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OpenText acquires HP TeamSite

Yesterday, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendor OpenText announced an agreement to acquire HP TeamSite, a web content management (WCM) platform, previously known as Interwoven TeamSite and Autonomy TeamSite. As part of this acquisition, OpenText also acquires other customer experience tools: HP MediaBin (digital asset management solution), HP Qfiniti (contact center management tool), HP Explore (analytics), HP Aurasma (augmented reality tool), and HP Optimost (A/B testing). The transaction purchase price is quoted to be approximately $170 million.

opentext-hp-teamsite

In the WCM space, acquisitions are common — over one-third of all leading WCM platforms are the result of previous acquisitions. The telltale sign of the OpenText + HP TeamSite acquisition came late in 2015 when HP made the decision to reside the Interwoven/Autonomy assets under HP Inc and not HP Enterprise (451  subscription required, h/t Matt Mullen).

“Why pair it with printers? In our view at DCG, we assumed this meant they’d be selling it off as soon as they could find a buyer. It’s been pretty public knowledge that HP has had buyer’s remorse from the Interwoven acquisition for quite some time,” said our CEO, Scott Liewehr, in an interview with TechCrunch about the acquisition.

For a long time Interwoven TeamSite was one of the leading content management solutions, typically considered alongside Oracle/Stellent, Vignette and RedDot. In fairness, it was the first true enterprise WCM system, and in many ways Interwoven was the firm that established this market. In their prime, Interwoven sales executives refused to engage in pre-sales conversations with prospects that didn’t disclose their CMS procurement budgets outright. Interwoven only targeted large organizations that could reliably afford top-of-the range license and maintenance fees.

Interwoven was a huge dot.com IPO success. It went public on the NASDAQ in Oct 1999 and raised what was at the time the staggering sum of $55m. Bear in mind that at the time of the flotation it was running at a loss and only had revenue of around $5m.  In 2009, Interwoven was bought by Autonomy for $775m but didn’t thrive under Autonomy’s ownership. In 2011, Autonomy (including Interwoven TeamSite as part of the deal) was sold to HP in probably the most controversial deal in software history. All in all, past M&As involving Interwoven TeamSite are full of overpriced valuations, but yesterday’s valuation of around 2x revenue seems fair for a divestment from HP Inc.

If you are a current TeamSite customer, you might be wondering what will happen to the numerous WCM and digital asset management (DAM) products post-acquisition. Following this acquisition, OpenText will own three WCM products: OpenText Web Experience Management (formerly Vignette), OpenText WebSite Management (formerly RedDot), and now TeamSite; plus two DAM products: HP MediaBin and OpenText Media Management (formerly Artesia). That’s a lot of product overlap. However, based on OpenText’s track record of acquisitions, it is reasonable to expect that these products will continue on their separate roadmaps, offering OpenText healthy maintenance revenue and cross-sell opportunities. The value in this acquisition for OpenText is not in product synergies, but in access to a new customer base of large, complex organizations that could benefit from other aspects of their Enterprise Information Management offering.

As for HP (both of them), we believe they are now officially out of the customer experience management business as we know it.


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