EMC teams with FatWire on WCM

EMC [1] announced this week that it was forming a partnership with FatWire [2] to offer a web content management solution under the EMC umbrella. My first thought after hearing this was: Why a partnership instead of a full purchase? Maybe this is a way for both companies to feel each other out before making a deeper commitment.

Seth Gottlieb, a content management consultant and author of the Content Here [3] blog, says there had been rumors of acquisition talks, but perhaps the price was too high, and the partnership was a compromise that worked for both parties. "My only explanation for the partnership rather than merger is that FatWire was asking for too much money. They feel like they are the only enterprise class Java WCMS in the market and to some extent that is true."

Robert Rose, who is founder of Big Blue Moose [4], a digital marketing firm (and former marketing VP at CrownPeak) thinks it was more of a matter of sizing each other up before making it permanent. Rose wrote on Twitter, "My guess is that 'buy' was [the] original intention - but with the personalities - 'date before marriage' won the day."

An EMC spokesperson says it was simply because "a partnership with FatWire aligns to EMC’s strategy of providing business solutions that reflects a broader and more comprehensive approach." What's more, the partnership provides them "with quicker time to market by selecting a partner who is focused and dedicated to the Web Experience Market (WEM)."

Gottlieb added that many of FatWire's competitors have gotten distracted from WCM (e.g., Oracle), fallen on hard times (e.g., Vignette), or just slowed down (e.g., Percussion). Gottlieb said that in spite of prevailing wisdom to the contrary, he doesn't necessarily think that EMC got the best Java WCMS out there in his opinion. "Personally, I don't think their position is that strong. At the high end, Day CQ5 is a very strong product: Architecturally superior and more aggressively developed. There are also some very worthy mid-market Java products that are very capable of serving FatWire's customer base (TerminalFour, Hannon Hill, etc.) and the open source Java WCM products are also coming on strong: dotCMS, Jahia and Magnolia in particular come to mind."

But Melissa Webster, an analyst with IDC thinks it was a good deal for both parties. "IDC believes that this new partnership will deliver great value to customers of both EMC and FatWire by giving them the tools they need to succeed with their online marketing efforts. With this move, EMC is clearly signaling its intent to compete strongly in the WEM arena."

Gottlieb says EMC likely had little choice but to move on to a better solution. "Up to this point, EMC's attempt at WCM was little more than transforming enterprise documents into web-friendly formats (.html, .pdf and .jpg). Compared to where the WCM market is now, this is the stone age. They were probably seeing their customers and integration partners defect to other products on the WCM side. Integrating with FatWire will save them the expense of building true WCM capability and give their salespeople and partners a more compelling offering," he said.

But EMC says FatWire is just part of a broader offering. "Customers and integrators also have an opportunity to take advantage of EMC's broader and more comprehensive approach using best-in-class capabilities to enable their business users and marketing teams adding that EMC's marketing solutions includes brand management (via Documentum), marketing process management (via partners), customer communications management (via Document Sciences) and web experience management (via FatWire)."

With WCM taking on a key role in many company's marketing strategies, EMC required a stronger offering to continue to compete in this space. Whether FatWire gives them the total package remains open to debate, but it certainly appears to put them back in the game and enables them to offer a stronger WCM offering than they had previously.

For more information:
- see the EMC press release [5]