Open Text Corporation

Open Text Corporation

File:OpenText Corp.png
Type	Public (NASDAQ: OTEX; TSX: OTC)
Founded	1991
Founder(s)	Tim Bray, Gaston Gonnet, Frank Tompa
Headquarters	Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Key people	John Shackleton, CEO Tom Jenkins, Chairman
Industry	Computer software
Products	Content management solutions
Revenue	▲ US$785.7 million (FY 2009)
Net income	▲ US$56.9 million (FY 2009)
Employees	3,500 (2009)
Website	www.opentext.com

Open Text Corporation (TSX: OTC NASDAQ: OTEX) is a Canadian high-tech company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It produces and distributes computer software applications designed to enable enterprise content management solutions for large corporate and government systems. Its flagship offering is the Open Text ECM Suite supported by Open Text Content Services. This suite provides extensive ECM functionality for managing content and integrating it with business systems from Microsoft, Oracle Corporation and SAP. Open Text employs approximately 3,500 people worldwide. It is a publicly traded corporation. Open Text is now the largest Canadian-based software-centric company.

History

The company, which was incorporated in 1991, originated from a project at the University of Waterloo to create an electronic Oxford English Dictionary — an undertaking that required developing search technologies that could be used to quickly index and retrieve information. The search technology developed for this project, which incorporated full-text indexing and string-search technology, was recognized as being useful for other electronic applications.

With the growing importance of the Internet, the company grew as organizations found they needed to index and search their existing and growing stores of electronic information. In 1994 Open Text began hosting its Open Text 4 search engine on the World Wide Web, competing directly with the AltaVista Web search engine. In 1995, Open Text provided the search technology used by Yahoo! as part of its Web index.

In 1995, Open Text purchased Odesta, producer of Livelink, an electronic document management system. This system was later converted to a Web-based system. In that same year Open Text shipped its first Web-based product, Latitude Web Server (later renamed Livelink Web Server), which gave Yahoo! the capability of searching every word on every Web page. It also co-developed with SAP ArchiveLink and the first standard ArchiveLink product for SAP.

In 1996 Open Text launched its initial public offering of 4.6 million shares raising $61 million. In September 2002 Open Text bought Centrinity and its FirstClass groupware for CA$19 million. Open Text completed several corporate acquisitions in 2002 and 2003, the largest of which was its acquisition of IXOS in October 2003. In 2004 Open Text acquired the digital asset management vendor Artesia Technologies.

By acquiring Hummingbird Ltd. in 2006, Open Text added several more businesses to its portfolio, including Hummingbird Connectivity and RedDot Solutions Inc.

On October 31, 2008, Open Text acquired Captaris and Captaris Document Technologies (CDT).

On April 8, 2009, Open Text announced that it had acquired Vizible Corporation, the makers of a digital media interface solution.

On May 6, 2009 Open Text announced an agreement to acquire Vignette Corporation, another ECM software company, for $310 million. On July 21, 2009 Open Text Corporation completed its acquisition of Vignette Corporation.

Offerings

Open Text is an independent software vendor which sells software licenses including support and maintenance. To help customers and partners in deploying and run the software, Open Text offers worldwide consulting services, software training and individual support packages.

Open Text ECM Suite

The Open Text ECM Suite integrates multiple technologies for document management, records management, web content management, digital asset management, email management and information lifecycle management. Other components include electronic discovery, document capture, document imaging and digital faxing solutions. The suite provides functions for team collaboration, forums, blogs, wikis, and real-time instant messaging and collaboration. These functions are connected through business process management tools to each other and to other business applications and processes.

The Open Text ECM Suite is based on a services-oriented architecture provided by Open Text Content Services. These services form the basis of a content management framework and take a repository-agnostic approach to ECM. Open Text Content Services include the following elements:

• Open Text Enterprise Connect: provides customizable views of business content and makes it accessible through desktop applications.
• Open Text Enterprise Process Services: a set of business process services to help organizations to automate the use of business content.
• Open Text Enterprise Library Services: provides a central repository to help with the enforcement and management of retention schedules, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance policies.

Applications for Microsoft, Oracle, SAP

Open Text offers multiple applications that extend the functionality of major business applications through partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. These applications allow companies and government agencies to use content to increase productivity, improve process efficiencies and ensure adherence with established archiving and records management policies and to manage information retention and compliance mandates.

Vertical, Horizontal Applications

Open Text offers content management applications for specific industries and business functions. These applications are built using Open Text ECM Suite technologies to address the requirements of a particular industry such as energy or pharmaceutical or particular business requirements such as human relations or accounts payable. As completed solutions, these applications reduce implementation and custom development costs. Open Text offers applications for 15 industries and 12 business functions.

Web Solutions

Open Text offers a set of Web solutions to manage and optimize Web-based content in order to establish intranets, extranets and external websites. This Web content management system is integrated with the Open Text ECM Suite. More than 2,600 companies are using Open Text Web solutions.

Digital Media Solutions

Open Text Digital Media solutions provide organizations with a centralized management resource for digital media files and underlying metadata. These solutions provide discovery, access, editing, sharing, reuse, distribution, and archiving of rich media assets. The software can be adapted to work with an existing workflow or content can be accessed using standard browsers or desktop applications. In April 2008, Open Text announced that it was selected by Siemens IT Solutions and Services as an essential technology component of the BBC's Digital Media Initiative (DMI) which includes the BBC iPlayer.

Competitors

Some of Open Text's key competitors in the enterprise content management market include: IBM's FileNet and EMC Corporation's Documentum.

See also

• Tim Bray - a co-founder of Open Text Corporation
• Gaston Gonnet - co-founder of Open Text Corporation, Professor of Computer Science at the ETH Zürich
• Open Text Communications Solutions Group (FirstClass)
• Open Text Web Solutions Group (RedDot)
• Open Text Fax Server RightFax Support RightFax

External links

• OpenText.com Official website