lines. I wrote atleast two months back about the likelihood of Filenet getting acquired. Filenet is a good match for at least two other majors – HP & Oracle. Earlier rumors suggested that Oracle could be an interested player to buy Filenet out.

This deal is in a way a natural choice for IBM, which can now push consulting and integration services to companies that buy FileNet's software used to store, sort and manage information such as text, graphics, video and audio files across enterprise. Filenet today has enhanced document management capabilities and had always claimed a pioneer status for its BPM offerings as well. For Filenet, under increasing competition from the likes of EMC & IBM, this is a welcome acquisition. For IBM, this is not a technology acquisition play but a customer/marketshare acquisition play – it has most of this technology already in place through its content manager system. Filenet’s customer base is very high –particularly in the BFSI, Healthcare & Government sectors – all growing sectors and one where substantial investments happen. This may give IBM an exalted status of being the market leader. This is now going to bring into shaper focus the competition between the major players in the ECM/WCM space. Once can expect more action centered on acquisition by the majors – Oracle, HP, EMC & may be Microsoft( actually it has a different approach in terms of the product play than rest of the players – but ironically, in my view, if anybody they must be acquiring the likes of filenet – if not for anything else atleast for the customer base! And gain a firmer foothold). Almost all players in the ECM/WCM space may now be looking at merger/exit strategies that may include the well known players like Vignette, Interwoven, Stellant etc.. besides BEA. Expect more action in the enterprise space in the coming weeks. Like all posts in this blogs, these are completely my private views - want to emphasise given that I regularly interact/work with almost all the companies mentioned herein quite closely.