Byrne Tony Byrne

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Software empires striking back

7-Oct-2009

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Web Content and Experience Management, CMS, Interwoven TeamSite, Nuxeo Enterprise Platform, OpenText ECM Suite

In the past few weeks, two high-profile people have departed established content management vendor empires for upstart players. 

It's normal in mature markets for people to leave large companies for more entrepreneurial competitors, and these transitions tend to accelerate around merger and acquisition activity. There's a bit more buzz than usual this time because both McKinnon and Wentworth are very active in Twittersphere.  I think you'll see more Interwoven, Vignette, and RedDot expats showing up at smaller firms.

Just remember, though, that most high-profile shifts like this involve marketing people.  Better story-telling doth not make for better software.

I think more meaningful transitions are happening right now behind the scenes in product development.  It's tougher as an analyst (and customer!) to get a handle on what's transpiring at the code level, but I sense a real shift afoot across many of the marketplaces we cover. 

Nearly all the large vendors we evaluate are avowing substantially expanded investments in core R&D. That's a good thing.  The rise of social computing and the primacy of the web caught some of them lagging over the past couple years. They know it, and they're trying hard to strike back.

Yet, most of the big players in content technology are facing some tough problems as they look to ramp up software development efforts.  Although it will vary from vendor to vendor, peel back the curtains and you're likely to see:

  • Difficult transitions to offshore development models
  • Legacy of multiple, disconnected development groups after numerous acquisitions
  • The old problem of heterogeneous installed bases to support and regression-test against

So, more money alone will not make the Open Texts and Oracles of this world more nimble and innovative. 

But smaller vendors with shiny new marketing execs looking to talk a more upmarket game face some serious hurdles as well. We find that small- to mid-sized software vendors typically underestimate the difficulty of refactoring their codebases for the kind of consistent scalability, reliability, and flexibility that's required for repeatable success at enterprise-wide deployments.  (And no, "the cloud" does not fix this for them.)

Developing sturdy software takes time and muscle.  I see a lot of both getting applied right now...and that's why I think 2010 will bring many new developments.

For you the customer, a wide variety of choices still abound. We'll keep watching, and advising our subscribers.

    Excerpt from the CMS Evaluation

    Web Content Management Report looks at... Extended Services in Ektron

    "CMS400.NET has a slew of micro-applications, including polls, surveys, blogs, and threaded discussions with permissioned commenting, among others. The product also comes with its own email subscription/marketing system -- something customers typically procure via a third-party provider. Larger customers may want to procure these services elsewhere, since Ektron's capabilities here aren't as good or as flexible as what you can find elsewhere on the market. On the plus side..."
    (p. 634)

    CMS Vendor Evaluations

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