Three years after Corbis purchased eMotion, a provider of hosted asset-management applications, the company has sold it to Canada-based Open Text for approximately $5 million in cash and assets. The division has been up for sale since last summer, when Corbis CEO Gary Shenk said the company would pursue profitability by focusing on still and motion-content licensing and rights-clearance services.
Open Text is an enterprise-software company that helps organizations manage business content. Evolving out of a search-engine project at the University of Waterloo, Open Text incorporated in 1991 and continued developing search technologies for clients that included Oxford University Press and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. After Microsoft Explorer and Oracle integrated Open Text search technology in 1995, the company joined the ranks of early Internet IPOs in 1996, raising $61 million with 4.6 million shares.
By 2005, the company had expanded its focus to intranet and hosted applications, acquired several others, and generated close to $0.5 billion in revenues. Currently, Open Text services 46,000 corporate clients and millions of users in 114 countries.
Artesia Digital Media Group, formed by Open Text after acquiring Artesia Technologies, will be the new home of eMotion. Artesia is Open Text's digital asset-management software division. Its flagship product is the Artesia DAM, an enterprise-class package for managing rich media content and related workflows. It is used primarily to facilitate advertising and marketing activities, as well as in producing broadcast and entertainment content.
Open Text views eMotion as broadening its existing offering to marketing departments and ad agencies. In particular, the company is looking to capitalize on the growth of corporate video, image and other rich-media content libraries. Open Text does not anticipate the acquisition to have a material effect on its total financial performance.
eMotion is headquartered in Seattle and has operations in Virginia. Jon Schupp, who has headed eMotion since 2000 and has served as Corbis' vice president of media services since 2005, is joining Artesia as vice president of software services.
This summer, Corbis has launched a fictitious online museum, rebranded its rights- services division and continued its longtime investment in the global advertising industry's biggest annual event, the Cannes Lions. In addition to continued investment in its new microstock business SnapVillage, Corbis is looking to emerging markets. The Saigon Times reports on a recent deal between the Bill Gates-owned company and Vina Communications Services, whose affiliate VietImage will represent Corbis in Vietnam.