EMC Buys Stake In Web Content Management Company
Under the agreement, EMC and FatWire will continue joint-development of solutions based around EMC's Documentum content management technology and FatWire's Web Experience Management (WEM) solutions, said Yogesh Gupta, president and CEO of FatWire.
In addition, EMC will resell FatWire's WEM product set, while FatWire will resell EMC's digital asset management software, including the EMC Documentum Media WorkSpace and EMC Documentum Content Transformation Services.
The two companies have been working together on mutual integration between their products for a couple of years, Gupta said. For instance, data in a Documentum repository can be made available to Web marketing teams and Website developers using FatWire's technology, he said.
"Both companies have systems integrator and channel partners, and this agreement allows them to offer new services around targeted marketing, impact market, and so on," he said.
The two companies are continuing their joint development, Gupta said. Currently, customers can move content from a Documentum repository to FatWire's products, but by mid-year such content will also be able to move from FatWire to Documentum as well for compliance and governance reasons, he said.
Neither EMC nor FatWire would disclose how much EMC invested in FatWire, or what percentage of the company it now owns.
Gupta said that FatWire, which has offices in 11 countries worldwide, has been profitable for the past four years.
EMC's investment in FatWire is a recognition that FatWire is the right partner for EMC's digital asset management business, in part because both companies have many overlapping Fortune 500 customers, Gupta said.
Gupta said his take on why EMC, a company with a long history of making acquisitions, decided to not purchase FatWire outright, is that acquisitions are not always the best way to work together.
"An acquisition can distract people from their business," he said. "EMC wants to make sure FatWire can grow aggressively in the market. We at FatWire have been tremendously successful, and have grown rapidly. And both companies realize there's more to growing a business than getting acquired."