Thread regarding Open Text Corp. layoffs

As an impacted employee, I feel indifferent. Netdocuments seems like a fresh, hopeful company unlike opentext which is stale and dying. I'm also transferring to fully virtual and no longer have to do the BS in-office mandate.. so that alone is enough for me. Sure there is a risk of being RIF'd down the line but I was not planning on being with OT long term anyway. This at least gives me a chance to try something new and figure out where I want to take my career. Takeaway: if you're impacted by a divestiture, take it as a blessing. The odds that you'll be better off at OT are slim to none.

Expect more to come.

@143
The meeting lasted about 20 to 25 minutes and, as usual, was largely unproductive and thoughtless, consistent with previous experiences. During the last 5 to 7 minutes, the speaker allowed attendees to ask only two questions — a clear indication of how little the employees’ concerns matter to them. Notably, the acquisition was not mentioned at all.

A friend at NetDocuments informed me that eDocs will be officially, technically, and legally integrated on December 1st.

@hz Any tantalizing updates from the meeting?

@k2 Honestly, that's giving the upper ups too much credit for foresight and planning. They never really embraced the product and just cracked the whip to meet release deadlines. OT legal has never even used their own legal document management product, eDOCS, and that should tell you something. It's always been the red headed stepchild since the acquisition of Hummingbird and after shooting themselves in the foot with the botched 16 release with an interface based on the already deprecated Metro UI (seriously, nobody could change the PM's mind on this horrible design choice; it was dressing up the product in the decaying flesh of another dead product) the clock was ticking.

The fact that this was the first to go is a bit of a shock, but ultimately not surprising. What will be interesting to see is if the prices for these assets goes up or down as time marches on. $163 million is not a great number for an enterprise product that was initially acquired for around $489 million in 2006.

The Mark B touch is the exact opposite of a Midas touch.

Enshyttify the onsite product to force the subscription model on users.

There’s a meeting scheduled for this coming Wednesday at 10:00 AM with the CEO, CFO, and CTO to discuss this topic.

The total number of invitees is 60, including teams from:
India, Canada, the US, EMEA, Japan/Pacific.
It’s worth noting that NetDocuments does not have physical offices in India, Canada, or Europe.

Based on my previous experience in executive-level meetings (CEO, CFO, CTO), the typical approach is to create a sense of reassurance—a “soft landing”—emphasizing that the changes are in the attendees’ best interest. However, concerns raised by participants are often left unaddressed or sidestepped entirely.

In an environment governed by micromanagement, transparency isn’t just absent—it’s deliberately withheld. Omission is not an oversight but a feature by design. Staff are treated not as contributors but as interchangeable cogs in a machine—replaceable, expendable, and dismissed without hesitation or remorse or the slightest qualm

@a8 What happened to the team in Cork?

@a3 They just sold off a unit with a very prestigious client list who routinely contract for professional services, and sold it for less than $200m and you're wondering how desperate they are?

The board really doesn't care about any of it. They're selling everything off. This is a cash out in progress, a rummage sale, everything must go...

What a wonderful addition to Sandy's memory book...

@d4 "Technical debt? Can we sell something to pay it off?" - Tom Jenkins

@cz That's what happens when you only chase release dates and build an insurmountable amount of technical debt.

I thought eDocs was safe as it's part of the main "core" component of OT, Content? No?

Is it really losing money or something? What's the decision making here for getting rid of it? It might point out a pattern into what's next on the list.

eDocs is an outdated, poorly engineered platform—slow, glitch-ridden, and notoriously unstable. Its JIRA backlog is overflowing with unresolved bugs, and every patch seems to spawn new issues. The system demands excessive maintenance, and many users have voiced frustration, questioning its continued relevance. Despite this, many multinational firms government agencies use it i.e UN, Human Rights Watchdog, Nuclear Energy Agency, Wal-Mart, Defense, Congress, Government of Canada, etc.

NetDocuments, by contrast, is expected to actively encourage customers to migrate from the on-premise eDocs to its cloud-based SaaS solution. It will offer incentives to ease the transition and, in time, is expected to formally announce the sunset of eDocs. Those who haven’t yet moved to the cloud will likely be left with little choice but to accept the migration offer.

@cq For the answer to that, you should ask former Decisiv customers how they felt...

They are lucky.

I wonder if they have been infected with COE "help".

If so, does buyer know that they are getting cheap replacements rather than actual expertise in the product?

@cm giving away where I work but
We do get decent sales, however it's incredibly module-based.

So if that order was wrong (which isn't uncommon) it's already a problem before it gets to them. Assuming the key worked.

Opentext was named for how it managed text. eDOCS manages documents, comprised primarily of text given their heavy use by the legal profession. Which, honestly, was used much more before they sh-t the bed with the disastrous and lame v16 launch. I'm not sure I understand how this isn't core. Makes me think the whole "core" thing is just a cover story for a fire sale to keep employees from running out of the burning building.

Either way, it will be the end of eDOCS. First OT closed their point of origin in Florida and dismissing nearly the entire U.S. support staff and development team. The support forum for it is a ghost town. Now, it's just being taken out back and shot in the head so NetDocuments can devour the corpse.

I predict OT will be gone entirely within 18 months, tops.

never heard that eDOC product. Better to get divested.

@c9 The keygen was probably written for Win7 and hasn't been touched since.

OH THANK GOD.

The key gen supposedly has had issues for months. That's actually a good thing for some of the teams around me.

IT will have to expedite fixing that I imagine but we'll take it not involving us.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4501551-opentext-to-divest-non-core-unit-for-163-million

60 people to be included. Best of luck k outside of opentext. You will be better off.

@a8 Good luck with the change.

I received an email from the acting CEO thanking us for our contribution.
EDocs — an on-premise solution primarily used by the legal industry — was sold for a total of $163 million.

The current EDocs team in Ontario includes a manager with no education or relevant experience, known mainly for his sycophancy, two support specialists, and three Level 3 engineers. Of the engineers, two are based in Florida and they bring extensive expertise of 15 years plus, while the other is located in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, the India team consists of 13 employees and one manager.

As for the future — it remains suspended in uncertainty, drifting somewhere in the ether.
Under the agreement, NetDocuments will acquire the technical assets, intellectual property, and dedicated personnel associated with eDOCS. Following closing, eDOCS customers and partners will continue to be fully supported, while gaining a clear pathway toward integration with the NetDocuments intelligent, cloud-based legal DMS when they choose to adopt it.

My guess is that it depends on the buyers and how desperate opentext is to sell.

Is this how OT plans to divest - product by product? Or can we expect to see entire business units go like ADM?