Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

Whither Jive Software?

Added By Tony Byrne on 25-Jan-2012

Jive Software has long been the darling of the Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software space. Yes, they have decent (though not spectacular) technology, but the company has always been savvier about "message." Jive talked social networking as an alternative to SharePoint 2007 when that was hot, then pivoted to more of a collaboration message as customers got more serious, then joined the cloud/API/ecosystem bandwagons at the right time, and so on ... Continue Reading

Major Collaboration and Social Platforms Are Coming Up Short

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Jan-2012

We've just released a major update (Version 4.0) to our Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Report, which evaluates nineteen Enterprise 2.0 vendors. Our subscribers will see several new vendors under review as well as an overhauled set of evaluation criteria ... Continue Reading

When your vendor does not do cloud

Added By Tony Byrne on 2-Jan-2012

Not surprisingly, most architects have taken an intense interest in cloud-based computing, across both its public and private (and hybrid) incarnations. These same architects typically also participate in software selection decisions. Then here's what happens: architects immersed in planning cloud-based futures often get surprised to discover how poorly traditional software vendors fit into that world ... Continue Reading

Always on the lookout for great analysts

Added By Tony Byrne on 12-Dec-2011

A skilled technology industry analyst is a rare bird: loves figuring out the innards of the tools, writes with depth and clarity, but can communicate effectively with business and IT leaders alike and coach them to make good decisions.  We try to set a pretty high bar above and beyond that. If you've seen our work and think you'd be a good fit for a very demanding job, check out our ongoing analyst position openings ... Continue Reading

Three options for social-enabling SharePoint

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-Dec-2011

SharePoint licensees seeking to deliver on the promise of social networking and more advanced collaboration applications must choose among three alternative approaches to close the gap ... Continue Reading

How accurate were our 2011 predictions?

Added By Tony Byrne on 5-Dec-2011

Like all analyst firms, every year-end we make predictions. I think we're fairly unique, though, in going back to see how our earlier predictions fared. Let's see whether our predictions for 2011 actually panned out. These were the twelve predictions we made in December, 2010 ... Continue Reading

Latest update to our Web CMS vendor evaluations

Added By Tony Byrne on 22-Nov-2011

We've just released a minor update to our Web CMS Report, which evaluates 42 major products from around the globe. Version 20.3 includes updated reviews of ... Continue Reading

Death of the Intranet

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Nov-2011

Intranets are dead. Long live the Digital Workplace!

OK, this is partly an argument about labels, but labels matter. What most employees understand as their "intranet" -- updates from corporate communications, some HR forms, and a mountain of outdated docs -- is increasingly irrelevant ... Continue Reading

What is a Community, anyway?

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Oct-2011

This question is popping up pretty frequently among our advisory subscribers. It's a subtle question in some ways, but also laden with great import for both intranet/collaboration managers and public website marketers ... Continue Reading

Welcome Kashyap

Added By Tony Byrne on 19-Oct-2011

I'm delighted to announce that we've added a new technology analyst, Kashyap Kompella, to our team.  Kashyap has deep experience in many of the technologies we cover, and brings a broad mix of industry, architectural, and usability perspectives ... Continue Reading

Oracle and Collaboration - take five

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-Oct-2011

Last week at OracleWorld the company announced that it was renaming and re-focusing its WebCenter "Connect" offering to "Oracle Social Network." A new emphasis on social networking services and middleware integration could prove promising, but real business value today comes from effective collaboration efforts that deliver quick business benefits out of the box, with a social kicker downstream. Oracle is a bit late to this party ... Continue Reading

Web CMS Evaluations - OpenText, Oracle, Tridion, Sitecore, Joomla - and more

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Aug-2011

Earlier this week we released some key updates to our Web Content Management comparative vendor evaluations. This batch includes several players who claim to excel at "experience management." Unfortunately, they've generated substantially more new lines of marketing than new lines of code ... Continue Reading

Predictions for CMS, Mobile, and Social

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Aug-2011

Earlier this summer we held a mini-summit of some RSG analysts and captured each others' thoughts in a series of short videos. In this one I make three broad technology predictions: ... Continue Reading

When WCM vendors choke on cloud

Added By Tony Byrne on 4-Aug-2011

Most of the Web Content Management vendors we evaluate claim to have some sort a cloud option.

For many of these vendors, this boils down to one of two things: ... Continue Reading

Opening for Technology Analyst at Real Story Group

Added By Tony Byrne on 12-Jul-2011

We're hiring.  Would you like to explore joining  our top-notch team of analysts?  Read the full position details here ... Continue Reading

A Requiem for RedDot

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Jun-2011

Like old soldiers, sometimes old Web CMS tools don't die outright....they just fade away.  Case in point: the product formerly known as RedDot, which became OpenText Web Solutions, but is now re-branded "OpenText Web Site Management."  RedDot boasts a long and storied past. However, it started falling behind its competitors even before ... Continue Reading

SharePoint 2010 SP1 Disappointment

Added By Tony Byrne on 29-Jun-2011

By now you know that Microsoft SharePoint has a 3-year development cycle. Three years is not a long time for highly process-oriented functionality, like many types of document management applications. However, a long development cycle is a significant shortcoming in areas like Collaboration/Social and Web Content Management, where Redmond's circa-2009 codebase feels increasingly out of step ... Continue Reading

Whither IBM Connections?

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Jun-2011

There's a longstanding question about how effectively Big Blue can evolve Connections ... Continue Reading

WCM Evaluation Research Updates

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Jun-2011

Last week we released a significant update to our comparative Web Content Management vendor reviews. There's a lot to conclude here about what's going on in the marketplace, but for now, I'll just summarize some of the new info from our revised evaluations ... Continue Reading

Why is most Real Story Group research behind a paywall?

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Jun-2011

There's widely-held opinion that all information should be open and free. We could debate that, but hopefully everyone can concur that analysis and critical judgement are value-adds on top of basic information. This value-add often stems from long historical perspective about a vendor, tool, technology segment, and methodologies. So the question becomes: how to underwrite the production of that value-add? ... Continue Reading

Copy-Pasting Word to Your Web CMS

Added By Tony Byrne on 7-Jun-2011

It seems like once a year one of us gets motivated to write about rich text (a.k.a., WYSIWYG) editors. After more than a decade in the market and much innovation, they are still a constant source of confusion and frustration for content managers. Too many vendors assume that rich text editing is "commodity" feature, when alas, it is not ... Continue Reading

Updates to Collaboration and Social Vendor Evaluations

Added By Tony Byrne on 25-May-2011

We recently updated our Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Report. Key highlights for this update: ... Continue Reading