Insci Buys WebWare In Latest Digital-Asset Acquisition

If there are content-management vendors out there still looking to acquire digital-asset-management technologies--and analysts say they better if they want to stay competitive--they'll have to take action soon because there may not be any targets left. The latest digital-asset-management vendor to get gobbled up is WebWare Corp., acquired Wednesday by Insci Corp., a provider of enterprise content-management software. Terms weren't disclosed but will be available as part of the Form 8K that Insci will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the end of the month.

Insci joins larger competitors Documentum, Interwoven, and Stellent in adding digital-asset management to its product suite via acquisition. Stellent was the most recent of those to make such a move, agreeing late last month to pay nearly $3 million for Ancept Inc., and Interwoven paid $10 million for MediaBin Inc., a larger competitor of Ancept, just two months earlier. Documentum was the first to jump into the digital-asset-management arena in December 2001 when it bought Bulldog Group.

In acquiring WebWare's ActiveMedia application, Insci gains a digital-asset-management technology built on J2EE and Web-services standards, which is key to winning deployments outside of the media and entertainment industries. Companies are looking to serve up rich media assets through corporate portals via Web services.

Remaining players in the digital-asset-management market include IBM; established independent vendors like Artesia Technologies, Convera, eMotion and Flexstor; and niche startups such as DAX Solutions, which develops digital-asset-management products for movie studios.