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MAM by any other name: more alphabet soup

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:13:00 -0400

Last week I wrote about Open Text's acquisition of eMotion, and may have added to the confusion over the alphabet soup of DAM, MAM, and MOM. Allow me to clarify how we use the acronyms, and then how they may be used differently by others.

DAM = Digital Asset Management
MAM = Media Asset Management
MOM = Marketing Operations Management

First, as with ECM, we must make the distinction between disciplines and technologies/tools. As my colleague Alan often points out, ECM is really a strategy or an approach that requires many different technologies coming together. I'd argue the same for Marketing Asset Management (sometimes also shortened to MAM) and MOM. Marketing Asset or Operations Management isn't a technology, it's a strategy, set of workflows, and often a suite of tools working together to achieve marketing goals. That might include a DAM system, a web analytics tool, and even a WCM system or a portal capable of personalization. All those technologies might manage marketing assets: brand materials, customer information, or the messages you want to target.

Now, we'll insist that tools alone don't make for a true ECM or Marketing Asset Management solution any more than a set of hammers, wood, and nails makes a house, so we're more specific about the MAM acronym and use it to describe technologies that specialize in certain scenarios. In our parlance, and in the lingo of many of the companies themselves occupied with the management of time-based assets, such as video and audio, MAM specifically describes the management of audio and video assets.

Corbis' (now Open Text's) eMotion is a hosted platform for general Digital Asset Management, largely used by marketers (and thus is called a MAM system in the Marketing Asset Management sense, as Open Text is pitching it). Open Text's other DAM platform, Artesia, offers both traditional DAM (management of digital photos and other marketing materials), as well as MAM (Media Asset Management) for time-based assets, one of the few vendors in our report that does both. In our universal DAM and MAM scenarios, we group ones related to marketing collateral and print production into one group, and the ones for video and audio production into a completely different group, given how vastly different the vendors are in their capabilities. Open Text's new combination of eMotion and Artesia means they're covering more of the whole range, in both hosted and licensed offerings.

Open Text continues acquisition trail, gobbling up MAM vendor

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:38:00 -0400

On the heels of my colleague Alan's report of Open Text's purchase of Spicer, the next sign along the company's acquisition trail was posted yesterday with the acquisition of media asset management vendor eMotion.

eMotion's prior caretaker was Corbis, famous for their massive image library. eMotion, a hosted MAM service, was a natural compliment to Corbis' offering, allowing publishers, image and video production managers to host both their own assets, as well as pointers to ones licensed from Corbis, in one place.

There's several interesting things about this acquisition. First is that Open Text already owns a rather sizable DAM software offering, Artesia. This reminds me a bit of when Microsoft acquired FAST -- many asked why Redmond needed another search tool, when they already had several of their own. It comes back to scenarios and specific capabilities. Just as searching a public website vs. a SharePoint repository vs. your firewall-protected Oracle databases call for very different types of search technologies, so does managing digital imagery vs. time-based assets. Like Microsoft, Open Text wants to dominate more of those niches.

DAM and MAM used to be quite separate, and different vendors "grew up" focusing on one domain or the other. As we learned in our research for The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008, there's few vendors that do well managing both images and video. Artesia's MAM capabilities are quite strong, compared to other vendors that grew up on the DAM side of the equation. Still, pure-play MAM companies like Blue Order, for now, continue to get the bigger share of the broadcast company MAM pie. Open Text's latest acquisition blurs the line between MAM and DAM even more, and shows they'd like to reach futher into both their core client base of marketers and advertising agencies as well as to the snazzy movie studios in Hollywood and beyond. Whether that can happen with two very separate technologies, Artesia and eMotion, will be interesting to see.

Also of note is that eMotion is a hosted or "On Demand" solution, whereas Artesia is strictly licensed softare. Several other DAM / MAM vendors have recently debuted hosted offerings as well. We've written in the past about the ambiguities of what a vendor is really offering when they say "On Demand", so proceed with caution. Open Text already markets a mish-mash of disjointed and loosely integrated ECM tools. This latest purchase is another reason for you, the buyer, to remain meticulous about understanding what each part of the pie really does.

Bam, WAM, thank you, DAM!

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:36:00 -0400

Late last month I had the pleasure of attending the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Symposium in London, UK, where I presented a summary of our research recently published in The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008. It was interesting to contrast this event with Henry Stewart's other recent DAM event, in New York City, held in early May. While many of the challenges faced by digital asset managers on both sides of the Atlantic are similar, few vendors find success on both continents. Though most of the vendors in our report claim customers "worldwide," a true presence (meaning more than a sales person) beyond the headquarters is usually lacking -- oftentimes, the software is simply pushed by resellers abroad, with minimal success.

Unlike last year, Canadian vendors North Plains and Nstein had their footprint on the London show floor, while Artesia ( who was there last year) was notably missing. Otherwise, ADAM, Vyre and other smaller UK and Europe-based vendors continued to fulfill the need of their local markets, and look to expand. As I noted along with my colleague Alan at Internet World UK back in April, there's no shortage of small to medium-sized WCM vendors doing well in the UK market, either, and many have yet to venture even into continental Europe. For every vendor that's acquired an gobbled up, two or three new ones seem to emerge, fulfilling ever more specific micro-niches. Perhaps the "Go Local" trend isn't just about food anymore, but technology suppliers as well.

But talk in the conference rooms was more about the business challenges of broadcasters, designers, marketers, and publishers than it was about the tools and vendors themselves. What echoed most frequently at both conferences was the idea of DAM not just as an asset repository, but a set of workflows leading to an end product (be it a brochure, catalog, or 60-minute broadcast). Each step along the workflow should add value, be it metadata enrichment or some artistic or editorial improvement. And yet, as we've pointed out before, most tools fall short of allowing licensees to truly automate and expedite the often complex publishing processes required by typical DAM scenarios.

It's in this spirit that Chris Glynne, who recently started his own consultancy called Bold Visions, pitched the concept of WAM, or Workflow Asset Management. While the last thing we all need is another acronym, if we're going to take DAM beyond the concept of a digital library, focusing on workflow, and the automation of steps along the typical DAM path is one key way of making that happen.

Digital asset managers asked me a lot of questions about non-pure-play DAM vendors' DAM capabilities. From Alfresco to Microsoft to Oracle, conference delegates wanted to know if they really needed a pure-play DAM tool if they already had SharePoint or Oracle's UCM. That question is not easily answered without delving deeper and understanding your needs and business scenarios. Do you have digital assets that are larger than 5 MB? Do your assets require you to manage both individual and composite assets, such as an product image, and then a brochure where the image might be used, and subsequently a 250-page product catalog where it might be applied as well? Do you need to manage and use the same asset at various resolutions, for both the Web and print? Then SharePoint sure as heck won't do the trick, and you'd be stretching other non-DAM-specific tools. Specialized DAM vendors raison d'être is to fulfill needs like these.

I'll share more leanings from these two DAM events as the summer continues; feel free to email me with any DAM or MAM questions you may have as well, as we continue our research into this fast-changing technology.

Open Text - acquire or be acquired?

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 03:09:00 -0400

Open Text is back on the acquisition trail. The company announced Thursday that they had bought Spicer for $12m. Spicer is a document/file viewing tool vendor that markets "Imagenation," software that competes against the likes of Snowbound.

It's a logical enough addition to the panoply of content applications within the Open Text portfolio, and appears to have been bought at a bargain price. It's not exactly a game changer, but it does resurrect the question of Open Text's own future.

Acquire to grow and compete, or be acquired -- those are the current options. It seems likely that if Open Text itself does not get bought by HP, SAP, or Microsoft in the near future (the most likely bidders), then they will themselves acquire again, probably on a more ambitious basis. Now that they find themselves competing against giants like EMC, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft it seems the only route to survive. Most likely in their sights is Interwoven, an acquisition that would bring near complete dominance in the Legal and Services sectors, along with some interesting new technologies in the bargain. I'll predict that one of these options -- big acquisition or get acquired -- is highly likely to occur in the next year.

But is Open Text really able to absorb so many counter-cultures and technology stacks? The firm has swallowed up rivals at a pace only Oracle could match -- but Open Text is not Oracle, and they simply do not have the resources to handle this kind of acquisition rate. Indeed many Open Text customers that we have interviewed for the ECM Suites Report regularly complain about disjointed and uneven support, confusing product roadmaps, and long-term concern about the future direction of the company. At the same time it's fair to also report that Open Text customers generally like the company and don't regret choosing them, but goodwill can only go so far.

With this small acquisition, Open Text has put itself back under the spotlight. The industry is again abuzz with rumors -- some of which may be true some of which may not. This remains a very uncertain time for buyers and partners alike.

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.

The basics of selecting an E-mail Archiving and Management system

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:51:00 -0400

In our most recent report, E-mail Archiving & Management (EAM), we struggled early on in the research process to differentiate in a meaningful way among the vendors in this sector. It was a good struggle to have, as it turned out that through our research we found few buyers or even other analyst sources had tried to categorize this sector either.

Like all markets, EAM can be sliced and diced in various ways, but as a starting point to buyers I tend to suggest first subdividing the vendors between those that are Policy-centric and those that are Archiving-centric. And of course figure out which particular category has more appeal and fit for your particular organization.

The Policy-centric vendors we evaluate in the report are those that offer the most advanced and sophisticated functions to provide records management-style capabilities to e-mail. Most typically these vendors sell into larger enterprises and government departments. As such you'll find them at the higher end in terms of cost and complexity to deploy, configure, and run. This higher cost and complexity is justified for customers in heavily regulated environments or any enterprise that needs to closely monitor e-mail content. It is also justified for those trying to filter out non-business related mails, archiving only true records. Vendors we consider to be in this category include CA, Open Text, and Symantec.

Archiving-centric vendors, just like their policy-centric competitors, sell mainly into larger enterprise or government markets. Though most of them provide some kind of policy management capabilities, their real appeal lies in their approach to archive optimization. These vendors tend to market more to the IT buyer than the business buyer, as their approach centers on backing up and actively archiving mail servers to maximize server and storage optimization.

In some cases vendors accomplish this through novel and unique hardware and storage arrangements (Mimosa, ZL, and HP); others approach it through a deep and long understanding of broad archiving requirements (AXS-One and EMC).

Of all the technologies we evaluate EAM is arguably the most difficult for a buyer to compare options side by side. But sometimes just some simple slicing and dicing can help the process.

Announcing the E-mail Archiving and Management Report

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:29:00 -0400

This may well go down as the busiest period in CMS Watch's history as this month we launch yet another new technology evaluation report, The E-mail Archiving & Management Report 2008. From our release:

EAM technology has become critical to both commercial and government enterprises -- but for a variety of different and sometimes conflicting reasons. This has led to a similarly diverse set of approaches from EAM suppliers...

It's somewhat surprising that this report -- which provides comprehensive comparative evaluations of 14 leading EAM vendors -- is one of the first of its kind anywhere.

Subscribers, you will be getting your copy very shortly. Others can order a copy or download a free sample here.

The report loosely groups EAM vendors into three categories:

Policy-Centric: Autonomy, CA, Open Text, IBM, and Symantec

Archive-Centric: AXS-One, EMC, HP, Mimosa, and ZL Technologies

SaaS: Dell, Fortiva, Google, and Microsoft

The research has taken more than six months to complete, and in the process we have talked to many customers and users of EAM systems. The conversations were illuminating and we look forward very much to continue those discussions moving forward.

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.

Enterprise Search Vendor Landscape, Circa 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:00 -0500

You might be tempted to select enterprise search vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market -- status either conferred by analyst firms or assumed by the vendors themselves. However, CMS Watch analyst Theresa Regli argues that you need to look more closely at product and vendor alike -- and understand where both are headed -- to properly evaluate your longterm risks and opportunities in an evolving marketplace...

Twelve Predictions for 2008

editor@cmswatch.com(The CMS Watch Analyst Team) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:01:00 -0500

It's that time of year again. The CMS Watch analyst team ponders what to expect next year, and offers 12 predictions that we think will shape content technologies in 2008 -- from Google to Microsoft, Web/Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Search, Archiving, and more...

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...

OpenText Buys Artesia: Mainstreaming DAM?

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 3 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

The last of the major independent Digital Asset Management (DAM) vendors, Artesia, has been acquired by OpenText. To some extent, this represents the mainstreaming of asset management -- a traditionally somewhat obscure product segment. However, don't expect asset management facilities to be added to existing CMS products without an additional fee. OpenText has been very hungry lately, but given recent indigestion over other acquisitions, we wonder if it isn't time for them to push back from the table for a while...
Read about the acquisition

On RedDot and Balance

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:38:00 -0400

Last week we received an e-mail from an IT staffer at an outfit that is looking to buy a Web CMS tool, with PaperThin's CommonSpot and RedDot CMS (part of the extended Open Text family) under particular consideration. The e-mail was a forwarded message from a RedDot salesperson, excerpting significant pieces of our Web CMS Report 2008 to make CommonSpot look bad and RedDot look good.

This is an explicit violation of our no-commercial-use policy, which forbids vendors or anyone else from using our findings as marketing material (our policy is modeled after that of the famous U.S.-based evaluation service, Consumer Reports). Somebody or some bodies at RedDot clearly took a lot of time to either OCR or re-type the text (you can't copy-paste from the PDF). They then took a lot more time to extensively -- if quite disingenuously -- redact portions of the text to make it look like we love their product (we don't) and dislike CommonSpot (we don't). I imagine other RedDot competitors were lined up and chopped down in similar fashion.

Consider the following excerpt from the RedDot salesperson's 4-page message:

"Open Text also holds a yearly LiveLinkUp conference for all of their customers and partners,... You can also find regional user groups around the world, an annual international summit, and an online developer community."

And our actual report text with the redacted clause italicized:

although RedDot customers we met there departed wondering where their web publishing needs fit in among the enterprise-focused Open Text strategy

Or this from the e-mail:

"...the product is mature, with a large customer base (over 2,500) and significant internal and external consulting expertise for customers to tap, plus a modestly active user community..you would buy it from a well-regarded vendor, Open Text, with a solid (if complex) "ECM" strategy..."

Which is really this in the report:

RedDot may lack the R&D energy of an Interwoven, Tridion, Day, or Sitecore, but the product is mature, with a large customer base (over 2,500) and significant internal and external consulting expertise for customers to tap, plus a modestly active user community.

And yet, RedDot average deal sizes continue to grow. We think this reflects more the cachet and customer expectations surrounding working with a major ECM vendor like Open Text, rather than intrinsic improvements to the core product -- which indeed have been rather slow in coming. Indeed, for what you get -- a somewhat dated mid-marketish toolset -- RedDot cannot be a called a great value. Nevertheless, you would buy it from a well-regarded vendor, Open Text, with a solid (if complex) "ECM" strategy.

The hatchet job on CommonSpot was as bad or worse.

Now, you and I both know that software sales can be a hurly-burly sport. Caveat emptor and all that. And we've all seen vendors distill convenient quotes from analyst reports across the spectrum (though, disappointingly, often with those analyst firms' approval). What's a bit startling here, though, is the depth of the dishonesty behind the very many ellipses. Although possibly the work of a rogue sales exec, it would seem to confirm my growing suspicions over the years that RedDot as a company has a tendency to play it rather fast and loose.

This makes RedDot all the odder fit within Open Text, an ECM vendor that -- whatever its shortcomings -- has always maintained a conservative, lower-key reputation in the face of the Oracles of this world. In fact, you can really feel the distance within Open Text (c.f., the LiveLinkUp meeting mentioned above), as if Open Text considers RedDot a sometimes charming younger sibling whose misdeeds are ultimately an embarrassment to the family name. It's too bad, really, because RedDot customers probably lose out in the end.

The larger issue here, though, is the way you look at software. Software development is really about trade-offs. Unless we all start managing our websites exactly the same way, something that works well in a tool for one customer can be a detriment for another customer. Do not seek to discover whether a software product is "good" or "bad." Ultimately you have to take a tougher but more meaningful measure: is that product a good fit for what you're trying to accomplish.

This means that every time an analyst or consultant praises some product feature, you have to ask yourself whether, in your case, that feature is actually a demerit -- and vice-versa. A more balanced view of the products -- and your needs -- can get you to the right solution.

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.

The Enterprise Search Report 2008, updated, plus a Basic Search edition

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Today we release an update and a new edition of our Enterprise Search Report 2008. In addition to Microsoft's acquisition of FAST influencing several of our reviews, we've added 3 new product reviews, of SAP's NetWeaver Search, Open Text's Discovery Server, and Apache Lucene, bringing the total number of product reviews in the Enterprise Edition up to 20.

But for those of you who are looking to do a simpler enterprise search implementation on a smaller budget, we've also debuted a Basic Search edition (with Team Use and Intranet Site License options), with a smaller selection of vendors, but still all the selection and implementation advice you seek. You can compare the two editions here, and determine which fits your project scope and budget. We'll highlight more of our recent enterprise search research here in the coming weeks.

Open Text in a thousand words

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:08:00 -0400

My colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe proves that it's possible -- just barely -- to describe a major ECM vendor that markets hundreds of products, in just three screens of text. His review of Open Text in Intelligent Enterprise magazine doesn't have all the juicy bits that you'll find in our ECM Suites Report, but it gives you a good sense for that vendor is all about...