CMS Watch Percussion Feed

Percussion splits off Lotus business

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:27:00 -0400

Percussion Software originally started out as a purveyor of Lotus tools. As its subsequent Web CMS business grew to substantially outstrip the Lotus side, those tools became a sometimes confusing appendage for prospective customers. Earlier this week, Percussion announced that it was splitting off its Lotus products into an entirely separate company called "Axceler." Of course, whenever this happens, one wonders if the company is preparing one part or another for an acquisition. However, over the years Percussion has garnered a reputation of playing hard-to-get when suitors come calling, which doubtless comes as a relief to its own customers. Interestingly, with the recent revivification of IBM's Lotus platform, Percussion's (former) Lotus offerings may be attracting more interest as well.

A new report on Content Component Management

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:07:00 -0500

Today we announced an alliance with The Rockley Group to publish a report evaluating "Content Component Management" tools and practices. From today's release:

Significant vendors in the Content Component Management space include: Astoria, AuthorIT, DocZone, PTC, SiberLogic, Trisoft, Vasont, XHive, XyEnterprise, Percussion, Tridion, Documentum, and Interwoven. The report will also evaluate major structured authoring tools, including JustSystems XMetaL, PTC Arbortext Editor, Adobe FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, and In.Vision Xpress Author.

I'm very excited because our customers frequently ask us about this space, and it seems to remain under-covered in the media/analyst community.

Percussion announces enterprise-ready Rhythmyx 6

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Fri, 7 Jul 2006 11:47:00 -0400

CMS vendor Percussion is pitching their latest Version 6.0 of Rhythmyx not so much as an ECM product solution – but as the core of an interoperability strategy that enables ECM. This seems like a smart approach for a niche solution. The company has added a WSDK (Web Services Software Developer's Kit) and web services API, making it easier to pull and push content into and out of the Rhythmyx repository. Percussion also productized a WYSIWYG web forms tool (à la Ektron) previously developed by a channel partner. That all sounds good, but Rhythmyx V6 doesn't actually release until the end of July and it will be some months before Percussion's customers have put it through its paces. We'll let you know...

The case against canned RFI/RFPs

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 6 Dec 2005 09:25:00 -0500

CMS vendor Percussion is beating the drums again about its free Request for Information template. I have one piece of advice: don't use it. Every other vendor has seen it and will think the project is hardwired for Percussion. Of course, nearly every other vendor also distributes their own canned RFPs, albeit more subtly. (Well, not always subtle...consider the file I saw recently, titled "RedDot Centric RFP"...though I guess that's being honest!) The use of canned RFPs might help explain this common lament from buyers: "I sent an RFP to a dozen vendors and only 2 responded!" In addition to being very busy, vendors are also very suspicious. So if your competition is truly open -- and it should be -- don't suggest otherwise by starting with a canned template. Instead, challenge vendors with real narratives, and use your own voice for your own best solution. And if you're looking to start from a good short-list, consult Alan Pelz-Sharpe's fine article on the subject.

Rich text editor alternatives to Ektron

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:46:00 -0500

CMS vendor Ektron started out as a WYSIWYG widget maker and pretty much made that market through OEM deals with several major CMS vendors. But some customers don't want an ActiveX-based solution, and rich text editors are notoriously finicky, so not every solution works well within any given environment. There are many applet-based alternatives, although they have had a reputation for bugginess. Now it looks like Ephox is coming to lead that lot, announcing recent OEM deals with Vignette and Percussion, enabling those vendors to compete better in some markets (e.g. academia) where Windows does not dominate the desktop. With the rise of AJAX, though, I'm seeing more CMS vendors gaining confidence with DHTML+Javascript rich interfaces. So the days of the thick plug-in may be numbered...

A short tour of ECM case studies

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:52:00 -0400

Tony Byrne reports on case studies from Vignette, Hummingbird, EMC, Stellent, and Percussion at the AIIM Solutions Seminars, and finds that much can be learned from what was said -- and not said -- at the show.

Mid-market can mean large and small buyers alike

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Like many CMS vendors, Percussion is trying to make its solution more "out-of-the-box." There's a fine line to walk, there, though, as largish buyers want something easy to prototype but highly extensible for enterprise roll-out. We're not sure whether Percussion's new offering walks that line well, but we like their description of a healthy niche in the sub-enterprise market. Here's what they say: "Rather than segmenting the mid-tier market by the size of the enterprise only, Percussion defines the mid-tier ECM market according to the unique content management needs of customers....these customers include midsize companies making strategic purchases, as well as Global 2000 corporations making tactical purchases..."
Read about "Rhythmyx FastForward"

Percussion releases Rhythmyx 5.6

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Percussion recently announced a dot-release of its Rythmyx CMS product. Most of the major changes in 5.6 revolve around redressing a traditional weakness of the product: spawning and managing multiple subsites in distributed environments. Good for them...but always test before you buy any product, especially those with "new" features...

Putting a CMS Behind Your Existing Website

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:15:00 -0400

Which came first, your CMS or your website? Probably the latter. But if your website employs a lot of dynamic logic, how do you preserve that investment while backing it with a CMS? Although not suitable for all use cases, one approach is to completely decouple your CMS and delivery environments. Percussion has aggressively advocated this approach and Refresh Software has simplified it to an extreme by handing off a populated database to your web tier. Conversely, Ektron has a bundled CMS and delivery architecture, but the company recently announced that its CMS400.NET product supports multiple scripting languages, including PHP, JSP, and ColdFusion for content delivery. Note that CMS400 still serves the content at run-time, and you must modify your existing scripts to access Ektron-managed items. Here's some sample PHP code for retrieving a specific list index from the respository:

<?PHP ecmListSummary ("MarketingNews",0,1,"", "Title,asc", "DateModified",0,"",""); 
  ?>,

taken from Ektron's public documentation (pdf).

A Transforming Experience for Content Management?

steveheckler@accelebrate.com(Steve Heckler) — Thu, 4 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

One of the traditional knocks against XML-based CMS products is the relative immaturity of XSL as a programming language. Well, Steve Heckler of Accelebrate returns to CMS Watch to show how the forthcoming XSLT 2.0 spec may change the way we all think about processing XML documents...

Percussion Offers Workgroup Portal

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

It's tempting for CMS vendors to develop or resell portals, too, since many of their customers lack a robust content delivery environment. Vignette and Interwoven have done so, and now Percussion has jumped into the race -- helpfully noting that its offering is directed more at workgroups than enterprise integration. Think of it as MS Sharepoint running on Java. Percussion's portal offers several nice widgets for workgroups, but we should point out the significant difference between managing collaborative projects vs. the collaborative development of web content. For the former, a collaboration portal is useful, but for the latter, you really want to focus on the native collaborative workflow capabilities of your CMS (and most of them aren't very good at it)...
Find out more about Rhythmyx Express Portal

Preview to a Marriage?

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:00:00 -0400

ECM vendor Optika and WCM vendor Percussion are dating. The former is a publicly-traded imaging firm that added workflow and DM capabilities, then recently acquired a records management company. In a new partnership agreement with Percussion, the two companies can now cross-sell complementary capabilities to each others' clients. Could it also presage an acquisition? Privately-held Percussion has been courted by others, but has consistently held out for a better match. In the meantime, analysts are urging some of the dowdier ECM vendors to pick up web CMS capabilities. Optika's stock price has risen recently with the rest of the tech sector (after twice falling below NASDAQ's warning threshold of $1.00); if it continues to improve, Optika will be able to offer a better dowry...
Read about the partnership at Percussion.com

Putting Content Delivery Metrics to Work for Content Management

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

As faithful CMS Report readers know, many web content management products follow a loosely-coupled or completely decoupled management/delivery architecture, while others bundle content management and delivery tightly within one package. The former camp can claim a more elegant architecture, but the latter camp, including Broadvision, Microsoft, and especially Vignette, can boast the ability to put delivery metrics (e.g. "how often is this page visited?") in the hands of editors and publishers at precisely the moment that they are working on a particular set of content. That's useful. Now one analytics company, Buystream, has come out with a website metrics package targeted for use in CMS environments. Users embed special tags into content during the management phase that are picked up by the analytics package at delivery time to help decode and report how that content is being used. Buystream presently integrates with two management-only CMS vendors, Percussion and RedDot...
Find out more about Buystream's "Perspective" Product

XML is Just a Means to an End (episode 39 of 63)

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Getting your content into XML is just the half of it, if even that. Many enterprises confuse XML authoring and editing with the actual management of usefully structured content and reusable chunks. Chad Dickerson, CIO of InfoWorld, recently had to migrate their site from eBT's old Dynabase to Percussion (both CMS packages are XML-based). He points out that XML has been as "abused, neglected, and misunderstood" as nearly every other enterprise technology. Specifically, according to Dickerson, it's extremely hard to "maintain the semantic integrity of the data represented in your XML as your business morphs and changes..." Meaningful structure takes work, throughout a content lifecycle...
Read Dickerson's piece, "Heaven of XM-hell?"

Public boasting, private financials

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 21 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

This is the time of year when CMS vendors start crowing (or eating crow) about their 4th Quarter results. Some of the most boastful pronouncements typically emanate from privately-held firms, who can avoid the inconvenience of publishing real financials in an openly-accessible manner the way most major bourses require of public companies. We would tend to agree that -- especially compared to their larger competitors -- many private CMS vendors appear to be doing well, but well enough to still stay afloat? When you get deep into the software selection process (read: contract negotiations) with them, private companies will disclose some nuggets of information, perhaps even audited financial statements. They know that for many buyers, it can be emotionally too late to withdraw an intent to purchase based on, say, a sickly balance sheet. Below you can find out about some private CMS vendors' Q4 results. But in our opinion, you'd be wasting your time...
FatWire PaperThin Percussion Tridion

Witness to a CMS Implementation

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 23 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0400

When we last profiled NetworkWorld Fusion editor Adam Gaffin, his team was just selecting a new CMS package. Now Gaffin is chronicling the actual implementation through a very promising blog. His comments about the package NW selected (Percussion's Rhythmyx) could apply to most other products. Note especially Gaffin's discussion of the complexities of expiring content in state-transition workflows, as well as his critique of the templating system. On the latter, we must agree that one of the negative side-effects of most CMS implementations is the reinsertion of an engineer in between a designer and their templates...
Check out Gaffin's Blog