OpenText enhances CX package, customer data platform
OpenText CE 22.4, its latest quarterly release, adds content security, CDP enhancements, and integrations with Microsoft Teams and the Google BigQuery data warehouse.
LAS VEGAS -- OpenText released a bevy of features and integrations for its customer data platform, CX suite and content management tools across its clouds at its first in-person North American user conference since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Included in Cloud Editions 22.4, OpenText's platform-wide quarterly release, were two new cloud applications: Experience Platform CXM and Experience Platform DXM. CXM is a personalization engine, and DXM manages digital communications across channels.
Both connect to a number of OpenText services, including Exstream, a customer communications management platform that handles users' digital and paper messaging; TeamSite web content management; Media Management, a digital asset management platform; Experience CDP; and Core Experience Insights, a digital event tracking and customer journey mapping tool.
Connecting these new and existing applications to OpenText CDP customer profiles provides a foundation for building individualized experiences, said Muhi Majzoub, OpenText executive vice president and chief product officer. CDP adoption has been strong among large OpenText customers, such as cosmetics manufacturer L'Oreal and a well-known large winemaker, which use it to connect data from different phases of the customer experience to personalize interactions.
"It's a richer experience since they gain richer insight by bringing call center data or [physical] store data in with website data," Majzoub said. "They're starting to analyze and blend data from multiple areas."
As part of its customer experience product rollouts, OpenText also released a new integration with Google's BigQuery data warehouse. Content creators and web developers at joint customers will be able to deploy customer data stored in BigQuery for digital experiences. It deepens a years-long integration partnership between the two companies.
On the enterprise content and collaboration security front, OpenText released connectors to Slack, Microsoft Teams and Facebook Messenger that let data forensics investigators collect evidence from those channels for incident response. OpenText added MacOS support for evidence collections. Customers called for that as remote work remains popular, Majzoub said, as well as device-agnostic cloud IT that gives workers a choice between Windows PC and Macintosh machines.
Those features -- especially the Microsoft integrations -- came about in part because OpenText itself is a large joint user of OpenText security and Microsoft applications for its employees, Majzoub said. The company wanted to push its security analysis capabilities deeper into the channels where its employees work, as did OpenText users.
OpenText also released Microsoft Office connectors that let users author Office documents and spreadsheets from within Core, OpenText's enterprise file-sharing cloud and competitor to Box and Microsoft OneDrive. The connectors also let users save to Core from those apps and apply and maintain the access and security policies users set up in OpenText.
OpenText CEO Mark Barrenechea and Google's Kevin Ichhpurani discuss the two companies' then-budding integration partnership in 2019 at OpenText's user conference in Toronto.
Mum on Micro Focus
The releases came in conjunction with the OpenText World user conference here. Looming large over the roadmap is the planned OpenText acquisition of Micro Focus for about $6 billion, a large deal for OpenText, which reported $3.5 billion annual revenue for its fiscal 2022 that ended last June.
If the deal closes as planned early next year, OpenText will get almost 300 different software products including project management, software development planning and autonomous operations tools. Many of the applications and cloud services Micro Focus got through a merger spinoff with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
OpenText was mum about the planned acquisition because the company is in a regulatory quiet period. While acquiring Micro Focus may look like a financial stretch on paper, the deal will pay for itself in just a few years through services renewals, according to Deep Analysis research. Cross-selling OpenText security, content management and ERP to Micro Focus customers will likely fuel growth.
"They'll get the money back in four years just by doing nothing, so financially, it's a very sound investment," said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis. "It brings a lot of products with it. There is a big job to go through and rationalize them. But the truth is, if you've got 300 products, you've probably got some stars in there. Micro Focus was totally managed for years, so OpenText should be able to bring some order to that chaos."
Project Titanium marches on
The features and integrations in OpenText CE 22.4 are all part of Project Titanium, an OpenText initiative that will eventually harmonize the features and capabilities of the company's on-premises, public cloud, and private cloud applications and services. Project Titanium's roadmap includes integrating all that with APIs and enhancing content services and security as well.
They'll get the money back in four years just by doing nothing.
Alan Pelz-SharpeFounder, Deep Analysis
Some large enterprises Pelz-Sharpe has consulted -- some of them OpenText customers -- are finding that cloud storage has grown costlier than on-premises. They plan to keep some data at home over the long term, whether that involves migrating it back from the cloud or canceling potential future migrations. Other global companies in regulated industries globally never have -- and never will -- trust sensitive data in the cloud, he added.
As such, the plans for Project Titanium figure heavily into future plans of OpenText customers, especially those maintaining hybrid on-premises and cloud environments.
"The cloud isn't cheap," Pelz-Sharpe said. "You've got business decisions being made about whether this stuff should really stay in the cloud, which seemed like a no-brainer 10 years ago, but now it's really expensive. So that hybrid world -- on-premises, off-premises, private cloud, public cloud -- is pretty messy, and it's probably going to get messier still."
Don Fluckinger covers enterprise content management, CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce, customer service and enabling technologies for TechTarget Editorial.
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