Metastorm acquisition opens OpenText partners up to BPM

ECM specialist OpenText (NASDAQ:OTEX) has powered its move into the Business Process Management space with the news it has completed its acquisition of global BPM firm Metastorm.
The purchase is OpenText’s third major announcement in the last few months as it pursues relationships with the three largest enterprise software vendors – Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) and SAP (NYSE:SAP).
In October, OpenText acquired SAP partner StreamServe, followed by an agreement between Oracle and OpenText in November, whereby OpenText will create archiving, compliance and eDiscovery solutions based on Oracle technology.
The last piece of the strategy slots into place with the Metastorm deal, with the company’s BPM solutions integrating with the Microsoft environment. OpenText currently offers compliance and content lifecycle management solutions that help customers centralise the management of their Microsoft SharePoint sites across the enterprise. Now, it says, the combined companies can provide a mix of process and content management solutions.

“We want to be strong ECM vendor and that means building on our strong partnerships across the three main vendors,” explains Mike-Pryke Smith, strategic alliance manager at OpenText.
40 percent of OpenText’s current sales are via indirect sales. Pryke Smith says its channel partners should leverage the broader portfolio now available to them. He tells Channel Pro: “The value of the BPM market in 2009 was valued at $1.9bn worldwide and is growing 15 percent year on year. Channel partners can take advantage of that growth.”
Earlier this week OpentText CEO John Shackleton said: “The demands for these solutions are in major industries such as financial services and insurance, energy, government, life sciences and healthcare, and that’s where we see the opportunity.”
“We will help our channel partners create a new generation of process-based solutions, for which there is a significant demand,” says Pryke Smith, who adds that the firm has Microsoft, Oracle and SAP competencies as part of its partner programme, and Metastorm’s partners will be able to choose which one to focus on.