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No sooner did executives figure out what enterprise content management (ECM) was and how it could help their companies, when a wave of consolidation began breaking over the sector. What's going on here?

A look at the acquisitions that have been announced over the last couple of months proves that vendors in the ECM sector that want to survive as independent companies have to make sure they have the "enterprise" in enterprise content management, meaning they have to offer end-to-end management of information, whether it's internal document repositories, Web content, or digital media, as well as collaboration features that allow end users to work together and implement workflow.

A definite pattern can be seen as companies piece together complete enterprise systems from the multiple pieces that have been available from a number of vendors.

In August of 2003, Open Text announced plan to acquire German Web content management player Gauss Interprise, giving Open Text, known for its LiveLink document management/collaboration/workflow product, a Web content and high-volume scanning component.

Also in August, content management vendor Interwoven announced plans to merge with iManage, adding the collaboration and workflow features of iManage to Interwoven's content management platform.

Earlier in October a content management vendor was the acquiree when storage giant EMC announced plans to purchase Documentum. EMC already had a fixed content infrastructure foundation with its Centera content-addressed storage product. Documentum already offered a fairly complete enterprise content management platform, including collaboration, after it acquired eRoom in late 2002. EMC plans to combine Centera content-addressed storage with the Documentum 5 ECM repository to get what it calls a complete information lifecycle management solution. (The easier way to look at this acquisition is this: all that content being managed by ECM products has to be stored somewhere, and that's where a company like EMC smells an opportunity.)

This week, Open Text went shopping again, and again it turned to Germany. Pending regulatory and shareholder approval, Open Text plans to acquire IXOS. IXOS adds content management and archiving to Open Text's Web content management, collaboration, and business process solutions.

In a conference call discussing the IXOS deal, both Tom Jenkins, the CEO of Open Text, and Robert Hoog, the CEO of IXOS, called the pairing a natural combination. Customers can consider Open Text a one-stop shop for content management, archiving, regulatory compliance, collaboration, as well as integration with enterprise software from SAP, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft and the like. (SAP document management was a specialty of IXOS.)

"In order to deliver the complete ECM solutions customers want, you need a combination of collaboration and content management," Jenkins said.

On the technical side, integration of the Open Text and IXOS solutions should not be complicated because the collaboration features of Open Text and the content management features complement each other.

"We see a symbiotic relationship between collaboration and content," Jenkins said. "The hand-over point is at a natural point of integration."

Open Text also upgrades its document repository in the acquisition. The old Open Text repository emphasized flexibility. It was made for implementing ad hoc workflow, and it didn't scale the way the IXOS repository does. Now Open Text will offer a combination of the flexibility and archiving both companies brought to the table.

According to Jenkins, enterprise content management customers want vendor stability (Open Text will continue to support customers of both companies), a one-stop shop, easy-to-deploy solutions, compliance with regulatory requirements, seamless integration with existing infrastructure, and ROI.

The vendors that can wrap up those requirements, and bundle document management, Web content management, collaboration and workflow, will survive. And according to Jenkins, they won't have much company. He predicts the crowded enterprise content management field will boil down to two or three leaders worth $2 to $3 billion, and he's positioning his company to be one of them.