Open Text Buys 3D Interface Innovator Vizible

Later today, enterprise content management juggernaut Open Text will announce to the world that it has acquired Toronto, Canada-based Vizible for an undisclosed sum. I’d never heard of Vizible before, but now that I have I’m stunned that this 10-year old company received so little attention for its achievements so far.

Vizible essentially transforms consuming just about any type of content into a rich, visual 3D experience and thus aims to ‘humanize’ how people interact with digital media.

The company breaks the Web into basic units which it refers to as “cells”, which can be virtually any type of media: text, images, audio, video. Once the media has been placed in a cell, that cell can then be tagged, categorized and manipulated in a number of ways. The units can be filtered, searched and organized; they can also be coded to respond to input, linked to other content, or viewed in a three-dimensional space along with other cells.

The technology was used by AT&T (an investor in Vizible) for its 3D browser initiative Pogo, which we covered when we learned the company’s business development unit was working it, although the project never actually came to fruition; the website PogoBrowser.com now redirects to AT&T Music.

Open Text, a publicly-traded company, will fold Vizible’s products into its own digital media solutions, which help its customers manage rich-media content. All Vizible employees will become part of the company’s Digital Media group and remain in the Toronto area, where Open Text also has an office.