Hummingbird, one of leading suppliers of document management, records management and associated technologies to law firms is facing a take over bid from competitor Open Text.

The board of Hummingbird have recommended that shareholders reject the unsolicited offer.

One of the reasons for the rejection is that the board are currently negotiating a potential transaction with Open Text pursuant to which Open Text would acquire Hummingbird at a price higher than US$27.75 per share which has been offered to shareholders.

The bid is a sign of the growing consolidation in this market place and follows the take over of iManage by Interwoven a few years ago. Most vendors in this market place have been buying in complementary technologies to complete their offering in the enterprise content management arena. However, with the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and IBM starting to make serious inroads into this market, the future of many of the vendors remains uncertain.