Open Text’s long-standing relationship with the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based vendor has been to resell and use technologies like the database and SOA suite. But it has now also obtained a technology and distribution licence for Oracle’s Universal Online Archive Content Management SDK, allowing it to embed Oracle technology in Open Text products.
“The solutions are delivered in environments that Oracle customers either already have or are familiar with and know how to use, and basically it’s the ecosystem they prefer,” said Rich Buchheim, vice-president of Open Text’s Oracle solutions group.
Specifically, Open Text’s content management offerings can take advantage of the enterprise content repository that is Oracle Database 11g to capture large amounts of data.
Buchheim, who himself previously worked for Oracle, said Open Text is hoping to leverage the single-vendor stack approach that Oracle touts. “And the more of that that a content management solution can uptake the better that fits into the Oracle ecosystem and the more interesting it is for Oracle,” said Buchheim.
But Open Text already has a content repository of its own with an established install base. The goal is not for the Oracle partnership to replace what Open Text already has; instead it’s for the Oracle customer “to be able to play well” with Open Text offerings, said Lubor Ptacek, vice-president of product marketing with Open Text. “We have no intent to give that up,” said Ptacek.
Ptacek said the partnership is valuable because Oracle doesn’t having offerings in the information governance space. But he didn’t want to speculate on what might happen if Oracle decides to put out its own offerings or acquire a vendor in that market. “It depends at that point if there is a joint value proposition possible,” said Ptacek.
Besides with Oracle, Open Text has similar partnerships with Microsoft Corp. and SAP AG. The situation is similar to Open Text’s partnership with Microsoft, said Ptacek. While SharePoint has content management capabilities, “it doesn’t mean we don’t have a joint value proposition. Au contraire, we actually added a lot of value to SharePoint deployments,” said Ptacek.
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