Continuing the theme of the Future of ECM … trend #8 …
The ECM market has gone through a series of frenzied acquisitions over the past decade as each of the leading ECM vendors assembled its arsenal of core ECM components. I’ve attempted to illustrate the main acquisitions by the leading ECM vendors in the diagram below. Note: this is obviously not an exhaustive list, and several vendors (for example, HP) are missing … there wasn’t enough “real estate” in my diagram to fit them all in.
The pace of acquisitions does seem to have finally slowed down and we are now in the closing stage of market consolidation for what we have traditionally viewed as ECM.
Over the next five years, we can expect a new wave of acquisitions as ECM expands its remit into the larger Information Management marketplace, augmenting its core product portfolio by further acquiring technologies that are adjacent to ECM. The smaller ECM vendors will probably be increasingly squeezed, especially as core ECM functionality becomes a commodity and drops into the infrastructure stack (see my blog ECM as a commodity) and licence cost reductions take hold. Of those smaller ECM vendors that survive, they will probably need to be more focused on niche markets or around specific vertical solutions.
The Digital Word on the Street 
Are you ok in sharing this overview with me in Powerpoint format? I have to chair a round table discussion next week about M&A in the ECM sector and i’d like to complete your picture with the latest developments. Obviously, I will share my input with you.
Regards,
Geert Kruiter
Document Boss