Stellent buys Optika

Stellent's acquisition of Optika will continue a wave of consolidation as enterprise content management vendors seek to offer a complete suite of products. However, this latest acquisition could make Stellent itself an attractive target for a major software company such as Oracle.

Stellent, the enterprise content management software maker, is paying $10 million in cash and 4.1 million shares for Optika in a deal that will total $59 million and give Optika's shareholders about 16% of the stock of the combined company.

Though it made a modest profit of $183,000 in its last quarter to September 30 on revenue of $5.3 million, Optika has an undistinguished financial record. The attraction to Stellent is its Acorde system to integrate imaging, workflow, collaboration and document/records management capabilities into a single platform.

Stellent CEO Robert Olson said customers are looking to consolidate their content management needs, including imaging, business process management, web content management and record management with one vendor. He said the merger will enable Stellent to provide a comprehensive suite for managing both consumption-orientated content and high-volume transaction-based content.

Combined, the two companies will have an annual revenue run-rate of about $100 million, which is modest given that the content management market is forecast to grow from $2.29 billion in 2002 to $3.8 billion in 2007.

Stellent has been acquisitive of late. It bought Ancept last August for its Media Server technology, while in March it moved into the hosting market with the purchase of Active IQ Technologies.

Stellent also announced that it is sticking to its previous guidance and expects revenue for its third quarter to December 31 to grow about 20% to between $9.2 million and $10.3 million.

Stellent's belief that customers want their needs to be satisfied by a single vendor applies on a larger scale too. Its acquisition of Optika makes it a more attractive target to a major software company and hungry companies such as Oracle [ORCL] could soon be knocking on its door.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire

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