RWS Holdings today announced the acquisition of Netherlands-based Fonto, the providers of the leading Cloud-native, data-driven authoring solution for mission-critical documents. Fonto’s easy-to-use, browser-based authoring environment makes structured content authoring and review possible for anyone in an organisation.
Both Fonto and RWS share a vision for enterprise content that is ’Beyond the Document’. Mission-critical content will be freed from the document format and managed in more modular and reusable forms that are optimised for digital delivery and machine/API consumption. Fonto’s technology empowers subject matter experts in an organisation to author and review structured content with an ease not previously possible.
“This acquisition enhances RWS’s leadership position in the structured content market and Fonto strengthens our ability to offer a set of governed authoring tools that enable teams to collaborate on their high-value content,” said Ian El-Mokadem, chief executive officer of RWS. “Fonto and RWS both focus deeply on the special content management needs of regulated industries such as life sciences, pharmaceutical and finance, where proper content compliance is not an optional requirement.”
The Fonto team will operate as a separate business unit within RWS and will be led by Jan Benedictus and Taeke Kuyvenhoven, who founded Fonto and will continue to lead the company in this exciting new chapter. “RWS has been a long-time partner for Fonto and during that time, we have found that we share a common vision about the future of documents and use of structured content,” said Jan Benedictus. “With RWS behind us, we strengthen our size, footprint and robustness to pursue our mission: to make ‘The Future of Documents’ a reality.”
“We welcome Fonto to the RWS family,” said Thomas Labarthe, president of RWS Language Services and Technology. “The more we collaborated as partners the more we realised that bringing the two companies together made incredible sense. We are both passionate about helping enterprises maximise the ROI associated with adopting structured content solutions.”
In addition to close collaboration with RWS, Fonto will continue supporting a wide array of industry partners who integrate Fonto’s cutting-edge content authoring and reviewing tools into their technologies. “The Fonto team will continue to service and support our valued partners with the dedication they expect from us. Our partners represent a diverse set of market leaders and we will continue to work with them to shape ‘The Future of Documents’ for a broad range of applications,” said Taeke Kuyvenhoven.