Some industry watchers have been forecasting a convergence between Web content management and digital asset management vendors, such as Bulldog, as mainstream corporations add more multimedia content to their Web sites.

"I think this is a strategic investment for Documentum because, if you ask me, where the industry is going can be summed up in one word: 'convergence,' " said Geoffrey Bock, an analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group.

Accenture, which partners with Documentum and Bulldog through its 18-month-old digital content services practice, likewise sees demand for digital asset management expanding beyond media and entertainment companies, said Frank Modruson, global leader for the practice.

"What's happened historically is you would buy a content management tool and a digital asset management tool and do the integration yourself," he said. "I think [the acquisition] is a natural evolution; you're going to see more and more of that will be to everyone's benefit."

Documentum said the acquisition makes it the first vendor offering a complete suite of enterprise content management software, including Web content management, document management, XML component management and now digital asset management tools.

"From a business point of view, we see this acquisition as opening new media markets for Documentum and as enabling us to offer a more comprehensive offering to the main market, which is the Global 2000," said Whitney Pidmarsh, vice president of product marketing for Documentum, Pleasanton, Calif.

Documentum plans to immediately begin offering rebranded Bulldog products through its sales channels. Within 90 days, Documentum expects to deliver the first products integrated with its Documentum ECM platform to market, Pidmarsh said.

The integrated products will include a media server add-on product that will give current users an ability to marry images, video and sound with content already managed by the Documentum platform.

Pidmarsh said while its users could already retrieve and store rich media and route it through workflow processes with the existing application, they will now gain capabilities such as previewing thumbnail views, carrying out complex searches, handling streaming media and producing Internet-quality and broadcast quality images.

Documentum also plans to release three new editions of its platform, one for Web content management, one for managing marketing assets in conjunction with CRM applications and one for media and entertainment companies.

Pidmarsh said the integration will occur quickly because the two companies' products have a similar architecture.

For its part, Interwoven, Sunnyvale, Calif., which takes a different approach to Web content management, unveiled an initiative on Nov. 20 to partner with digital asset management vendors, including Artesia Technologies, Adobe Systems, IBM and Virage.

Joe Ruck, senior vice president of marketing for Interwoven, said only about 2 percent of its clients need the kind of capability offered by those vendors to handle complex media. He said Interwoven's hybrid architecture could already meet the needs of most companies for managing rich media.

"The high-end niche is really just a sliver of the demand out there, and that's why Interwoven isn't interesting in buying into that," Ruck said.