Motorola tackles a 60,000 seat intranet

Motorola (Schaumburg, IL) has awarded Open Text

(Waterloo, Ontario, http://www.opentext.com) a 60,000-seat intranet installation contract. The company has chosen Open Text's Livelink Intranet 7.0 application suite as the basis for a global information sharing system. Code-named Compass, the system will enable Motorola employees to find, share, collaboratively develop and manage vast information and resources.

Without divulging the specific value of the award, Tom Jenkins, president and CEO of Open Text called it a seven-figure deal and an on-going revenue stream. He expects the entire installation to be accomplished over the next two quarters.

Part of the attractiveness of the system to Motorola's MIS group, which made the purchase, is that departments can use the product suite to address their own individual document management, project management, collaboration and workflow problems, whatever they may be.

According to Jenkins, the cost could be justified by reduced hardware costs. Because the system does not require sophisticated clients, Motorola can extend the life cycle for each generation of desktop hardware they have. For a company the size of Motorola, moving the replacement cycle for desktop computers from three years to four years immediately produces hardware savings that make the software costs look like a bargain.