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Technology Stocks : Enterprise Informatics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elliot Puritz who wrote (3604)	5/13/1999 3:05:00 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13797

Open Text Denied Access To PC DOCS Data and Withdraws Bid WATERLOO, ONTARIO (May 13) BUSINESS WIRE -May 13, 1999--Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX)(TSE:OTC) announced today that despite signing a confidentiality agreement with PC DOCS (NASDAQ:DOCS)(TSE:DXX), it was unable to obtain access to any of the non-public information of PC DOCS that has already been provided to Hummingbird Communications Ltd (NASDAQ:HUMC)(TSE:HUM). As part of its agreement with Hummingbird, PC DOCS must enter into a confidentiality agreement with any competing bidder before providing that bidder with access to the non-public information provided to Hummingbird. On May 9, 1999, Open Text entered into a confidentiality agreement with PC DOCS, which put PC DOCS and its Board of Directors in the legal position of being able to provide Open Text with all non-public information previously provided to Hummingbird. Open Text has not been allowed access to undertake their due diligence which was a condition to the Open Text offer. Tom Jenkins, CEO of Open Text, stated: "Without access to PC DOCS information we are unable to properly assess the value of PC DOCS to Open Text Corporation. Therefore we are unable to properly assess PC DOCS value and we intend to withdraw our bid." About Open Text Corporation Open Text Corporation's software and services enable the world's largest companies to move "Toward HyperInnovation"(tm) by leveraging the global reach and openness of collaborative intranet, enterprise and extranet applications. Open Text(tm) has a worldwide installed base of 3 million users in 3,600 corporations. Open Text's dramatic growth has been fueled by the rapid market acceptance of its innovative collaborative knowledge management system, Livelink(R). The company has been named the growth leader by the Delphi Group and the market share leader by International Data Corporation. Livelink is a registered trademark and Open Text, HyperInnovation, Toward HyperInnovation and MyLivelink are trademarks of Open Text Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. -0- mb/bos* CONTACT: Open Text Corporation Thomas J. Hearne, (519) 888-7111 Chief Financial Officer KEYWORD: INTERNATIONAL CANADA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMED COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS Today's News On The Net - Business Wire's full file on the Internet with Hyperlinks to your home page. URL: businesswire.com * end of story * =============================================================== : Hummingbird bids $305 million cash for PC Docs TORONTO, May 13, 1999 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) -- Hummingbird Communications Ltd. has made a $305-million counter-bid for PC Docs Group International Inc., topping the offer from Open Text Corp. of Waterloo, Ont. The board of Toronto-based PC Docs, a document management company, said today it will support Hummingbird's bid for all of the common shares of PC Docs at a price of $11 a share. The offer tops Open Text's $8.50-a-share bid, made April 29 after Hummingbird had made an all-shares offer of one Hummingbird share for each parcel of three PC Docs shares. On the Toronto stock market Wednesday, PC Docs shares closed at $9.25 each. Hummingbird shares closed at $23, Open Text shares at $49.50 . Open Text initially went after PC Docs last December. Since then there have been counter-moves by the PC Docs board, Solution 6 Holdings of Australia and by Hummingbird. PC Docs said in a release that shareholders with 16 per cent of the common shares have signed irrevocable agreements to tender their shares to Hummingbird. PC Docs would become an operating division of Hummingbird. Rubin Osten would become vice-chairman of Hummingbird and keep his position as president of PC Docs. The bid is conditional upon, among other things, two-thirds of the outstanding common shares of PC Docs being tendered by May 19. Hummingbird Communications specializes in the development of enterprise software solutions, including network connectivity and business intelligence products. Based in Toronto, it has offices throughout Canada and the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Mexico. PC Docs Group and its subsidiaries, PC Docs/Fulcrum, CMS/Data Corp. and CompInfo Inc., develop, market and support object-oriented client-server and Internet document management systems. Copyright (c) 1999 The Canadian Press (CP), All rights reserved. -0- * end of story *

To: Elliot Puritz who wrote (3604)	5/13/1999 3:59:00 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13797

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.