Lava Systems Africa, an affinity partner of Canadian-based for Open Text, today announced that analyst firm Gartner, a research and advisory firm with worldwide influence, has placed Open Text in the Leaders Quadrant of the Smart Enterprise Suite (SES) 2004 Magic Quadrant*. Gartner`s well-known Magic Quadrants define technology companies in a particular market segment based on their vision and ability to execute that vision.
Issued on May 17, the Smart Enterprise Suite 2004 Magic Quadrant evaluated 22 companies assessing `vendors not only with regard to the completeness of their suite, but also the degree of integration at both user level and underlying product engineering`. Leaders in the Smart Enterprise Suite (SES) market `are tracking market demands well and are prepared for the future. They have strong market visibility in multiple geographies, consistent financial performance, well integrated functionality, good customer support, the most comprehensive and scalable products`, according to Gartner. Gartner defined the SES as software that combines portal, collaboration, and content management technologies, and delivers these capabilities in an integrated suite. According to Gartner, `The SES provides a broad foundation to support knowledge or information work within an enterprise or sometimes between groups in different enterprises, and may be considered the platform for knowledge management. It focuses on support for unstructured work processes, but through portal-based integration with business applications, can provide a comprehensive digital or electronic workplace`.
"Gartner`s Smart Enterprise Suite is supported by the changing needs of our customers," commented Bill Forquer, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Open Text. "Customers want to bring together content and knowledge across the enterprise, improve integration, and build in collaborative tools to improve the productivity of teams managing important projects. We`ve built these capabilities into our Livelink suite, and gone a step further. We also provide integrated e-mail management, records management, access to third-party repositories, and other unique business and vertical solutions built on Livelink."
Open Text is also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Integrated Document Management, 2003 published in July 2003.
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Gartner, Inc.`s, Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of vendor performance in a market segment. The vertical axis of the quadrant indicates the vendor`s ability to execute on its strategy and the horizontal axis indicates the vendor`s completeness of vision. Each of the four squares of the quadrant are named to characterise the vendors placed in those areas: lower left square is labelled Niche Players, lower right square is Visionaries, upper left square is labelled Challenger, and upper right square is Leaders. Gartner defines the four segments as follows:
* Leaders are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market
* Visionaries have a clear vision of market direction and are focused on preparing for that, but they can still improve in terms of optimising service delivery
* Challengers execute well today, but have a less-defined view of market direction and, therefore, may not be aggressive in their preparation for the future
* Niche Players focus on a particular segment of the client base, as defined by characteristics such as size, vertical or project complexity. Their ability to outperform or innovate may be impacted by this narrow focus
Open Text
Open Text is the market leader in providing Enterprise Content management (ECM) solutions that bring together people, processes and information in global organisations. Since launching the world`s first Internet search engine and the first Web-based enterprise collaboration and knowledge management software, Open Text continued its leadership in providing global enterprises with innovative and effective solutions. Throughout its history Open Text has matched its tradition of innovation with a track record of financial strength and growth. Today, the Canadian based company supports 15 million end users across deployments in 31 countries and 12 languages worldwide and includes amongst its client base Governments departments in Australia, Canada and Japan; the UK Metropolitan Police; British telecommunications, UNHCR and the USA Department of Defence. Open Text`s flagship product, Livelink(r) seamlessly combines collaboration with content management, helping organisations transform information into knowledge in order to provide the foundation for innovation, compliance and accelerated growth. Open Text acquired Germany`s Ixos Software AG in February this year to become the largest ECM software vendor in Europe and the largest pure-play ECM software vendor in the world, according to Bradley West, an analyst with Southwest Securities Inc.
Lava Systems
The Lava Systems Africa (Pty) Ltd., team originated in the late 1990`s with the objective of becoming a premier supplier of enterprise systems based around Knowledge Management, Document Management, Records Management, Image Management, Collaboration and Workflow solutions. The emerging demands that were identified included Government Process re-engineering, Supply Chain Co-ordination, Customer Relationship Management, e-Government and B2B processing. In support of these business aims the technology platforms chosen had to enjoy a proven global track record and adhere to open Internet architecture standards and developments. Lava Systems Africa is a South African-based BEE company dedicated to the sales, marketing, support and consultancy founded upon the Livelink product suite from Open Text, a product that the staff have been involved with since 1998. Lava Systems Africa user base embraces customers from both the private and public sector and includes organisations such as Bateman Projects Limited, Alexander Forbes, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the National Social Security Fund of Uganda.