Stellent buy poses content questions

Oracle’s agreement to acquire Stellent will bolster the database giant’s enterprise content management (ECM) wares but the deal poses questions about product support and the future of other ECM firms.

Early this month, Oracle said it had signed a $440m acquisition of Stellent, an ECM veteran that counts Birmingham International Airport, the British Red Cross and Coca-Cola among customers. The move gives Oracle a respected firm in a sector where it has so far depended on relatively new home-grown products.

However, experts noted a potentially problematic disconnect between the images of sales-orientated Oracle and customer service-focused Stellent, with blogger and former Stellent employee Charlie Wood writing: “Oracle is Wall Street. Stellent is Fargo.”

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an ECM consultant at services firm Infosys, wrote that Stellent “embodies Minnesota nice, mid-Western congeniality [whereas] Oracle can be brutal.”

Also, Oracle will now have to accommodate its home-grown Content Database and Records Database offerings alongside Stellent’s broader product set. Stellent users that integrate ECM with Microsoft, SAP and IBM middleware could also be concerned.

Some watchers expressed surprise that Oracle had bought Stellent, given that IBM and EMC paid much larger sums for FileNet and Documentum respectively.

“It was a bit curious that Oracle opted for Stellent [rather than] someone with a larger footprint,” wrote Ralph Gammon, publisher of the Document Imaging Report. “Open Text seemed like the most logical choice.”

However, Gammon noted that Stellent’s Optika document imaging capabilities and integration with Oracle’s JD Edwards enterprise applications would be attractive.
The knock-on effect of the deal may be to hasten the acquisition of remaining ECM-focused companies such as Vignette, Interwoven and Open Text, rumoured to be a target for SAP.

Sue Clarke of analyst Butler Group said that “if SAP wishes to regain the initiative over Oracle it needs to become a major ECM player, which can only be achieved through acquisition”.

However, Pelz-Sharpe said SAP may be unwilling to open the “Pandora’s box” of technologies Open Text acquired through its own buying spree.
Interwoven said ECM mergers “meant a lot of heavy lifting for the vendors and the customers” and noted that “consolidation itself does not provide a better solution for the customer”.

Open Text declined to comment.