Open Text will today meet UK customers to plan its next steps following its merger with Ixos - a deal that makes it the world's largest company focused on enterprise content management.

Collaborative software and knowledge management firm Open Text last month completed the capture of Germany's Ixos in a transaction that gives it a much bigger say in document management and archiving technology and in the European market generally.

Managing content is becoming more important due to corporate governance regulations. Rules such as the Combined Code on Corporate Governance in the UK and Sarbanes-Oxley in the US are forcing companies to take a more proactive role in storing, time-stamping and indexing content.

Today at its LinkUp conference in London, Open Text chief executive Tom Jenkins and Ixos chief executive Robert Hoog will outline a strategy designed to make the company the leader in collaboration and content management, and will provide a roadmap for future product releases.

The Ixos purchase follows recent deals to acquire web content management firm Gauss and portal developer Corechange.

Near-term plans will include combining Ixos's email archiving and Open Text's records management and indexing tools to create a scalable email management system that provides an audit trail; creating a web content management suite; and using Ixos tools to add archiving to Open Text's flagship product, LiveLink.

In an interview with IT Week, Jenkins said the moribund market for public company flotations had slowed innovation in some areas of content management, most notably multimedia, and he applauded storage giant EMC's acquisition of document management firm Documentum. "We think it's a smart move for them but we want to stay independent and partner with storage companies," he added.

The London conference is expected to attract about 450 delegates from companies including builders' merchant Jewson, Sony and Barclays Bank.