Interwoven scoops up records management company

ECM (enterprise content management) company Interwoven on Monday announced the acquisition of Software Intelligence, a maker of records management technology, for $2 million in cash and stock.

Previously, Interwoven offered some records management capabilities through partnerships with third-party vendors. But increased pressure on enterprises to meet compliance regulations and formulate a cohesive strategy for managing both electronic and physical records required Interwoven to integrate full records management functionality into its ECM platform, according to Dan Carmel, vice president and general manager of legal professional services and compliance solutions at Interwoven.

Technology assets from Software Intelligence will be renamed Interwoven RM (Records Manager) and will allow corporate users to manage paper documents, electronic documents, and e-mail under a single records system.

"Customers need a way to apply [a] records retention policy at the enterprise level, applied in touch points across all content of business value that is a record," said Carmel.

"Now organizations can expect a single integrated approach to managing e-mail, electronic documents, and physical paper records in a consistent way across the enterprise. That is the key capability we are offering," he said.

Interwoven Records Manager initially will be integrated with the company's WorkSite document management and collaboration offering. The RM can take advantage of a metadata inheritance feature that is part of the WorkSite platform, according to Carmel.

Rather than filling out a profile form on a document or piece of content each time it is saved, WorkSite can define metadata anywhere up and down a hierarchy, he said.

"With WorkSite we eliminated the need to profile individual documents by having most of the metadata inherited automatically based on where you file something," Carmel said. "The context or location of content actually infers quite a bit about it, and our system takes advantage of that to provide the correct classification."

The first phase of the acquisition integration, offering integrated paper and electronic records management capabilities, will be available before Sept. 30. Phase two, due by early 2005, will provide tighter integration between the Software Intelligence platform and Interwoven's WorkSite to include functions such as complex records searches.