CMS Watch Clickability Feed

SaaS Web CMS vendor Marqui going belly up?

jgingras@cmswatch.com(Jarrod Gingras) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:51:00 -0400

I follow several Software as a Service (SaaS) web content management vendors for the The Web CMS Report. This includes SaaS vendors Clickability, CrownPeak, OmniUpdate and Marqui, a small SaaS-based content management and campaign management vendor headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. In the last version of The Web CMS Report 2008, we recommended that potential buyers of Marqui "perform due diligence before signing deals." While this is good advice when preparing to make any software acquisition, Marqui's previous management overhauls and financial secrecy presented warning signs of potential financial difficulty.

Recently, I was alerted to TechVibes' news that Marqui was in receivership (Investopedia defines receivership as: "A type of bankruptcy a company enters when a receiver is appointed by bankruptcy courts or creditors to run the company.").

Our multiple attempts at contacting Marqui through calls and e-mails have been unreturned. To date, there has been no official communication from Marqui. There have been no Marqui press releases since March and no blog entries on their company blog since September of 2007. Customers we've contacted have remained mum.

One of the arguments against the adoption of a SaaS CMS is exactly this scenario: what happens to my content if my SaaS provider goes out of business? You can typically export all your content via XML, but that's only a part of your web publishing effort, which includes templates, layouts, access controls, and so forth, all of which need to be recreated in a different system. It remains to be seen what will happen to Marqui and how their clients will fare, but buyers certainly need to do their digging on financial stability of any Web CMS partner.

The other lesson here is not to assume that outside funding will automatically improve a vendor's long-term viability. Marqui somehow blew through a considerable investment of approximately $11 million in venture capital, without much to show for it but a long list of creditors.

We will continue to do some digging of our own to find out Marqui's plan for their existing customers.

North Plains and Interwoven offer DAM SaaS service -- or do they?

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 4 Jun 2008 16:03:00 -0400

Software-as-a-Service has an especially strong case in the area of Digital Asset Management, where the buyer is often a marketing manager or creative team with a fixed monthly budget and little to no IT support. But not all SaaS is created equal. Granted, we've pointed this out before, but after my experience on the analyst panel at Henry Stewart's DAM Symposium last month, I can't help but warn again that this term means very different things depending upon who's using it.

On the panel, during a discussion regarding the value of SaaS-based DAM, one analyst cited Interwoven's MediaBin as a SaaS option. I immediately retorted that Interwoven didn't offer MediaBin (or anything else) as SaaS, as a member of Widen's marketing team shook his head simultaneously in the audience. Still, there was continued disagreement on the matter, thus I went straight to MediaBin's product manager after the panel to make sure I hadn't missed this as an offering. In fact, Interwoven offers 3rd-party hosting and management of MediaBin, if you'd like. Sure, that I knew. But I'd never, ever call that SaaS, and to their credit, neither does Interwoven.

Why? To quote my colleague Tony Byrne, "contracting with a supplier simply to host and customize traditional software is not the same thing as working with a well thought-through, 'native' Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that was built from the ground up by a company dedicated to providing such a service. There is a case to be made for outsourcing application hosting and support, as well as a case for true SaaS. Just make sure you know the difference -- and know what you're getting in either case."

Widen, a pure SaaS vendor through and through, had a right to be shaking their heads in the audience. Like WCM vendors Crown Peak and Clickability, Widen's philosophy is that service is just as important as technology -- an attitude that very few software vendors seem to have. Most software companies are out there to simply sell licenses, and it shows in the poor customer service ratings that many vendors receive in our reports.

The latest DAM vendor to jump on the SaaS bandwagon is North Plains, which debuted a new SaaS/"OnDemand" service that same day at the Symposium. North Plains' new service is closer to Interwoven's under-the-covers offering than it is to Widen's, as there's 3rd-party hosting involved (from NaviSite). North Plains says its client support team has been "fully trained on serving the needs of TeleScope OnDemand clients," and that additional support resources have been added to meet the 24x7 demands of true SaaS. But one has to wonder how many, and if more SaaS-based support will be a cause or an effect of people choosing the new service.

As we point out in our Digital & Media Asset Management Report, ClearStory is one of the few vendors that's seen success with both approaches. Still, I remain skeptical of traditional software vendors jumping into SaaS, mostly because I've found such a significant difference in the corporate culture of the pure SaaS vs. non-SaaS companies I've watched over the past several years. It's not that one is necessarily better than the other, but just be sure to know which is right for you, and understand what a vendor is really offering when that term "SaaS" gets thrown around.

A Greener CMS?

jgingras@cmswatch.com(Jarrod Gingras) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:30:00 -0400

"Recycling" information (a.k.a., "content reuse") is a critical goal for most content management systems. On this Earth Day 2008, I thought it appropriate to share another green movement that's emerging in the content management industry. While researching SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions for The Web CMS Report 2008, I talked to several customers who stated "it is greener" as a reason they decided to choose a hosted solution for their enterprise.

Granted, it was not the decisive reason -- apparently getting out of the IT business is more compelling than saving the planet -- but it was the first time that I heard it as a factor.

Many observers consider SaaS greener to the traditional installed approach because SaaS providers host multiple "tenants" on the same servers. This more efficient approach requires less energy and releases less CO₂ than if each tenant were running their own servers.

So it should come as no surprise that two of the four SaaS CMS vendors we cover, Clickability and CrownPeak, both promote their offerings using the "greener" message. Clickability promotes their Four Green Tenets of the SaaS Model, and today CrownPeak announced a site devoted to helping other companies achieve carbon neutrality.

In an era of increasing server virtualization, this argument holds less water, at least within larger enterprises who are increasingly mastering virtualization. But for the mid-market customers that most SaaS vendors target, energy savings could become quite real. The bigger benefit may come in not having to employ people to babysit your Web CMS servers -- quite literally reducing the carbon-based footprints in your enterprise...

Of course, SaaS isn't for everyone. Bringing the wrong solution into your enterprise can generate a lot of hot air and steam, too, so consider all factors here.

Happy Earth Day.

Clickability as Open Source?

jgingras@cmswatch.com(Jarrod Gingras) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:09:00 -0400

I received an e-mail this weekend from a very confused researcher of Web Content Management systems. The first result they found in their search results (Ask, Google) was this paid advertisement from Clickability:

Search results from Ask and Google

I don't blame this person for being confused -- as readers of The Web CMS Report 2008 know, Clickability is not an Open Source offering. Apparently Clickability's marketing department has confused Software as a Service for Open Source.

Unless, of course, Clickability released their codebase into open source and didn't tell anyone about it? I highly doubt it.

This is just another example of why we constantly preach that you can't always believe the hype...

The Stability of Clickability

jgingras@cmswatch.com(Jarrod Gingras) — Mon, 4 Feb 2008 10:18:00 -0500

In a recent article and blog entry, my colleague Tony talked about both the popularity of Software as a Service or hosted model and some of the potential dangers. In our 2008 Web Content Management Report we cover two pure-play SaaS vendors, Clickability and CrownPeak. Both are venture-backed, both have shown consistent growth recently, and today Clickability announced that it has received a second round of funding of $8 million, bringing its total outside funding to $15.3 million.

One of the critical concerns of potential SaaS buyers who are thinking about trusting their content on someone else's servers is the vendor's stability. This concern is even more important when evaluating a company like Clickability, who for most of their customers not only hosts their clients' content management system, but also the clients' customer facing sites. Clickability customers will likely find some re-assurance that there is more money behind the company protecting their investments.

An influx of money usually means two things: vendor stability and product instability. While vendor stability is almost always a good thing, product instability means changes are coming and those can go either way. We will be watching these changes closely.

Which comes first: WCM or web analytics?

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:30:00 -0500

Hosted solution vendors WebSideStory and Clickability are both touting recent new releases that highlight the integration of web content management and site analytics. WSS has refreshed its user interface, making it look more like the other products in the lineup, and introduced a new PHP-based templating system, which should allow interaction with databases and create more dynamic pages than WSS has allowed for in the past. Clickability, meanwhile, added ad management to their array of analytics data that can be browsed in the context of their WCMS, allowing content managers to track impressions and click-through rates. It's a common approach from many smaller CMS vendors as they head into 2007: WCMS, analytics, and search in one package, all sold to your friendly neighborhood marketing manager. Don't rush to buy it all at once: "integrated" is a loaded term and suites often aren't as out-of-the-box as you'd hope. Test the whole package with your own content first. Still, as we argued in the most recent edition of The CMS Report, analytics in the context of a Web CMS allows marketers and content managers ready access to relevant information to make smarter publishing decisions.

It's mostly about you: the lure of customer conferences

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:43:00 -0500

Clickability's announcement of a pending 2007 user conference (2006 agenda here) reminds us that sometimes customer communities need to meet in person, even if they don't regularly communicate online. That's one of many reasons to attend user conferences if you're a current or potential future buyer of a CMS. Knowledge and experience-sharing with other customers is a start, but at the best such gatherings you can also participate in hands-on technical training sessions. Just beware of the ubiquitous cross-selling of the company's products you may not already own -- inevitable salemanship when there's a captive audience on hand. Some companies, such as Ektron (who just announced their first user conference in Boston for the fall of 2007), are savvy enough to solicit input from their customers in order to shape the conference agenda. This is a great way to let your vendor know what you need. Be sure to encourage customer extranets, forums and improved support, while you're at it. While big vendors such as Vignette and Interwoven have held user conferences for nearly a decade, there's no reason why smaller suppliers can't think bigger in a customer-focused way.

Cisco implements hosted CMS service for sales extranets

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:56:00 -0400

Cisco Systems is rolling out sales extranets with partner firms using a hosted CMS service from Clickability. The first extranet, between Cisco and HP, launched 6 months ago; others are development now. Interestingly, Cisco has an enterprise license to Interwoven, but chose a 3rd-party solution to avoid having to involve their own and partners' IT staffs. Hosted solutions seem well suited to these sorts of scenarios where multiple companies jointly "own" a given site.

Build Analytics into Your CMS

john@clickability.com(John Girard) — Fri, 14 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Many CMS vendors build in useful, lightweight add-ons -- like collaboration, asset management, and search -- to their solutions when the alternative of integrating a 3rd-party solution proves too complex or costly. John Girard argues that likewise, website analytics should become part of your Web content management system as well...

Interface Scalability

jfreund@Clickability.com(Jeff Freund) — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Finding your CMS interfaces bulging at the seams? You're not alone, says Clickability's Jeff Freund. Just as your content management infrastructure must scale to meet your growing web publishing needs, explains Jeff, so must the interfaces of your CMS scale to meet the ongoing needs of your editorial team...

Hosted CMS Players Push E-mail Delivery

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 9 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0400

If you're going to deliver your hard-earned, approved content via the web, wouldn't you also want to ditribute it via e-mail as well? Some CMS software packages offer some nifty e-mail broadcast features. But most do not, because it can be devilishly difficult to integrate with cutomers' e-mail, network, and CRM infrastructures, and because, well, CMS vendors haven't thought about it a lot or just assume that customers have other tools to handle this. The hosted CMS players, however, can provide e-mail publishing features with few encumbrances -- and they are. Atomz recently announced an ability for end-users to "subscribe" to new content. Clickability and Crownpeak have similar features...
Atomz CrownPeak Clickability