Open Text Corporation

Anouar Namouh, with the University of Waterloo professors Frank Tompa and Gaston Gonnet, founded OpenText Corporation in 1991. It grew out of OpenText Systems Inc., founded in 1989. The founders spun the company off from a University of Waterloo project that developed technology to index the Oxford English Dictionary.

Key people involved later include Tom Jenkins, who joined the company as COO in 1994, and later became president and chief executive officer. John Shackleton served as president from 1998 to 2011 and as CEO from 2005 to 2011. Mark J. Barrenechea became the president and CEO of OpenText in 2012. Barrenechea was named Canadian Business CEO of the Year in 2015. In January 2016, Barrenechea became Chief Technology Officer. From January 2016, Steve Murphy served as the President; however, the company eliminated the position in Q1 2017.

In October 2012, it was announced that OpenText would support the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus, by contributing both funds and in-kind services to the school.

In July 2020, OpenText partnered with cybersecurity company NINJIO. The collaboration strengthens security awareness with videos showcasing detection of phishing emails and inappropriate URLs.

In February 2024, OpenText joined the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), a United States Government cybersecurity initiative. The JCDC aims to improve cybersecurity readiness for the U.S. and its international partners. OpenText announced it would be providing a range of services and insights into safeguarding sensitive information.

In January 2025, it was announced that OpenText was chosen as one of Canada's Top Employers for Young People for 2025, as well as one of Canada's Most Responsible Companies of 2025.

OpenText suspended its business in Russia in 2022 after having made donations to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. The company stated it would only resume business when "the war ends and sanctions are lifted." In 2025, OpenText was declared an undesirable organization in Russia.

In August 2025, James McGourlay was appointed as the interim CEO of OpenText, replacing Mark Barrenechea.

OpenText's products include enterprise content management (OpenText Content Suite, OpenText Extended ECM, OpenText Documentum Content Management), Business Network, customer experience management (OpenText Customer Experience Platform), digital process automation (OpenText Process Automation), discovery (OpenText eDiscovery and Investigations), security (OpenText Forensic (EnCase), OpenText Carbonite and Webroot solutions, OpenText NetIQ, OpenText ArcSight, OpenText Voltage, OpenText Fortify), and AI and analytics (OpenText Magellan Product Suite).

OpenText announced cloud-native containerized versions of many of the company's software applications in April 2020.

Documentum

OpenText Documentum is a secure information management platform, named after the company Documentum that originally developed the software suite. In 2003, EMC acquired Documentum for $1.7 billion. In 2016, EMC was acquired by Dell, becoming Dell EMC. Subsequently, all of the Documentum intellectual property was sold to OpenText Corporation.

Content Suite Platform

In 1996, the product originally called "Livelink" became OpenText's. Between 2003 and 2005, "Livelink" evolved from being the name of a single product to being a brand applied to the names of several OpenText software products. As a result of this change, "Livelink Server" became known as "Livelink Enterprise Server" (LES) and later "Livelink ECM. In 2012, OpenText introduced the OpenText Content Suite. Then the technology component formerly known as Livelink ECM – Enterprise Server became known as OpenText Content Server, which is now a key component of OpenText Content Suite Platform.

OpenText has acquired several businesses over the past two decades, beginning with IXOS Software AG in 2003, followed by Artesia in 2004. Other notable acquisitions include Hummingbird Ltd. in 2006 for $489 million, Captaris Inc. in 2008 for $131 million, and Vignette Corporation in 2009 for $321 million in cash and stock.

In the early 2010s, it acquired StreamServe Inc. for $71 million, EasyLink (2012) for $232 million, and GXS Inc., which had previously acquired Inovis, integrating the latter into the OpenText Business Network, which later acquired Inovis. In 2014, OpenText purchased Cordys for $33 million, and Actuate of San Mateo, California. The following year, it acquired Daegis for $13.5 million.

After Hewlett-Packard split into two companies, HP Enterprise and HP Inc., OpenText acquired HP customer experience content management from HP Inc. for approximately $170 million in April 2016. On September 12, 2016, OpenText further expanded its share of the enterprise content management software market by buying that division of Dell EMC, which included Documentum, for US$1.6 billion. OpenText had originally had Documentum and Hummingbird, Ltd., as its chief competitors in this space, but this acquisition brought the long-time third competitor in Documentum under one corporate roof. Also in 2016, OpenText acquired Recommind after previously engaging with the company as a strategic partner.

In 2017, OpenText acquired both Guidance Software for US$240 million, and Covisint for US$103 million, which they integrated into their OpenText Business Network. In 2018, OpenText acquired Liaison Technologies for US$310 million and integrated Liaison into their OpenText ALLOY Platform.