CMS Watch Immediacy Feed

Mediasurface and The Three Bears

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:15:00 -0400

UK-based Web CMS vendor Mediasurface announced today its intention to acquire smaller UK competitor Immediacy. This follows a 2005 acquisition of a hosted Dutch solution that Mediasurface renamed "Pepperio," to target small businesses. I wasn't sanguine at the time about one vendor selling two products and I don't see how three offerings makes the company any stronger, even if it gets bigger.

To its credit, Mediasurface has dispensed with the usual bromides about "synergies" and offers a fairly straightforward rationale for adding a mid-range solution to it's current high / low set: Mediasurface salespeople can now sell Goldilocks a small, medium, or large solution. As Web CMS Report readers know, Immediacy's underlying technology differs quite substantially from Mediasurface's flagship Morello tool. The two companies also exhibit quite distinct cultures, although I think Mediasurface will absorb its new family member quite quickly.

Because you see, the acquisition was pretty much an all-cash deal (£5.6m), to be paid by a Mediasurface supplemental stock offering (pdf). Seems like Immediacy's owners are cashing out rather than hanging in. So to the extent there are any risks here, I suspect they will fall to Immediacy customers and Mediasurface stockholders. Too early to tell if those two groups will find themselves brothers grim. For you the prospective customer, you'll need to decide whether getting a tool that's "just right" for your size is worth the downside of working with a vendor that must enhance and support three different products.

Marketplace Realities: A European Perspective

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:06:00 -0500

Janus Boye examines the content technology landscape from the perspective of a European customer, and finds much of concern (beta software, inexperience, confusing terminology), but much to laud (better accessibility, widespread choice) as well...

CMS vendor Immediacy announces document management system

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:52:00 -0500

In recent news the UK-based Web CMS vendor Immediacy began trumpeting a new lightweight document management system (DMS) add-on. As readers of the CMS Report, European Edition know, Immediacy offers basic, MS SharePoint-like functionality to manage Office documents. Other Web CMS vendors have been adding lightweight document management capabilities as well, and for some customers, it makes sense. Immediacy doubtless wants to make it easier for smaller UK government organizations to use them as their sole vendor, without the need to invest in third-party document management systems. That might work for some, but buyers should remember, that there is no "One Ring To Rule Them All." It is already difficult or impossible to find one CMS well-suited for the multiple scenarios in your enterprise. In our research we found Immediacy a decent fit for only three out of our twelve scenarios.

We release version 10 of The CMS Report

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:01:00 -0400

Our quest to tell the real story about web content management software continues today. In this latest edition of The CMS Report, we've updated all the vendor reviews and added some new evaluation criteria, including system reporting, micro-applications, and content retention -- addressing the increasingly important role of marketers and records managers. With this version, we also make available an optional "European Edition," which adds several new vendors active primarily in that region (Escenic, e-Spirit, eZ publish, GOSS, Immediacy, and Terminalfour). In North America, we begin coverage of Hot Banana and Hannon Hill.

As always, CMS Report buyers within the past 10 weeks will receive the new version gratis. Previous CMS Watch customers are eligible for discounted updates. Look for an e-mail shortly.