TORONTO (Reuters) - OpenText Corp (>> Open Text Corporation), one of Canada's most valuable technology companies, unveiled a major upgrade to its suite of data management tools on Wednesday, a simplification it hopes will harness a growing reliance on digital tools within companies.

The Waterloo-based business software maker said it has spent more than $300 million to develop the product suite, code named "Project Blue Carbon," over the last 18 months as its corporate, government and other large customers seek more control, improved engagement and better insight from their data.

The products, launched together as "OpenText Suite 16" and "OpenText Cloud 16" mark the first time the company has upgraded its entire offering in one go, rather than updating as many as 300 discrete products over the course of a year.

"We've been an acquisitive company over the years, we've had different product lines on different version-numbering schemes," said Adam Howatson, OpenText's chief marketing officer. "We're aligning them all to drive simplicity for customers."

One of those acquisitions from earlier this year, Actuate, has boosted predictive analytics across the new product line, Howatson said, while the upgrade also makes collaboration and customization easier and makes it possible to set automatic self-destruct functions on sensitive information.

The services can be delivered from OpenText servers or those that sit on the premises of their customers, or a combination of both, and work with software from a range of other suppliers.

OpenText says that its customers include 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies and that it has 10 percent of a $25-billion market for enterprise information management.

It competes most directly with International Business Machines Corp (>> International Business Machines Corp.), as well as EMC Corp (>> EMC Corporation), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (>> Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co) and others to sell software to companies to automate their business processes.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Sandra Maler)

By Alastair Sharp