Arbortext Buy-Out

["" <rising_fawn -at- excite -dot- com>]

This just in, from the xml-dev listserv, regarding an Arbortext buy-out.



>http://www.ptc.com/

>

>About the deal

>Needham, MA - July 6, 2005 - Today PTC announced it has entered into a

>definitive agreement to acquire Arbortext, Inc., a recognized leader in the

>emerging Dynamic Enterprise Publishing market, for $190 million in cash.

>Arbortext serves 1,700 customers worldwide in multiple industries, including

>discrete manufacturing, life sciences, financial services, insurance,

>publishing and government. With this acquisition, PTC will be uniquely

>positioned to enable customers to create, manage and dynamically publish

>critical information concurrently with the development of related products

>or services, improving time-to-market, quality, cost and customer

>satisfaction.

>

>  

>

There's a moral here somewhere. PTC is a jumped up CAD company, now 

doing "product lifecycle management". That's product as in 'thing'. 

Hardware even. They've got two CAD products, a CMS (Windchill) and 

several other 'lifecycle' things. They're springing  $190 meg to add 

techdocs to their glued-together "suite".



By itself it doesn't sound like a big deal. But it says a lot about the 

SGML/xml-doc world. A niche market company nobody ever heard of is 

buying Arbortext to fill a gap in a kludged up product line that might 

let them play Corel to AutoCAD's Microsoft. What makes it sting even 

more is that XMetal was picked up by a web advertising company because 

it was cheaper to buy XMetal than migrate to OpenOffice.



We are not where it's at folks.



Frank



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