Autonomy to swallow up Interwoven... (updated)

..... but will it choke on it ?

Hopefully not.... UPDATE - see this CMSWatch post: What next for Interwoven?

Kas asks some good questions in this post, so I wont regurgitate it here - I note my comments to his posting though - A big part of Autonomy is its Virage 'rich media management' product offerings. To me this would seem to fit very nicely with Interwoven's MediaBin Digital Asset Management (DAM) offering. So if you can manage, and search rich media assets, what else do you need, yep a Web CMS so that you can publish them. So, while agree that Autonomy might not leap right pouring money into updating the rather ancient underpinnings of the Interwoven WCM line, hopefully it will 'do the right thing' and update it as part of a 'full lifecycle' digital asset / rich media product line up - which pretty much answers my own question at the bottom of the original post below - yep Autonomy may well become a fully blow ECM vendor.

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Since I heard about this early this morning, I have been trying to find time to do some analysis and blog on it, but to be honest Alan Pelz-Sharpe pretty much nails it (as per usual) with his commentary over at CMS Watch here: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1481-Autonomy-acquires-Interwoven---A-first-take

Some others I have chatted with today make the same point as Alan, that Interwoven's TeamSite has always been big in the legal sector, and thats a key 'discovery' market for Autonomy, so in some respects the deal makes sense. However in others it does not; e.g. Autonomy picked up Meridio last year, and there is considerable overlap with between their EDRM facilities and some of the features provided by Interwoven.

Sometimes Autonomy appears to be the British IBM - I am fairly sure it makes more money on its consulting and services revenue stream than it does on the licences for the IDOL platform, indeed Alan characterises it as a 'holding company'.

However with enterprise search, e-discovery, EDRM and now Web Content Management and Digital Asset Management solutions in its pocket, do we reqard Autonomy as one of the main ECM players, challenging EMC, IBM and OpenText ?

For sure it will be interesting to keep an eye on this......

Autonomy press release

Interwoven press release