Oracle Plans To Buy Stellant : Sensible Move

Oracle plans to acquireStellant.Recently I wrote that more consolidation of ECM space appears plausible – that would be bringing together platform/infrastructure players, portal players, ECM players together. This was written based on Opentext buying Hummingbird and IBM offering to takeover Filenet. When the Filenet news came, I wrote that 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. John Newton, co-founder of Documentum and the main force behind Alfresco writes on IBM buying Filenet as signifying that consolidation is truly on its way. He also confirms my earlier view that clearly, the reason for these mergers is not for technology, but for market share and customer base. As he sees it with the level of overlapping technology in these systems, the problems inherent in consolidating the repositories must be outweighed by the desire to consolidate customers. This is a sensible acquisition seen from Oracle perspective. They are weak in the content management space While Vignette/Interwoven might have appeared to be more glamorous, this is really good for them. Actually, I see that Oracle is able to improve things when they buy products in spaces where they have not been there. This is quite similar to their Glog or Portal acquisition. Wherever they buy for marketshare - we may have to wait and watch the results. Existing customers of acquired product demand more. Too big a width may affect their bargaining power in large system integration deals - so it may make sense for them not to just roll up and bundle all these new products. After all the customer always want more choices.