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The ECM Suites Report 2009 released today

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:07:00 -0400

Today I'm proud to announce the release of the 2009 edition of The ECM Suites Report. Expanded out to over 400 pages, I believe this constitutes the most comprehensive ECM product evaluation report of its kind. In this edition we have added some new vendors, dropped some old, and revised all 30 product reviews.

This churn reflects a vibrant and extremely healthy global ECM market. As we note in today's press release, there probably has never been a better time for buyers, with a wide range of strong products to chose from, especially in the mid market.

If there is one thing in particular this latest research has shown us, it is that SharePoint did not (as many predicted) kill the ECM market, but rather the ECM market has embraced SharePoint -- and we are all the better for it.

Of course there are some stinkers out there, and as buyer you need to exercise caution, but we hope the advice, critiques, and "insider" detail we provide in this report will help mitigate your risks.

As always, if you're a subscription customer, you'll automatically receive your copy shortly.

Decoupled Web CMS vendors have not disappeared

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:44:00 -0400

Over the past two years, Web Content Management vendors have fallen over themselves to provide more interactive services on the front ends of websites, closely tied into traditional content production services on the authoring side. Put another way: in an attempt to appeal to the ever-alluring (but often elusive) web marketing manager, CMS vendors are increasingly binding website management to content management.

Even Percussion -- onetime stalwart defender of the decoupled approach, advocate for flexible delivery environments, and ardent supporter of the website developer working separately from content people -- now talks avidly of combining content and interaction management.

At one level this all makes sense. You want to obviate the need for pervasive IT support for interactive websites.

But I'm also noticing a certain subset of customers feeling quite left out. Those who want a Web CMS that won't dictate (or interfere with) their delivery environment are becoming chagrined by constricting choices in the marketplace. They look around and see the likes of SDL Tridion, Interwoven, and RedDot (all traditionally decoupled systems) placing increasing emphasis on marketing applications and Web 2.0-style interactive services.

So it's worth noting that some established Web CMS vendors continue to buck the trend, including Refresh Software and Hannon Hill. As Web CMS Report readers know, Refresh Software appears headed in a newish direction though, towards DITA and component content management. Hannon Hill is more interesting, because they tout their unfashionable avoidance of interactive marketing with great pride. They argue that their higher education and government customer bases prefer simpler systems that "bake" static pages. SaaS provider OmniUpdate -- also decoupled -- makes the same argument. I suspect it's true.

To be sure, it's possible to embed dynamic logic in any of those systems for an interactive experience on the front end, but then previewing pages means the hassle of pushing content to a staging environment first. And perhaps more importantly, non-coders have no control over interactivity. So, there are trade-offs to the decoupled approach, but advantages as well. The good news is, you still have choices.

A pat on the legal back for Interwoven

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:17:00 -0400

It wasn't news that rocked the world, and in fact most observers didn't even notice it, but I was struck by Interwoven's announcement that they intend to team up more closely with Lexis Nexis.

Some customers I have been chatting to recently are stoked about the deal. In the legal sector, Lexis Nexis is the research tool. It dominates. In a sense the announcement is no more than a statement that you can now access Lexis Search Advantage services within Interwoven's own Universal Search client. But to those who use both systems every day (and there are a lot of them) it means much more.

It's a pragmatic approach, one that some other vendors would do well to note. Rather than trying to be more Web 2.0 than the next guy, or following whatever trend that the analyst firms predict CIO's will be hot under the collar about in 2010, why not just ask your customers what they want, then listen and respond?

Interwoven prospers as Vignette continues to bleed

kthomas@cmswatch.com(Kas Thomas) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:59:00 -0400

Vignette and Interwoven have released their second-quarter 2008 results, and it's a study in contrasts.

With Interwoven, the news is essentially all good. License revenue for the quarter was up 11 percent (to $23.4 million) over the same quarter a year ago, while service and support revenue grew 18 percent. Overall, gross profit jumped a solid 16 percent in Q2 2008 versus Q2 2007. First-half gross profit was likewise up 16 percent year over year. Net profit soared 78 percent (Q2 2008 vs. Q2 2007), and on a six-month basis the year-over-year jump was 53 percent.

Certainly some of the top-line revenue growth came from recent acquisitions, but any way you slice it, those are some pretty impressive numbers.

Vignette, meanwhile, continues on its sad downward trajectory. The company saw license revenue fall to $9.9 million for Q2 of this year, from $14.6 million in the same period last year. Services actually grew slightly, however (to $35.8 million from $33.4 year-ago). Gross profit was similarly down. But more ominously, net income went negative. The company reported a loss of a little over $863,000 in Q2 of this year, compared to a net gain of $4 million in Q2 of 2007.

What makes the Vignette story so sad is that the firm does not lack for talented people (nor technological vision). What's lacking is an ability to land new deals at the kind of rate that will stop the financial bleeding. It's also a matter of battling ASP (average sales price) deterioration.

We've been seeing indications for some time that Vignette is under strong pricing pressure. In the recent earnings call (transcript available at SeekingAlpha.com), CFO Pat Kelly may have unwittingly provided a valuable data point on this. He notes that Vignette's ASP was $211K in Q2, versus $249K in Q1. (He ascribed the difference to "normal volatility in that metric.") The problem with averages, of course, is that a single abnormally high value can sway the overall average upward, giving a potentially misleading result. (This is why people often use median values rather than averages.) Tellingly, Kelly noted that Vignette scored three large deals in excess of $1 million during Q2. It doesn't take a math genius to see the implication of this. Quite simply put: It means the majority of Q2 deals came in at less than $211K. Maybe far less.

Headcount reduction is usually the first tactic a company resorts to when attempting to arrest a downtrend in profitability. But ironically, headcount-trimming costs money in the near term. (It's not unusual for personnel-related "restructuring" costs to come to $50K per employee.) In the course of the earnings call, Vignette's Somesh Singh, SVP of R&D and Technical Operations, verified that a charge of $2.5 to $3 million would probably be taken soon, due to severance costs.

Other Vignette executives hinted at re-allocating resources internally. As ECM Suites Report readers know, Vignette sells a broad line of different tools. Attention will surely shift internally, though it's too soon to know exactly how.

We'll keep you posted.

Interwoven and the Gartner WCM MarketScope

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:25:00 -0400

Gartner's recent "MarketScope for Web Content Management" has predictably garnered a lot of attention from vendors happy with their position in the ratings chart. I have a mixed reaction.

Specifically, I'll take issue with Interwoven's "Strong Positive" rating. I've been following the company for ten years now, and this is what I think. Interwoven as a company and the extended TeamSite product management team in particular are still some of the best briefer/demo-givers in the industry. They perpetually tell what analysts call a great "story." What we've uncovered on the ground is a rather different story: a set of very expensive WCM tools running off a highly dated technology platform, often requiring excessive customization that can be detrimental to your longterm website health. For a complete scrub of Interwoven's TeamSite/LiveSite line, check out the free sample featuring that evaluation, from our Web CMS Report 2008.

On the plus side, I think Gartner' MarketScope format is much more nuanced than the Magic Quadrant. Still, I think horserace-style analysis like this can become counterproductive, since it assumes that all Web CMS technology buyers are racing towards the same goal, with the same budget, in the same country, with the same website profile. That's simply not the case.

It is healthier for everyone, though, that Gartner has lowered the bar for vendor participation ($10m in sales) and therefore expanded the pool of covered vendors to seventeen. I think the marketplace is even flatter and more distributed than that (which is why we cover forty, with more coming), and open source WCM has a much more significant footprint in the enterprise than Gartner allows. But it's good to see major analyst firms (Forrester, too) returning repeatedly to WCM after occasionally dismissing it while riding ECM and Social Software waves.

As long as enterprises publish websites and intranets, they will need ever more capable Web CMS tools. We'll keep watching closely.

Adobe and Alfresco

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:37:00 -0400

It's been a while since there was a big product announcement in the ECM world, but today's announcement by Adobe that they will be embedding Alfresco into their LiveCycle Enterprise Suite will doubtless garner a few headlines. Alfresco, the UK-based open source ECM company, has certainly done a great job of marketing themselves since their launch a couple of years back, stealing some limelight from more established and much bigger vendors such as Interwoven, Vignette, and Open Text.

The question we have to ask is whether this announcement is another marketing triumph, or whether it suggests something more substantial.

First off is the fact that it is a real OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) deal, and the technology will actually get embedded into the Adobe offering, so it is more than simply a paper partnership.

But let's think about what the Adobe offering is and why we do not currently evaluate it in our ECM Suites Report. Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite is a product set built upon the acquisition of Acellio in 2002 (better known as "Jetform"). Though the user interface and underlying codebase may have changed a bit, the principle of this product remains the same: automating simple, usually forms-based, processes. The product excels as a point solution particularly in Government, where a form needs to be issued to the public, and the capture and subsequent business process needs to be automated quickly.

In theory the Alfresco repository adds some true ECM capabilities at the back end of the Adobe product set. Also the Alfresco solution will add some "Web 2.0" capabilities to Adobe, as Alfresco supports Adobe Flex. So in theory, the LiveCycle solution could be extended to build more complex applications rather than basic forms routing.

On a corporate note the OEM deal is intriguing, since of course Alfresco is a minnow compared to Adobe, and there are close connections between the executive teams. For example the Senior Vice President of this particular Adobe Business unit is none other than Rob Tarkoff, a close friend and ex-Documentum colleague of Alfresco CTO John Newton. Could Adobe be planning to acquire Alfresco? Who knows? But if the OEM is successful, an acquisition might appeal to both firms, if less so to Alfresco's current customer base.

In short then, it's an intriguing announcement, and we will be looking at demonstrations of the technology in practice later today as well as testing it out more thoroughly over the coming months. Like us, you should treat this new product arrangement with real caution until it has been thoroughly tested by customers. That is not a a slight against either firm, but an announcement is just that and no more. Time is always the true test.

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.

Announcing The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 7 May 2008 08:34:00 -0400

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008. While we've followed DAM and blogged quite a bit about DAM and MAM (Media Asset Management) over our 7-year history, this report represents our first comprehensive comparative evaluation of 18 DAM tools, and our first aggregation of DAM and MAM best practices.

Subscribers, you'll be getting your copy shortly; others can download a free sample here.

For several evaluations of major enterprise DAM vendors (Open Text's Artesia, Interwoven's MediaBin, EMC's Documentum Digital Asset Manager, and the IBM FileNet / Ancept Media Server pairing), we built on the foundational DAM research in our ECM Suites Report 2008. We then looked at several pure-play DAM vendors, including ClearStory, North Plains, Canto, WAVE, Widen, and ADAM. You can see the full list of vendors covered here.

As always, the core of our research centers on talking with customers, the real everyday users of DAM systems. Our goal is to cut through the marketing hype and report people's real-world experience with the tools, and help you, the buyer and implementer, understand which tools are most appropriate for which situations. As with all the technologies we cover, the DAM industry has seen many failed or abandoned investments because of poor product selection or implementation practices. We want you to go into your product selection and implementation with full knowledge of a product's strengths and weaknesses.

My fellow DAM analyst Kas Thomas and I will blog a lot more about DAM and MAM in the coming months. We both had a great time putting this report together, as it's a rather fun and sexy technology. We also hope to see you at the Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in New York City next week; my Wednesday tutorial, "Sorting Out the Content Technology Marketplace," will present an overview of this new research, along with some of our latest ECM and WCM findings, as well.

HP expands archiving, e-discovery, and compliance portfolio with acquisition of Tower Software

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:17:00 -0400

So HP finally made a move into the world of ECM by acquiring Tower Software of Australia. On the surface it's an unusual match for HP, as many had expected them to buy one of the top tier players such as Interwoven, Vignette or even Open Text, but on closer consideration it's a move that makes sense. Revealingly, HP does not call this an "ECM" deal and focuses on the e-discovery and compliance benefits from Tower's addition, so it's possible HP has further moves to make if it wants to get serious about offering broader ECM services à la IBM.

Tower does have a long tradition in ECM (and has carved out a niche for themselves particularly in the Government sector globally), but primarily in Records Management-centric ECM. That's a focus that ties in nicely with HP's emphasis on archiving and storage-centric information management. Plus, Tower costs only a fraction of what other leading ECM firms would have set HP back. And of course HP has the footprint to manage an Australian-based division well. So those are the positives for HP. But what about Tower's existing customer base? Well in all likelihood there should be no major disruption, since HP does not have the ECM skills or competing technology in-house to disrupt this base, rather simply to continue to support it and help it to grow over time.

What is likely to change in the Tower offering is deeper integration with HP's Information Management archiving and storage offerings - and consolidation of the sales efforts in joint accounts. Tower will be absorbed into the Information Management division and the transaction should close in Q2. One slight change will be HP's focus on the Records Management (read Legal and Compliance) elements of Tower (where they are strongest) rather than the broader Tower ECM portfolio. Tower's deep integration with and architecture based upon Microsoft technologies -- and in particular their Gold Partner level status for SharePoint -- makes Tower a particularly appealing acquisition. But it does mean that areas Tower was hoping to grow may well get neglected in the short term, areas such as imaging, collaboration and traditional document management services.

HP has made it clear that they want to build a full Compliance and E-discovery solution, and that Tower will be integrated in with the HP Integrated Archive Platform along side e-mail archiving, ultimately as a single offering. But HP is still missing some elements, most notably a top notch search/discovery offering -- something that Tower cannot bring to the table -- so it's reasonable to expect more acquisitions in this area to come.

We cover Tower technology in-depth in our ECM Suites Report. We'll expand our coverage further as the the deal closes and HP begins the work of integrating both Tower's technology and their remaining staff into the HP machine. As acquisitions go this one is not particularly brutal or surprising; Tower was likely to get acquired by somebody, and HP was likely to acquire somebody.

But acquisitions of small firms by behemoths like HP cannot occur without some upheaval. Most likely for Tower's existing customers that upheaval will come in the form of dealing with HP sales and support staff who will in time want to be involved in the deals, whether they know anything about ECM or not. Things will settle but it will take time, and for now new buyers are urged to tread with caution.

Vignette, Ajax, and Usability

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 10:44:00 -0400

Web CMS vendor Vignette recently released a new, dashboard-type interface featuring several Ajax controls. CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne demonstrates some of the ups and downs of this new approach, and poses some larger questions about usable interfaces...

Enterprise Content Management Marketplace: Opportunities and Risks

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:09:00 -0400

Buyers looking at strategic ECM investments can find product research from CMS Watch and other analyst firms, but, Alan Pelz-Sharpe argues, you need to look beyond the tools to the vendors themselves. And here, Alan finds that some of the biggest and well-known vendors are undergoing substantial change right now, at some near-term risk for their customers...

New IE7 Shakes Up CMS and Portal Implementations

tbyrne@cmswatch.com; jboye@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne and Janus Boye) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:19:00 -0500

Is your CMS or Portal vendor ready for IE7? As your read this, Microsoft is updating PCs around the world, but Tony Byrne and Janus Boye point out that support for the new browser varies across the content technology marketplace. Whatever your application, you likely have some important testing to do...

A Scenario-based Approach to Evaluating CMS Vendors

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:17:00 -0400

Every CMS vendor calls themselves a "leader," but what does that really mean? Depending on your circumstances, leading-edge features can actually hinder your efforts to manage web content effectively. So how do you evaluate vendors for different use-cases? CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne outlines an approach for vetting products against twelve common CMS scenarios...

Sex, Lies, and CMS Vendors

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:51:00 -0500

CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne argues that CMS vendors will sometimes short-cut important discussions with simple (but not always completely truthful) answers. Tony lists the top 10 myths you're likely to hear during the CMS sales process...

Integrating Interwoven and BEA

Tony Byrne — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Are there any known issues integrating Interwoven CMS and BEA WebLogic Portal?

Interwoven Gaining Traction

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 15 Aug 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Aberdeen reports that Interwoven leads all vendors in CM marketshare with 25%. What's going on here? Aberdeen's numbers only tally CM sales at competitors like Vignette and Broadvision, but Interwoven's story is one of specialization: all it does is Web Content Management. And CMS Report readers also know that Interwoven's products focus further on the crucial Production phase of the Web CM lifecyle, while partnering for everything else...
Download the Aberdeen Report from Interwoven's website