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OpenText secures digital transformation across the intelligent and connected enterprise

OpenText Release 16 Enhancement Pack 4 delivers a secure platform for artificial intelligence, IoT, content services, and extreme automation
OpenText™ (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX), the global leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM), today announced OpenText Release 16 Enhancement Pack 4 (EP4). This release further extends security, artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and cloud support into the market-leading OpenText EIM platform.
“The world’s leading organisations use the OpenText EIM platform to manage and gain insights from their critical information assets,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText vice chair, CEO and CTO. “This latest release enhances protection of these assets from threats and data breaches, while continuing to expand support for advanced AI and extreme automation use-cases.”
Barrenechea continued, “Cybersecurity vulnerabilities represent a real and present threat to today’s digital organisation. The value of information in our modern economy requires data-intensive companies to contend with a barrage of cyberattacks, the risk of data breaches, and the growing impact of data privacy regulations. Building any business requires companies to develop and maintain trust with their customers and suppliers. Intelligent and connected enterprises must effectively use, protect, and steward their information in a secured manner.”
OpenText Release 16 EP4 makes it easier for organisations to move to the right hybrid or fully managed cloud environment. New cloud connectors continue to place the OpenText ecosystem at the center of digital business, while working seamlessly with the best-in-breed technologies in asset and resource management, operations, content creation, and content collaboration.
“OpenText is leading the way in how AI will transform EIM and we are revolutionising how connected enterprises engage with data and information,” said Barrenechea. “Release 16 EP4 creates new opportunities for our customers to leverage the power of hybrid cloud, IoT, AI, and automation to improve the way they securely operate and innovate.”
EP4 brings significant enhancements across Release 16:
- AppWorks: OpenText Process Suite is now AppWorks, a fully customisable automation platform that delivers a compelling low-code development experience and new support for developers.
- Content: Expanding on the simplified user experiences delivered in R16, Content Services EP4 further deepens integrations with leading process applications to drive productivity, strengthens compliance with automated capture of metadata, enhances cloud readiness and advances analytics and reporting. OpenText iHub analytics and reporting are added to OpenText eDOCS.
- Experience: Exstream brings agile cloud CCM applications to omni-channel communications with automated job visualisation and end-to-end tracking analysis. TeamSite will take advantage of machine intelligence capabilities to extract concepts and is now enabled with “Search Engine as a Service” and “Taxonomy as a Service” capabilities. For a call center in the cloud, Qfiniti is listed on the AWS Marketplace leveraging Amazon Connect.
- Security: OpenText EnCase Endpoint Security adds bi-directional Splunk integration and other new tools for automated and expedited incident response.
- Discovery: OpenText Axcelerate adds performance, usability and compatibility enhancements for eDiscovery and investigations, plus new data collection services powered by EnCase.
- Analytics: OpenText Magellan introduces out-of-the-box Content Services Platform connectors for integrated content mining, extended data loading options for analysts and business users, and a deeper leveraging of Hadoop and Spark for data processing and Machine Learning.
- Business Network: New integrations with AppWorks and Covisint create new opportunities for automation and IoT. This release of the OpenText Trading Grid bundles predictive analytics for all new customers. OpenText also now offers a new RightFax Managed Services solution, helping companies implement secure communications across their entire business ecosystem while leveraging OpenText people, process and technology.
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UK-Japan trade deal settled nerves for Japanese firms, Honda executive says

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s trade deal with Japan settled the nerves of a lot of Japanese businesses in the United Kingdom and gives them confidence about their future prospects there, a senior Honda executive said on Tuesday.
Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has since the 1980s made the United Kingdom its favoured European destination for investment, with the likes of Nissan, Toyota and Honda using the country as a launchpad into Europe.
But Britain’s shock 2016 decision to leave the European Union had prompted Japan to express unusually strong public concerns. Their companies and investors warned that a disorderly exit from the EU would force them to rethink their four-decade bet on Britain.
“We welcome very much the Japanese trade agreement which as a Japanese businesses was very welcomed,” Ian Howells, senior vice president at Honda Motor Europe, told a parliamentary committee.
“On the point around confidence, that certainly amongst my peers in Japanese companies was very much welcomed, and probably settled a lot of nerves in terms of their trading prospects in the UK going forward.”
Britain and Japan formally signed a trade agreement in October, marking Britain’s first big post-Brexit deal on trade. It has also made a formal request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), of which Japan is also a member.
(Reporting by Kate Holton)
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UK retailers see sharp fall in sales and mounting job losses, CBI says

LONDON (Reuters) – British retail sales fell in the year to February as stores cut jobs at a rapid rate, with only supermarkets reporting any growth during the latest COVID-19 lockdown, a survey showed on Thursday.
The Confederation of British Industry’s gauge of retail sales stood at -45, up only slightly from January’s eight-month low of -50. The measure points to falling sales and is below the consensus forecast of -38 in a Reuters poll of economists.
Retailers’ expectations for March – when non-essential shops will remain closed to the public as part of lockdown measures – fell to -62, the lowest since the series began in 1983.
In another sign of a changing consumer habits during lockdown, the survey’s gauge of internet retail sales hit a new record high.
“With lockdown measures still in place, trading conditions remain extremely difficult for retailers,” said Ben Jones, principal economist at the CBI.
“Record growth in internet shopping suggests that retailers’ investments in on-line platforms and click-and-collect services may be paying off, but the re-opening of the sector can’t come soon enough to protect jobs and breathe life back into the sector.”
Job losses among retailers accelerated according to a quarterly question in the survey. For the distribution sector as a whole, which includes wholesalers and car dealers, employment fell at a record rate, the CBI survey showed.
(Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by David Milliken)
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Holiday bookings soar as Britons hope for travel restart

By Sarah Young
LONDON (Reuters) – International holiday bookings surged by as much as 600% after Britain laid out plans to gradually relax coronavirus restrictions, giving battered airlines and tour operators hope that a bumper summer could come to their rescue.
EasyJet said flight bookings from Britain jumped over 300% and holiday bookings surged by more than 600% week on week after the government indicated on Monday that travel could restart from mid-May, while holiday company TUI UK said that its holiday bookings surged 500%.
This summer is make-or-break for many airlines and holiday companies which are struggling to survive with close to a year of almost no revenue due to pandemic restrictions. Without it many will need extra funds after burning through cash reserves.
UK-listed travel stocks were buoyed after new bookings flooded in on Monday evening and Tuesday despite ongoing uncertainty over exactly how and when international routes can reopen.
Shares in easyJet jumped 9%, while British Airways-owner IAG traded up 6%, TUI and Jet2 both jumped 6% and Ryanair was 3% higher.
While British tourists are some of the biggest spenders in Europe, the presence of a more infectious variant of coronavirus in the UK could alarm some countries. France and Spain have shut their borders to most UK travellers due to variants.
UK holidaymakers will know more on April 12 when the government publishes a travel review. It has said that a lockdown ban on most international travel will stay until at least May 17.
That should give airlines time to plan their summer schedule, a process which takes months.
EasyJet said trips from the UK to beach destinations such as Malaga, Alicante and Palma in Spain, Faro in Portugal and Crete, Greece, were the most popular destinations with holidaymakers keenest to travel in August. July and September were the next most popular months.
TUI said destinations in Greece, Spain and Turkey were the most booked overnight, with people opting to go from July onwards.
Britain’s route back to normality is helped by rapid progress with its vaccine plan. Over 17.7 million people, or a quarter of the population, have already had a first dose of the jab. The government is also considering options for vaccine passports.
The airlines and travel companies hope such progress will mean that from May 17 the UK will end its holiday ban and remove a 10-day quarantine requirement, a big deterrent for holidaymakers, and some of its COVID-19 testing rules.
(Reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Paul Sandle and Susan Fenton)