EMC buys content management vendor Documentum for $1.7B

Computerworld - Storage vendor EMC Corp. is acquiring enterprise content management vendor Documentum Inc. in a $1.7 billion stock transaction that will bring together two major players in their individual market segments.
In an announcement today, Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said the deal will make it easier for customers to store and retrieve their unstructured data through an integrated software and hardware package.
"We believe Documentum's rich software development talent, its management strength and depth, its top-notch sales, marketing and services expertise in content management, and its blue-chip customer base will add significant strategic value as EMC continues to evolve," Joe Tucci, EMC's president and CEO, said in a statement.
The move is another step in a continuing wave of consolidation in the content management market as vendors come together to increase their offerings to customers. In August, content management vendor Open Text Corp. in Waterloo, Ontario, announced the acquisition of German Web content management software vendor Gauss Interprise AG, while Stellent Inc. bought digital asset management software vendor Ancept Inc. of Minneapolis.
EMC, which offers a full line of storage systems and software, will now be able to match its products in-house with Documentum content management applications that rely heavily on storage capabilities.
A user of both EMC and Documentum, Robert Terdeman, vice president and chief technical officer at Rogers Medical Intelligence Solutions of New York, said the deal is great for customers. "I can't see any downside at all," he said.
He said his company has been using EMC's Centera content-addressed storage product, which relies on Documentum software, and has been pleased with the results. What this acquisition does, he said, is advance Documentum in the enterprise by giving it broader appeal. "It also repositions EMC into the world of really managing information, as opposed to managing data," Terdeman said.
"It looks like a very sensible combination," said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at Patricia Seybold Group Inc. in Boston. For customers, an increasing problem has been organizing, finding and using company information. For many companies, those problems will be easier to fix using a single-source vendor.
Overall, the combination of the two companies will likely shake up the marketplace, O'Kelly said. "This significantly changes the competitive landscape for enterprise content management."
Robert Markham, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said the deal is evidence that "enterprise content management and storage need to be thought of in the same breath."
He called the deal an offensive move by EMC into the enterprise content management market, as well as a defensive