Documentum acquires Bulldog and content technologies market converge
Consolidation and product convergence were on the cards by Paola Di Maio, 6 December 2001
Earlier this year, after carefully researching the distinctions among various classes of products, it became clear that Content Management
and Digital Assets Management were likely to converge (Conversations with
Artesia, Content-wire CM Newsletter, Issue 3 - 29 June 2001 )
The prediction was based on the (rather obvious) observation that content
management systems should be 'format independent', ie should be indifferent and
operate independently from the type of files where the content, ie the data, is stored.
This very simple notion is in fact, apparently, rather overlooked by systems
producers.
Last week Interwoven made a move and partnered with Artesia and a couple of
other players in the space, and yesterday Documentum formally announced acquiring Bulldog, a strong DAM player.
No financial details were disclosed, but some sources suggest the deal coule be worth around 10m Usd.
Bulldog according to Frost & Sullivan holds a 10% market share of the DAM sector, forecast to be worth $157m next year, rising to $2.6bn in 2007.
We spoke with David Gingell, VP Marketing Emea for Documentum to find out a
bit more
"Enterprise content management is a typically horizontal technology, but the
integration with a software company with a strong grip over the multimedia content is a clear move towards some kind of vertical technology integration"
Why Bulldog and not any other DAM player
"We have based our decision on a number of favourable conditions, including analysts validation that confirm the strength of the product and the market position of Bulldog. We cannot disclose the value of the transaction, because
they are a privately held company, but the are considered leaders in their segment.
The company is a complimentary fit in terms of technology, their product is
built around server based architecture and have very open api's, that make
it essential for ease of integration with various multimedia products like
virage and telestream for example.
We also feel that we have very compatible corporate cultures, encouraging teamwork and customer relationships.
How will Documentum benefit from the acquisition
In addition to their strong product and technical expertise, Bulldog could
represent an additional revenue opportunity for Documentum, as their
portfolio of clients include many 'very blue chip' customers
Historically we have been strong in highly regulated industries like finance
and commodities, while Bulldog lead in retail and media market space
Will Documentum Upgrades include Bulldog functionalities?
Documentum announced to the investor community that a product roadmap has been created that maps out staged approach to integration of
Bulldog functionality into the Documentum product set. Initially Bulldog functionality
will still be available in line with the current Bulldog
product roadmap. This will be converged with the Documentum product plan
through 2002.
Can we expect ECM products to specialise according to vertical industries?
The next wave of products could well be verticalized.
If a solid CM implementation is format independent, what's the big deal about DAM?
Documentum can manage any file , independently from its format, but wee don't know what is inside, xml allows us to identify and tag content.
However to manupulate rich media digital assets including transcoding and search you really need a DAM product.
John Phillips, former General Manager for Bulldog Europe, is now in sales director for the Bulldog line of Ducumentum products, in charge of easing the transition to the new parent company for old Bulldog customers.
How does it feel to be acquired?
I am glad to be the first company to experience the convergence of 'pure
rich media' and content management systems. This realizes the vision of true content management, from the content's initial creation through to its consumption by a viewer infront of a tv or computer screen, or what is
often termed as "from glass to glass".
What is unique about Bulldog technology?
We can acquire content and metadata in any raw format, like uncompressed videos for example, or high resolution picture, or low resolution pictures. We can virtually carry out any manipulation from any multimedia into any
multimedia format, generally within the known standards.
We are also very scalable, for example Bulldog systems are in charge of Microsoft 8000 users who hold in their repositories approximately 1.5
million rich media files ,
Gworing at a rate of 20,000 per week
What makes a product scalable?
A good architecture very modular and object based
But wouldn’t you expect any modern software product to be modular and object
based?
You'll be surprised. We have spent the last 12 months ripping apart our own
monolithic application, and redeveloped our technology to be much more flexible than before. Now users can customise our application according to different views, Based on the tasks that they need to carry out. Our competitors remain with a monolithic DAM application, unwieldly and difficult to integrate"
Bulldog has separated its core DAM engine and the applications sitting and
inserted open API between the two, to enable more audiovisual products to integrate with their engine.
The new version of Bulldog will be brought to market at next year as Documentum DAM Server.
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