Why an OpenText partner came back — and what still needs to change

Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

We’re wrapping up our coverage from OpenText World 2026 in Orlando with a look at what the company’s changing partner strategy looks like for a solution provider that’s built a business around OpenText technology.

My guest today is Shaney Salomon from Optima Consulting, a company that operates at the intersection of the OpenText and SAP ecosystems, helping enterprise customers implement, modernize, and get more value from their technology investments.

Shaney has an interesting perspective on OpenText’s partner evolution. She started her career with the company, left to build Optima, and after years of working with OpenText technology without being an official partner, has recently brought the company back into the OpenText partner program. And she’s quite clear about why.

We talk about how OpenText’s previous approach to professional services sometimes put the company at odds with its partners, what’s changed under new leadership, and why there’s still work to do to make that partner-first approach a reality throughout the organization.

We also get into how AI is changing the enterprise modernization conversation, why customers can’t necessarily wait until they’ve completed their cloud migrations to start seeing AI value, and the lessons Optima has learned about building a successful solution provider business around major technology platforms.

It’s a useful look at OpenText’s strategy from the perspective of a partner that’s actually putting it into practice.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Shaney Salomon.

Robert Dutt: Shaney, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I’m sure it’s a busy week for you.

Shaney Salomon: It is. It’s been a busy week so far, but super happy to be here with you and looking forward to the questions.

Robert Dutt: And just starting, too.

Let’s start with your story. You started within OpenText and then went out and built out Optima Consulting. What led you to make that leap? What was the opportunity that made you decide that building a partner organization around OpenText was the right move to make back when you made that decision?

Shaney Salomon: I came to OpenText through an acquisition, actually, of one of the solutions that SAP considers a solution extension today, Vendor Invoice Management. That was back in the 2004 timeframe.

Once I joined OpenText, I worked my way up into leadership, into the SAP Global Services lead, and had a really good run there.

But when SAP and OpenText really went to market together around their archiving solutions, and then eventually Vendor Invoice Management, the partner community, the big guys, the Big Four, started coming into the space.

And those were the partners that OpenText, I think, thought would be the right level of partners to really work with SAP and OpenText on bringing these solutions to market.

I saw that a little bit differently. I saw that as an opportunity to go out into the ecosystem, partner with both SAP and OpenText, and create a company that really focused in that space.

Robert Dutt: In that kind of intersection. That’s interesting, because I’ve heard the story of folks who are within a vendor and decide to go out and build a partner organization around that vendor. But it’s an interesting twist to have that be at the intersection of two vendors’ businesses there.

Shaney Salomon: I had been in the SAP space for several years and really saw that as the catalyst.

OpenText has very, very strong technologies, but SAP had the breadth of reach with enterprise customers. It was really interesting to me.

Being able to marry the two, where my understanding of the OpenText products married up with the SAP ecosystem and that enterprise customer breadth, that was really interesting. And the thesis has proved correct.

Robert Dutt: I guess an interesting level of insight, especially going into it, into customer needs and customer requests across both OpenText and SAP.

Shaney Salomon: Absolutely.

Things have changed a lot. I think originally the idea was we were out really just selling and implementing OpenText at the time. We started out with just a product or two, and now we cover everything where SAP and OpenText meet.

But our team has expanded, our opportunities have expanded, and we’ve really moved also into the spend management space around SAP and the OpenText Vendor Invoice Management space, accounts payable, that whole procure-to-pay space that we really got good at.

Leveraging the OpenText solutions afforded us the opportunity to move deeper into the spend management space with SAP.

And now, with SAP really moving all of their customers to cloud, that big S/4 transformation that’s happening in the market today, we see customers really needing to modernize their stacks. And that’s our bias today, helping them modernize so that they can get prepared for AI in a way that makes sense.

Robert Dutt: Is that something that you find you’re driving to them, or is it something that they’re coming to you and asking for, looking for?

Shaney Salomon: It’s certainly both, but it’s top of mind for everyone. It’s board level, CEO level, CIO level. But bringing it to life is a whole different story, right?

And OpenText has a great perspective around that, I think, because without structured content, the context around that, making AI work for a company is really challenging.

Both OpenText and SAP are bringing their own technological versions of AI to the table. But customers are really, really trying to figure out which stack makes sense, which AI is the best, how do they combine them, where do we orchestrate all of that kind of thing.

So it feels like the Wild West right now, but it is certainly the mandate for all of our customers today.

Robert Dutt: It feels like the Wild West, but I think I’m hearing over the course, especially over the course of this year, that we’re getting past the point of customers coming to an organization like you and saying, “CEO says we have to do AI. Don’t really know what that means, but we need to do it.”

Sounds like there’s an increased level of sophistication, understanding, and wanting to get to outcomes as quickly as possible in doing that.

Shaney Salomon: Absolutely. And that’s where I think we start, and we do really well, is focusing on what is the outcome.

Then you can think about what are the inputs and who’s it going to impact and all of that.

But if there isn’t a really good reason to do it in the first place, where it’s going to provide ROI, allow a company to do things better, faster, make better use of their resources, all of that, then what’s the point?

And that’s our perspective. It has to come with a clean core, good data, good context, a business process that’s going to help them move their business forward.

But it also needs to be a trusted place as well.

We see our customers finding use cases in spaces where there are outcomes that will make a big difference, but also aren’t too risky right up front.

And so the starting point is places where you can really make a business outcome and a big difference.

Robert Dutt: Going back to the spin-up and the buildup of Optima over the years, you built a business around a couple of major technology vendors’ ecosystems.

What were the biggest lessons along the way? What did you get right about your thesis coming into it, and what did you kind of have to go, “Okay, in reality, this needs to look a little different”?

Shaney Salomon: I think the number one lesson is you can’t rest on your laurels, right?

You might be knocking it out of the park in one business area, but being able to always be looking forward, seeing where the market is heading, getting ahead of your clients so that you’re there before they even know they need to be there, I think that’s probably one of the most painful lessons learned.

Because when you are really, really focused in one channel, one product, one approach, and even though you may be fantastic at it, you have to continue to evolve.

And now, as we all know, things are evolving at the speed of light, right?

But I think that’s the biggest lesson learned so far, is really that innovation and that future-looking strategy have to be top of mind every single day.

And I think that’s what we do differently than a lot of our competitors.

Robert Dutt: How has the transition to AI and that whole evolution over the last couple of years changed Optima, both in terms of how you work with customers and especially internally? How have you looked at it from an internal lens?

Shaney Salomon: We’re on the journey ourselves, right?

And we’re doing things like marketing systems, areas where the risk is low, but it’s easy to test our theory, building harnesses behind the scenes, trying to make a difference in big ways. But we’re continuing to roll that strategy out internally.

It’s really very similar for our customers. Everybody’s ready to go all in on AI, but they also need to do it in a way, as I mentioned before, that provides the right business outcome and doesn’t provide too much risk.

What we’re seeing, though, is even internally, change management is a big part of it, and that’s with clients as well.

It’s a new way of working. People don’t think that way natively sometimes. And as the workforce is aging, some people are having trouble making the shift to thinking about AI practically. Where does it practically make sense?

There’s still a lot of fear out there about what’s it going to do to our job.

So it’s an interesting time.

Internally, our goal really is to make the work easier, faster, better for our folks so that we can serve our clients consistently in a way that makes sense.

And then for our customers, at this point, it still is finding those practical use cases where they’re feeling good about it.

And then it’s on to agentic and all of those kinds of things.

Robert Dutt: Yeah. Always something new.

Shaney Salomon: Exactly.

Robert Dutt: Especially, obviously, your job is to educate and then facilitate around the technology side of things.

But when you get to that more cultural side of AI, the building up of internal processes, the setting of expectations, all that change management stuff