Upstart software firm is simply, divine

Mitsubishi Electronic Automation has been using Participant Server content management software since the summer of 2000 to streamline the administration of its business-to-business Web store and distributor extranet. It's been happy with the technology, but it's not getting the software from Eprise anymore.

Today, Participant Server is one of a myriad of technologies available from upstart software and services firm divine. While divine may not be a household name today, analysts says it's a company large customers should be watching.

Divine is the latest venture for Andrew Filipowski, who built Platinum Technologies into a software powerhouse before selling it to Computer Associates in 1999. Filipowski built Platinum through acquisitions and he's taking the same path with divine.

Filipowski launched divine as an Internet holding company, but switched gears early last year with the purchase of enterprise information portal vendor SageMaker. With that acquisition, divine headed down the road of assembling a software and services company designed to serve Web-enabled businesses. Mitsubishi Electronic Automation is among divine's customer base of 20,000 companies.

Divine's acquisitions have brought it technology and expertise that run the gamut from network hosting services and professional services to collaboration and content management. Last year, divine acquired professional services and hosting firm marchFirst, content management and e-commerce companies Open Market, Eprise and RoweCom, and managed hosting provider Data Return, among others. Analysts say it acquired more than 30 companies last year.

Sue Feldman, an analyst at IDC, says companies should "absolutely" be watching divine, especially in regard to its content-related offerings. Last month, divine acquired assets from search and content vendor Northern Light. With the acquisition, divine offers Northern Light's search technology and its Special Collection online library of more than 7,100 sources, including Forbes, Business Week and The New York Times.

Feldman says content management is a growing concern for large companies as the amount of digital information explodes. Companies that don't handle information well can suffer millions of dollars in losses, she says.

"So along comes divine and they offer information, plus content management, plus search," Feldman says. "Until now, for the most part, it has been necessary to buy a separate search engine, a separate content management piece and separate content. With divine, all the pieces are strung together and there is one contact point for your information systems.

That could be a key differentiator as the company gears up for some pretty stiff competition, experts say. In a company profile she wrote on divine in December, Patricia Seybold of Patricia Seybold Group said divine would compete with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and "all the existing professional services and systems integration firms," such as Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Electronic Data Systems. In content-related areas, it will be competing with companies such as Vignette, Interwoven and IBM/Lotus, she said.

Other analysts say they wonder how the company will integrate the myriad technologies it has brought on board. "I'm not real sanguine they're going to do it. At least not within the time frame they're talking about," says Robert Lerner, an analyst with Current Analysis. "But I may be proven wrong."

Hank Barnes, divine's general manager of content delivery and aggregation, says the company expects to integrate its products within the next year or so. He says most of the products are built on Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition.