TrendWatch: CMS Watch Blog
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
Introducing our new Online Education series
29-Jul-2008 | Permalink
For nearly a decade, my colleague Tony Byrne has traveled around the world to teach Web Content Management seminars. Hundreds of conference-goers have had the opportunity to attend his half-day tutorial introducing and exploring the concepts of WCM technology that we've documented over 15 editions of The Web CMS Report. At the same time, we receive many inquiries from new WCM project teams who would like guidance when starting an implementation. Unfortunately, we're unable to meet all requests to teach this course in person.
To meet this demand in a different way, we're excited to introduce a new option - Online Education - for those interested in learning the fundamentals of content technologies. Today we debut our WCM course, and we'll be adding new courses throughout the rest of the year and into 2009. Each course is designed for completion in a half-day, but they're each split into shorter modules, so you can complete them at your own pace over the course of a full year, from wherever you have online access.
For our first course, we've taken Tony's half-day WCM technology tutorial and made it available online for anyone to digest at their own leisure. The Fundamentals of Web Content Management Technology course is broken up into 5 modules:
- Introduction to WCM
- WCM Core Technology Services
- Web Content Production Services
- Web Content Delivery
- WCM Vendor Landscape and Trends
We've added a new Online Education section to our site with information about the course format, what's included in the course (and what's not included), who should take the Fundamentals of Web Content Management Technology course, and upcoming courses.
Please direct any questions or suggestions about the course to education@cmswatch.com.
Submitted by Jarrod Gingras, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Interwoven prospers as Vignette continues to bleed
25-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Vignette and Interwoven have released their second-quarter 2008 results, and it's a study in contrasts.
With Interwoven, the news is essentially all good. License revenue for the quarter was up 11 percent (to $23.4 million) over the same quarter a year ago, while service and support revenue grew 18 percent. Overall, gross profit jumped a solid 16 percent in Q2 2008 versus Q2 2007. First-half gross profit was likewise up 16 percent year over year. Net profit soared 78 percent (Q2 2008 vs. Q2 2007), and on a six-month basis the year-over-year jump was 53 percent.
Certainly some of the top-line revenue growth came from recent acquisitions, but any way you slice it, those are some pretty impressive numbers.
Vignette, meanwhile, continues on its sad downward trajectory. The company saw license revenue fall to $9.9 million for Q2 of this year, from $14.6 million in the same period last year. Services actually grew slightly, however (to $35.8 million from $33.4 year-ago). Gross profit was similarly down. But more ominously, net income went negative. The company reported a loss of a little over $863,000 in Q2 of this year, compared to a net gain of $4 million in Q2 of 2007.
What makes the Vignette story so sad is that the firm does not lack for talented people (nor technological vision). What's lacking is an ability to land new deals at the kind of rate that will stop the financial bleeding. It's also a matter of battling ASP (average sales price) deterioration.
We've been seeing indications for some time that Vignette is under strong pricing pressure. In the recent earnings call (transcript available at SeekingAlpha.com), CFO Pat Kelly may have unwittingly provided a valuable data point on this. He notes that Vignette's ASP was $211K in Q2, versus $249K in Q1. (He ascribed the difference to "normal volatility in that metric.") The problem with averages, of course, is that a single abnormally high value can sway the overall average upward, giving a potentially misleading result. (This is why people often use median values rather than averages.) Tellingly, Kelly noted that Vignette scored three large deals in excess of $1 million during Q2. It doesn't take a math genius to see the implication of this. Quite simply put: It means the majority of Q2 deals came in at less than $211K. Maybe far less.
Headcount reduction is usually the first tactic a company resorts to when attempting to arrest a downtrend in profitability. But ironically, headcount-trimming costs money in the near term. (It's not unusual for personnel-related "restructuring" costs to come to $50K per employee.) In the course of the earnings call, Vignette's Somesh Singh, SVP of R&D and Technical Operations, verified that a charge of $2.5 to $3 million would probably be taken soon, due to severance costs.
Other Vignette executives hinted at re-allocating resources internally. As ECM Suites Report readers know, Vignette sells a broad line of different tools. Attention will surely shift internally, though it's too soon to know exactly how.
We'll keep you posted.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
Confusing enterprise agreements and enterprise licenses in SharePoint
25-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Over the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to speak to various customers about SharePoint licensing. The common theme is that most don't understand Microsoft licensing in general and SharePoint licensing specifically. In fact, most customers are pretty confused by the dizzying array of options, choices, and requirements Microsoft has constructed.
In particular, some customers have gotten a nasty shock when they realized the (potentially expensive) difference between an Enterprise Agreement and an Enterprise License in MOSS.
Confusion starts with the difference between Enterprise and Standard license options. In fact, at the server level, there isn't a distinction. The difference between the versions of SharePoint (specifically Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - MOSS) center on the infamous client access license (or CAL). As The SharePoint Report 2008 points out, most Microsoft customers with an Enterprise Agreement end up licensing something called the "Core CAL." This license is a combo CAL that includes the rights to connect to four different server products -- SharePoint is one of them. However, the SharePoint CAL in the Core is the Standard CAL.
So what? Doesn't the Standard CAL give me SharePoint? Yes and no. The Standard CAL entitles you to use the "standard" features of Microsoft Office Server -- one step up from the "free" Windows SharePoint Services. However, it doesn't give customers the right to use "enterprise" features such as Forms Services -- a component of the enterprise license that enables customers to display InfoPath forms as a web form. This situation is true of other very useful components of SharePoint Enterprise, including Excel Services.
Microsoft will counter that you could license some of these components separately. The theory is that you don't need to upgrade to the Enterprise CAL just to get Forms Services; you could license Forms Services separately and run it along side your SharePoint Standard environment. The downside is that licensing just Forms Services, for many organizations, may be nearly as expensive as purchasing the additional Enterprise CALs.
In short, familiarize yourself with the various options. Spend time speaking with the Microsoft Licensing specialist in your region (ask your sales person to help you contact them). You may not necessarily like the cost implications of some of their answers, but it will be time well-spent; you'll better understand the license requirements and benefits for your specific situation -- in some cases the answers could surprise you.
Submitted by Shawn Shell, Contributing Analyst | All SharePoint Channel Trends
Beware the social networking news feed
24-Jul-2008 | Permalink
A few weeks ago, I was having drinks with a friend of mine who'd recently separated from her husband. She hadn't told many people the news as of a week before we met up, but then she changed her relationship status on Facebook. A broken heart icon declaring that she was no longer married appeared on her profile, and immediately she was bombarded with phone calls and emails from concerned friends. She was mortified, as she didn't realize that changing this piece of information in her profile would go out via her news feed.
I saw this as an isolated incident, until it happened again today to another friend of mine who's apparently separating from his wife. In fact, unlike the previous occasion, I found out from Facebook. It was a lousy way to find out that a couple may be on the road to divorce -- as it would have been a lousy way to find out any other piece of "serious" or "sensitive" information. But there it was in my Facebook friends news feed. I learned from a mutual friend that the dissemination of the news was unintentional.
And what about enterprises that use Facebook as a corporate intranet? Could it be that employees are also unaware of such automatic information distribution? As readers of The Enterprise Social Software Report know, it's difficult to separate professional from personal information on Facebook, which has also had a history of privacy and security breaches. Though you can now categorize friends and decide who gets to see what information, I admit, I find it crazy that in this day and age, people still think that things published on a social networking site will go unnoticed, or not be disseminated. Unless you specify otherwise, you should assume it will not only appear on your page but distributed to every close, personal Facebook friend you have. All 347.
If you mix work and play on Facebook, don't be naive. If you're going to sip wine while naked in a hot tub in California, don't write about it on your wall unless you're comfortable with everyone knowing, including your boss, your ex, your clients, and anyone else you may have thought it was a good idea to "friend."
In this blog, I once linked to a colleague's Facebook page, and then was contacted by his company's PR firm, insisting I switch the link to the person's profile on LinkedIn. I accommodated, but was also perplexed. What I'd said about the person was nothing but complimentary. It was clearly an issue of not wishing to mix work and personal information. But really, it's too late. We're already there, thanks to Facebook, thanks to the legions of social networking sites on the web. Social software doesn't let you control the dissemination of every piece of information about you out there -- yet. If you don't want people to know, just don't publish it. Anywhere.
Submitted by Theresa Regli, Analyst | All Social Channel Trends
No easy upgrade for Sitecore customers
24-Jul-2008 | Permalink
While Web CMS vendor Sitecore has been busy promoting the new user interface in its recently released Version 6, the company has attracted quite a bit of criticism from existing customers for the new version's lack of an easy upgrade path.
In a recent blog posting by Sitecore's VP of Technical Marketing, Lars Nielsen, he discusses their upgrade strategy and explains the company's choice between delaying the release of Sitecore 6 or let the database conversion tool follow afterwards. Similar to many other vendors in this situation, e.g., Microsoft, Sitecore decided to get the new product out the door and worry about upgrades later.
The definition of immediately afterwards may extend beyond the 2 months that have transpired since V6 came out, but I see that Sitecore themselves have still not upgraded their very own website. According to Sitecore, an alpha release of the upgrade tool is expected this week, but there is no news on when customers can expect a final release.
Regardless of vendor, upgrades are never straightforward, and you typically want to wait until the vendor has gone through the pain itself before teaching them the ropes. In this case, though, it is telling that Sitecore -- a vendor with a support model that we have previously questioned -- has focused more on pleasing new prospective customers and less critical analysts alike with exciting new demos rather than supporting its faithful customers. If the past is any guide, do remember to budget and plan any upgrade carefully.
Submitted by Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst | All CMS Channel Trends
A new (and wearable) Content Technologies Subway Map
23-Jul-2008 | Permalink
A new season brings an updated vendor map:
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We added a Yellow Line -- for XML & Component Content Management vendors, and reflected some other station changes.
And now, if you like what you see, you and your wall can wear it. Our new store at Cafe Press offers t-shirt and posters of various sizes, along with other CMS Watch tchotchkes.
Regarding the latter, perhaps you already own your fill of mugs and mousepads, but can you ever have enough beer steins? Bring it to the next event where we're speaking and we'll fill it up with the closest available brew. ;-)
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Web UI development: inherently slow?
22-Jul-2008 | Permalink
In a thoughtful post at JavaLobby, developer Ali Loghmani poses a simple but important question: Why is Web UI development so slow?
Here, Loghmani is not just talking about the creation and placement of AJAX widgets on web pages. He is talking about full-cycle development and testing of web and portlet interfaces that integrate with popular MVC webapp frameworks such as Grails, Django, Tapestry, or any of a slew of others.
The reason this is an important question, of course, is that people write custom web and intranet apps against their DAM, WCM, ECM, and Portal systems all the time, whether for public-facing B2C apps or just to create a CMS front-end that content contributors will actually use. And it is invariably a resource-intensive process. Gobs of time, money, and engineering talent go into the creation of web interfaces (and the code that binds those interfaces to back-end business logic).
Loghmani laments the protracted program-test-debug time in development frameworks that require (as many do) redeployment of files to an appserver before changes can be previewed. This is certainly a problem. It's one thing to do an eye-pleasing mockup of an AJAX webform in a browser; quite another to wire it into JSF and do full-cycle debugging in WebSphere, say, or JBoss (or whatever).
There's also the perennial cross-browser compatibility bugaboo. Web UIs tend (still) to perform differently in different browsers, necessitating ugly "browser-check" code with parallel logic branches to handle the various browser types and their legacy quirks. Writing and testing this kind of code takes time.
Of course, to some degree UI development is an inherently hard problem. The mapping of widget states to program states is not always straightforward. To the contrary, the possible permutations are more often than not incalculable, and the potential side-effects legion. You can't expect this kind of programming to go quickly.
In the end, Loghmani argues that the sheer complexity of popular MVC frameworks is a major (perhaps the major) contributor to long UI development times. As much as I value simplicity, I have to disagree here. In my experience, complexity is not a bad thing per se if you can properly hide it. Twenty years ago, three-person crews were the norm on airliners. Today it's almost entirely two-person crews. Ironically, the airplanes have gotten much more complex, but the human interface has been refined to the point where you no longer need a "flight engineer." This is an example of how complexity can be hidden, to good effect.
I think one could argue that the main reason Web UI development is slow is because insufficient tooling exists to make it quick and easy. Things like Tapestry and JSF (and appservers) are complex, with many moving parts. Developers are constantly having to open the hood and make hand adjustments to rather intricate machinery, using only basic hand-tools.
In the post-2.0 world, that won't do. Time is too precious. We're going to need better tools -- or perhaps an entirely new development paradigm. Old-school MVC development, à la Struts and all the rest, is just not cost-effective any more. If indeed it ever was.
Submitted by Kas Thomas, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
Oracle doesn't eat its own blog food
22-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Via numerous acquisitions, Oracle has built up a formidable collection of products that they sell for Portals, Content Management, Web 2.0, and other content technologies. As a result, customers find considerable overlap in functionality and often there are multiple options for doing same things. Consider blog services:
Oracle WebCenter page lists "...services such as wikis, blogs, discussions..." as one of the benefits
BEA AquaLogic Pages (now part of Oracle) touts "Drag-and-drop simplicity for creating wikis, blogs and basic Web applications"
Stellent had a blog module even before it got acquired by Oracle
So its perhaps a bit surprising that when it came to their own blogs, Oracle chose to migrate to Six Apart's Movable Type.
We had cautioned about lack of a decent blog functionality in Oracle stack in our recently released Enterprise Social Software Report 2008. Well to be fair to Oracle, they are not the only ones -- many other product vendors use 3rd-party blog and wiki products for specific functionality. Blog migrations are never easy, but Oracle seems to have pulled it off successfully.
So if you are a buyer of similar technologies, remember that:
- If a product vendor is selling you a suite that claims to do everything, be very cautious and ask for real life examples and demos
- A product suite might not be the best option; keep your options open and consider point solutions for specific requirements
It's quite possible that Oracle uses one of its own blog packages behind its firewall. But when ECM vendors put their trust in best-of-breed tools for high-profile, publicly-facing sites, perhaps there's a lesson there.
Submitted by Apoorv Durga, Guest Analyst | All Social Channel Trends
Start flossing your content now
22-Jul-2008 | Permalink
Nobody likes content migrations. But they're inevitable. Like trips to the dentist.
You can perhaps reduce your pain by reading this nifty little white paper, "Content migration: options and strategies," by James Robertson of StepTwo Designs. It's a wonderfully concise survey of your likely toothaches and options for dealing with them.
James is not optimistic about outsourcing the migration project, but as others have pointed out, staffing depends on how you organize the effort, and there is potentially a role for temporary help.
You'll also want to pay close attention to the question of metadata. Oftentimes enterprises implement a new system in order to employ tag intelligence for publishing and navigation. Someone knowledgeable needs to add all those tags -- at least as part of the final migration QA process. Like transforming the content itself, you'll find automated classification tools a mixed bag at best.
Everyone can agree though, that the more attention you pay to regularly cleaning up your content beforehand, the more likely this particular dentist visit will prove less painful.
Submitted by Tony Byrne, Analyst | All Portal Channel Trends
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