With its acquisition of iManage approved and completed, Interwoven is seeking to position itself to deliver "end-to-end content lifecycle management". It made some noises about its new strategy yesterday. Here's my take on what it's doing:
- It's strategy is very expansive, covering many things in one integrated platform: collaboration, document management, Web content management, digital asset management, email management, and records management. Of these, document management, email management, and records management are the most mature, and enterprises will be willing to consider purchasing a single integrated platform from one vendor. I'm less confident that enterprises are ready to commit to a single vendor for all six, however, with collaboration, Web content management, and digital asset management being less mature offerings. These three areas need another 2-3 years to play out more fully.
- Interwoven intends to develop further points of integration between iManage's collaboration and document management technology and other Interwoven technologies. That's a good move, but is hardly a revolutionary thought. iManage has a good customer base, and if Interwoven intends to phase out the iManage product brand, it will need to convince existing iManage customers to migrate to products from the joint company. That transition process will be very important, and if not managed well, Interwoven will lose a lot of value from its iManage acquisition.
- This is for big companies. There's too many moving pieces (ie, different servers, multiple points of integration to other systems) for any organization that doesn't have dedicated resources in IT to spare.
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