Information Management & Automation – A Summer of M&A
Considering the sheer volume of startups and smaller legacy firms, there is no shortage to choose from, and the economies of scale can make many a target.
ECM
SharePoint Plus Blockchain
A cheap and straightforward to install and use blockchain add-on/plugin to systems like SharePoint and Salesforce. I rarely call out a specific vendor in an analyst note, and I only do so here to ask why it took so long?
Sign here please! The revival of eSignatures
One of the reasons eSignatures are not as widely used as they could be is the cost. Though Box’s announcement this week that they are essentially bundling this functionality for free in its platform takes that barrier away, at least for Box customers. But a more significant reason appears to be the complexity of configuring and using these systems.
Did OCR Discover the Fountain of Youth?
In perhaps the ultimate cool endorsement, last week at WWDC Apple announced optical character recognition will be embedded in iOS 15. Named LiveText OCR, Apple describes it as “secure on-device intelligence to help you discover more in your photos, quickly find what you’re looking for, and relive special moments.”
Box Shuttle Take Off
You can read more about the arcane world of file migration in our recent report, but though this Analyst Note focuses on Box Shuttle, the fact is we are seeing a surge of interest across the board in moving files to the cloud. And that shift opens up a wide range of new opportunities and challenges for firms to adapt, and to innovate in ways they could not do while keeping files on-premises.
Warburg Pincus Invests in NetDocuments – Our Thoughts
This past week, Utah-based NetDocuments ownership switched from Clearlake Capital Group to private equity firm Warburg Pincus, reportedly, for reportedly, over $1B documents. It’s an exciting move for NetDocuments, whom we know pretty well, for several reasons. Firstly, such a large deal will surprise many in the industry as NetDocuments, as the saying goes, flies beneath the radar.
SeeUnity Acquired – Our Thoughts
But, this past week, fellow cloud file migration vendor, SeeUnity (based in Colorado), was acquired by Boston, based private equity-backed legal tech firm Anaqua.
Mobius & UIPath take off – Our Thoughts
All in all quite month of activity, but all of course, overshadowed by the UIPath IPO. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the enterprise automation market in the short and long term. Undoubtedly some of the money raised, possibly much of the money, will go toward multiple acquisitions.
How to Turn an Aircraft Carrier: A Review of OpenText World 2021
We attended OpenText World Europe this April to learn where the ship is headed. OpenText made it very clear that it is staking its content management future on the cloud. The company announced Cloud Editions 21.2, an all-encompassing, all-in effort to achieve that long turn away from on-premise legacy software. Mark Barranchea, CEO, pledged an R&D investment of over $1 billion in R&D in their diverse stable of products. For a company with $3 billion in sales last year, that is a very impressive number.
Financial vs Industry Analysts and Box
My take was that this investment was a good move for Box. It provides longer-term stability and some protection against an activist investor who may well have wanted to control or flip the company. My interest is in the industry as a whole, buyers, users, and builders of technology.