CMS Watch Broadvision Feed

Location matters: URLs should be short, meaningful and permanent

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:25:00 -0500

In a refreshing blog entry from last week, Microsoft evangelist Jon Udell considered .aspx harmful. Udell boils it down to futureproofing and style.

We've been writing about the importance of URL's since 2003 (e.g. CMS Lessons from Primary School, Portal Software: Passing Fad or Real Value?, State of the Art for Enterprise Portals) and in The Web CMS Report and The Enterprise Portals Report we cover the URL structure for each and every vendor.

Interestingly almost every vendor criticizes what we write about them when it comes to URL conventions, with a few open source vendors as the exception. Either the vendors with harmful URLs assert that it is a non-issue or they keep repeating that their professional services team can easily implement redirects or rewrites or other hacks to create shorter, better URLs. Rarely do they remember that if you do create redirects those too also need to managed.

With lack of understanding from the vendors, many enterprises find themselves tied to both vendors and technology. An unfortunate example is Italian car manufacturer FIAT, which uses BroadVision on their website with a URL that looks like this:
http://www.fiat.com/cgi-bin/pbrand.dll/FIAT_COM/home.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=no
The URL is fascinating reading: You'll find the BroadVision cookie flag at the end, after JSP technology mixed with a DLL and CGI (!) earlier on. I've seen longer URLs, but the problem here is certainly both futureproofing and style, as Udell points out. I would add security to the list of problems, since a transparently programmatic URL is easier to hack.

Not only should you ensure that your site has short, meaningful and permanent URLs, but as buyers you should also try to influence the vendors so that they understand the issue. This matter is relevant to every single project, so customization should not be required. This should be out-of-the-box!

Further reading: Take a look at a 10-year old article from Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee: Cool URIs don't change.

Enterprise Portal Marketplace: 2008 Vendor Risk Profile

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0500

It is all too easy to identify vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market. But CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye argues that CIOs, procurement officers, and other technology leaders considering investments in enterprise portals should carefully examine the risk profile of prospective vendors to help identify the right "fit" for their needs.

BroadVision: Missing in action?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:43:00 -0400

The website of onetime Portal and CMS vendor Broadvision has been unavailable for the last several days. Strange from BroadVision, which earlier this month announced their 2007 roadmap. Website maintenance is sometimes necessary, but to take a website down for 3+ days seems peculiar. A few partners even report that mails are bouncing. This may not be the bust of the company, but buyers should ask themselves whether a firm that talks about "e-business for everyone" really understands the Web when their site is down for so long. BroadVision has been through a tough time in the last years and while we've all experienced troubles with our own websites, the obvious question remains: What's really going on at BroadVision? [Update, March 30: The website is back up and in an e-mail BroadVision cites "an Internet Outage" as cause of the problem]

Portal Kudos and Shortcomings -- Summer, 2006

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:24:00 -0400

Segmenting the portal software marketplace by putting products into boxes on charts is a popular exercise among pundits. But CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye argues that for buyers, a meaningful vendor breakdown must describe how well the various offerings fit actual requirements across specific business scenarios. See how Janus compares the major portal products in the marketplace today...

BroadVision carries on as a public company...for now

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:26:00 -0500

In July 2005 ailing portal vendor BroadVision announced their plans to go private and be acquired by a private equity company. It slipped our radar that in November the company then announced a "mutual termination of acquisition", due to "difficulty of securing a quorum in the stockholder vote." Pehong Chen, onetime media darling and still BroadVision's Chairman and CEO, has gamely made a commitment to relieve the company of some short-term liquidity concerns by fronting some of his own cash. In later news from December, BroadVision announced plans for a possible reverse stock split to maintain its NASDAQ listing. The company continues to work hard to survive -- and potentially find a new owner. BroadVision has made a serious investment to migrate off its own application server to broader J2EE-platform support, and relative to its smallish size, the company certainly tries to address some ambitious portal problems. Read more in the upcoming Enterprise Portals Report.

BroadVision Goes Private

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:45:00 -0400

Running short of cash and struggling under a debt load, BroadVision has agreed to be purchased by a private equity firm. Most analysts already considered BroadVision on life support, although founder Pehong Chen kept the firm chugging while casting about for potential suitors. I think it's indicative of what can happen to diversified (BroadVision has focused variously on CMS, CRM, and Portals) software firms that run out of, well, runway. Software companies can often survive on maintenance streams, but Broadvision's maintenance income dropped ominously from 2004 to 2005. BroadVision's new owners will presumably shed costs and modules to make the company more focused and acquirable. I disagree that this is the forerunner of consolidation to come, at least in the CMS/Portal space near-term. Smaller ECM vendors like Interwoven and Vignette may have weak earnings, but they still sport strong balance sheets, and therefore have less urgency than BroadVision to find an exit.