WATERLOO - Open Text(TM) Corporation announced yesterday that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2009 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management,* based on an evaluation of the company's completeness of vision and ability to execute. The Gartner report, based on an assessment of ECM trends and multiple software suites, helps IT and business buyers assess which vendors have the functional capabilities and vision to support business objectives and requirements and which would make suitable strategic partners. According to the report, "Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of ECM, they have strong channel partners, presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders deliver a suite that addresses all six core components, though these are not necessarily owned by them, tightly integrated, unique or best-of-breed in each area. We place more emphasis this year on demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; incorporation of Web 2.0 and XML capabilities; and vertical process/horizontal solutions focus. Leaders should drive market transformation."

The world's shift to digital work practices and communications continues to evolve, leaving companies with an overflow of valuable - and often unstructured - electronic content. Organizations are struggling to manage and control this information so that it not only yields workplace efficiencies and collaboration, but does so in compliance with internal and external regulations.

As the Gartner report observes, "Organizations need ECM to manage the increasing growth, volume and diversity of the unstructured content that now represents up to 80% of enterprise information. There is an opportunity to start applying to this content some of the rigor currently devoted to structured data in terms of valuation, elimination of redundancies, optimization of architectures for availability, enrichment of metadata, and overall life cycle control."

The Open Text ECM Suite addresses these business challenges with a foundation of scalable technology that promotes agility, control and user empowerment. With applications that range from Web content management to records management to reporting, the implementation of the ECM Suite promotes lower costs of administration and training, greater process efficiency, the increased exchange of knowledge assets and the dexterity to rapidly build, manage and profit from Web properties.

"The fact of the matter is that ECM is a strategic imperative in organizations," said Kirk Roberts, Executive Vice President of Products for Open Text. "Companies are turning to their ECM solutions in order to enhance strategic growth and practices, streamline processes and foster a greater aptitude of individual empowerment. The Open Text ECM Suite evolves content into a source of innovation, efficiency and profit."