Elliot,
PC DOCS focus over the years was on electronic document management for professional services organizations. PC DOCS originally was pigeon holed in the legal DM vertical. I can assure you that they are not so any more. Their largest verticals are Prof Services, Manufacturing, Govt and growing in Finance.
The product line is pretty complete, originally focussed almost exclusively on electronic documents (as opposed to Altris early singular focus on images and then images / CAD) but now encompassing imaging and other document object types.
The latest releases of DOCS are similar to what most of the DM industry has gone to -- predominantely Microsoft based architectures (COM/DCOM, multi-tier operation, web via MS IIS/ASP). They have some interesting technology in clustering/fail over and load balancing for enterprise deployments. CyberDOCS, the web client, is an excellent platform to build web applications on.
PC DOCS arguably has the largest channel delivery capability (or perhaps FileNET does but not in DM) of any of the players at this point. 1,000,000 users across 5000 organizations.
They have had their share of stumbles but lots of cash in the bank saw them through, not to mention continually growing revenue.
Over a year ago they purchased Fulcrum Technologies, a full text search vendor similar to Verity (one or the other product is licensed on an OEM basis by virtually all DM players, probably including Altris) - but Fulcrum's real value is what they were working on in the Knowledge Management field. They have some very interesting technology as a result of that acquisition and its possible this (plus the big client base) was of real interest to Open Text.
It is my view that this market will see one of two types of players. Maybe three.
1. Small niche players in very special markets. I see Altris as only making it in this way and think focus on engineering would serve them well.
2. Consolidation of smaller and larger players to build big user communities and drive commoditization
3. Software houses that build complete application solutions out of the technology and market those solutions, not DM. DCTM is like this at present.
Just some quick thoughts...
PS: If the OTEX bid is dead, what will they do with the 200M (can't remember the number but its big) in cash they recently raised? Who's next? Or another bid?
THe big get bigger, the small will specialize or die. |
