I’m following the Bigamy story with great interest and fascination. It’s amazing.
I suppose my reaction is no different to any other guy that has heard about it: Two wives ? Really? Is he crazy?
Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other.
But in this case both wives know about each other.
Did I say know about each other? I meant to say “hate each other’s guts with passion”.
They have been fighting each other for years. Both pretty girls. Both successful. Both with a lot to offer and both seeking attention in the same field. Fierce competition.
So when he married his first wife – we all said congrats. Well done. Smart move…
And now.. the second wife…. Oh my god!… This is going to be great to watch!
I’m expecting a catfight. The three of them living together. I can’t see it working…
Even if they try to be civil, the kids will probably kill each other.
And what am I to read into this? He married the first. She wasn’t good enough so he married a second… How did the first wife agree to this? maybe she didn’t have a say?
Or maybe he is just widening his “portfolio”… maybe he’s already looking for wife #3
This is truly turning into a soap opera… Fantastic…
Anyway, interesting story. I’ll be following with interest.
So congrats to Mr OpenText
Mrs Global360, Mrs Metastorm – please play nicely together!
Adam Deane 
Hi Adam, what a nice simile. I think this consolidation is dramatic, because the resulting ambiguity will be a boon for all other vendors. There is no way this can be consolidated into a single BPM and ECM infrastructure without throwing out a lot of technology which means dumpting a whole bunch of existing customers. I think it is the fourth or fifth BPM product at OpenText.
Regards, Max
By: Max J. Pucher on 14/07/2011
at 7:29 am
Would we get to watch the threesome sessions? I believe OpenTeXt may have just gone overboard here with the purchase.Why on earth would I want to buy 2 BPM products? I can understand that as a solution picks up pace; there will be a consolidation at the top with the big players buying out the small niche players. Perhaps, OpenTeXt thinks its summer and they are on a vacation shopping!
By: Sanooj Kutty on 14/07/2011
at 8:09 am
Must be the silly season again or else I’m missing the point.
Technology-wise there’ll be few synergies and I really don’t see an OpenText approach to managing business processes. But maybe they’re relying on the size-matters approach to achieve something in the market.
By: Thomas J. Olbrich on 14/07/2011
at 11:03 am
Great story. Not only is it bigamy – it is bigamy with twins! It only proves the theory that one’s second wife is almost identical to the first wife…
I must be missing something. I don’t see how this can work unless they decide to spin off the BPM side of Global 360 and leave only the case management part – but that would be really expensive way to get a small portion of Global360.
By: Jacob Ukelson on 14/07/2011
at 12:55 pm
[…] Deane has a very funny post about OpenText’s “bigamous” BPM acquisitions. Bigamy is one analogy for […]
By: Appian Insight » …And Another Monster is Born on 14/07/2011
at 3:51 pm
From what I understand there’s not a lot of overlap across Metastorm and Global 360 customers, and they are rarely in the same deals. Not sure it will be that hard for them to co-exist. BPM is not one size fits all, but there is a lot of pull through for ECM functionality.
By: Brian on 15/07/2011
at 7:48 am
@Brian – isn’t that exactly what you would expect from competing products? Not many companies use both MySQL and Oracle – they choose one and run with it.
If the products were complementary you would expect companies using both, each for its own purpose.
For example will companies be asked to leverage Metastorm ProVision BPA for analysis and modeling, or should they use Global 360 analyst view? Both? Neither? – and that is just one example…
By: Jacob Ukelson on 15/07/2011
at 11:14 am