Software company OpenText expects to increase its global presence in managing case files for governments and the private sector with the acquisition of Dallas-based Global 360 Holding Corp. for US$260 million.

"It is a strategic acquisition where we see opportunities for the business," Greg Secord, vice-president of investor relations at OpenText in Waterloo, Ont., said Wednesday.

"It's a global market and it's market that we had a little bit of experience with, but we have certainly stepped into over the last few months."

The deal, along with the recent purchase of U.S.-based Metastorm, bring opportunities with financial services, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies as well as government departments, Secord said.

Both acquired companies were considered leaders in the industry with their business process management software but IBM is seen as the biggest competitor, he said.

"We decided we wanted the market and we went in and bought two of the top recognized companies in that space," he said. "We do about half of our business outside North America so it makes sense for us to have products that are leveraged and have brand recognition overseas."

The software allows the management of all documentation and social media such as video interviews and photos around a specific case file, Secord said. For example, it would allow a government department to manage all reports, emails and correspondence associated with a specific file and who has access to it, which can be an unwieldy process on its own.

OpenText is Canada's biggest publicly traded software company and has a variety of systems to manage digital content.

"OpenText is very focused on working with corporations and governments that have terabytes of data everywhere and managing that data for these companies and making sure that the right people can have access to information," Secord said.

National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson said OpenText now has about eight per cent of the global business process management software market, starting from "close to zero" last year.

"Combined, OpenText will generate about $160 million of BPM (business process management) revenue out of a global market that is about $2 billion," Thompson said in a research note.

"In our view, OpenText is becoming a much more important Microsoft SharePoint partner through these two acquisitions."

OpenText also has software that tailors Internet-based searches more precisely to what a user wants and has software that lets businesses build their own social networking sites and also allows employees to file expense reports with their smartphones.

The company "digitized" the G20 summit last year in Toronto, providing software that allowed participants to do such things as social networking and blogging securely on mobile devices. OpenText software was also used at the G20 Seoul summit on the global economy last year.

Shares in OpenText closed up $3.07, or almost five per cent, at $66.37 Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.