Interwoven Acquired by Autonomy: It’s a Done Deal

Everything is moving according to the plan. Autonomy announced its decision to buy Interwoven early this year, and the deal has been signed earlier today (not without minor hurdles).

As at today, Bloomberg consensus analysts estimate Autonomy’s revenues at $119.9 million with adjusted EPS of $0.14. Updated consensus analysts’ estimates for the period, including Interwoven’s contribution under Autonomy’s ownership in Q1 2009, are revenues of $125-$128 million and EPS of $0.14 to $0.15. More financial results to be announced mid- to late April 2009.

It’s a Done Deal, What’s Next?

Well, most likely there will be organizational changes, including those known as “overhead costs optimization.” The initial plan was to terminate about 70 positions in the company. It’s close to the end of Q1 and, as promised, Interwoven will (if it hasn’t already) start letting people go. The desired savings of approximately $8.0 million to $10.0 million annually have to come from somewhere.

However, as in case with recent Vignette layoffs, who will be working on new Interwoven product management initiatives if the brains are gone fishing?

How Much Longer for Interwoven in the Content Management Space?

There’s still not much clarity on how IWOV’s product line will be married with Meridio, IDOL and other Autonomy technologies. Seen some seemingly internal PPT’s floating around the Internet, but won’t comment on that. Would rather prefer a vendor briefing invite.

Best bet would be to preserve Interwoven’s WCM and ECM focus, but this would be up to Mr. Lynch, of course. BTW, did you see the new Interwoven+Autonomy logo? It explains everything.

Any hints in what Lynch said today?

“… With this acquisition we will redefine how global 2000 corporations interact with the web and how leading law firms and government regulators will discover, analyze and manage information and interactions.”

Let’s just say Open Text may see more competition in the near future on the “law firms+government regulators+ discover” front.

WCM/ECM Chronicles

One brand name after another, the good ole web and enterprise content management markets are getting thinner and thinner (Isn’t there some sort of a technological Rogaine for that? 😉 ) with long-timers disappearing/morphing in some form or another.

RedDot – gone, swallowed by Open Text. Day Software’s Communiqué – abbreviated to CQ. Percussion Rhythmyx – rebranded to CM System. Interwoven – ummm, as of now, overpowered by Autonomy in (at least) the logospehere business and being called Autonomy Interwoven.