Open Text erases Hummingbird brand

A leading enterprise content management (ECM) vendor's decision to re-name a familiar brand it obtained through acquisition has been hailed a big mistake by experts.

Open Text, which this week completed the acquisition of fellow ECM player Hummingbird, has announced that it will kill off the latter's enterprise brand, replacing it instead with Livelink ECM - eDocs, and Livelink ECM - eDocs R/KYV.

But leading analyst Butler Group has branded the intended move as a wrong one, suggesting that the company has far from positioned itself from an acquisition target with such action.

Additional details about the brand's fate are sketchy. According to Butler, Open Text intends to fully unveil what its plans are later this month. And it won't discuss future roadmaps until next month when it hosts its Livelink global user conference.

The issue of concern going forward lies in product overlaps, where the current offerings perform very similar tasks, according to the analyst.

"It is perfectly understandable that Open Text should be looking to grow the company to compete more effectively in an increasingly competitive market place, but a better way of doing this is to target companies that provide complementary and not competing technologies, that can be integrated into its product portfolio to extend its capabilities, "said Sue Clarke a senior research analyst at Butler Group.

"An example is Digital Rights Management (DRM), with both Stellent and EMC making acquisitions in this area to extend the capabilities of their ECM solutions."

Despite what may be unveiled in the coming weeks, Butler doesn't think Open Text has made the right decision, brand-wise.

Clarke added: "Dropping the Hummingbird brand is a big mistake. Three different products under the Livelink brand will lead to confusion in the market place which will ultimately lead to loss of business and damage to the company, which it may not recover from. If Open Text was hoping that this acquisition would help to protect it from becoming an acquisition target, it is wrong."

Email to a friend

Print this page

Social Bookmark this article: What is this?

Digg

Delicious

Reddit

StumbleUpon

Slashdot

Google

Facebook