When SDL finally came to terms with Alterian in December, we were inspired to take a look at this and other recent acquisitions that have been done as part of the broadening of WCM into Web-experience (or customer-experience) management. Alterian brings SDL another WCM product, since Alterian acquired Mediasurface in 2008, but SDL is really after the real-time analytics and campaign management tools that are part of Alterian’s marketing automation portfolio.
It strikes us that these areas are fairly far afield from SDL’s origins in language technology and services. The deal wasn’t surprising though given how far SDL has gone into WCM. It’s not enough today though at least at the high-end of the market to be in WCM without a broader play for online marketing / marketing automation.
While there are some vendor attempts to grow web-experience management organically (Sitecore is probably most notable here), there has been a good deal of M&A inspired by bringing together WCM, web analytics, content targeting/recommendations, social and testing technologies, among others.
We’ve put together a report that reviews many of these past deals and provides some predictive analysis of M&A in this sector — available here for 451 Research subscribers.
Some forward-looking takeaways from this are:
- There are few WCM independents left to be acquired, particularly in the non-.NET camp, though there are several potential acquirers that might still want a stronger WCM component.
- CoreMedia may become a desirable target, as a rare independent with a Java codebase and high-end customers. Both SAP and IBM could pursue, though SAP seems more likely as CoreMedia is a German company and already plays the WCM part in SAP’s Web Channel Experience Management initiative.
- WCM isn’t the only field for potential targets in the name of customer-experience or even more strictly in web-experience management. Content targeting, analytics, and testing/optimization will all likely hold interest in 2012.
- It’s not just the big IT players that have a role in this consolidating landscape, though Adobe, Oracle and IBM are key players to be sure. We’ve also seen smaller players, like Norway’s eZ Systems, making small technology buys to round out their portfolios. eZ bought two companies in 2011 — YOUCHOOSE for its recommendations engine and odoscope for web analytics.
- There are lots of small technology providers in this sector, most are SaaS, and we expect there will more acquisitions like these to come.
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