Where OpenText has traditionally focused on content from the user's perspective, IXOS, a German-based company focused on content from an IT or administrative perspective. Both have virtue in their field but have fundamental technical and logical differences to be overcome as well as a significant business hurdle to overcome. The technical issues were many but the most significant was (and is) the security access model. Where Content Server uses a flexible and extensible per object Access Control List  [ACL] whereas the Archive Server uses a trusted server method to provide access to content, inherently, therefore, the Archive Server could weaken the security of the original Content Server.

The business challenges were much more difficult to mitigate. Archiving of content is a task that is not perceived as particularly valuable to the business users of content, it is primarily a cost-cutting tool deployed by IT to lessen the required resources for an application. While the benefits of archiving can be enumerated and a positive Return On Investment realized, they will not make for more sales nor provide for any upside. In the software world, the valuable, high-margin software solves business problems and is sold to business units, commodity software like file systems, archiving, and email are sold in a highly competitive market to tech-savvy IT professionals and make relatively low-margin. The exact details for OpenText are confidential of course but the public price for the software tells the story well enough, there was about an order of magnitude difference in the license cost (though to be honest, even that comparison is as inaccurate as it is informative, the whole pricing structure was at odds with each other).

The final challenge to this job was around geography. The technical resources for the Archive were primarily located in Munich, Germany, those for the Content Server in Chicago, Illinois, and much of the business resources in Waterloo and Toronto Canada. This made collaboration more difficult but more importantly provided for an interesting cultural mix as Germans, Americans, and Canadians worked together.