Autonomy Corporation plc announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire etalk Corporation, a provider of enterprise-class contact center products, for a purchase price of US$70 million payable in a combination of cash and Autonomy ordinary shares, with an opportunity to earn additional consideration payable in Autonomy ordinary shares upon meeting and exceeding certain future performance-related targets. Combined Autonomy and etalk products are expected to be generally available within a quarter. Autonomy is expecting to discontinue certain aspects of the etalk business. The transaction is expected to be accretive to Autonomy’s earnings per share within six months from closing, excluding the impact of one-time and non-cash acquisition related charges. http://www.autonomy.com
Year: 2005 (Page 63 of 95)
I’m way behind in planned blog entries from last week’s conference, but this has jumped to the top of the queue. Rather than repeat points made by others I’ll point you to Thad’s post, and a couple of other postings and focus on a point I haven’t seen made yet. Brice and others made the clear point that application redundancy means death for certain products. I also share Tim’s skepticism of Flash. But while every analyst under the Sun will talk about what this means to Microsoft, there is an aspect of this that needs more attention.
Whatever the combined suite of Adobe and Macromedia apps ends up looking like, it will be a mammoth suite with a combination of document and web capabilities that will compete with Microsoft Office, which will also have a combination of document and web capabilities. The real competition won’t be immediate because the difference between creative and knowledge worker tools is still pretty wide, and it won’t be complete because there will always be a need for a difference. However, over time the differences will be managed more by configuration of functions than by buying separate applications.
Thinking about a future dominated by these huge suites you can’t help but think “What’s the alternative?”. Many of us author less and less in big powerful applications, and more with simple editing tools (email, blogs, HTML forms, Notepad etc.). There are two reasons for this. One is that “fast and easy” is critical for efficient communication and we naturally gravitate to it. Second, none of the authoring tools available today have succeeded in allowing us to easily author once for both documents and web pages. The big feature-heavy suites are good to have around, but we also need new authoring tools that are light, flexible and create content that is marked-up just enough to easily share with applications, whether office or web suites, or enterprise applications.
How did we become sheep? In fact eunuched sheep? Why is anyone pretending that the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe has anything to do with the customers of either company? This is a deal only for the management and shareholders of Adobe and Macromedia. Anyone who pretends otherwise is a fool. Graphic designers and webmasters should be greeting this with the same enthusiasm that Buckingham Palace received the news of Prince Charles and Camilla.
Adobe is famous for making acquisitions that could be funded from the expense accounts of its senior executives. Most amount to spare change (and have a similar impact on Adobe’s corporate fortunes). Adobe’s last big purchases were Aldus and FrameMaker, both in the mid-90s. As far as I can tell PageMaker is the only extant product remaining from Adobe’s purchase of Aldus, and it’s on life support. A year ago Adobe made it clear to PageMaker users to upgrade to InDesign pronto, or face product upgrade and customer support hell. Adobe continues to pretend that FrameMaker is a going concern, but it’s an ill-kept secret in the industry that the next version of InDesign will be announced at FrameMaker’s graveside.
What’s the win for either company’s customers? Better products? Better customer service? More innovation? Give me a break! These are two great companies, leaders in their field both in terms of innovation and customer service. But they are competitors. And in the dog-eat-dog world that we call “capitalism,” the larger dog eats the Chihuahua for lunch, and we all call it “synergy.”
In today’s CNET we were offered the kind of analyst’s quote that passes for informed critique:
“Consolidation in the industry is not always the best thing,” said Bruce Heavin, co-founder of Lynda.com. “I’ve always seen Macromedia and Adobe get better when they were on each other’s heels. When Adobe had LiveMotion, I saw better things coming out of Flash. And GoLive has helped Dreamweaver progress.”
That said, Heavin said the acquisition could improve compatibility between products.
“I think it will make it easy for these programs to talk to each other,” Heavin said. “It could wind up making it easier for the customers and the users… In the end I think this will be somewhat (emphasis mine) of a good thing.”
I’d never heard of lynda.com before today. An authoritative expert, no doubt — the site helps “media designers & communicators understand how to use professional tools and design to enhance visual communication through web, print, and motion graphics.”
My first reaction to today’s news was “where are they going to dump FreeHand?” You may recall that Adobe ended up with FreeHand once before, after acquiring Aldus in 1994. Legal action by Altsys, FreeHand’s developer, and some semblance of a Federal anti-trust department, forced Adobe to return all rights for FreeHand to Altsys. And then Altsys promptly sold itself to Macromedia.
Those of us more than 11-years-old recall that Altsys’ big product was not FreeHand but Fontographer (FreeHand may have generated more cash, but Fontographer was the product that put Altsys on the map). Fontographer was the first, and, as far as I know, remains the best product for creating digital fonts (OpenType fonts excepted). I’d long ago forgotten about it, but see tonight that it remains available, buried on Macromedia’s site. So Adobe got that in the bargain (let this serve as a reminder to Adobe management — they probably didn’t notice along the way!).
The official FAQ of the announcement is a model of corporate bafflegab:
“Why are the companies joining now?”
“Both companies are experiencing great success and momentum and have great opportunities ahead of them, and believe that together, they will be better able to achieve their combined vision with greater synergy. We also believe the joining of two healthy companies will lead to a more successful combined company.”
Wow! That certainly makes sense to me!
Analysts who are trying to be provocative are positioning the takeover as a stab against Microsoft. According to Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
“Microsoft already regards PDF’s success as a long-term threat. The next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn and due out next year, is expected to include features to move documents around companies and the Internet, and aimed at eliminating the need for PDF.
‘There’s a huge battle brewing’ between Adobe and Microsoft, said Andy Warzecha, senior vice president of Meta Group, a unit of technology-research firm Gartner Inc., in Stamford, Conn.'”
Zowie! That faux-battle is a subject for a separate critique. But tell me how does the acquisition of Macromedia make the least bit of difference in this “battle”? Adding Flash to PDF makes no sense whatsoever (though no doubt, some engineers will find the bandaids to do so). SVG was Adobe’s “Flash-killer.” It seemed like a joke at first, but has gained W3C endorsement (including endorsement from Macromedia). It’s a more complex format than Flash, and far less ubiquitous, but offers significant features that Flash doesn’t even reach for. On top of that, SVG is a direct descendent of PDF, and shares much of the code base. Flash is the bastard cousin of PDF.
As I think about the acquisition tonight, only two things are clear to me. First, Adobe needed to do something that would make headlines to justify its recently inflated share price and reputation. With its share prices suddenly inflated into the stratosphere Adobe could afford to make an all-stock deal for Macromedia (Macromedia shareholders take note: sell ASAP). Second, there’s no better time to make an obviously anti-competitive acquisition than during the reign of George Bush II.
Siebel Systems, Inc. and Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) announced that the companies have formed a multi-year partnership. Terms of the agreement involve the integration of FAST InStream within the core Siebel business applications platform, making FAST’s enterprise search capabilities available across Siebel Systems’ family of business applications and hosted solutions. The agreement also provides Siebel Systems the ability to leverage FAST InStream internally. Supporting both structured and unstructured data, FAST InStream provides value across all types of software applications, including enterprise portals and intranet sites, Enterprise Content and Document Management systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, Business Intelligence (BI) suites and applications, as well as Storage and Archiving solutions. The integration of FAST InStream with Siebel business applications will enable new functionality for Siebel customers. Customers will be able to extend their use of Siebel solutions by integrating existing customer and sales information with information from a range of repositories including databases, Web and intranet pages, and third-party internal file systems. http://www.siebel.com, http://www.fastsearch.com
Open Text Corporation introduced the Livelink ECM Platform, a secure, integrated framework that combines a shared content repository with user, content, and process services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The Livelink ECM Platform marks the completion of Open Text’s integration of Livelink with the content archive from IXOS Software, which Open Text acquired last year.
Open Text Corporation also said it will support the emerging Java standard governing content integration called Java Specification Request (JSR) 170. For Open Text customers, support of the standard will mean more options for corporate-wide access to all information, no matter where it resides. Open Text will support JSR 170 as part of its just announced Livelink ECM Platform, a secure, integrated framework that combines a shared content repository with software “services” in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The software services include content services which offer a single point of access to content, either in an Open Text repository or other systems. The addition of JSR 170 support will extend the reach of the Livelink ECM Platform to all repositories that provide a standard JSR 170 connector. Open Text will join the expert group working on future versions of the specification. To find out more about JSR 170, including a description of the specification and its current development stage, visit the specification page at http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=170, http://www.opentext.com
JASTEC Co., a Japanese custom software development and systems integration company, announced that its 100% U.S. subsidiary, JASTEC International Inc., had acquired 100% of the stock of LTU Technologies, the image mining visual search engine software. LTU Technologies will continue to operate as an independent company, with the management team, vertical markets and product development roadmap unchanged. LTU Technologies addresses several vertical markets, including Law Enforcement, Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Corporate search, and online search and filtering. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. http://www.ltutech.com
Verity Inc. announced availability of a business process management (BPM) solution with enterprise-class, full-text search for immediate access to time- sensitive content across the entire business process lifecycle. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 has built-in capability to search, evaluate and monitor in-process content and other information. The delay to get to crucial information until a business process has run its course and is placed in a data repository is eliminated. Expanded tracking and auditing capabilities log system administrator activities such as changing rights and permissions in the management console as well as every time a user accesses or views form-based content. The Verity BPM solution securely connects all people across the enterprise and geographies with information and processes, whether inside or outside the enterprise firewall. Verity LiquidOffice also includes several new features that optimize designer productivity and accelerate deployment of processes. The Form Designer feature supports Unicode character sets. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 is the first BPM solution to result from the company’s acquisition of Cardiff Software and Dralasoft. It is currently available from Verity and its global network of sales partners.
ClearStory Systems announced the release of the Radiant Enterprise Media Server (EMS) 2.0, an enhanced version of its media services software platform. Radiant EMS features functionality for managing complex video, graphics, compound documents, and other rich media; and a flexible foundation for enterprise content management (ECM). A J2EE system with services-oriented architecture (SOA), Radiant EMS offers advanced capabilities for the management of rich media, providing deployment flexibility; alignment with current best practices in IT infrastructure; and the ability to integrate with and leverage a broad array of third party and open source media processing tools. Radiant EMS supports complex file types with the ability to ingest and manage links between related files. File types supported include all encoded video formats as well as specialized metadata types such as vdf. Radiant EMS offers compound document capabilities for complex file types like Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress. Enhanced taxonomy, metadata, and security features provide modeling flexibility. Radiant EMS supports asset-level security and permissions. APIs allow for creation of new applications, and integration with new or existing workflow.
