Well, spring seems to be a good season not only to celebrate Queen's Day in the Netherlands and the Internationals Worker's Day in Russia, but also to harvest the vendor acquisition crop. Next up – SaaS Web CMS vendor Clickability acquired by video platform company Limelight Networks.

Although it's not entirely clear yet what Limelight will do with Clickability, some of the guesses may include: as a true CMS, as an interface for a hosted video delivery platform (transcoding/encoding, streaming, and HD video), or as a central content repository (infrastructure, syndication, and digital marketing) for various other cloud-based integrations (Limelight made other SaaS acquisitions in the last year, including EyeWonder and Delve Networks).

In any case these agendas might present a stretch for those organizations exploring Clickability as a potential WCM vendor.

As one of the long-standing and "true SaaS" Web CMS vendors (Crownpeak is another one), you can't say Clickability has been struggling lately (despite occasional pitiful attacks towards struggling CMS vendors). Nor can you say that it's been exactly prospering.

One fact to illustrate the latter point: Clickability took in $15.3m in venture funding over the years, but sold for $10m. Lesson #1: Investors face deadlines too, and will cut their losses when they can.

Secondly, despite much hype otherwise, interest still remains much greater in on-premise WCM technology, even if many organizations exhibit insufficient resources to deal with full-blown WCM installs. Given that Limelight expects Clickability to contribute only up to $5m in H2 2011 revenues, everyone seems to be very cautious. Hey, even TweetDeck sold for at least $40m on the same day.

As for Clickability, some departures at the executive levels in recent years suggested something was stirring. The CEO (and CTO) Jeff Freund has been quiescent for at least the past couple of years (perhaps busy prepping for the sale), while still formally remaining on the official roster.  Lesson #3: pay close attention to vendor intangibles (we do, in our vendor evaluations).

If you're reviewing Clickability as your next CMS supplier, it might be wise to pause for a bit until things sort themselves out. In addition to the typical cloud concerns (c.f., Amazon data loss), you don't want to deal with post-acquisition usuals -- possible staff cuts, rebranding pains, awkward integrations. Product instability is one of the areas of concern here. Tread carefully if planning to invest in Clickability for traditional Web CMS scenarios.