OpenText CEO Blasts IBM Watson, Calls It Slow and Expensive

Written by Edward Gately
May 22, 2018

OpenText increased its IoT capabilities through its acquisition of Covisint.

(Pictured above: OpenText CEO/CTO Mark Barrenechea on stage at Enfuse 2018, May 22, 2018.)

OPENTEXT ENFUSE — Acquisitions have been and will continue to be a major part of OpenText‘s growth strategy as the company increasingly focuses on security, the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

That’s according to Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s vice chair, CEO and CTO. His keynote kicked off the company’s Enfuse 2018 conference in Las Vegas. Some 1,500 attendees from 40 countries, including more than 600 companies, are in attendance.

The enterprise information management (EIM) company now has nearly 300 million end users, and it’s providing managed services to nearly 2,000 companies, he said. It also has the 10th largest cloud in the world, he said.

“Two things we must do,” Barrenechea said. “Security is the digital platform. And two, we have to take AI and drive business. It’s not going to get slower, bad guys aren’t going to slow down, and business isn’t going to slow down.”

OpenText increased its IoT capabilities through its 2017 acquisition of Covisint, a cloud platform for building digital identity management, IoT applications, and automotive and transportation supply chains. The company now has IoT customers in industrial, commerce, cities and towns, homes, vehicles and people, he said.

Late last year, OpenText acquired Guidance Software, adding that company’s EnCase line of e-Discovery, endpoint detection and response, digital investigations, and data risk management offerings to its portfolio. It also acquired cloud service HighTail and then introduced the OpenText Release 16 Enhancement Pack 4 (EP4) that further extends security, AI, IoT and cloud support into its EIM platform.

Acquisitions are at the center of OpenText’s total growth strategy, Barrenechea said.

“At the core of it, we’re doing it because our customers are asking for more,” he said. “We have great (experience) managing enterprise information platforms and archives; why not secure them? And if we’re securing them, why not provide discovery? And if we’re discovering them, why not move that to the endpoint, and secure and do all of that for the endpoint? We’ve been growing double digits as a company led by acquisitions and it will continue.”

OpenText also has been growing organically, expanding through partners, distribution and sales force, Barrenechea said.

“When we buy a company … we have a point of view on how a partner program should run, so we will take those programs and standardize them on the OpenText approach,” he said. “We learn things along the way.”

Barrenechea called AI …