Hummingbird Bought By OpenText
Hummingbird Bought By OpenText
August 8th, 2006: Confirmation today from the board of Humminbird in Canada that it has unanimously accepted the take-over bid from ECM rival OpenText.
Turning aside the approach of Symphony Technology Group, the Canadian-based board of major Enterprise Content Management software and services, Hummingbird has accepted the US$498-million from erstwhile rival, OpenText.
IDM spoke with the local, Australian office of Hummingbird today and was met with a firm, 'No comment'. "We're just not allowed to say anything about this, not even off the record. Everything has to go through corporate relations", commented the company's spokesperson. There was noboday available at OpenText's Sydney office to comment.
Spurned suitor, The Symphony Technology Group is effectively a venture capitalist organisation with no previous experience or apparent interest in documents or records management. A extraordinary Hummingbird shareholders' meeting to further discuss the Symphony bid was due to convene on August 18th - this has been cancelled.
What this does mean, however, is that two of the most respected, largest and long-lasting pure ECM companies will now become a single entity before the end of the year. Whether this will bring greater economies of scale and valid synergies to the benefit of both companies' clients can only be speculation at this time.