Canadian software giant OpenText is turning much of its content management software into microservices, to enable partners to build customised applications for their clients.
Its hybrid cloud platform OT2 offers containerised versions of the vendor's Release 16 enterprise information management (EIM) suite running on microservices, all available for third-parties to plug and play to create entirely new pieces of software.
"This is really going to open things up for partners to build applications with our components, so you can take our APIs and microservices and very easily build what you want to build on the cloud," said Lynn Elwood, VP of cloud and services solutions,
at the company's annual conference in Toronto yesterday.
"Our partners, our services, our customers, everybody is going to benefit from being able to work with this."
The self-service EIM platform, available now, means developers can build SaaS apps and run them in OpenText Enterprise Cloud.
Typical use cases will mirror those of Release 16 - namely, content collaboration, security, process automation, and analytics.
"If you were to start a SaaS company this is where you'd start," said CEO and CTO Mark J. Barrenechea, highlighting OT2's platform support for the likes of Cloud Foundry and Kafka, and services in the shape of identity access management, analytics and AI.
Two services on OT2 - OpenText Quality, a life sciences app that's designed to meet strict regulations, and OpenText Legal, which manages client onboarding and document sharing - will become available before the end of the year.
OT2 runs out of OpenText's own private cloud offering, OpenText Enterprise Cloud. But it's tied to Release 16, which can run on customers' data centres, in OpenText's cloud, and now also on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Elwood told Channel Pro that this ensures OpenText can offer "complete flexibility" to customers, who can run services wherever suits them best.
"They can move components wherever they want them to be," she said.
Barrenechea also indicated that the decision to support the three public cloud giants also allows OpenText - and its channel partners - to reach new customers within its 'global 10,000' list of the world's largest companies.
"Some of the global 10,000 have made platform decisions they've standardised on, so we think it'll open new markets for us," he told press, highlighting services like its Core file sync and share tool, document capture software and digital asset management that would work well as public SaaS-delivered services.
"It's another area for partners to build that and go to market on," he added.
OpenText stated that after effectively containerising Release 16 with OT2, both OT2 and the customer-centric suite will run in tandem.
"[They] will live next to each other and have a long life next to each other," said Barrenechea.
OT2 will receive quarterly updates, and applications will be tightly integrated with Release 16 apps, the firm said.
