I just encountered elcom CMS proposition, flipping through the pages of the products i realized the truth of the proposition.
The product is bought as a base infrastructure with Base modules and then you can add new modules on top.
This is a very small business oriented approach to my taste and understanding.
When we approach an enterprise with a “Social Package” or with Blogs/Wiki/Comments modules that you can add to the base offer we will get a bitter response to the latter, the people in the organization don’t like to play Lego. they just don’t care if the tags is different module to the wiki’s or not, TCO is what they care about and the CAPEX encuring the purchase to be justified with the ROI.
So packing modules into integrations, seamlessly integrate able product lines will generate much better traction then modulizing offerings with a base install.
The thought line behind modulization is clear, installing a new module will be simple. but the simplicity is good for mediume and small businesses and not a large scale IT infrastructure where the stability and scalability play a bigger part of the decision making.
So my take on the offering from elcom is that its aimed to the medium size clients making them feel big enterprises as they are installing ECM and not some Joomla/Drupal open source thingy.
Looking into the offered modules and i noticed that the bread and butter of an enterprise are in the additional modules sections, SSO and Staging of content are the air you breath in an organization with more then one layer of content creator and multiple business units handling content in the environment.
This leads me to believe that the product is not aimed at enterprise after all is it.
So these days businesses use the Enterprise keyword as a marketing spin to make the purchaser look good in-front of the board of directors and to explain high costs, noice.
Coming back to the Modules vs Product theory, in the field of large organizations a module can be used only by a small segment of the business and be neglected in the purchase as to the additional cost, thus may be preventing a better business process. or it could be a hidden feature on the platform that gets used most often and add the best value.
Business in the sizes we are speaking of will shell the extra dollars for a full package so the offering of modularization does not appeal to it.
As oppose to the medium business who has a small IT team that is very well familiar with all the organization and has the ability to chase every requirement and be aware of it, in this case modularization is a great optimization solution to save on the IT cost of a CMS.

No no no, i did not get an iPad on ebay, its still missing some basic specs i need like a camera, though the WePad seems more like what i want.
The iPad is starting to symbolize the death of the Searched web, where website page was king, this is done with the help of mobile OS’s perception of usability standards.
iPad is pointing on the change we are making to the internet, from the even spread internet to Silos of information instead with vertical content, the Apps!
There are some people in the industry that compare the iPad with the CD-ROM publishing phenomena, where CDs were sellotaped to the front of a magazine, and their inability to bring extra profit. they were only done to glorify the news paper brand.
Apps are wonderful things they are focused on a single realm of usage and the put the rest of the world aside, but they are changing the way we build our internet and structuring our content.
We used to have silos of thought and very productized information consumption long ago when the internet was nothing more then a dream in some university, they called it news paper.
But the internet broke these silos to pieces and enabled a generation of people to produce news and information sharing in the forms of Blogs, Micro blogging and Collaboration Sites.
These enabled us to publish everything and surpass governments to display real footage from places like Iran.

But the iPad is becoming the icon of the reversal of that, its iconic because of the broken promise of creating the ultimate publishers tool.

What we get is a big App driven solution resembling the iPhone and Android phones supplying segregated content streams that are awesome on the go but lack when you hit a certain size and commitment.
The phenomena we are getting now is that many companies invest efforts in becoming iPad capable with applications, especially publishing houses, which in this age of the web should not happen. The web standards should have sufficed with a browser.
Some will claim that the Appcelerator IDE and alike just create a web interface over the same content i supply, i disagree as to the point that web standards should have driven the product to be able to display and let a person interact with content without the need to re mask it under an app.

The issues i see with this from the content management side are huge, since we are now using a different interface to display content you will not be getting the same content as it is probably not looking “Good” on the App you just built, this will mandate an “iPad” version of the same content and thus will create content duplication and degradation to fix display issues that could have been avoided.
We are talking about multiple content formats to maintain partially duplicated content with same metadata and probably the same tags and classification, all in the sake of the App.
This will create the duplication of resources in the team to manage the Website and the App’s, iPhone/iPad/Android etc, content.
I wonder how quick will somebody build a publishing plugins/system only for iPhone/iPad and the likes?

But i think that the product is incomplete as with the iPhone that was released in the first version without the GPS who its competitors had.
So i am not claiming i will never buy an iPad, just not this one.

As for some other perspective i got thinking about when i was reading Jeff Jarvis article, the inability to open the packaging, with the ability to close it back, makes these items throwaway like and very unfriendly to people who can repair electronics or inquisitive child.
This is something i can understand in a phone a bit more, may be as a construction stability, but not at a personal computing unit.

This subject was introduced by a group of WCM guys and will be discussed in the best Web Conference in the world by Janus Boye.
This will include a Web Content Management track that is suggesting it will give guidance as it states

How do you get it right? What are the pitfalls to avoid? On this track you can learn from internationally recognized analysts, who will be joined by practitioners, all sharing their insights on how to get it right.

to solve your earthly problems with the WCM implementations.
The panel will be Janus Boye representing the customer viewpoint, Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch representing the analyst massive, and Jon Marks defending the honour of the implementers.

This session will be an interactive one where you can use twitter to submit questions about the problems or solutions you had to WCM implementations using #fixwcm tag.

But what is really wrong about the WCM that we are in need of this session?

Inspired by the twitter tag #fixwcm i was pondering about the CMS sickness and what is the methods i see to cure that.

some people suggest that the WCM term is bigger then what it should be and thus too hard to handle and needs to be cut into smaller chunks.

Others put the blame on estimates and project schedules, or more politely on the sales process for cutting down on the implementation times.

But what is wrong with the WCM products and implementations?

The customer is not happy with the solutions and usually works with it only due to necessity not because they love using it.

But why is that?
The technology has matured enough to satisfy any customers need.
Implementers have matured.
The web has matured and implementation processes been formed. we have Agile methodology to make the implementation in the most versatile way.

This should have been sufficient to support the creation of the best fitting products for each and every customer. but it just doesn’t cut it.

Whats is wrong with that?

Interaction is what comes tomy mind every time i think of what went wrong.
Internal and external interactions are the place where we lose the implementation.
it starts with the initial process of selecting the right product through translation of business processes to requirements and failing of the requirements to be formed into artifacts in development and to the final grave of testing.
When selecting a product you are dealing with the Sales teams of each vendor and they want you in, that is where you get the more generic answers “Yeah our product can do that” and they are correct but it takes time to make the product do that.
Jon Marks had a discussion about the selection process. iguess there is no clear solution to this enigma.

It continues with the Dictionary each party is using through to politics and risk management.
To prove the dictionary point just ask any of your clients what CMS is, you will be in for a bit of an earthquake.

So what is to be done?
Some of the points that were up in the air like simplification of terms under the CMS with smaller chunks will create an easier dictionary.
use of simpler tools for the implementation.

The way i see it changing is with the maturity of the clients and the implementors in understanding what should be done when implementing the WCM and been trouthful about the weight and cost of such a process we will have a better implementation and love to WCM solutions.
Peace and Love
Yuval.

Just dropping a Wave demo using the Wavr plugin.

Can you submit to this one not from the wave?

When i think on Enterprise 2.0 implementation in any organization i am looking to see if the organization will embrace it and invest the time needed.
Judging people on a quick impression basis probably gives me the wrong impression over the flexibility of some of those organizations. And imagining the CEO of a company embracing a blog usually seems impossible.

Apparently i am wrong Ron Miller in Fierce Content Management has posted a commentary about how the Enterprise 2.0 is been adopted by the more mature crowd of companies as tools of communication.
It might be that the validity of the Web 2.0 as a communication platform is really here in the Enterprise Corporation and not the twitter mania over Iran.
I hope of hearing more and more news like that.

There are 2 pre warnings I am to put on this post.
1. This post is my own personal opinion and not of my employer
2. I am a vignette employee and have been offended by the paper thus this post uses harsh language. If you believe you will be offended by this post don’t read it. If you have decided to read it you are the sole responsible of your actions and Yuval Ararat will not be responsible.

The second wave is on now and the attack over Vignette using deception and frightening techniques just went to a whole new level.
I am now pissed, really pissed. This Clickability white paper just makes no sense and uses false information to intimidate customers of V5/6 from upgrading to vignette.
The white paper is full of half truths, but those i can accept as legit, like the V7 upgrade quoted at 1.5 million. That is a nice number but what hides behind it? What were the requirements and how much of that was the licensing cost? It does try to support the fact that licensing is expensive.

According to public financial reports, Vignette sold very few V7 licenses last year. Ever wonder why? First, there’s the cost. One Vignette customer (who wishes to remain anonymous) told us he had been quoted a $1.5 million price tag for a V7 upgrade.

Sorry mate but the upgrade is more then the licensing costs to say the least, usually the professional services or the agency bill is triple the cost so he got a nice deal in this case on the licensing.
Then they ask a legit question that has no grasp of truth

Who’s Working on Vignette 7.6 After the Layoff?

To answer it simply i am doing it now at a client site, so you can guess who.
As far as I know the layoffs had no effect on client’s activities nor on implementation of the new versions, making this question a more means of bringing the layoffs into the paper rather then introducing constructive information for their case.

Traditionally, when it comes to “upgrades” Vignette doesn’t even eat its own dog food. Once
again, according to CMS Wire, “And while we’re at it, we have to mention something about long
product development cycles, and Vignette’s slowness in adopting its own new releases. Would
that be out of fear of complex content migrations and painful upgrades?”

No, No, no no no. You are missing the point and clinging to falsehood again.
Dear Sir Robin, who robs to provide, we make many of the upgrades as VPS and as such eat our own dog food. Some of the migrations are complex from many reasons and some are as simple as a months work, all depends on the implementation and the customers approach to development.

I think that Vignette Clients are slow to adopt from 2 main reasons:
1. They don’t have the need and like the product they are with.
2. They are Enterprises and as such take time to make the decision and gather the funding. they are not little op shops where the owner is the IT is the Marketing like most of your clients.

Yes, it’s true that years ago Vignette was a CMS pioneer. But since then, the company has simply
failed to anticipate the speed at which the Web evolves (for the record, the head of Vignette has
publicly stated that the company completely missed the Web 2.0 train by failing to execute).

Now did we? Look at the CMS wire and take your pick of who is more reliable resource.

Yes, Vignette is a proven innovator

Oh as for the claim that the clients don’t embrace the new tech fast enough i have to disagree, they do so quicker then the industry perceive. Portal 7.4 was grabbed in the first days it was out and so did the VCM 7.6.
Vignette is the master of slow or no innovation. Ha! Should i respond to that? No i don’t think so i think they never seen the product suit and they are relating to customers who will never will. Guess Clickability has the capabilities in the space of the Collaboration server and the Community applications and services offering vignette has and with the ability to put it in enterprise server architecture. Oh, you don’t, maybe the cloud gods will grant you your wish.
But wait, SaaS will solve it all and the cloud will import all of your data automatically within weeks. So you will be up and running quicker then a speeding bullet.

Like Salesforce.com, Clickability is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company that lives in the cloud.There is no expensive software or hardware to buy or install. We provide our solution entirely in the cloud with a tested reputation for reliability, performance, security, and scalability. In contrast, Vignette’s installed software model is flawed (the same is true for any installed-software WCM vendor).

Sorry to put the kryptonite on the table but this is nothing more then a false statement. SaaS is just another way and not the ultimate super model for Content Management solutions out there, the implementation will not be 2 weeks as a result of the SaaS, it is not self building self migrating magic wand solution. And I am still waiting for the response of John Girard to Jon’s blog post to prove us wrong. SaaS does not indicate that 90% of the industry is wrong. It just offers an alternative to self hosted solutions and the ability to reduce the price tag that comes with its limitations (lack of SSO with AD, Blocking of the service to the internet and security will be the first to pop).
Vignette video was between versions! Now where did they came up with this one? Have they lost the rich media services release? They are trying to mix the news release on the purchase of Vidavee and the announcement of the video integration.

Vignette software can often take months or years to be
fully deployed and has proven to be very difficult and costly to update or upgrade. It also requires a
highly technical staff to maintain and manage.

Where is Quick Site? it is lower costing and very quick to implement take you less then a month end to end, have they forgot to mention that just for the sake of argument? or they are just padding their white paper with more misleading information? you will be the judge of that.

VCM lipstic on a pig.

Wow, that is low balling, i think they crossed the line of been reasonable at this point.
Sorry Clicability but i dont care how good your product is at this point. Spreading this kind of false negativism is just exposing the true nature of your company, i would rather do business with the pirates in Africa then with you guys, they seem more reliable. The worst thing that really caught me was the classification of the pdf as White Paper, seems to be a marketing paper to me. It’s a wolf in a sheep’s skin that is what it is.
V5 – V6 – V7 is a hard upgrade but aligning yourself in the V7 space makes the upgrade to next versions a simpler option.
One thing to remember is that Vignette is not just a WCM system as Clickability and is in the ECM space. Different space different clients different pace and different products that is all I have to say.
But if you are still thinking on Clickability as a valid solution after all they are spreading look at Jons post about the Snake Oil and ponder to yourself if moving technology to any provider may it be Vignette V7 or Clickability or even Fatwire is any different from each other and thus will take less time. My claim is simple, NO! You will spend similar amounts of time moving to V7 as you will to Clickability or Fatwire. You are changing the software and technology and will need to do a lot of data conversion.
I am thinking of the fatwire chivalry act and wondered if the way that clickability is migrating the clients also ties them down to some 3rd party service providers?
The customer of the V5/6 usually are from an era where ECM was not even coined, thus vary in size and can be small WCM customers who can suffice themselves with the open source solutions out there. Take a look at the choosing a CMS post for more information on how to choose a CMS not based the above false information.
May the cloud be with you!

as the announcement of the S-4 are here and the shareholders meeting is to be on the 21′st of July 2009, the future of Vignette seems brighter and brighter.
To all the sceptics out there, V8 is coming out soon and the way it looks and built i will be so happy to implement it. Who wants to be my first customer? Sign up in the comments section.
The latest Fatwire advertisement that we are shaky providores and the best bet is to go and use fatwire, promoting its free licenses if you do the move with them, is like a Venus fly trap, the lure is great but wait till you get inside as my friend Jon‚Äôs post a-fatwire-in-shining-armour discovers, you will soon realise that there are 3‚Äôrd party connections to tie you down and the fatman’s way might not be as safe and free as it is publicly stated.
On another note, customers thinking their legacy fatwire system is not up for the job i have enough experience to put you out of your misery. I have done that twice already and willing to do that again, now that is chivalry.
Oh and you only need VPS team no other dodgy 3rd party to do the trick.
For the question imposed by fatwire in their ad,

Are you with a vendor that can provide the right path forward for your business?

i will say this: No vendor can predict the unknown future, but i am sure as the sun rises in the east that the products in the market are not going to any dustbin soon, Binaricly speaking the answer is YES from all of my clients.

Moving to FatWire in more technical details, my take is that customers considering a Fatwire Solution could find it limited in capabilities, the WCM capabilities and volume/delivery abilities lack, to say the least, when compared to the vignette solutions.

And looking at the available solutions you will notice that FatWire have no suite of products to match every product or most of the products that Vignette offer and most of the customer have implemented.

As for switching the CMS in your organisation to a different vendor, it is not as switching your internet provider and only changing the ADSL connection details getting the same result immediately, it takes time to choose the matching product to the requirements (look at my previous post), building the web presence (usually customers take advantage of the investment and redesign their Ux and branding incurring more cost), getting the Business users up to speed with the new content management system and so on and so forth.
Its not that this is not achievable but it will cost you more then the licensing fee. i will say as a rule of thumb about twice all in all correct me if i am wrong.

Now back to the S-4, i am anxious to be at the 22′nd of July and to know how the merger is going to go ahead, it seems that exiting times are just around the corner and we are about to embark on a marvels journey when it comes to the new product line and the new products we will get exposed to from the OpenText side.
I am an ex sharepoint .Net Architect and will love to work on both sides of the technological trench again.
For those who are sceptic in my predictions there is a great interview audio with the CEO of OpenText, John Shackleton

To those who are curious what an S-4 stands for, this is a form that public companies have to file to give the facts around a Merger for the share holders.

Every one out there who wants to hear more about V8 listen closely tomorrow to the vignette wire!

I see around the web, guides on how to select an open source Content Management System, though important they usually miss the mark for companies looking to evaluate the CMS vendors from both ends of the trench.
So what happens when you want to do a comparison between ANY content management systems?
Here is my take, based on my experience, on how to evaluate a CMS regardless of its vendor’s nature.
I will start with the commons i find on the web, most of the recommendations i have seen tend to split the evaluation into these topics when it comes to open source

• Web application platform
• Software license
• Stability and development activity
• User community
• Documentation and source code
• Web standards, accessibility
• Suitability and usability

These topics are great! What they are missing is fully disclosing the hidden costs for both the open source and the commercial implementation, but do a decent job.
So what is missing from the list? Allot, Platform is nice but is not specific enough, licences are nice but again don’t cover some of the hidden costs like annual support, stability is a vague factor and developer community is usually tightly bound to the next item Community, and both don’t represent the parallel commercial vendors Professional Services.
Bashing this list brings us no where. Calm down yuval! ahhh that’s better.
Let’s start from the most important factor in an organization, the Human.
Humans make the decision of which CMS answer their needs, wants and aspirations.
I see the process divided into realms representing the people involved in the choice.
There are 4 “teams” involved in the Content Management system, some directly and some indirectly, all influence the decision over which CMS will be chosen

• Direct
  • Development Team
  • Business Users Team
• Indirect
  • Financial Team
  • Management Team

Requirements for a Content Management System don’t match these teams precisely and are in 5 dimensions

• Technical Dimension
• Support Dimension
• Features Dimension
• Implementation Dimension
• Cost Dimension

These dimensions are not separate and all represent the same product thus you get some overlap between them.
Each team is more dominate in one of the Dimension and has more say over it, so nature’s laws direct us in giving them the rule over the dimension they are dominant in.
This is not true to every company and usually the division over the decision criteria’s and dimensions is left to the project sponsor due to cost.
[INSERT RANTS HERE]
So what is the more optimal way of going through the process of analysis of a content management system?
The steps i see are

• Listing Requirements by each team
• Sorting the requirements to each Dimension
• Assessing the proposed products – There are many options to tackle this, let each team do a Dimension or create a team for all dimensions or let an individual do the job
• Meet with teams to finalize the decision

My thoughts about assessing the products is to take each team and assign them the dimension they are good at, this will enable them to be more thorough, the team can be a single representative.
After the teams asses the Dimensions for each product the time comes to collect the assessments and get a score for each product.
Here is a sample of the decision supporting parameters separated to each dimension.
In each of these Dimensions there are decision support factors that need to be rated/graded with a mark in a predefined scale i.e. 1-10 or similar.

• Technical dimension
  • Core language
  • implementation languages
  • Application servers
  • Operating systems
  • Supported databases
  • Rendering of content
  • Interfaces to external systems like LDAP/SOA bus
  • SLA levels per CPU
    • Peak Users
    • Peak Page Views
• Support Dimension
  • Community/Activity rate in the product
  • Clients
    • World Spread
    • Size
    • Since when
    • Versions
  • Documentation Availability and Quality
  • Community Collaboration tools (is it forums/wikis or more)
  • Support product team and availability
• Features Dimension
  • Content Modelling
  • Workflow
  • Users And Groups
    • Ability to subdivide content between groups
    • Groups based capabilities
  • Media Handling capabilities
  • DRM
  • Publishing
  • Versioning
  • Personalization
    • Of content (group based, same page displays different content)
    • Of presentation (iGoogle)
  • Reporting and statistics
  • Search
    • In the CMS
    • In the delivery stages
  • Content Staging
  • Scalability
  • Caching and tuning features
  • Perceived External Attacks Security of the product
• Implementation Dimension
  • Initial Estimation of effort (in man days)
  • Implementation Planning
  • How many features need customization
  • Availability of the Skilled Crew in the market
    • Hiring/Converting existing crew
    • Service Providers/Agencies
  • Availability of integration system internally
• Cost Dimension
  • Licensing
  • Support
  • Implementation
  • Future Development
  • Training
  • Infrastructure
  • Contracts
  • Trial Periods

looking around the internet at the surprise from the OpenText Vignette i cannot wonder why. it was known late 2008 that OpenText are sniffing the behinds of Vignette to proceed with a purchase. it was even posted on cnet.

Then came the redundancy and other means to make Vignette attractive, and it seem to have worked.
I have to say that as a Vignette employee i am exited and waiting for the bigger announcements of the future of the brand and the products.
And no i dont see all of Vignette been thrown out in 2 years from now.
I loved all the analitics done on the 2008 financial performance of the two companies like CMS wire

In 2008 Open Text (OTEX) did about US$ 725 million revenue, with a net income of US$ 53 million or 7.3%. In the same year Vignette (VIGN) did US$ 128 million in revenue with a net loss of US$ 6.28 million.

Trying to state that vignette is a losing company going down, but that is not the case. i wonder if the 2002 report was to be compared. 2008 was a tough year on vignette and thus resulted in this ugly result.
Now for Jons question about shared clients.

The fact that they share clients is true, but I don’t get why that makes it a good idea to buy them.

The solution i think is in the support and upgrades. now that OpenText and Vignette are one its like buying out of IBM, you buy integrated suites and implement them. That alone is a very big business. as for new clients they will come to OpenText due to its sheer size and brand stability, a thing that is very appealing in down term and troubled times.
There is also a point to the 5 year old Ixos acquisition in 2004 that resulted in OpenText Web Content Management product roadmap been a bit quirky. i believe that these were the early days of Web Content Management and the first steps for OpenText in the field, this makes them the best owner you could wish for with 5 years experience in the field. yes i know that Ixos and its fellow inmates are long gone but so is version 6 of Vignette.
Now some people tried to stretch the news to wired places like Sam Dean’s report on the acquisition as it has anything to do with open source initiatives like alfresco and Drupal and was going to affect the market. i really wonder what was the case there but some people have to write some things.
BTW Sam i am happy you are using Drupal, but that doesnt even compete with the Enterprise content management solutions.
Now back to Jons question

Let’s forget the past, for a second. Picture the scene Рyou’re a sales guy with a Vignette history and an Open Text business card and you’re meeting with a new prospect. What are you going to be selling?

bzzzz wrong question. near future i see no change in business cards and far future is a different story that no one knows.
For the sake of argument i will say that the sales guy will be selling what he finds fit for the customer and when a customer needs an Enterprise content management he gets VCM and when he needs a content management he gets RedDot, portal was an easy one and per the complimentary products you get the ones that fit the basic products.
When we get to the Imaging and Workflow realm i am not sure what will happen.
Now back to cnet Matt Asay‘s ,who is Alfrescos VP Business Development, prediction

Will we be seeing “OpenVignette” soon? I suspect the answer is “Yes.” OpenText needs strength outside its core records management business, and Vignette needs someone to shepherd it back to health

First i have to say again Spot On Matt! it took 6 months and i think that the reasons behind the purchase are still the same. Open Text saw a bargain on the shelf for the Enterprise Content Management field and took the step. it was the right price and the right company.
Vignette products are good and solid making them a great value for the future of Open Text’s Enterprise Content Management.

Its an interesting world when i am just wondering over the web and stumbling uppon some thing that was interesting to all of us, following up on Jon’s post Which Comes First the crew or the CMS.
The underlying problem there was that we lack a pure methodology that dictate the process of Knowledge management.
This was the state until i stumbled upon Mike! well to be exact MIKE 2.0.
Well mike is an open source EKM (Enterprise Knowledge Management) established by BearingPoint.
Mike is yet to be fully understood by me and will take me some time to figure it out.
It seems that it is inspired by Wikipedias information collection process.
The most relevant piece of work relating to our pondering is the 5 Phase method that specifies the difference between the Blueprint and RoadMap derived from it.

The most important part of the blueprint to our discussion is Phase 2 “Technology Assesment” Running right after the “Business Assesment” but before the content development. This sounds to me like a solution for the question of what comes first. i have yet to find the reasoning behind the decision and am still looking around for it.
In a deeper look there is another term in the technology which is the Technology Backplane, referring to an architecture that is technology independent and thus can take information from both new and legacy environment.

The Technology Backplane Architecture reduces the risk of technology obsolescence. Application suites become ‘plug and play’ with respect to the infrastructure.

Using the Technology Backplane Architecture, new and old environments can co-exist, helping to more effectively support mergers, acquisitions, B2B and as well at IT transformations.

But what all of that implicate on our question? do we select the technology and then the crew, or the other way around?
Simply put the documentation currently does not reffer to the process as part of the whole business process so the technology selection depicted is not designated as before or after agency selection. it seems that if the agency is working to make the IA and EKM they are probably involved in the selection of the content management vendor.
But then again they might not be part of the implementation and thus have nothing to do with it.