TrendWatch: CMS Watch Blog
New Course on E-Discovery
20-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Recently, I've heard several people make the statement that "law firms grow most during tough economic times." This is not surprising as desperate times often lead to disagreements, the merging or division of assets, and massive organizational changes.There is lots for a lawyer to do.
More and more, IT teams are finding themselves entangled in legal webs as legal actions spawn electronic discovery efforts. E-discovery can quickly become a costly and time-intensive activity -- and can put immense strain on an enterprise's business as usual. So much so, that many enterprises choose to simply settle cases in order to avoid the costly, and often painful, process altogether. Adding to the pain of an e-discovery process is the confusing marketplace of technologies that are classified as "e-discovery" tools. These can range from everything from search engines to full-blown case management tools.
Today we added our newest course, "The Fundamentals of E-Discovery" to our ever-expanding curriculum of online courses. Our hope is that this course will give you the basics that you should know before beginning an e-discovery project and help you minimize your risk by taking a pro-active approach to e-discovery. Armed with these fundamentals, you will be able to help your team see how e-discovery technology can be an essential part of the solution, but not the solution alone.
Submitted by Jarrod Gingras, Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
RSS is more than aggregation -- it's the new personalization
19-Nov-2008 | Permalink
A recent press release concerning ArnoldIT's Google monitoring service piqued my interest. It turns out to be a nicely formatted aggregation page for Google blogs. The most recent five blog entries (or titles therefrom) are grouped together by category. Google has over 70 different blogs (for everything from Gears and Gadgets to OpenSocial and Chrome). Keeping up with them all is nearly impossible. Hence the ArnoldIT aggregation service, dubbed "Overflight."
While handy in its own right, Overflight is not available as an RSS feed. It also doesn't seem to be searchable. So I decided to see if I could mash together my own version of Overflight (tailored to my own research needs), using Yahoo Pipes, the visual Web-app builder.
As it turns out, I was able to cobble together an Overflight workalike in a matter of 90 minutes or so (give or take a bag of microwave popcorn). I didn't have time to aggregate all 70-something Google blogs, so I concentrated just on the twelve developer blogs that are of particular interest to me. My app is on the Pipes site as Google Developer Blogs Super-Feed, which you can subscribe to here.
With my super-feed, you can see the title, description, and content for the most recent 8 blog entries in all twelve Google developer blogs that I chose to aggregate (AJAX Search API, Gears, Gadgets, OpenSocial, Open Source, Mashup Editor, Web Toolkit, App Engine, Google Code, iGoogle, Desktop, and Data API blogs). That's 96 entries total. Actually, it can be less than that if a blog is cross-categorized, since I included logic that removes duplicates.
A tool of this kind is obviously more useful if it allows searching. The keyword-search version is here. (It supports single words or exact phrases.) You'll notice that after you perform a search, a header bar will appear above the results-list containing various links and buttons you can use to subscribe to (and/or syndicate) that particular search. In other words, you can search on "AJAX" and then subscribe to the query as a feed; then you could search on "Google Docs" and subscribe to that query as a feed. And so on.
Is Pipes the ideal way to build Web apps? Not necessarily. The list of things you can't accomplish with Pipes is quite long, and the learning curve (for what you get) is somewhat steep. But it offers a glimpse (arguably) of how some Web apps will be built in the future.
What this exercise really shows, however, is the power of standards like RSS. This is a point worth emphasizing. As Web content becomes more granular, compositional, and personalizable (not to mention more perishable), subscribability becomes a design consideration. Users want to be able to opt into dynamic content. This is a theme I've seen emerge over the past year in the Web CMS world as well as in Enterprise Search, where it's no longer enough just to let users save queries; they now need to be able to subscribe to their queries (or the content generated by them).
Bottom line? Feed-based delivery of content isn't just about aggregation; it's about empowering users -- giving them the power to choose how they want to consume content. That's a subtle distinction that's driving a good deal of change in the content management industry right now, and it's something we continue to watch carefully.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
When public agencies select software
19-Nov-2008 | Permalink
I recently had a wide-ranging interview with Government Computer News. The conversation was rather stream-of-consciousness, but I think the most useful part was:
- GCN: What do agency systems developers sometimes forget when
purchasing an ECM system?
BYRNE: ... The third thing is a tendency not to test the tools properly before they sign a contract. The federal government is way behind the commercial space here and doesn't need to be. There is a misperception among contracting officers that the Federal Acquisition Regulation doesn't allow this, but the FAR actually does. Some of the smarter agencies do these [competitive bake-offs], but too few of them do.
As someone committed to the value of proper research, I'll always suggest doing your homework before you start to procure technology, but then -- after getting as smart as you can -- be sure to test....test....test...before you buy.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Let's meet at AIIM Expo 2009
17-Nov-2008 | Permalink
You can now review the schedule for the late March AIIM Expo 2009, to be held in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
As always, CMS Watch will be leading a track. I'd like to point you in particular to the now-famous "Stump the Consultant" session, where you'll have a chance to win a free iPhone if you pose the toughest question to our panel of expert consultants.
We organize the "stump" session because we believe that when you go to conferences you should get your specific questions answered. This year the Expo program offers a slew of answers in a very broad curriculum. And if you don't find all the information you need, feel free to drop by our couch on the exhibit floor for a "content management therapy session."
Finally, please consider our post-conference tutorial, "SharePoint for the Enterprise: The Real Story on Strengths & Weaknesses." I'll be teaching the workshop, and guarantee you'll come away significantly smarter about where and how and why to use (or not use) SharePoint in your enterprise. Tutorial space is limited, so register early...
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Interwoven in a bullish mood
14-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Yesterday I attended the Interwoven annual Analyst Day in New York. It was an interesting day in many respects, and one which showed a very different Interwoven than the one of circa 2006. For just a few short years back such events for the firm were painful experiences, as they were forced to trot out a series of lame excuses for missing targets and falling short of expectations. To their credit they have been working hard to turn things around, and with new leadership at the top, financially at least, 2008 has been a year of success. Despite a slowing economy Interwoven has become the comeback kid.
In New York they were not just in a confident mood, they were overtly bullish, bordering at times on the arrogant. And they laid out a simple, but potentially effective strategy to continue their upward path.
This strategy hangs on three things.
First, the recognition that Interwoven is in fact two separate companies, with two very different sets of customers - Web (read TeamSite) and Document (read WorkSite). This basic recognition that there are and always have been two quite separate worlds (that's why we have separate CMS and ECM services) is a breakthrough, and one that some of its competitors might want to follow.
Second, a continued focus on customer satisfaction. As readers of our CMS and ECM services will know this has not always been a strong point for Interwoven, but to give credit where it is due, I have observed and had further confirmation this week that they have worked hard to improve on this - and partners at least (who account for nearly 3/4 of Interwovens revenue now) have come to both like and rely on Interwoven - whilst souring on other relationships.
Third, is to target in on, and to take market share away from, vulnerable competitors. In this regard Interwoven execs were clear cut about exactly who they are gunning for. Vignette customers on the Web side of things, and disaffected Hummingbird (now Open Text ) customers on the Document side of the business, and as of today that approach appears to be working for them.
Overall this appears to be an effective if simple strategy - but it does not tell the whole story of Interwoven. For example, I have long thought that the WorkSite side of Interwoven was the stronger of the two, despite the fact that Interwoven's roots are in the web - and I saw little this week to change that opinion. For like it or not TeamSite is due a major overhaul, some might say long overdue - as the core system is over ten years old. And knowing what we know in 2008, nobody would build a CMS system the same way they did in 1998. How the newly invigorated Interwoven handles this overhaul will be key. They do have the luxury of being able to learn from and avoid many of the mistakes from Vignettes truly disastrous move to V7 that left many customers both stranded and angry. Then again change is always painful, and surely the best they can hope for is to manage the transition in as humane a way as possible. One thing they could (and arguably should) do, would be to lay out a very visible road map for TeamSite change - but they didn't do that in New York. There was tacit recognition from the executive team that change was due and would be coming, but specifics were non-existent.
This has been a constant theme over recent years, and just as Interwoven is gunning for Vignette, they are also losing Web CMS deals to smaller competitors with more contemporary architectures.
With a new VP of Engineering in place Interwoven needs to get public quickly regarding what is on the horizon, again to be clear, we all know that nobody would design a CMS product today the same as they would have in 1998 - hence tinkering with the system will not do the trick, it will need much more than that.
Yet it's not our job at CMS Watch to advise vendors - and my cautionary here is not for the benefit of Interwoven - but for you the buyer to be aware and to start asking tough questions of Interwoven. Where exactly is TeamSite going? How will future changes impact my existing deployment? When and how can I expect these changes to occur? If you don't there is a real danger that the next 18 months could good for Interwoven, but might leave you the buyer with a headache once the party is over.
But let's try and end on a positive note. I really don't want to rain on Interwovens party, they have a strong story, strong management (which they haven't always had), cash in the bank, a supportive channel and are experiencing sustained and profitable growth. And for what it is worth I have some faith that Interwoven will manage future change well, whether it involves acquisitions, mergers or just some new products. Nevertheless for buyers (and the channel) a bit more openesss around where things are going would help to put a lot of minds at rest.
In the interest of full disclosure - CMS Watch paid for all our own travel and accomodation to the event, along with my delicious veggie burger from Big Daddy's Diner on Wednesday evening. We do not accept travel and expenses from vendors, just as we do not consult to or work for vendors, period.
Submitted by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
We release SharePoint Report 2009
14-Nov-2008 | Permalink
I'm excited to announce the latest version of our SharePoint research, the SharePoint Report 2009.
With this latest edition, we recognize that SharePoint has moved beyond a simple product, and beyond even a platform, to become a vibrant but often beguiling ecosystem of 3rd-party suppliers, consultancies, and integrators. In the report, we evaluate twenty-two SharePoint software partners. The latest edition also identifies best practices for enterprise architectures and governance.
You can download a free sample here.
Full subscribers will receive their copy shortly.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All SharePoint Channel Trends
Day CQ 5 -- more than a pretty face(lift)
13-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Day Software's David Nuescheler (CTO) and Kevin Cochrane (the company's new CMO) were in town last week, and we had an interesting lunchtime conversation, much of it centered on the long-awaited Version 5 of Day Communiqué, the planned release date for which is ... November 14.
Without spoiling the suspense, let me just say that CQ 5 (not unexpectedly) demos well and is replete with enhancements that are certain to wow many a new customer while also mollifying many an existing customer (including some who've waited years for these functionalities).
But for me, the most impressive features of CQ 5 are in areas other people might not think are sexy. Admittedly, I'm a bit of an alpha-geek; I like to know what's going on under the covers, and I get jazzed about architectural minutiae that would bore the average system administrator to tears. But I've also spent enough time (in prior lives at SilverStream and Novell) installing, troubleshooting, upgrading, configuring, using, and documenting Java-based systems to know how important the seemingly small things can be for achieving acceptable quality-of-life.
Installation pain is a prime example of what I'm talking about. I can name popular products (you probably can, too) that require two full days of hair-pulling and hoop-jumping before you can light up localhost and get "Hello World" to stop throwing exceptions. The excuse is often given: "You only have to go through this pain once, therefore it's not really a cost-of-ownership issue in the broader scheme of things..." Which of course is not a good excuse for having to endure a time-wasteful, ibuprofen-intensive installation process. With Communiqué 5, Day has made installation about as painless as it can be. With just a couple of mouse-clicks to kick off the installer, you can lay down a sandbox-worthy system in less time than it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn.
"Upgrade pain" is another qualty-of-life issue for ECM and WCM system admins. Day Software has done some exemplary work here. With CQ 5 comes a hot-upgrade utility that allows you to migrate from CQ 3 or 4 straight to CQ 5 while editors, content creators, and administrators are still using the old system. You don't have to take the system down in order to upgrade, nor do you have to go through a two-phase process of migrating content, then migrating changes that occurred while the original migration was underway. During the hot-migration process, Day activates change-listeners on your old system, ensuring continuous synchronization of content even as users continue to author and approve material in the old environment.
System backup and "point in time" snapshots with rollback capability are yet another area where most WCM vendors leave customers in the House of Pain. Again, Day has done some good work here. Unlike other products that merely back up your content and templates (and maybe a few artifacts here and there), CQ 5 actually backs up your entire system, including all configuration settings, all logs, license keys, credentials, state information, dependencies, everything necessary to fully recreate the running system. When you later unpack the snapshot (a .zip file), it "installs" itself and recreates the previous environment bit-for-bit. "This is a boon for customer service scenarios," David Nuescheler explains, "because now you can just send me your entire system as a snapshot, and I can reproduce your problem on my machine exactly."
Probably the most impressive thing I saw in CQ 5 when David demonstrated it to me on his PowerBook was the hot-scale-out capability of the newly updated CRX repository. Every copy of CRX comes clusterable by default (i.e., cluster capability is not "added on" or sold as an extra-cost upgrade). In essence, a single-repository install of CQ 5 is just a cluster of one. To add more nodes, you simply install more CRX instances (on as many different boxes or blades as you want), run a wizard that asks you for the URL of the primary node, click OK, and wait for the new nodes to connect themselves together automatically. In demos, David and Kevin routinely do the grid-expansion trick between their two laptops (one of which is a Windows machine, the other of which runs MacOS), wirelessly, in real time -- and I must say, it's a jawdropper. I've never seen clustering done this easily.
These are just a few of the seemingly less important, easy-to-overllook features of CQ 5 that may not make for sexy screen shots or wow the typical business user, but are bound to have a big impact on people who administer, maintain, troubleshoot, and/or implement solutions built on Day Communiqué. In today's market, most WCM vendors are struggling mightily to come up with differentiators for their products. Day, it seems, has found a few -- in the unlikeliest of places.
If there is a fly in this nice ointment, it is that (as Web CMS Report readers know), Day has a history of demonstrating impressive engineering feats that don't always work as well as intended in real enterprise environments. So, as always, test first, before you buy.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Oracle redresses WebLogic Portal
11-Nov-2008 | Permalink
As indicated in its new portal strategy back in late June, Oracle is continuing to develop and support WebLogic Portal. Last week Oracle released WebLogic Portal 10.3, as a follow up to BEA's last release of WebLogic Portal back in March.
According to the 10.3 release notes, Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3 is really a very minor release. Support for WebLogic Server 10.3 and Java version 6 has been added. Oracle product naming and branding has been implemented and developers can now work with a new version of the Workshop IDE.
This may not sound like much and I doubt that it is enough evidence to comfort those worried buyers that have invested deeply in WebLogic Portal. To be fair, some other large vendors -- e.g., Microsoft and SAP -- have also done very little to their portal products during 2008.
While Oracle may have its own reasons for slowing down the pace on product improvements to WebLogic Portal, change is certainly still happening in the marketplace. Both from the open source vendors in the space, but also from vendors that don't call themselves portal vendors, e.g., Google with iGoogle and gadgets, Netvibes with widgets, Facebook and LinkedIn apps, and those hyped enterprise social software vendors. 2009 promises to be another interesting year in the portal market!
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Vignette still in transition
11-Nov-2008 | Permalink
These aren't exactly the best of times for WCM/Portal/ECM vendor, Vignette Corporation.
Today we learn of the departure of Sarah A. Reed from Vignette. As Director of Global Analyst Relations, Sarah was our main point of contact with the company and she did a great job of making our job easier (which is saying a lot). We wish Sarah well in whatever life-after-Vignette holds in store for her.
This week is also the final week at Vignette for Alex Shootman, the company's SVP of Worldwide Sales and Service. His last day is November 14.
It's a bit too soon to tell if these departures mark the beginning of a trend -- after all, software companies typically have high turnover for sales and marketing staff.
But we note with interest that other restructuring is going on. For example, Vignette has lately been accelerating its transition to an Asian-outsourcing model for R&D. In the company's SEC 10Q filing of September 30, 2008, we learn that Vignette (which currently gets half of its R&D done overseas) has "decided to establish a development center in India" and will "phase out our primary third-party service provider over a twelve month period." The third-party provider is Virtusa Corporation, which Vignette has been paying $7 million per year (approximately) for offshore services. The phase-out (which began last August) calls for the payment to Virtusa of a $1 million termination fee, because there is still a year to go on the Virtusa contract. In an August 2008 SEC filing, Vignette notes that it is entitled, over the next twelve months, to "solicit for hire as full time employees of the Company [Vignette], the Virtusa personnel who are currently performing services as part of Virtusa's center dedicated to the Company."
We also know from a 2006 slide show put together by Leo Brunnick, Vignette's then-SVP of Engineering and IT, that "full lifecycle product development in the Offshore Center is a prerequisite to attract the real talent," meaning Vignette has tried (and abandoned) the typical "do your best R&D in the U.S. and ship QA-and-maintenance grunt-work to India" model. The company will seemingly ship the real R&D jobs to India.
This is also a fortuitous time for Vignette (and other companies) to send jobs to Asia, because in just a couple of months, when Mr. Obama takes office, Congress will likely enact legislation that will penalize (or at least not reward) companies who ship jobs overseas. For companies like Vignette, it's now or never.
Meanwhile, Vignette continues to be severely punished by Wall Street. For the year, VIGN common stock is down 50 percent, and in today's trading action, it made a new 52-week low of $7.24 a share on the Nasdaq. You shouldn't acquire software (or not) based on stock prices, but Vignette's transition is worth following. We'll keep watching....
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
DAM vendor ClearStory to be acquired?
10-Nov-2008 | Permalink
At recent Henry Stewart DAM conferences a couple of ClearStory Systems customers mentioned to me that they have been contacted by a potential acquirer of that DAM vendor performing due diligence with the licensee base.
Normally that might spook a customer, but both were actually pleased that some sort of acquisition might transpire. As Digital and Media Asset Management Report readers know, ClearStory provides a well-regarded, SaaS-based (hosted) DAM service, but the company itself has suffered various management problems over the past year, and its future viability has been much discussed among industry insiders.
Hence the customers' positive interest in an otherwise potentially disrupting acquisition. Now, I don't know whether any deal will actually go through. But when a toothache is lingering, sometimes a quick -- if painful -- visit to the dentist is just what's needed.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All DAM Channel Trends
Percussion - Is no news good news?
10-Nov-2008 | Permalink
It has been more than 6 months since the most recent press release with any substance from privately-held Web CMS vendor Percussion. Except for management changes and an award to a customer, the most recent product release is about personalization, from late April.
Percussion also has a CTO blog, where the most recent entry is a slight bit fresher, from July.
Perhaps in these times, no news is good news. However, I say that 6 months feels too long to be quiet. A big part of surviving in tough times is saving money, so it might make sense to cut down on press releases, updating the website, blogging -- but in this industry, you the buyer should carefully investigate any radio silence.
[Update, Nov 13: After reading this blog Percussion contacted us to provide an update on their activities over the last 5 months. Expect to see more from their side shortly]
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Google breaking out of the box
10-Nov-2008 | Permalink
While I was at jboye08, talking about enterprise search, Google snuck up from behind and surprised me with the release of the virtual edition of the Google Search Appliance. You can now download it from Google Code.
While I already knew Google had virtualized versions of the Appliance software (someone in a Google training pinged me that he found out they were working on identical VMs, not actual Appliances) it still came rather unexpected when the company released this to the public. It makes a lot of sense -- the Appliances aren't very feature-rich, to say the least, and a lot of functionality is being added by a growing group of resellers, integrators and developers. Releasing a VM to test against will certainly help this nascent community bloom.
Another added benefit, of course, is you can now actually try-before-you-buy. If you're considering getting a GSA, try the virtual machine first. The download obviously isn't really meant for pre-sales testing (which is why it was released relatively quietly on Google Code), but will do nicely for the purpose: even if you don't really doubt your choice, what have you got to lose? While it won't run on most laptops (hardware requirements advise you to use a dual core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and 40 GB of free space on a 7200 RPM or faster hard disk), many modern desktops should do nicely.
It makes me wonder whether in the future, you'll be able to buy Appliance VMs and pay by credit card, then just download the image and install it on your (virtualized) servers. Getting a closed "black box" (well, blue or yellow) to run in a server rack behind the firewall has met with some resistance from IT departments, and a VM may get more acceptance.
At any rate, the GSA and even the Mini aren't machines you'd want to buy on a whim. Try the VM, see for yourself how easy to use it is, but don't forget to push a little bit harder and try to do those extra things, which may be harder to accomplish than you'd think. Enterprise search isn't particularly suited to impulse buying, but at least now, you can think outside the box -- you should take your time doing so.
Submitted by Adriaan Bloem, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
Cloud computing - Ellison rants, others reap
06-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Cloud computing is one of those buzzphrases that, like "redistribution of income," seems to make otherwise dispassionate people hyperventilate. Oracle founder Larry Ellison, speaking at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference, raised quite a few eyebrows when he derided "cloud computing" as "complete gibberish" in an extended on-stage rant before an audience of financial analysts. A few days later, Free Software Foundation patriarch Richard Stallman (never one to mince words) called cloud computing "worse than stupidity" in a highly critical interview with The Guardian.
Don't be fooled, though. Cloud computing is not just a catchphrase. Like REST, it's a style of doing things that doesn't seem particularly profound at first glance, but has important implications for certain problem-spaces. What the skeptics need, perhaps, are a few real-world case studies in cloud computing, to understand what the hubbub is about.
One such case study comes by way of a blog by Derek Gottfrid of The New York Times. Gottfrid tells (in some detail) how he used cloud computing on a spot basis to solve a very specific (and quite daunting) content-management problem in a short period of time, at minimal cost.
The problem: Make all of NYT's public domain articles from 1851-1922 available online as PDFs. The source data? Four terabytes worth of TIFF images.
Gottfrid decided to use the Amazon S3 service for temporary storage, and Amazon EC2 as a processing grid. The basic idea, Gottfrid says, was to "write some code that would run on numerous EC2 instances to read the source data, create PDFs, and store the results back into S3. S3 would then be used to serve the PDFs to the general public."
Gottfrid wrote some relatively simple code against the popular iText PDF Library to achieve TIFF-to-PDF conversion. Doing the conversion with a single running instance of iText would have taken a very long time, obviously, so the main challenge was to distribute the processing across numerous EC2 virtual machines. To help with this, Gottfrid turned to Hadoop, the open source implementation of Google's MapReduce algorithm for distributed computing. Using Hadoop, Gottfrid was able to spread the conversion process across 100 EC2 instances. As a result, some 11 million PDFs were generated in 24 hours. Mission accomplished.
The cost? A total of $240.
NYT's use case is tactical in nature. A more recent example of a company using cloud computing to solve a strategic problem comes from Drop.io, the private file-sharing service. (Files stored on Drop.io are meant to be easy to share with friends, but tightly "locked down" otherwise, so that even Google can't expose your files, or the fact of their existence, to the world.) Yesterday, after a year of doing things the old-school data-center way, Drop.io announced that it has moved 100 percent of its infrastructure to Amazon's cloud. (Company co-founder Sam Lessin gives his reasoning in a blog posting.)
So is cloud computing "complete gibberish"? Is it simply old-fashioned data-center computing with a bit of lip gloss? To me, it's about rethinking the role of infrastructure in a world of astonishingly cheap and abundant infrastructure. Think about it. If you could have all the storage, memory, bandwidth, and computing horsepower you could ever want, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee at Starbucks, what sorts of solutions would you build, and how would that change your life (and the lives of your customers)? That's the question -- not the answer -- implied by "cloud computing."
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Web Idol 2008
06-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Here at J. Boye 2008 in Denmark, yesterday we held the 3rd-annual Web Idol, where five vendors got seven minutes each to demo their wares and get critiqued by a set of judges (myself included). Ultimately, the audience voted the winner.
The general crowd consensus was that this set of demos were less interesting and polished than previous years. But I thought the choices vendors made about what to show were revealing. Sitecore, eZ publish, and SDL Tridion all demonstrated rather feature-rich (and daunting) "power-user" interfaces. We see this a lot in demos: vendors trying to appeal to the most sophisticated users in the room -- who presumably are decisive in the final selection. But do you want the most powerful system, or the easiest to use? Different stakeholders are going to have different answers.
All five vendors (including Hippo and e-Spirit) emphasized website management over basic content/information management. This follows an important trend in the industry, but still left some of the audience wondering a bit about how the workaday business contributor would simply edit a single page.
So who won the election? It was close, but no re-count necessary, with the Danish "home team" vendor, Sitecore winning the day.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
DAM vendors engage in analyst payola, then dissemble about it, too
05-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Recently a buyer of our Digital & Media Asset Management Report contacted me with a few questions about vendors they're considering for a major Enterprise DAM implementation. One of the vendors in the running is Artesia, part of Open Text.
In our research, we spoke to more than a dozen major Artesia customers as part of our product evaluation process, and most were unhappy with Artesia's customer service and support. This is perhaps not surprising, since the majority of Artesia's revenue is from software licenses, and members of Artesia's executive team have said on panels that they are not a services company.
When our customer confronted Artesia about the low customer service ratings in our report, Artesia claimed that our analysis was based on one isolated customer experience, and that our report was a "paid report." Our customer wrote to me asking what that meant.
I couldn't help but laugh, and be appalled at the same time. When I first called DAM vendors to gather information for The Digital & Media Asset Management Report, more than half asked how much they had to pay to be in the report. The answer? Nothing. A few didn't believe me, because they're used to a more traditional analyst model where vendors often have to pay to be included in a report, or worse yet, in order to receive positive spin.
Now, Artesia is using payola in a different way -- trying to claim their review would be better if they paid us somehow? Please, keep the money and put it into a customer service program. We talked to many customers, and several ex-Artesia employees, and in turn reported the facts. And that's what we'll continue to do.
Submitted by Theresa Regli, Analyst | All DAM Channel Trends
Google Analytics eMetrics Surprise
03-Nov-2008 | Permalink
Well, it was actually kind of an expected surprise...
In my last post I mentioned that I'd be curious how web analytics vendors might respond to Yahoo! Web Analytics at the eMetrics Summit in Washington DC. In fact it was Google Analytics that "stole the show" with the introductions of a host of long-awaited features, including an API and Advanced Segmentation.
The buzz at the conference was overwhelmingly positive, and both independent practitioners and Google Analytics partners have been providing plenty of color commentary on the features and cool things available, and so on and so on.
From what I've seen, I agree for the most part...sure I'd quibble about the value of a segmentation capability that focuses on visits and not visitors, and I found others at eMetrics who discussed issues they had with how Google Analytics cookies identify visitor status through a session or with how the segmentation report presentation was not to their liking, but this is almost besides the point in looking at how the analytics vendor landscape is changing.
On one hand, there is, and will continue to be fragmentation in the market because web analytics has a low barrier of entry for the creation of new tools. This was my take after the last eMetrics, and this continues today.
On the other hand, Google and now Yahoo! are using web analytics as part of online product platforms to drive revenue to their advertising and online store products. AdMob and Bango Analytics are doing this in the mobile analytics space; AdMob with its advertiser network and Bango with its payment services. This is all part of the "platformization" in web analytics.
OK, not an elegant term, but something that many of you will find an attractive option in looking for an analytics solution, although hard to find outside of Google and Yahoo!. You could say that Affinium NetInsight in addition to one of the other products in the Unica suite, such as Campaign, meets this criteria because it's part of a larger platform.
Now, I'll bet that I'll be getting vendor e-mails pointing to all their partnerships and so on, but I don't think these partnerships have a clear value proposition associated with them because of the customization that needs to occur to make many of them work. There are inconsistent levels of productization and a great deal of competition with offerings outside the partner networks. So, there are no "must have" reasons for purchasing vendor partner options in common areas such as search marketing, e-mail marketing or content management.
In my opinion, easy integration of web analytics data with other data and web tools, such as those listed above and the ability to do complex queries into the unaggregated data sets should have been one of the top priorities among analytics vendors. This was possible even with the NetGenesis tool I used in 1998, but has been such an issue with the SaaS and page tag vendors. It reminds me of how the US car industry spent their time in the 1950s putting tail fins on cars instead of making cars more efficient. Now with Google and Yahoo! both offering fairly robust analytics tools within their platforms, the rest of the industry is starting to look tired and in a game of catch up. I'm not going to say that there aren't bright spots, but why did it take Omniture so long to open up its APIs? Why is WebTrends all of a sudden preaching the importance of getting data out of their system? Why did it take so long for Coremetrics and Nedstat to provide query access to their databases?
Some might argue, myself included, that there hasn't been a groundswell of market take up for advanced features, due to lack of organizational understanding regarding the business value of analytics. But I'd further argue that vendors haven't helped this by generally focusing on product features, rather than real education...not just the kind that conveys how to use the tool, but demonstrating the value of the tool.
I'm not given to crystal ball predictions, but I see some tough times ahead for these companies if they can not focus on and execute on a value proposition that validates the reason to pay for primarily stand alone tools in a world that is going to both "fragmentation" and "platformization."
What do you think? I'd love to get your take.
Submitted by Phil Kemelor, Contributing Analyst | All Analytics Channel Trends
Does eXo Portal have most active contributors?
02-Nov-2008 | Permalink
French-based commercial open source portal vendor eXo recently used a blog post to announce that they have almost 100 active contributors. According to the blog, eXo now has more active contributors than most other open source projects, including familiar ones such as JBoss Application Server and Mozilla Firefox
Tracking the number of contributors can be a relevant indicator of the health of a product development community, but looking behind the numbers reveals a slightly less positive impression.
With 85 employees, most of which are developers, the majority of the contributors happens to be on the eXo payroll.As I mentioned back in July eXo is in rapid growth mode and has many new hires. I would argue that if you deduct the eXo employees from the numbers, it would seem like there are very few contributors left from "the community," and as a buyer that is not necessarily a good thing.
With many government customers and a global footprint, I suspect that eXo, unlike other commercial open source vendors, has not been as badly hit by the current financial crisis. But despite their enthusiam, their community has some way to go.
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
End of an era for Redmond?
30-Oct-2008 | Permalink
Microsoft's announcement this week of its intention to expose SaaS versions of its Office products (under the moniker "Office Live") can be interpreted in numerous ways. Some see it as not much more than a kneejerk response to Google Docs. Others have characterized it as a kind of belated attempt by Microsoft to tap the promise of cloud computing. (Microsoft is no stranger to cloud computing, however, as any Xbox owner knows.)
Microsoft, on the other hand, sees this as a fundamental strategy shift for the company. Office Live is just the latest addition to a large and growing confederation of technologies known as the Azure Services Platform. Soon, with the help of .NET and the Live Mesh infrastructure, you'll be able to access (or build, if you're a developer) applications from any device, anywhere (or so we're told).
According to Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Business Division: "We are on a path to deliver all our technology as software-plus-services.” (Emphasis added.) Note well, this isn't just about hosted versions of Office products. It's about all of Microsoft's technology.
Historically, this could be the end of an era for Redmond, the ultimate capitulation; the realization that the Web is the new OS. For an operating system company, that's Big.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Apache Lucene site -- powered by Google
30-Oct-2008 | Permalink
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What's wrong with this picture? (Hint: Apache Lucene is an open-source search framework...)
Note: After seeing this blog, Andreas Hartmann (of the Apache Lenya team) wrote to us to explain that "The Lucene team uses Google to provide search functionality for their website because of infrastructure restrictions of the Apache Software Foundation. Only static HTML files are allowed on the webserver. It is not possible to deploy Java-based web applications."
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
More on the SharePoint Service Pack
28-Oct-2008 | Permalink
Janus has already provided a first take on Redmond releasing another service pack for the Office products. Of course, this SP is not a huge surprise. Microsoft releases services packs every six months to a year, with various "patches" released more frequently. However, what is somewhat unique is what's been coming in these service packs.
The first surprise was the engineering update from June/July of this year. Microsoft did something nearly unheard of: it updated an existing product, between major releases, with new functionality from related products. Namely, SharePoint was updated to include significant changes to interfaces and functionality found in Search Server.
Coming shortly after the engineering update, Microsoft released a few more goodies. In August, a CodePlex-based project, Faceted Search, was more "officially" announced after a recent update to the code. This project is particularly significant in a number of ways:
- SharePoint didn't contain the feature previously
- Microsoft officially released the code on its open source site (CodePlex)
- It's being supported by Microsoft (primarily Microsoft Consulting Services) and non-Microsoft folks alike
To add to regular service pack updates and open source code, Microsoft has been making efforts to enable SharePoint to support new technologies. SharePoint now supports Visual Studio 2008, SQL 2008 and Windows Server 2008. While Microsoft has, in past, updated "current" products to enable support for "new" products, they seem to be paying a lot more attention to the Office products -- specifically SharePoint -- than most. This is especially true if you look at the relatively abysmal support they gave the previous version of SharePoint for Visual Studio 2005 (or Content Management Server for that matter).
Beyond all of the software-based updates, you can find a whole host of upcoming conferences either featuring SharePoint or including significant SharePoint content. The most obvious examples are TechEd 2008 during the summer, but just as significant is Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Both of these conferences are largely aimed at technical folks. However, you can also have conferences like IIR's Enterprise-3 conference in Las Vegas..
All-in-all, it seems as if Microsoft has caught the SharePoint bug like the rest of us (no pun intended). As we discussed in the SharePoint Report 2008, there's clearly more they can do, like providing better documentation for CAML. That said, they are doing more than they have historically and that can only help the thousands of people implementing the tool.
Submitted by Shawn Shell, Contributing Analyst | All SharePoint Channel Trends
In Defense of Blogging
27-Oct-2008 | Permalink
Recent months have seen -- perhaps inevitably -- something of a backlash against blogging. Earlier this week, Wired told you to "pull the plug" on your blog. Others have even speculated that the economic downturn will reduce gratuitous blogging.
One argument is as old as the first blog post: that you should stop blogging and get a real life. Balance in life can certainly become more elusive in a networked world, but surely you can blog and still find time to go hiking with your family.
The newer and headier case against blogging argues that you should follow a sexier alternative -- micro-blogging -- via Twitter, or Facebook status messages, or various other similar services.
Micro-blogging is more spontaneous, the argument goes, and its length limits keep you more disciplined. So you should put your energy there. Besides, Twittersphere remains much less commercialized than the public blogosphere.
I don't subscribe to this argument. Twitter and Facebook give you the opportunity to push trivia, personal status updates, brief opinions, and ephemera -- all in a venue more suitable for those types of information. We've certainly enjoyed some good internal debates on the internal CMS Watch micro-blog service.
But what if you want to seriously develop an idea rather than share what your pet cat just did or pass along a single hyperlink? This requires a narrative. What if you want your argument to be searchable? To grow over time? Edward Tufte went overboard in his criticism of PowerPoint bullets, but surely his collateral defense of the narrative argument form merits renewed attention today.
In any case, it's surely ironic that -- after people feared that blogging would "dumb-down" the Web (see here or here) -- now we hear that blogging has become too rich an environment.
This may speak more to narcissism than substance. People tend to micro-blog about themselves (my Facebook status box, like yours, defaults to a leading "Tony is..."). Whereas the best public blogs are about issues and topics in the wider world. If your blog constitutes a personal diary about your life, then sure, switch to Twitter. Just remember that Twitter et. al. are also getting found by corporations, and you'll see as much drivel through those channels as any other.
If you are trying to discuss something bigger than yourself, don't give up on blogging so quickly. In fact, I think blogging in the business context has more relevance than ever, in a world where customers want to be able to understand and connect with the firms they patronize. People complain about marketing shill-blogs, and I hate those blogs, too. But yours doesn't have to work that way.
And remember, you have choices among blogging tools; if you want to read our assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, check out our Enterprise Social Software Report.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All Social Channel Trends
In search of a standard search syntax
27-Oct-2008 | Permalink
I've spent a lot of time recently (along with colleagues Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) researching various information-access technologies and search products, and I had a bit of an "Aha moment" the other day. It occurred to me that while there are well-proven languages for querying structured data (e.g., SQL, XQuery, XPath), there is no universally agreed upon syntax for crafting ordinary keyword searches.
You might be wondering: Why do we need a standard syntax for keyword search? After all, studies have shown that across a fairly wide range of topics, keyword queries tend to average just 2.3 words in length (in English, at least). At first blush, that wouldn't seem to allow much room for linguistic interpretation. But in fact, even on a two-word query, there has to be some underlying assumption about whether the search terms should be treated conjunctively (connected by "and") or disjunctively (connected by "or"). A common behavior is to treat the terms as if they are connected by "and." There's no guarantee, however, that just because System A does it this way, System B will handle it the same way. And that's the crux of the problem.
It gets to be more of a problem as searches become more complex. If you're a Google user, you've probably found yourself, more than once, using Google syntax on a non-Google system only to run into strange results, either because the host system didn't honor a phrase in quotation marks ("New Year") as a single search term, as Google does, or because putting a minus-sign in front of a term didn't cause the search engine to suppress documents with occurrences of that word (again, a Google behavior), or whatever.
As much as you might want to believe that Google has created a de facto "standard keyword search syntax," it just isn't so. Few commercial search offerings implement the Google syntax, and in fact even Google doesn't implement the same syntax on its various search pages. (If you've used Google Code Search, you know what I'm talking about.) And there are rudimentary capabilities Google doesn't support at all, such as arbitrary grouping and nesting of terms separated by Boolean operators.
A "search syntax for the rest of us" would have none of the complication of a formal query language; it would be totally unobtrusive, seldom (if ever) noticed by casual users, but very much appreciated by power users. It would make simple things easy and difficult things possible. If you needed to do a fuzzy search with negation and range-matching, you'd be able to do so (without learning SQL). But you could also continue to do simple "Google-style" keyword searches without even knowing that an advanced syntax exists. The essential point is, a system that honors a Standard Search Syntax could be counted on to behave the same way as any other SSS-compliant system. No unwelcome surprises.
Does the industry really need one more standard, at this point? Frankly, yes. We need the data-query equivalent of International Sign Language. Right now we're just waving our arms.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
SharePoint 2007 SP2 is coming
26-Oct-2008 | Permalink
On Friday Microsoft announced a few interesting details about the next service pack for SharePoint.
SharePoint 2007 SP2 is expected to be released between February and April 2009 and seems more focused on end-user functionality rather than administration and security, which were the prime domains for previous updates. Among the main areas for the upgrade are performance and manageability improvements to variations in including STSADM commands for repairing links between source and target pages.
The news was first announced on the Office Sustained Engineering blog and later a few more details were released on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog. What strikes me as missing based on conversations with the large SharePoint eco-system, including several MVPs, is no mention of improvements in the areas of accessibility and standards or enterprise search.
As our readers may remember, Microsoft has historically been very secretive about the SharePoint roadmap, and I am certain that it has taken many customer requests for Microsoft to become more open and transparent.
Still, I continue to recommend that all buyers keep asking questions directly of Microsoft, as they may be willing to share further details, potentially under a non-disclosure agreement. It's possible that a new feature or bug fix is set for release a few months out, and that could save some time and money on your implementation budget.
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
What's your experience using Google's enterprise tools?
26-Oct-2008 | Permalink
I've just started new research on how Google's many enterprise tools are being used, for a new evaluation report called Google in the Enterprise.
I would be really interested in hearing from any readers that might have some experience as customers.
Today Google offers many relevant enterprise tools, and I'm not even sure that Google has the full grasp on what they offer themselves.
I plan to focus on:
- Google as an e-mail vendor
- Google as a web development helper
- Google as an enterprise search vendor
- Google as a desktop suite vendor (Docs)
- Google as an app. dev platform (Apps)
If you're interested in sharing, our discussion would be entirely "on background," which means I would apply your experiences to my knowledgebase, but never indicate your name nor mention your institution in any publication.
Please contact me directly at jb@jboye.dk. Look forward to hearing from you.
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All Search Channel Trends
Rest in Peace, Java 1.4
25-Oct-2008 | Permalink
October 30 marks what could be a bitter-sweet day for Java aficionados -- and administrators tasked with supporting various JRE and JDK deployments throughout an organization. On that day, the Java 1.4 family officially reaches end-of-service-life (EOSL) status. You can read more about it on Sun's Business Support Road Map page.
Java 1.4 (now at level 1.4.2) was released in February 2002 and went on to become the most widely deployed (and arguably most stable) Java releases in the platform's history. It was the first Java version to support 64-bit architectures, and it was the first distribution to have built-in support for DOM, SAX, and XSLT. It brought superior security capabilities, including support for Microsoft's NTLM protocol as well as Transport Layer Security and Kerberos V5. In addition, it featured a new access-control API known as JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Service).
There were countless enhancements in 1.4 to make Java enterprise-friendly. A new network I/O package dramatically increased the number of simultaneous connections that a server could handle by removing the need to dedicate one thread to every open connection. File I/O suddenly became up to twice as fast as before, with support for file locking, memory-mapped files, and multiple concurrent read/write operations. Long-overdue feature enhancements related to runtime debugging and troubleshooting appeared, along with many other welcome changes.
But as of October 30, Java 1.4.2 will, as I say, be deprecated. So, review your Portal, Web CMS, ECM, DAM, and other systems across your enterprise. If you have any Java 1.4.2 dependencies, now would be a good time to take note of them and develop a strategy for migrating to Java 5, if you haven't already. Or (failing that), get in touch with vendors to see what their roadmaps are with regard to Java version support. Note that if you need to migrate to Java 5, it too is near end-of-life: it's scheduled to reach EOSL next year at this time.
And you thought planned obsolescence only happened in the auto industry?
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
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