TrendWatch: CMS Watch Blog
Small step towards addressing SharePoint's replication problem
29-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Microsoft announced yesterday through a TechNet blog entry that they have released an update to the SharePoint administration toolkit. One key piece of new functionality is a profile replication engine. In short, this new tool will enable customers with geographically distributed My Site and Shared Services farms to replicate profile data across those farms.
As readers of the SharePoint Report 2008 already know, replication is something that SharePoint does not natively support today. In fact, the issue of replicating content across SharePoint farms is something that enterprises have been requesting since SharePoint 2003. Clearly Microsoft has finally begun to address portions of the problem -- albeit for user profiles and not content. We can only hope that true content replication (and not just SQL log shipping) becomes a reality in the next release. If Microsoft wants to play in the enterprise, it will have to address truly global implementations and the fact that not everyone will have OC3-level connectivity among their different locations.
Submitted by Shawn Shell, Contributing Analyst | All SharePoint Channel Trends
What You Need To Know About Search in SharePoint 2007
29-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Search is important to most SharePoint projects, but unfortunately it is also something that causes quite a bit of frustration as well as confusion.
I'm very pleased to be talking on this exact topic in London on September 15 at a Henry Stewart conference on The Latest Thinking on Optimising Enterprise Search. In my talk I'll cover some of the usual pitfalls and also share some recent project experiences (both positive and less positive) with SharePoint's search functionality.
At the conference I'll be joined by a global team of noted enterprise search gurus including James Robertson, Adriaan Bloem and the Martin White. I'm also looking forward to two interesting case studies from the BBC. I'm sure I'll learn much during the day and hope to see you there!
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
SAP looks to India for ECM?
29-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Is SAP slowly moving into the ECM space? It's a question that has been asked so many times over the years that it has become something of a "chestnut," as we say in England. For if you are ever at a loss as to what to chat about with people in the ECM industry, SAP is a surefire conversation starter.
SAP was (allegedly) going to buy Open Text on many occasions, but as of today still have not. They were (allegedly) shocked when Open Text bought iXos ( a firm that focused almost exclusively on providing content and archiving software for SAP), but did nothing about it. They were (allegedly) going to buy German vendor Saperion, but didn't. Once Oracle moved in to the ECM space with their acquisition of Stellent, fine ECM minds asserted that SAP would be forced to respond, but they didn't.
But now SAP does appear to be doing something: they are considering buying a 15% stake in Indian ECM vendor NewGen. Could this be a prelude to a full acquisition? Well it could be and it wouldn't be a bad choice, though it may take Euro- and US-centric observers by surprise. At CMS Watch we always try to take a very global view of things and have been following NewGen since the birth of the ECM Suites Report. It's a product that would potentially be a good fit for SAP -- and one that could likely compete well against the likes of IBM and Oracle with the marketing and sales push that SAP could give it.
But who knows...a 15% stake sounds a lot, but to SAP 15% of NewGen is small change. (SAP's venture arm has also invested in search vendor Endeca and open source ECM supplier Alfresco.) What we do know is that it keeps the rumor mill busy - and reminds us that from the outside SAP may appear to doing nothing in the ECM space, but they clearly are aware of ECM, and they probably do have plans for the future, even if they haven't shared them yet.
As a buyer of an ECM system to handle content and archiving loads from SAP, it's not as if you are short of options; almost every major ECM vendor can provide relatively out of the box integrations with SAP, and some even have dedicated groups to support such integrations. So an entry by SAP into the ECM market will likely not present a sea change for buyers, but it will certainly be interesting fodder for industry observers.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All ECM Channel Trends
A pat on the legal back for Interwoven
28-Aug-2008 | Permalink
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?
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All ECM Channel Trends
Virtual SharePoint?
28-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Last week Microsoft announced new licensing arrangement for its products, including SharePoint Server 2007. In particular the new licensing scheme will support those who want to virtualize their server environment, since in the past enterprises taking this route were somewhat punished financially. All in all the new approach is a good one and buyers should be happy. At the same time this raises questions about how many people actually want to virtualize their server environment, and what if any the drawbacks such an approach might present.
We have written often about the frequently viral spread of SharePoint, in whose wake there usually comes a big expansion in server farms. Hence it may make sense to consider virtualization for large distributed SharePoint environments. You can theoretically run the same processes at the same speed, with far less hardware, power usage, and costs. However you also need to consider that not all security systems support virtualized environments, and that some virtualization systems suffer from performance and CPU usage problems, issues that can be very hard to track back to their roots in a virtualized environment. You should also consider that virtualization software cannot bend the law of physics; you need to realize that popping everything on one machine dramatically reduces the number of I/O's for network resources, memory and CPU ( they now all share the same I/O), and in some cases you will see performance drop.
At a pragmatic level you should not see virtualization as a cure to SharePoint viral growth. SharePoint proliferation issues stretch way beyond hardware issues, and into compliance, governance, and productivity. Nonetheless, running SharePoint servers farms on virtualized hardware is a sound thing to look into, and the improved licensing makes it even sweeter to consider.
So don't count me among virtualization nay-sayers. However, good IT management and good SharePoint practice and governance I like even more.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Fresh look at Enterprise Portal Software
27-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Today we released the Enterprise Portals Report 2009, which evaluates twelve major portal offerings.
Main conclusion: Major portal players are responding -- in some cases successfully -- to Microsoft SharePoint. (See our findings here). The major enterprise platforms are consolidating, while the open source projects are expanding as an alternative to Redmond.
You can download a free sample of the Portals Report here
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Socialtext, SaaS, and upgrading enterprise wikis
25-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Noted wiki vendor Socialtext has been busy appearing at high-profile conferences to promote their concept of business social software. However, recent experience suggests the still-young company may remain a little too fascinated by exciting new features rather than supporting and maintaining their customer base.
As we mentioned in the Socialtext review in the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008, customers were concerned earlier this year over quite a few upgrade problems with the hosted Socialtext service. Recent reports from customers suggest that the popular service remains quite a bumpy ride. Here's a few of the issues that Socialtext customers have reported over the past few month:
- The one and only reporting feature in Socialtext -- weekly usage reports -- stopped working back in May
- The search feature was suddenly substantially changed. Now search results no longer sort by default according to last edited date, but by relevance. This may seem an improvement, but try a search on a public Socialtext wiki and you'll find that it still takes some time getting used to.
- In another incremental upgrade, international characters were transformed to garbage, e.g., the Danish "æ" became an "Ål" and "å" became "Å¥."
It is also worth adding that while Socialtext formally announced version 3 back in April, the hosted service is today still running version 2.22, almost 5 months later.
The larger issue here is that as a SaaS customer you remain very much in the hands of the vendor. Often that's a good thing ("our upgrades happen automatically"); sometimes it's a bad thing ("we can't chose to postpone an upgrade"). How well your SaaS vendor prepares you and performs proper regression testing may seriously impact your project. Enterprises don't like surprises, but it appears like Socialtext still has some way to go here
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Social Channel Trends
Nedstat Sends a Message
25-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Last week, European web analytics vendor Nedstat announced a new feature called "Live Segmentation," which enables you to develop customized behavioral analysis across unaggregated web data.
This is a big step for Nedstat. Readers of the Web Analytics Report know that this missing capability was somewhat of a downside to an offering that competes in Europe with the likes of Omniture, and WebTrends -- two vendors already providing a "data warehouse"-type of feature that enables deeper and more customizable analysis.
I've seen Live Segmentation, and at first blush it looks pretty straightforward...clean interface; drop and drag filter building, and so forth. However, Live Segmentation has a singular benefit that can't be found in the technology itself: availability to all SiteStat customers at no additional cost to the basic offering.
Nedstat argues that all web analytics solutions should provide for this level of behavioral segmentation analysis as part of their core, and I would have to agree. Although why it has taken so long for vendors to follow through on this has been somewhat of a mystery. NetGenesis (a "first generation," log file-based, licensed software package) provided segmentation functionality in 1997, but tag-based, SaaS vendors have been slow to catch up. This is problematic, because these sorts of custom queries really lie at the heart of contemporary web analytics, which tries to move beyond the limitations of "out of the box" analysis and reporting queries.
Nevertheless, the marketplace is moving. Coremetrics' announced their "deep dive" segmentation analysis offering, Explore, in May, 2008. Unica, in its latest release, 7.4, also just announced this level of custom analysis. The difference here is that Nedstat is essentially providing deep behavioral segmentation analysis for free.
Submitted by Phil Kemelor, Contributing Analyst | All Analytics Channel Trends
Omniture and the Business Intelligence - Web Analytics divide
21-Aug-2008 | Permalink
At the TDWI Summit this week, I had the opportunity to talk about Web Analytics with enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) execs. I came away concluding that the worlds of enterprise data and web metrics still remain far apart.
I've argued before that the separation is partly technical and partly cultural. BI managers are wary of the firehouse of web traffic data, and most web managers just don't think much about non-web data stores and the value of website metrics to the broader enterprise.
Chatting with a BI manager at a major Omniture customer highlighted some of the issues. As Web Analytics Report readers know, Omniture is good at getting data into its system, but not very friendly about getting it out. Now, this customer wanted a small subset of key web data to bring back into their data warehouse. The key word here is small: you don't necessarily need and in fact can't handle all that extra traffic data for CRM-oriented enterprise datamarts. But you do want to know what your customers are doing. So, this enterprise put their own unique tag on key transaction pages (downloads, inquiries, and other form submissions) that wrote to a separate database, which they could then synch up with their master customer data to get a more holistic view. It's a useful work-around that seems to be working well for the BI team there.
At the same time, it made me a bit uncomfortable, because now they run two different tracking systems -- Omniture and the bespoke capture application -- and experience suggests that they will generate different metrics. The web managers will make decisions based on what they see coming out of Omniture, while the master enterprise data may show something different.
That's not the end of the world -- at least this customer actually made an effort to extract some web data for long-term enterprise use -- it's really just a first step.
Before you start to criticize Omniture, understand that no web analytics tool has been built to integrate with enterprise BI systems (indeed, the free Google Analytics service has no data access API at all). I think the marketplace still reflects the fact that within most enterprises, web managers and enterprise data managers live in two different worlds. But, if like the customer I met, you are trying to bridge that gap, be prepared for some custom development.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Marqui de Sale
19-Aug-2008 | Permalink
A few weeks ago, I questioned whether the SaaS Web CMS vendor Marqui was "going belly up" due to the fact that they had gone into receivership. Contraction within the Web Content Management marketplace has long been predicted by many analysts, but like many, many WCM products, it appears that Marqui will continue to linger. According to the Marqui site, the company has been sold to a group of private investors.
As indicated in the Marqui press release, the investor group also owns a fellow Vancouver-based company called WaterTrax that produces software to monitor water quality. Marqui customers should take some comfort that WaterTrax has experience with SaaS, but it remains to be seen how the new owners will go about creating what they are calling "a multi-brand software-as-a-service." We already know that the WaterTrax and Marqui will be sharing a CEO and CFO, Marqui customers will want to watch carefully how the new owners plan on sharing technical infrastructures. Sharing infrastructure could mean consolidation of technical and support resources.
Customers will want to carefully gauge how this impacts the Marqui service. Will the offering change or will divided attention keep Marqui in a state of dormancy? As always, we'll be watching...
Submitted by Jarrod Gingras, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
The Emperor's New Box
18-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Google has announced its new Search Appliance, version 5.2. As usual, this has been marked by a slew of presentations -- and of course, a video on YouTube. Probably the main upgrade: a 10 million document limit on one server.
The box, dressed in imperial yellow -- or somewhat more irreverently: the pizza quattro formaggi -- of course goes with the times. Faster (probably multi-core) processors allow for the higher document count. That's not so much Google's achievement, though you shouldn't forget that this is one enterprise search solution that actually comes with the hardware to run on, and the company makes sure it can handle its workload. But what else is new?
Well, according to the presentations and press release, you now get Kerberos, personalization, alerts, and better stats. Kerberos (no, not that Kerberos, but the security protocol) provides "single authentication for Sharepoint, file shares and non-Windows-based content systems, in addition to Windows-based systems". The personalization features mainly seem to be a form of collection-based biasing (i.e., for certain collections you can boost specific results; and it's now possible to do this based on metadata, too). The alerts are supposedly much like the regular Google Alerts we've come to love and hate. And as readers of the Enterprise Search Report will know, the GSA's statistics certainly had room for improvement.
I'll remain skeptical of these features until I've actually seen them, however. And none of the GSA integrators I talked to seemed to have hands-on experience with them as of yet. It took the previous GSA 5 release several months to be revealed as a bit of a disappointment: first meeting with enthusiasm, but slowly becoming a bit of a let-down. We'll have to wait and see what is actually delivered -- and how.
With the GSA, you get a whole lot out of the box. In this case, quite literally: many things touted as features actually rely on you installing them on external servers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if you're aware of it before you commit (and Google's aggressive marketing doesn't really help a fair comparison). Helpful colleagues frequently remind that I should think outside the box; however, I tend to believe only what I can see with my own eyes, and I would advise you to do the same.
Submitted by Adriaan Bloem, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
Quick: what do Joomla!, Drupal, and WordPress have in common?
18-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Big Blue recently released its IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force 2008 Mid-Year Trend Statistics report, and it contains more than a few eyebrow-raisers. For example: Web-application-based security vulnerabilities have begun to outnumber reports involving conventional viruses and trojans (of the kind that target the operating system). We're now at the point where 51 percent of newly discovered software vulnerabilities depend in some way on web-page interactions.
Also, there's been a sharp surge in the number of vulnerabilities that involve SQL injection (as opposed to cross-site scripting). Meanwhile, the use of infected image files (.gif or .jpg) as a way to inflict mayhem is on the decline.
What really got my attention, though, is the new Top Ten list of vendors with the most vulnerability disclosures. Normally you would expect Microsoft to be at the top of that list (I would, at least). Instead, it's at Number 3, behind Apple and... Joomla!. Fortunately, Joomla! can be secured, but it's quite possible that many novice Joomla! installers do not.
Numbers 8, 9 and 10 are interesting, as well: Drupal, WordPress, and Linux.
The finding that no fewer than four of the top ten vendors with the most reported vulnerabilities are open-source projects is, at first blush, quite striking. But the results should be viewed with caution. In part, the rankings reflect a recent change in IBM's data-gathering methodology (which the report's authors are quick to point out). Another important caveat is that the numbers are not normalized against adoption rates or installed seats or any other usage metrics. They're based on raw numbers.
It's worth remembering, too, that open source projects are extraordinarily open about security vulnerabilities. Hence you would expect a comparatively high rate of reporting for an open-source product. Finding, publishing, and fixing security vulnerabilities is something the open-source community has gotten quite good at, particularly in the Linux world, where every line of code for the entire operating system (including all encryption routines, random-number-generating code, and so on) is available free for the downloading. Security flaws in Linux tend to be found and corrected with astonishing alacrity.
On the other hand, it's striking that three of the Top Ten contenders on IBM's security worry-list have PHP in common. You can read whatever you want to into that, I suppose. I'm not a PHP expert, but I'm enough of a web developer to know that languages don't create security problems; programmers do.
If you have the time and the inclination, download the IBM report. At 85 pages, it' a well-worthwhile lunch-hour read, if you care about web-app security ... as I think we all should.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Free SharePoint Webinar
15-Aug-2008 | Permalink
In collaboration with our partner, KM World, my colleague Tony Byrne will lead a free webinar, How to Evaluate SharePoint for the Enterprise, on the 28th of August at 2 p.m. US ET / 11 a.m. PT. It's a preview of the full-day seminar that Tony will teach in San Jose, CA on September 28th, closing out a packed week of content technology education at the San Jose Convention Center.
The webinar offers a high-level critical view of SharePoint, with candid, independent advice for both business and technology leaders alike.
You can register for the webinar here. See you online!
Submitted by Theresa Regli, Analyst | All SharePoint Channel Trends
CMS Watch consulting services
12-Aug-2008 | Permalink
A question we are often asked is "Does CMS Watch provide consulting services?" In fact this question is asked so often, I thought a quick blog entry might be in order.
The answer should be prefaced by our raison d'être: CMS Watch evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions. We see our work primarily as informing and educating buyers of content technology via our reports and this web site. We admit that the constant work of updating reports such as The ECM Suites Report and the eMail Management and Archiving Report leaves us little time for consulting, but some of our customers do desire personal help and advice. In these cases we provide advisory and consulting services, most commonly to help with vendor and product selection. We don't do very large projects, nor do we compete with the big consultancies and integrators out there. Indeed why would we -- they are often our clients too, and many are among our subscribers, who receive analyst time built-in as part of our offering.
The engagements we do take on help keep our feet solidly on the ground. Buyers know they are getting tough, critical and truly independent advice, while at the same time, we remain rooted in the world of real projects and real buying issues. We help our clients distinguish marketing hype and hyperbole from the facts and real-world experience of others - something we work hard to ensure is reflected in our reports. If this kind of consulting is something you feel you could benefit from, just drop us a note. Remember, we consult only for buyers, and never for vendors.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All ECM Channel Trends
Plenty of choice for buyers in ECM's mid-market
12-Aug-2008 | Permalink
Laserfiche is an ECM vendor we have been watching and writing about for a while, and our coverage of them in The ECM Suites Report is set to extend this year as we evaluate their new Rio offering. To some it may seem crazy for a mid-tier vendor like Laserfiche to expand their offerings in the wake of SharePoint, as there is a popular myth that SharePoint has all but finished off the ECM mid-tier. But a close look at the Rio offering shows us that there is thankfully no lack of innovation or useful products to compare, contrast, and chose among.
The new release from Laserfiche builds on its long history of records management and imaging, but adds deep integration with SharePoint. More importantly, with its set of connectors, Laserfiche now provides (relatively) out-of-the-box integration, along with an elegantly distributed architecture for capture and document management. Though these strengths might not seem as sexy as the name Rio suggests, these are product features that distinguish Laserfiche from many of their competitors, and add real value to many larger SharePoint environments.
We urge you to investigate the mid-tier of the ECM market for reasons such as these. As a buyer, you should never simply default to the big 4 or 5 'top right' vendors. ECM mid-tier vendors such as Laserfiche, Nuxeo, EVER and Objective often provide a better technical and cultural fit for you and your organization. They are also often the least turbulent of vendors, with healthy revenues, large (over 25,000 in Laserfiche's case) well-established and supportive customers, and a settled corporate culture - all important strengths in difficult economic times.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All ECM Channel Trends
Cold Banana?
05-Aug-2008 | Permalink
We've been following Web CMS vendor Hot Banana for some time now. The little Barrie, Ontario start-up challenged pre-eminent ColdFusion-based vendor PaperThin with a somewhat simpler and very marketing-oriented offering.
Then online marketing roll-up vendor JL Halsey came calling, and Hot Banana agreed to get acquired. A thinly-capitalized former health-care company, JL Halsey was best known for its flagship Lyris e-mail marketing package and ultimately assumed that name. Then, as readers of The Web CMS Report 2008 know, Hot Banana seemed to stall a bit; customers complained of poor support and some internal disarray. Lately we've heard of a couple would-be buyers struggling to get Hot Banana's attention amid rumors of staff turnover and a difficult transition to a SaaS-based delivery model.
Turnover and organizational change are part of life in any software company, but something here is setting off little alarm bells in the back of my head.
You see, roll-ups are tricky: they seem so promising, but "synergies" among different products (in this case, really different companies) rarely pan out, and when it comes time to meet real quarterly revenue numbers, things can get tough. I don't know entirely what's going inside Hot Banana (they won't return our messages), but if you're considering them as a supplier, you'll want to make sure you perform careful diligence first.
Update: 07 August -- a Lyris exec e-mailed us declaring Hot Banana alive and well. We'll offer an update after the company's forthcoming quarterly SEC filing.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Join us in Copenhagen and London for search, IA and more....
04-Aug-2008 | Permalink
I'm elated to invite you to two seminars and a full-day conference on enterprise search, findability and information architecture, taking place next month in the wonderful cities of Copenhagen and London.
In cooperation with our Denmark-based partner J. Boye, I'll be teaching a full-day seminar on Information Architecture for Findability and Web Publishing on September 11. This seminar is cumulative learnings from my time as a taxonomist and implementer of many a WCMS, as well as my more recent few years as an analyst (speaking with hundreds of users of CM, DAM and search systems), about what kinds of information structures help, or hinder, the implementation of specific technologies. If you're an information architect, web content manager, portal manager or search project manager, this class is geared towards the kinds of challenges you face.
In London a few days later, together with Claudia Urschbach, Senior Information Architect with the BBC, I'm chairing a full-day event on enterprise search. The speaker lineup includes Adriaan Bloem, Martin White, Janus Boye, James Robertson and others, and we'll spend the day discussing the current thinking on optimizing search within the enterprise. Our goal is both practical and tactical: we'll discuss search UI best practices, the vendor landscape, managing search projects, audio/video search, what you need to know about search in SharePoint 2007, and of course, we'll do some future-gazing.
Finally, Adriaan Bloem and I will teach a half-day intensive course on enterprise search in London on September 16th. If you're looking for a deep dive into today's search technology, join Adriaan and I for a combined presentation of our recent research. We hope to see you there!
Submitted by Theresa Regli, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Cuil could be cool
01-Aug-2008 | Permalink
As the buzz has it, public website search engine Cuil is the new Google challenger. "Cuil" is apparently pronounced "cool", and "an old Irish word for knowledge".
The search engine was officially launched a few days ago and is enjoying its time in the spotlight. There's two reasons for that: the company was started by ex-Google employees; and it has an index that's supposed to be three times as large as Google's. Now, that's all very nice, but since CMS Watch doesn't evaluate the public search engines, but enterprise search tools ("behind the firewall search"), you may ask: what's the relevancy?
Well, the word is still out on Cuil's relevancy ranking -- or the freshness of its index, for that matter. One thing is certain: a larger index doesn't necessarily mean better results. The Cuil folks must have realized, though, that to be any kind of competition, your index has to be huge; it's the old numbers game that especially Yahoo! and Google used to engage in. Google was the first to quit playing that game, but somewhat "coincidentally" suddenly made a statement about their 1 trillion pages indexed.
As for how relevant this is for enterprise search: well, Cuil doesn't play that particular game (though many search companies do both or at least used to: Microsoft, FAST, Exalead, Vivisimo, the list goes on... and oh yes, Google). What struck me as most interesting is that Cuil attempts to change the way people don't just search, but find, by using an innovative new results interface. And that's always pretty good news... since so far, most vendors have rather unimaginatively been copying Google's design of search results, since that's what most users have grown used to on the web.
Of course, again, they're not the first to innovate: notable examples are the public search engines of Exalead (exalead.com) and Vivisimo (Clusty). Both are quite experimental, and especially Exalead is continuously updating the interface. What you like best is rather personal, but for me, both are more useful than Cuil, where a static footer on the bottom takes up too much of my screen real estate: frames are soooo 1996 (even if they're not actual HTML frames). But Exalead and Vivisimo's public search engines are more interesting because they are not just marketing, but also ongoing research: what you see there might actually turn up in an enterprise search interface near you soon.
Still, if Cuil will get people used to more varieties than just plain vanilla Google behind the firewall, as well, that would be nice for anyone trying to implement search. I think many would be quite happy to have users clamor for something that's more like Cuil, rather than "why can't we just have Google". It's time to innovate the interfaces beyond just Googlesque results listings and Endeca's facets. That wouldn't just be old Irish knowledge, it would actually be pretty cool.
Submitted by Adriaan Bloem, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
Ongoing confusion in the land of MS search technology
01-Aug-2008 | Permalink
The SharePoint IT Pro Documentation Team recently published a blog post on the various Microsoft "enterprise" search technologies. The post did a nice job of clarifying the role of each of Microsoft's various search tools, save FAST (but more on that in a bit). Even the post's author, Kathy Narvaez, admits she has trouble distinguishing the various "...flavors of Microsoft enterprise search;" hence the blog post.
This post is significant for two reasons: first, she used the word "enterprise" when describing SharePoint search, as well as Search Server Express and Search Server 2008 (although she also used the term "entry level"); and second, there was absolutely no mention of FAST. In some ways, the exclusion of FAST could be a result of the continuing ambiguity around how Microsoft will integrate the tool into the overall product set. Further, this blog post is coming from the IT Pro Documentation group (think Infrastructure Team - TechNet, not MSDN subscribers) and they don't seem to be as close to the product teams as the developer-based bloggers.
As our Enterprise Search Report 2008 and SharePoint Report 2008 both point out, Microsoft does not have a particularly strong native search offering, especially when we consider search across multiple repositories of various types. I don't think anyone but Microsoft considers their offerings outside of FAST truly enterprise class or scale. And that's why this blog post is a bit surprising: it strikes me as odd that they have so much trouble controlling the language they use to describe their own products.
Submitted by Shawn Shell, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
Alfresco as a SharePoint alternative
31-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Microsoft SharePoint goes open source? Shock, horror! Ok, well not quite, but an open source alternative to SharePoint is now an option with the release of Alfresco's Lab 3 Beta product. Alfresco's new module allows you to hook Office into Alfresco, giving you the option to use Alfresco as opposed to SharePoint as your collaboration platform.
It's an interesting option. As readers of our ECM Suites Report 2008 know, Alfresco is one of the more interesting ECM vendors around. The question you might ask yourself however is, why would anyone want to do use Alfresco instead of SharePoint? Clearly open source enthusiasts will herald this as a major breakthrough - and those enterprises that espouse open source may well become customers. But then again, if you are going to dump Microsoft for the back end, why use Office at all, given there are open source alternatives?But this release has appeal beyond the open source community, for the simple fact that by using the Alfresco alternative you are not locked into the Microsoft stack. This isn't so much an issue now, but will be when Office and SharePoint effectively merge at the next major release. Unhooking the two from each other (or at least having the option to do so) is good risk mitigation, and a powerful thing to have in your armory when negotiating with Microsoft.
Where Alfresco may find a particular sweet spot is with those organizations looking to take SharePoint beyond its limits. In some of those cases Alfresco may well be more developer-friendly both in terms of the technology (AJAX and RESTful) and more digestible in terms of pricing. It's a David and Goliath situation - and certainly that's how Alfresco would like to pitch it. But outside the Book of Samuel, David and Goliath-style battles seldom turn out in quite the same way.
One does need to be aware that Lab 3 is a beta release and an open source product, so it's really not to everyone's tastes. Nevertheless, while many ECM vendors have released SharePoint add-ons and related products, Alfresco's new module goes for the SharePoint jugular. Despite the small size of Alfresco, the product is likely to gain some real attention over the coming year. Worth remembering though (as we detail in our ECM Suites Report) is that while Alfresco may well be open source, it's not free, and just as some people think SharePoint is free, of course it is not. In other words, if you are thinking that Alfresco is a free alternative to SharePoint then you are mistaken, it's simply an alternative, albeit a very intriguing one.
As with any beta release we urge you to be cautious. We're currently looking at the product as a part of our evaluations for the ECM Suites Report, and of course in the context of our SharePoint Report. In time Alfresco Lab 3 may turn out to be a damp squib, but for now it's got our attention.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All ECM Channel Trends
Apache in the Outer Hebrides
31-Jul-2008 | Permalink
As we enter the peak of the vacation season, those of us fortunate enough leave the rat race and head off to distant shores. And it was whilst on a very distant shore this past week that I came across an advertisement that stopped me dead in my tracks: check it out here.
We all give lip service to the idea of the global village, and that the internet is redefining the business geography. But to most of us that means little more than outsourcing to India or former Eastern Bloc countries. However, this job is located on the Isle of Lewis, a stunning windswept island in the North Atlantic. Getting there requires a two-hour ferry journey from the mainland (when the weather allows the ferry to run at all). It's metaphorically, if not literally, a million miles from San Jose, London or Bangalore. But looking at the actual job requirements, it's also about as far from corporate America as you could get. No Windows NT here, it's Ubundu, PHP5 and the LAMP stack, fairly cutting edge by anyone's standards.
This may seem just a blog post for the end of a vacation week, but there is food for thought here. If evidence were still needed that the global village is with us and expanding faster than the cubicle paradigm of corporate America cares to acknowledge, this may be it. And what a phenomenal opportunity for a top developer to live "the dream"!
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Three years later, Day CQ 5 is still almost ready
31-Jul-2008 | Permalink
In prior blogs as well as the past several editions of The Web CMS Report 2008 (in the chapter on Day Software), we've mentioned the agonizingly long buildup to the release of Version 5 of Day Communiqué. The last major release (4.0) of Day CQ was in 2005. There have been two point-releases since then (4.2 is current), but the product's lackluster user interface remains a glaring sore point in what is otherwise a very capable and elegantly architected (if pricey) WCM platform.
The company promises that Version 5 will have much improved usability for administrators and content contributors alike. The problem is, Day has made many promises before regarding CQ 5. And they remain only that: just promises.
To be sure, Day has been plenty busy with product development. In the past year, the Basel, Switzerland-based firm released a DAM offering and a social-software package. And the core repository, CRX, underwent a major revision (1.4 was released only two weeks ago). But time and again, the CQ 5 release date gets pushed off.
Today comes word that the wait for CQ 5 may be almost over (yes, again): apparently, the product is finally in beta, actually being put through its paces by major customers, having undergone (and completed) a long "technical preview" phase. According to Jean-Michel Pittet (writing in a blog at dev.day.com), "There are about 80 editors producing content [with CQ 5 beta] already. This number is expected to increase into several hundred very soon." Anticipated final release date? Still late 2008.
I'm tempted to say Don't hold your breath. But you know what? This time, based not just on Pittet's blog but on recent conversations I've had with a number of Day insiders, I think the promises might actually come true.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Stop the Presses: the Word is out
30-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Not quite hot off the wire, but WordPress version 2.6 was released two weeks ago. Given I reviewed version 2.5 for the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008, I was eager to find the answers to three questions and took my time to run it through its paces. First of all, did they finally manage to make the upgrade a painless process? And secondly, would it affirm the sense I got that blog software keeps moving toward fully-fledged WCM software?
As for that upgrade: I'm happy to report that when testing this, it was pretty flawless. In the past, it has often been a painful process, usually because of incompatibilities in either plugins or templates. Of course, this upgrade was relatively minor, but all of my plugins still worked and my templates weren't broken (though there are some possible issues, especially with the changed configuration files). I still haven't managed to get the automatic upgrading of plugins through the interface to work, though.
The second question: is blog software becoming more like "regular" WCM software? Well, WordPress has certainly come a long way since the original b2 that got the project started. As with other pure-play blog software, such as Movable Type, an increasing number of the features we tend to see in WCM software are creeping into these products. Both, for instance, now contain some rudimentary DAM functionality (enough to upload, resize, and reuse images, at least). And in 2.6, WordPress now outdoes both Movable Type and Blogger: it's the first to offer versioning. It's still pretty basic stuff, but at least you can now revert to an older version of your post or page if need be, and they've managed to keep it as easy to use as most other features in the product. I think that using WordPress as a real WCMS is still a bit too clunky, though, probably as much using a WCMS (or SharePoint) to blog. There's a serious risk WordPress might evolve into a mediocre WCMS in the future, instead of the purposeful blog software it is now.
Oh, and yes, I said three questions in that first paragraph, not just two: is Blogger ever going to catch up? In our social software report, I mentioned development of Google's blogging service has been slow. As I check the Blogger Buzz, I can't help but notice its most recent improvement has been adding Malay to the supported languages. That's nice, but if Google isn't careful, the main reason for users to stick around will be that they are stuck to their blogspot.com URL...
Submitted by Adriaan Bloem, Contributing Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Is uPortal a good fit for self-service?
30-Jul-2008 | Permalink
In an interesting blog posting by Andrew Petro, Senior Software Engineer at Unicon, he mentions that uPortal is commonly successfully adopted as a self-service portal platform and also shares details about how Rutgers University and The University of Wisconsin are using the open source product for self-service initiatives.
It may come as little surprise that an employee of Unicon, the dominant uPortal systems integrator, has good things to say about the product. By contrast, our research for the The Enterprise Portals Report 2008 finds uPortal is an unlikely fit for e-business and self-service portals. Let's briefly explore why.
As prelude, I'll note that the products we cover are among the most widely-used products in the portal industry. Consequently, almost all vendors can claim references across all scenarios.
Despite that, I'd first point out that just because uPortal has a few universities that use the product for self-service doesn't mean that the product compared to other enterprise portals, such as Vignette, is a good fit for this scenario.
Second, we find that uPortal isn't particularly rich in out-of-the-box functionality for self-service portals (below, I mention some of the features you should look for and test for this scenario). Together with Vignette, which has strengths in this area, Oracle also provides you more to get you up and running with self-service. Among the open source projects, even JBoss Portal and Plone has more to offer than uPortal with regards to self-service.
Third, self-service portals come in many flavors. The way you define self-service may not be exactly the same as I define it, or Unicon does, but there are likely a few common requirements we would all have. Good reporting, for example, is typically a key requirement, as is integration to existing repositories, such as those used for customer data. In our research we found users struggling with uPortal integration, and citing very little beyond technical and basic reporting out-of-the-box. Neither integration nor reporting was among the major improvements in the recently released uPortal 3.
Always remember, when evaluating which product to use, be sure to rely on matching your key requirements and use case scenarios to what the different products have to offer, and be sure to test with your own content. That's always more important than impressive references, however relevant they may be to your case.
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
A new edition of The Web Analytics Report 2008
29-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Today we release a new edition of our Web Analytics Report 2008, a Basic Edition. This new edition focuses on the smaller players in the web analytics space, for organizations with smaller budgets or analytics initiatives in only one business area or on a single web site. For those with enterprise-wide analytics projects in the works, consult our Enterprise Edition. In both editions we've added a vendor risk profile cross-check, as we've done in the past for enterprise search and ECM. This gives you, the buyer, insight into how rapidly vendors are evolving and developing their products, as well as the risk that may be involved in purchasing a particular technology. As always, both editions contain best practice advice on establishing a business case, putting together a team, product selection and implementation.
A side-by-side comparison of the two editions is here. We'll share more details from this new commentary in the coming weeks.
Submitted by Theresa Regli, Analyst | All Analytics Channel Trends
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