Open Text announced last week, it had reached an agreement to buy Metastorm, a Baltimore, Md.-based business process management, business process analysis and enterprise architecture software vendor for $182 million.

While the press release quotes say all the right things about how excited both parties are to be joining forces, the fact is that Metastorm's business works nicely with the current direction of the ECM industry and its increasing focus on case management. As such, having some software that moves content along the case life cycle is very important. In addition, being able to analyze the process and look for ways to improve it also becomes increasingly important.

As Lee Dallas points out, in a Big Men on Content post analyzing the purchase, it's not a coincidence that IBM has been plucking similar companies over the last couple of years. Dallas writes:

OpenText buying Metastorm is in some respects an acknowledgment of the weight non-document BPM integration now carries in enterprise architecture relative to the pull on ECM software that it can create. IBM in particular has invested heavily in the last few years with similar acquisitions. (i.e. Savvion and Lombardi)

Open Text continues a buying spree with this purchase, attempting to be the one-stop vendor for all things related to enterprise content management. Whether this is an approach that customers are looking for isn't clear, but it's the role Open Text has chosen to play in the marketplace.

For more information:
- see the Open Text press release 
- see Lee Dallas' Big Men on Content blog post

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