Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software blog posts

Three lessons across ten years of content technologies

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-Feb-2012

Late last year we marked our tenth year in business, which seemed like a good time to reflect on what has changed across the landscape of content, web, and collaboration technologies -- and what has not ... Continue Reading

Updated Technology Vendor Map

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Jan-2012

We've just updated our longstanding "subway map" for 2012.

Biggest changes have come around acquisitions (e.g., HP), and ... Continue Reading

Are cloud-based file-sharing services too immature for the enterprise?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Jan-2012

We've just released an advisory paper, "Are cloud-based file-sharing services too immature for the enterprise?” ... Continue Reading

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

Digital marketing making inroads in India

Added By Kashyap Kompella on 20-Jan-2012

We recently attended the Click Asia Summit in Mumbai, a gathering for digital and social media marketers in the region. Here are the mantras and maxims, tidbits and trivia from the event ... 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

Is social software vendor Telligent really gaining Leverage here?

Added By Kashyap Kompella on 20-Dec-2011

There is usually a common theme that drives M&A in the technology sector and this season it is the "cloud." For example, in the last couple of months Oracle bought RightNow (cloud-based customer service) and IBM acquired DemandTec (cloud-based retail analytics). The trend seems to be spreading to the social software space as well ... 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

Storage Wars in the Cloud

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 17-Nov-2011

OK, I'll admit it. One of my guilty pleasures in recent years has been the American television show, Storage Wars ... 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

Box Playing Hardball

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 14-Oct-2011

Not long ago, many were scoffing at Box as being just another California start-up foolishly comparing themselves to the SharePoint behemoth. ... 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

SharePoint and cloud - ready or not...

Added By Shawn Shell on 10-Oct-2011

While SharePoint's "cloud" ambitions started many years ago, the perfect storm of Azure (another major component of this year's SharePoint conference), Office365 and improved development tools have created the fertile environment for adoption. When Microsoft first announced cloud services like Business Productivity Online Suite and, specifically SharePoint Online, it was a way to stretch the existing SharePoint 2007 product, without the expectation of being truly successful. It was, however, a good proving ground to enable Microsoft to learn about how SharePoint could play -- or not -- in a shared environment ... Continue Reading

Mobile-Enabling Enterprise Applications

Added By Apoorv Durga on 10-Oct-2011

Once you decide to mobile-enable your enterprise information systems, the key question you need to address is whether to provide mobile access via Mobile Web (browser-based interfaces) or by offering downloadable applications ("apps").

This is a longstanding debate and proponents of both approaches will point to numerous benefits ... Continue Reading

Microsoft SharePoint in 2011 - 2012: State of the Nation Webinar

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Sep-2011

Next Wednesday I will be hosting a free SharePoint-themed webinar. My intent is to look at SharePoint in 2011, its victories to date and its challenges ahead. ... Continue Reading

Understanding Autonomy's Family Tree

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Sep-2011

Since HP decided to buy Autonomy for just over $10 Billion dollars, there has been a lot of discussion over the acquisitions that Autonomy itself made over the years to expand its portfolio of products and grow its revenues. ... 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

Helping you avoid the mistakes of others

Added By Sanjeev Gupta on 22-Aug-2011

Having worked with a broad spectrum of technology customers over the years, I've come to see broad common patterns in the mistakes that most large enterprises make -- be it during the technology selection process, RFI/RFP process, or project execution itself ... Continue Reading

When vendors come up with new labels

Added By Apoorv Durga on 22-Aug-2011

Vendors are increasingly using more abstract labels to describe their products. Doubtless all these vendors employ well-staffed marketing departments who spend a lot of time working up this sort of nomenclature ... Continue Reading

HP plus Autonomy equals Buyers Beware

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Aug-2011

I cannot say that the acquisition by HP of search giant Autonomy bodes well. Taking the parties' past histories into account, this simply doesn't seem to be a good long term match. Hence my advice is ... Continue Reading

How to get yourself thrown off a technology selection list

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Jul-2011

When you advise customers selecting software, as we do, on occasion you run into very awkward and difficult situations. Recently we've seen more cases in which we (RSG) are advising buyers, and software vendors bidding on an RFP process have contacted us directly to elicit information and advice, or in two particular cases to try to bribe us ... Continue Reading

What Google Plus Teaches about Publishing to Social Networks

Added By Apoorv Durga on 14-Jul-2011

Many web publishers have been trying to work out how best to make use of social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. It's only recently that some decent integration methods and clarity on what works have started to emerge. Now comes Google with its own social network Google+. While most people are trying to figure out how it competes with Facebook, it has also added an additional channel for web publishers ... 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

How to Avoid Common Technology Selection Mistakes

Added By Sanjeev Gupta on 8-Jul-2011

Going through technology selection is like finding yourself a bride or a groom – everyone will we have their own opinions to share, with a lot of hype being built around each one's recommendations. But really, no one but you knows what you want and what your real priorities are. ... Continue Reading

First look at Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform

Added By Irina Guseva on 6-Jul-2011

The word adobe traces its roots to spoken Arabic (from Coptic), where it was al tub, or "the brick." Adobe's recently announced Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) can be described as a tub of bricks for building tablet, mobile, web, and desktop applications. The "tub" in this case is CRX -- the repository layer that Adobe took over via the Day Software acquisition. ... 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

Implementation Cost Multipliers

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 23-Jun-2011

Rules of thumb can be dangerous -- because of the inherent broad generalizations. But they can also be quite useful, especially if they highlight something that may be unpleasant to hear, but shouldn't be ignored.One such truths is that in general, your implementation cost for an enterprise implementation will come to 7 to 8 times that of initial licensing ... Continue Reading

What dropping support for older browsers tells us about Google Apps

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 22-Jun-2011

Google has announced that for Google Apps, it's dropping support of older browsers. Only the current and previous versions of IE, Firefox, Safari, and of course Chrome will be supported. After August 1st, Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3 and older versions will be the first to be dropped. Clearly, this is going to put some customer IT departments in a bit of a pickle ... Continue Reading

SharePoint is a Swiss Army Knife

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 21-Jun-2011

We've said this before on this blog, in various ways. But sometimes, the simple analogies seem to work the best: if you think of SharePoint, think of it as a Swiss Army Knife. That sounds great, doesn't it? It's like the multi-tool of content technologies. Imagine a major vendor and integrators turning up at dinner to explain how great their Swiss Army Knife is for any purpose, and yes, it's excellent to carve your food with, too. Why go with just a knife, if you can have a whole range of additional functionality in one system? ... 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

5 Cloud Contract Considerations

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 23-May-2011

In this era of many enterprises moving content to the cloud, it is easy to get caught up in the potential benefits and rush to get started without properly protecting yourself ... Continue Reading

UGC, 2.0, and Commenting Services

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 18-May-2011

Perhaps you're thinking about adding some "2.0" to your site or intranet, to obtain that great user generated content (UGC) -- but where do you start? You start with commenting, of course ... Continue Reading

On Trial for Software Kick-Backs

Added By Theresa Regli on 16-May-2011

In Boston, USA for most of the month of May, I've been following with interest a local story about former Massachusetts Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi. A federal grand jury recently indicted the former Speaker and three of his associates on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud, after DiMasi allegedly wielded his power to procure multimillion-dollar contracts for a software company, Cognos ... Continue Reading

Is Immersive Collaboration Software Ready for Prime Time?

Added By Tony Byrne on 6-May-2011

The initially meteoric rise of Second Life gave visibility to a (mostly) new crop of vendors looking to apply "immersive" or "virtual" experiences to enterprise collaboration ... Continue Reading

Alternatives for Building Portal-Like Applications

Added By Apoorv Durga on 3-May-2011

If you ask "What is a Portal" on twitter, you will likely get numerous replies depending on tweeples' point of view. For some, their Intranet is a Portal, while for others a public search engine is their Portal, and for still some others their own website is a Portal. Instead of ... Continue Reading

Showcase your Intranet

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 25-Apr-2011

Intranets guru James Robertson (of StepTwo) just reminded me of the Intranet Innovation Awards 2011, now in it's fifth year. It's one of the few ways to learn of great intranets, because after all, these are usually hidden behind the firewall ... Continue Reading

Our founding principles

Added By Tony Byrne on 12-Apr-2011

People often ask me about the origins of The Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch). How and why did we come into being? What made (and makes) us different? ... Continue Reading

Should You Use SharePoint 2010 for Public Websites?

Added By Apoorv Durga on 7-Apr-2011

As always, the specific answer depends on your particular requirements. Nevertheless, based on our customer research and recent product CMS selection experience, we can generalize that SharePoint remains poorly suited for most external web publishing environments ... Continue Reading

No more content management

Added By Tony Byrne on 1-Apr-2011

I'm pleased to share the results from some new, path-breaking research we've been conducting this year. Content Management technology is no longer necessary. Read the full release here ... Continue Reading

SharePoint 2010 and NKOTB

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 30-Mar-2011

Over the past few weeks I have been seriously challenged to revisit and reassess my views around SharePoint. As an analyst it is all too easy to fall into the trap of studying a topic, coming to a conclusion (hopefully the right one) and then sticking with that conclusion. Time and the steady pace of progress eventually change everything, and SharePoint is no different in this regard ... Continue Reading

The Latest on SharePoint as a Social and Collaboration Platform

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Mar-2011

"How good is SharePoint as an Enterprise 2.0 platform?" People ask us that question a lot ... Continue Reading

Real Story Group March Madness Bracket

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 14-Mar-2011

For most enterprises, selecting technology can be like picking a winner of the NCAA basketball tournament ... Continue Reading

Content Therapy is back at info360

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 7-Mar-2011

Due to popular demand, I'm happy to announce that "Content Therapy" is back at the info360 Conference in Washington DC ... Continue Reading

The right way to select software for the enterprise

Added By Tony Byrne on 28-Feb-2011

Most software implementations fail to realize their stated objectives -- and much of the problem can be traced to a poor solution selection process. Very often a business unit leads the process, but they may have never done it before. Other times selection may fall completely to an IT team or individual, who in turn may have to guess at business needs in the absence of sufficient participation by their colleagues ... Continue Reading

Check out these two great conferences

Added By Tony Byrne on 18-Feb-2011

The era of the mega-IT exposition may be closing, but two large conferences -- info360 and Interop -- continue to thrive. I think it's because both events are very well run, and both focus on meaty business problems ... Continue Reading

Feeding Your Content Technology Research Needs

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 8-Feb-2011

With the addition of our newest analyst, Irina, it seems like a good time to remind you where you can keep tabs on the latest research from the Real Story Group. We know that you consume information in a variety of ways, so we’ll try to accommodate your preferences ... Continue Reading

Updates to our vendor comparison charts

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Jan-2011

For the past ten years we've been using check-marks (with plus and minus indicators) in our comparative ratings and scenario charts. Some of our research customers have asked for a more visually revealing approach, and we've settled on harvey balls ... Continue Reading

What happens when a standard dies?

Added By Apoorv Durga on 14-Jan-2011

The tech blogosphere has been debating the apparent demise of the Java Content Repository (JCR) spec, especially after news that the open source Document Management firm Nuxeo dropped support for the standard. JCR's popularity and future are always debatable. However, it should focus you the customer on an important topic: what happens when a standard dies? ... Continue Reading

Selecting Software in the Federal Government

Added By Tony Byrne on 13-Jan-2011

I recently had the chance to sit down with the famous John Gilroy of Federal Tech Talk on Federal News Radio in Washington, DC. The 30-minute show aired earlier this week, but you can listen to or download the archive ... Continue Reading

New Subway Vendor Map for 2011

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-Jan-2011

Here's our latest "Content Technology Vendor Map," updated for 2011. We've accounted for several marketplace changes, and happily, numerous new stations. Many of you have asked us in the past to interpret the map and explain further how it can help you, so we'll do just that ... Continue Reading

Making lassi in a washing machine requires the right model

Added By Apoorv Durga on 22-Dec-2010

Lassi is a yogurt drink popular in India, but you wouldn't usually employ a washing machine to make it. Unless, of course your requirements are similar to those in this HSBC Ad. We call such differentiating requirements "scenarios." Think of scenarios as ... Continue Reading

Assessing Buyer Risk via Redesigned Cross-Checks

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 21-Dec-2010

Every product and technology solution provider inherently brings some amount of risk. When it comes to technology, change is inevitable and often a good thing, but also potentially a strong indicator of risk for new buyers of technology. For example ... Continue Reading

Real Story Group Hiring a Technology Analyst

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Dec-2010

We have a job opening for a full-time analyst to join our research-and-advisory team. The person can be based in Northern Europe, India, or East Coast USA (preferably Boston or Washington area) ... Continue Reading

ECM to Cross the Chasm?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Dec-2010

Yesterday our friends over at AIIM (Association of Imaging and Information Management) hosted a webinar that presented new work by sales & marketing guru Geoffrey Moore called A Future History of Content Management: "A Social Business Revolution" ... Continue Reading

No substitute for real-world testing

Added By Tony Byrne on 14-Dec-2010

After a decade of doing this, I can assure you that the demos vendors give during canned analyst and media "briefings" and the demos they perform for customers during the sales process are as different as night and day ... Continue Reading

Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Dec-2010

We have a new new advisory paper out called "Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI" that hits on a key gap in many procurement processes. For with most prospective content technology buyers, great effort gets expended on an RFP process at the cost of the RFI. In fact, there often is no RFI. This is a mistake ... Continue Reading

Can your vendor be too successful?

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Dec-2010

You may be getting pressure to join a particular tool's bandwagon. This year it could be Drupal, Sitecore, Jive, or Liferay. Next year it will certainly be a different set of names. Our industry is nothing if not faddish. When faced with the bandwagon effect, I encourage you to pause and consider all the angles ... Continue Reading

Lots of information - not enough critiques

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 8-Dec-2010

We always follow the communities around specific products quite closely. Whether an open source or commercial closed source system, product communities can give us great input on the real story. But one thing to remember is that the most active and enthusiastic communities are also a really biased source of information ... Continue Reading

How we get the real story

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 6-Dec-2010

One question I got over and over again from folks learning about us for the first time was, "where do you get all of the information about the vendors and products that makes it into your research reports and advisory papers?" ... Continue Reading

2011 Content Technology Predictions

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 1-Dec-2010

As we approach the end of 2010, it's time for our team of Real Story Group analysts to reveal our 2011 predictions, where we make our best guesses as to what the Content Technology industry will hold for you in the new year ... Continue Reading

How did our 2010 predictions fare?

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Nov-2010

As you may know, we make twelve predictions every year, and every year, we go back to try to assess our accuracy. So, let's see how we did with our 2010 predictions from last December ... Continue Reading

How do you defend system training?

Added By Tony Byrne on 22-Nov-2010

I had an interesting conversation with an intranet manager at the JBoye10 Conference in Denmark last month. She got frustrated when executives at her firm declared that the collaboration and networking tools she was rolling out should be so simple, "they don't require training." ... Continue Reading

Attention Deficit Tweet Disorder (ADTD)

Added By Matthew Clapp on 17-Nov-2010

What does it mean to follow 5,000+ people on Twitter? There is no way you can possibly read that much and still have a day job. What does it mean to have 500+ colleagues on LinkedIn and 1000+ friends on Facebook ... Continue Reading

New Research - How to Support Gadgets in Your Portal

Added By Apoorv Durga on 12-Nov-2010

A web portal's true potential lies in its ability to access multiple applications across an enterprise backbone, as well as applications residing on the public web. Gadgets have emerged as a lightweight alternative to build portal-like applications for the enterprise ... Continue Reading

Avoiding the enterprise social surprise

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Nov-2010

In talking to customers for our Collaboration and Social Software evaluations, we've seen many of them struggle to take departmental or smaller-scale pilots to enterprise-wide deployments ... Continue Reading

Do you really want a Ferrari?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 28-Oct-2010

I tend use cars as a metaphor to describe the differences among software products. Even in internal discussions among our team of analysts. Which is how this came up last week: I described a particular system as a Toyota compared to another vendor's Ferrari ... Continue Reading

Get the Real Story in Denmark

Added By Apoorv Durga on 21-Oct-2010

I'm quite happy to be returning to Aarhus, Denmark to attend the JBoye conference from 2-4 November, 2010. This is one conference where you get to not only learn and interact with others, but also get to network and socialize in a very informal environment ... Continue Reading

Content: the King is dead - Long live the King!

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 18-Oct-2010

Last week, I presented at Mobile Mojo -- an event about Mobile & Social. It was an interesting gathering, with a lot of buzz. One of the highlights was certainly Peter Hinssen's excellent keynote about ... Continue Reading

Updated Collaboration and Social Software Evaluations

Added By Tony Byrne on 15-Oct-2010

We've just updated several vendor evaluations in our Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software technology stream, including ... Continue Reading

Why software vendors acquire others

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Oct-2010

My post yesterday about Autonomy reminded me to explain a bit more about software vendor "roll-ups" and what they really mean to you the customer ... Continue Reading

Social and Collaboration Software within the Enterprise - Key Debates

Added By Tony Byrne on 13-Oct-2010

I hope you know about the forthcoming Enterprise 2.0 Conference, now in its second year on the U.S. west coast (Santa Clara, CA) next month. I'll be kicking off the ... Continue Reading

Beware big vendors if you care about viability

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-Oct-2010

When I was a pup in the enterprise technology industry, I noticed that some of the best solutions came from smaller vendors. Upon hearing this, my elders would pull me aside and say, ... Continue Reading

Education versus Training

Added By Tony Byrne on 6-Oct-2010

Most enterprises I encounter who are implementing new information management systems (like Web CMS, Portals, Collaboration, DAM tools, etc.) understand the importance of employee training, and we certainly advise customers to pay close attention to it with RFPs and program planning ... Continue Reading

Webinar - Latest trends in Intranet technologies

Added By Tony Byrne on 27-Sep-2010

Are you an Intranet leader expected to stay abreast of multiple related technologies? If so, please join me for a complimentary webinar next Monday ... Continue Reading

App Store? There's an App for that

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 27-Sep-2010

What, your system vendor doesn't have an app store yet? Apple has popularized the concept, and most phone platforms now have something similar: Google's Android Market and Nokia's Ovi Store come to mind. So now everyone has to have one, not just devices, but enterprise software as well ... Continue Reading

Social Software at Interop India

Added By Apoorv Durga on 27-Sep-2010

It seems every new technology gets labeled "social," and every vendor wants to be "global", "leader", "first," or some combination of these. So it's important to get the real story and follow a structured approach to product selection. With this in mind ... Continue Reading

Mobile and Social event in Utrecht

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 22-Sep-2010

On October 7th, the MobileMojo event in Utrecht (NL) will focus on mobile and social media. Those two areas touch on almost everything we cover, so I'm happy that both my colleague Theresa Regli and I will be attending ... Continue Reading

Movable Type isn't like Britney Spears anymore

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 22-Sep-2010

VideoEgg announced today it will acquire Six Apart (creators of Movable Type). Or, depending on how you look at it, it's a merger. VideoEgg and Six Apart will form a new company, called "SAY Media." But where does that leave Movable Type? ... Continue Reading

What makes The Real Story Group different?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Sep-2010

Our product evaluations are here for one purpose alone -- to provide buyers with truly independent, technical, and critical assessments of the products they are considering. What this means in practice is that some products get added to our services, and others quietly get dropped ... Continue Reading

ECM TALK - A New Podcast Series

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Sep-2010

Before speaking at industry events I often post a blog asking people to come along and say hello in person. In London a few months back James Lappin did just that, and though I knew of James as an Records Management (RM) expert by reputation, I had not actually met him in person ... Continue Reading

Skeptical about DotNetNuke getting enterprisey

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Aug-2010

Many observers expected big things when DotNetNuke Corporation raised serious venture capital in November, 2008. (DotNetNuke Corporation is the commercial entity behind the sprawling, open source CMS community by the same name) ... Continue Reading

Vendor Landscapes and Horse Races

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 19-Aug-2010

There's an odd fascination with equestrianism in technology. Vendor landscapes are often described as horse races; there's leaders and laggards, winners and losers. That's great for gamblers, investors, and jockeys. But it's not very useful ... Continue Reading

Making sense of IT gibberish

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Aug-2010

Explaining technical concepts -- which are often quite abstract -- can be quite a challenge. So at the Real Story Group we often try to be creative in how we go about explaining things ... Continue Reading

Adobe To Acquire Day - First Take-ECM Perspective

Added By Apoorv Durga on 28-Jul-2010

Adobe Systems today announced their intent to acquire Day Software. We've seen Adobe featuring in many Content Management RFPs and although they had some of the necessary pieces including Adobe Contribute and LiveCycle, they were never taken seriously as a Content Management player. An OEM deal with Alfresco a few years back though well intentioned didn't help much but this announcement will surely change the situation dramatically. ... Continue Reading

JackBe's App Store is interesting but not new

Added By Apoorv Durga on 19-Jul-2010

JackBe, one of the Mashup vendors we cover in our Portals and Content Integration Research, announced version 3.0 of their Mashup product Presto. The new version features enhancements ... Continue Reading

How to get the right vendors to respond to your RFP

Added By Tony Byrne on 12-Jul-2010

Many of our enterprise research customers are reporting an interesting trend: fewer responses to their RFPs (a.k.a., "tenders"). Even vendors they had at the top of their lists may decline to bid. This puzzles them ... Continue Reading

Don't ogle search if you really want content management

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-Jul-2010

I'll agree with mega-vendor Autonomy on one key point: Search technology is really important. But is it so important that search functionality should dominate your choice in a content management system? ... Continue Reading

WordPress 3.0 released: Bzzzzz.

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 2-Jul-2010

Well, it was to be expected: after a long wait, WordPress 3.0 got released just when I was on a short holiday. (WordPress admins shouldn't be allowed to take holidays for that exact reason.) ... Continue Reading

UK Budget Cuts and Public Sector IT

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Jun-2010

In the UK today, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne will announce his emergency budget details. The one thing we know in advance is that this will contain some of the most severe cuts in recent history ... Continue Reading

Get your updated vendor subway map

Added By Tony Byrne on 15-Jun-2010

Here's our latest take on the marketplaces we cover. We still can't fit all the vendors we evaluate, but we're getting closer ... Continue Reading

Adapting Your Content Management Platform for Mobile Delivery

Added By Apoorv Durga on 14-Jun-2010

One of our predictions for this year was about the rise of mobile as a delivery channel -- much more closely integrated with your content technologies. Most vendors provide some sort of mechanism for delivering content to mobile channels ... Continue Reading

When infrastructure vendors use niche products for Enterprise 2.0

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-Jun-2010

I participated in an interesting workshop at the 2.0 Council last week where one of the big debates was -- inevitably -- the tension between behemoth collaboration platforms (especially SharePoint) vs. point solutions for social computing ... Continue Reading

Facebook Likes...to take your web content

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 10-Jun-2010

You may have noticed Facebook "Like" buttons spring up everywhere on the web the past few months ... Continue Reading

Video: Meeting the System Integrator

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Jun-2010

I was myself once a systems integrator, and many of my friends still work for systems integrators. This is my roundabout way of saying sorry in advance for the following video ... Continue Reading

Selecting Social and Collaboration Software

Added By Tony Byrne on 28-May-2010

There's always a high energy level at the semi-annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference, and I expect this June's Boston event will be no exception. Please consider joining me there ... Continue Reading

Drupal Gardens: A Critical Review of the First Bloom

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-May-2010

My colleague Adriaan Bloem has produced a short briefing answering two important questions that have emerged around Drupal Gardens ... Continue Reading

Categorizing the Collaboration and Community Technology Marketplace

Added By Tony Byrne on 13-May-2010

Recently, we've been presenting on the Enterprise Collaboration and Community software marketplace, and one slide in particular seems to attract peoples' attention ... Continue Reading

Office-SharePoint 2010 Launch After-Party

Added By Tony Byrne on 12-May-2010

Microsoft and its partners have good reason to party, but for you the celebrations could come prematurely ... Continue Reading

Scoring spreadsheets, the bane of my life

Added By Theresa Regli on 11-May-2010

My colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe and I frequently engage in friendly debate. Recently, we've been discussing the pros and cons of using scoring spreadsheets in the vendor evaluation process ... Continue Reading

Ten reasons why governance is like sex

Added By Tony Byrne on 7-May-2010

At this week's J Boye conference in Philadelphia, I joined a panel reviewing some of the "hot topics" from the event. As you might expect at a gathering of web and intranet managers, the issue of governance kept recurring ... Continue Reading

UK ECM Roadshow in June

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-May-2010

One of the events that I most looking forward to this year is the AIIM UK Roadshow - 14-17 June ... Continue Reading

Eyjafjallajokull's Cloud hanging over the Web

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 23-Apr-2010

I spent several days anxiously keeping track of the latest updates on the cloud hanging over Europe. It gave me plenty of time to ponder just how important on-line communications play a role in this nowadays. ... Continue Reading

The 90-9-1 Rule, Forums, and Social Media

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 20-Apr-2010

You may have heard of the 90/9/1 rule of social engagement: in essence, the rule posits that in a community, 90% of the people are passive readers; 9% are active participants; and 1% account for creating the majority of content ... Continue Reading

Jive and Drupal: Don't take their word for it

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 16-Apr-2010

This is just a little tiff between vendors, so why should you care? Well, both are making it abundantly clear that a vendor is not a neutral source of information ... Continue Reading

The willful ignorance of business users

Added By Theresa Regli on 8-Apr-2010

One of my favorite parts of my job is the educational aspect - helping people new to content technology understand what it does and how it works. ... Continue Reading

Pardon the ECM Interruption

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 7-Apr-2010

This session will be a fast-paced debate exploring a variety of controversial ECM-related issues and trends ... Continue Reading

Think you can you stump these consultants?

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 1-Apr-2010

For the last several years, I've had the honor of hosting our Stump the Consultant panel at the info360: AIIM Expo ... Continue Reading

Pathbreaking research focuses on Human Cloud

Added By Tony Byrne on 1-Apr-2010

I'm delighted to announce today that we have just released new research on emerging technologies that will transfer live human beings to the Cloud ... Continue Reading

Hiring a UK/Europe Account Executive

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 31-Mar-2010

As we continue to grow globally, we're looking for a motivated account exec in the UK or Europe ... Continue Reading

Selecting Wine and Software

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 31-Mar-2010

Theresa Regli recently recorded this video using one of her favorite analogies: selecting the right enterprise software is a lot like selecting the right wine to have with dinner ... Continue Reading

Social as a Service, not an Application

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Mar-2010

I recently had the opportunity to publish in Information Management magazine some thoughts on collaboration and social computing architectures for larger enterprises ... Continue Reading

Join me at Internet World in London

Added By Theresa Regli on 26-Mar-2010

The annual Internet World UK event in London is always one of my favorite shows to attend each year. ... Continue Reading

Finding the best vendor means treating bidders right

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Mar-2010

Is it a buyers' market for content technologies? Some enterprises believe that technology suppliers are so hungry for business that they will line up for kilometers to respond to an RFP. ... Continue Reading

Facebook competing around the globe -- but not always winning

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 22-Mar-2010

If you live in North America, it's easy to forget that Facebook's global competition may not be MySpace or LinkedIn. Instead, it's a plethora of local competitors. For example, Hyves, here in The Netherlands, has some 7.6m users ... Continue Reading

Google, DocVerse, Jive, and vendor-switching in the Cloud

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 19-Mar-2010

Google bought DocVerse two weeks ago -- but that was hardly a surprise. DocVerse allows people to collaborate on the same Office document via special plug-in. The software syncs ... Continue Reading

What makes your project successful in the real world

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 19-Mar-2010

There are many ways to measure success of an information management project. Project leaders typically want to "help" your colleagues, but how do they know they're successful? ... Continue Reading

Holistic Information Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Mar-2010

Whilst recently working on a change management initiative for one of our multinational clients, I had a bit of an "aha!" moment. I was in the midst of explaining to the assembled team members how their future information management system ... Continue Reading

Evaluating vendor proposals - Kill your spreadsheets

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Mar-2010

As you may know, a lot of our work at the Real Story Group involves helping people make the right information management buying decisions. Not surprisingly, one of the most common areas where our customers seek our counsel is with vendor scoring and assessment methodologies ... Continue Reading

SharePoint Ecosystem Pros and Cons

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Mar-2010

I hope you can join me 15 April for a great conference (Midwest SharePoint 2010 Conference), at a great venue (Italian Conference Center), in a great city (Milwaukee, WI, USA), on a Great Lake (Michigan) ... Continue Reading

Yammer's microblogging branches out

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 2-Mar-2010

Microblogging is the quintessential "keep it simple" service. So when a vendor adds a seemingly minor new feature, that's relatively big news ... Continue Reading

Two new Advisory Papers for enterprise technology selection teams

Added By Tony Byrne on 1-Mar-2010

My colleague Alan has produced two short briefings of special interest to content technology selection teams ... Continue Reading

Beware Drupal, Joomla! plug-in vulnerabilities

Added By Kas Thomas on 1-Mar-2010

IBM has released its IBM Security Solutions X-Force 2009 Trend and Risk Report, and the news for users of popular WCM platforms Drupal, Joomla!, TYPO3, and WordPress is decidedly mixed ... Continue Reading

What is Content Management?

Added By Tony Byrne on 24-Feb-2010

There's a question that keeps popping up around our industry: "What is Enterprise Content Management?" ... Continue Reading

Which is better for you - platforms or products

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Feb-2010

Today we released a new advisory paper, "How the New Platforms vs. Products Debate Impacts Your Success." Subscribers to any of our EI Watch, SharePoint Watch, and CMS Watch research streams can ... Continue Reading

Google - unsuitable for the enterprise

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

For years now Google has played fast and loose with information confidentiality and privacy issues. As if further proof were needed ... Continue Reading

SAP, EMC, and Open Text - Who cares?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

Over the last few weeks there has been a flurry of media interest in the fact that SAP is reselling EMC Documentum and Open Text products. It's a flurry (bordering on blizzard) that is of little or no relevance to actual buyers of these software products ... Continue Reading

Keeping it Real

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

Welcome to the Real Story Group! For my colleagues and I this is an exciting time, and part of a continuing adventure that I hope you will join. ... Continue Reading

Welcome to the Real Story Group

Added By Tony Byrne on 17-Feb-2010

Welcome to the Real Story Group. Today we cut over to our new website(s) ... Continue Reading

Big changes coming at CMS Watch

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-Feb-2010

Early next week, we will be re-launching this website, adding some new sites, and at a more fundamental level, revamping the way we serve our customers. ... Continue Reading

ROI calculations are a joke

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Feb-2010

Our colleagues over at Forrester recently undertook some interesting research regarding content management investment attitudes in 2010 (DM, RM and WCM). The overall finding was along the lines one might expect ... Continue Reading

Vendor Tip: perform some basic research before disqualifying prospects

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Feb-2010

Our job here is to advise buyers of technology, never vendors. But today I am going to make an exception and give the vendors out there a solid tip. Do your homework before responding to RFPs ... Continue Reading

EPiServer goes public

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 27-Jan-2010

Like nearly all its competitors, Swedish Web CMS and Social Software vendor EPiServer is doing well financially. The company reports nearly $30m in revenues over 2009 and now boasts almost 3,000 customers. So perhaps it's no surprise that last week ... Continue Reading

Oracle and SharePoint

Added By Tony Byrne on 26-Jan-2010

Among the various categories of content technologies that we evaluate, Oracle has been very quiet over the past year. For the past two years, actually, Oracle has urged customers and partners to look forward to the "11g" series of upgrades across its various application sets ... Continue Reading

Seeking UK/Europe Sales and Customer Supt Exec

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Jan-2010

We're looking to hire a UK- or Europe-based (with native English) sales and support executive. You can ... Continue Reading

Google vs. SharePoint can be Apples vs. Oranges

Added By Shawn Shell on 12-Jan-2010

Since the birth of SharePoint, Microsoft has marketed it as an internal collaboration platform, during a period when Intranet managers increasingly see collaboration as a high-priority service. Now, players such as Google and HyperOffice are trying to repeat SharePoint's success, using an on-again, off-again "SharePoint Killer" marketing tactic combined with the idea of creating a kind of Intranet-in-a-box alternative. However ... Continue Reading

Movable Type 5 -- too little, too late?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 11-Jan-2010

Noted blog package WordPress keeps coming out with maybe more releases than you'd care for, fixing exploits and bugs, but also steadily improving functionality. By comparison, it has been very quiet around Movable Type. That is, until last week, when the long-awaited version 5 was released. So was it worth the wait? ... Continue Reading

Twitter is not just microblogging anymore?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 4-Jan-2010

Twitter apparently isn't just for "microblogging" anymore. Co-founder Biz Stone would now describe it as an "information network." So there you have it: the activity you engage in on Twitter is now "information networking." Thankfully, everyone's already calling it "tweeting" instead ... Continue Reading

Social software is still software

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 17-Dec-2009

Quick question. If a conference runs simultaneous tracks on "Enterprise Search," "Document Management," and "Company XYZ's project to replace the intranet with microwikiblogging," which will have the largest audience? ... Continue Reading

How did our 2009 predictions fare?

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Dec-2009

Yesterday we issued our twelve predictions for 2010. Once again, I'll look back at our 2009 predictions and see how we did ... Continue Reading

2010 Content Technology Predictions

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 15-Dec-2009

With only a few weeks left in 2009, it's time for our team of CMS Watch analysts to reveal our 2010 predictions, where we make our best guesses as to what the Content Technology industry will hold for you in the new year ... Continue Reading

Lotus and SharePoint - a mea culpa and other thoughts

Added By Tony Byrne on 6-Dec-2009

My colleague Adriaan mis-spoke when he said IBM was "slowly phasing out" Domino. IBM is doing no such thing. For that, I apologize. We have corrected the original post ... Continue Reading

The Difference between SharePoint and Lotus Notes

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 3-Dec-2009

If you're familiar with Lotus Notes/Domino, I'm sure SharePoint, in many ways, feels like a déjà vu. But because we don't cover the Notes client or the Domino server (well, not on its own, though we cover several IBM Lotus products that run on top of Domino), I've never really compared them head-to-head ... Continue Reading

Updated Collaboration and Community software evaluation research

Added By Tony Byrne on 3-Dec-2009

This week we updated our collaboration and social computing vendor evaluations. Specifically, we updated the following reviews ... Continue Reading

Content Technology Vendor Map - 2010

Added By Tony Byrne on 2-Dec-2009

We've just updated our "Content Technology Vendor Map" for 2010 ... Continue Reading

Stop Blaming IT

Added By Tony Byrne on 19-Nov-2009

At the Interop conference yesterday I heard a familiar refrain: "IT is the problem." The epithet was issued by a cloud computing guru, but you could replace "cloud computing" with nearly any emerging technology and hear the same thing. Enterprise IT just doesn't adopt new technologies as fast as many consultants and analysts would wish ... Continue Reading

Is the SharePoint bubble going to burst?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Nov-2009

As subscribers who received our recent advisory paper know, there is plenty to be excited about in SP2010, especially if you are a part of the SharePoint channel of resellers, consultants, developers, and system integrators. But over the past few weeks I have been noticing something of a shadow side to this excitement ... Continue Reading

Enterprise 2.0 Conference wrap up

Added By Tony Byrne on 6-Nov-2009

The (excellent) Enterprise 2.0 Conference concluded yesterday in San Francisco. Here are some thoughts on several of the key issues bandied about, including ROI, adoption, usability, SharePoint, and the evolving industry ... Continue Reading

Are all wiki tools the same?

Added By Tony Byrne on 29-Oct-2009

Are all wiki tools essentially the same? Our research suggests not. For a longer explanation, consult this KM World article. To quote ... Continue Reading

Google takes page from Microsoft playbook

Added By Shawn Shell on 28-Oct-2009

I was recently invited to participate in some early testing of Google’s Wave product. As readers know, Wave has been described as a "SharePoint killer." My initial impression of Wave leads me to believe it’s little more than hype ... Continue Reading

Riding the Google Wave

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 28-Oct-2009

Time to put the Wave to the test. Over the past few weeks, Google opened up Wave, its "online tool for real-time communication and collaboration." There's been quite the invite-frenzy with Google using the doorman's trick. You have to be on the list to get in, so you'll have to wait in line; but since you can see there's a huge line, there must be a good reason to want to get in. So you want in, right? ... Continue Reading

Social Software - key debates revisited

Added By Tony Byrne on 27-Oct-2009

At the Q2 Enterprise 2.0 Conference, I had the opportunity to moderate a town hall-style debate on key trends in social computing. The questions I posed are here, and some of the (sometimes surprising) answers from the audience are here ... Continue Reading

Say hello at ARMA Expo

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Oct-2009

Later this week I will be at the ARMA Expo in Orlando ... Continue Reading

See CMS Watch in Denmark

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 8-Oct-2009

We are rapidly approaching the fall conference season, and this year I am particularly excited about returning to beautiful Aarhus, Denmark ... Continue Reading

JSR Cheat Sheet for content technologists

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 6-Oct-2009

If you're following the content management space closely, but aren't a Java wizard, the JSR (Java Specification Request) numbers can become a bit of a puzzle ... Continue Reading

Lotus Connections now with Microblogging and Wikis

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 5-Oct-2009

Last week, IBM announced the official release of Lotus Connections 2.5. For me, the main two updates in this social software tool are ... Continue Reading

Google Sites with API: Still No SharePoint Killer

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 2-Oct-2009

Is Google Sites a SharePoint killer? Well, to be fair, I haven't heard the exact term this past week, but the innuendo was clearly there ... Continue Reading

The vendor-analyst echo chamber game

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Sep-2009

Had a nice chat the other day with an old acquaintance who previously held two interesting jobs: as a practice lead at a major technology analyst firm, as well as heading up "analyst relations" for a major vendor. This is not uncommon; there's a revolving door between staff at vendors and analyst firms ... Continue Reading

Where did all the HTML editors go?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 19-Sep-2009

Once upon a time, when people started building web content management systems that actually allowed you to manage the content (and not just publish it), there were hundreds of editors ... Continue Reading

Four hot topics in Social Software

Added By Tony Byrne on 17-Sep-2009

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference this past June, I facilitated a session called "Social Software: Key Debates" -- and wrote a brief summary of the outcomes for EContent Magazine. ... Continue Reading

Making sense of ECM acronyms

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Sep-2009

One of the challenges we face at CMS Watch is the continuing need to bridge the gap between those new to ECM, and the deep industry insider knowledge that our subscribers seek ... Continue Reading

Yet another WordPress release

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 13-Aug-2009

If you're admin of a number of WordPress implementations, I hope you didn't plan anything. Just because, you know, neither did WordPress. ... Continue Reading

Visualizing the Social Software and Collaboration Marketplace

Added By Tony Byrne on 5-Aug-2009

How can we best understand the broad social software and collaboration vendor marketplace? I'd just been pondering that question when ... Continue Reading

Learn best practices for your intranet

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Jul-2009

Intranets have been around for more than in a decade in many enterprises, yet developing an effective intranet remains a puzzle for many information and communications managers ... Continue Reading

Open source: it's just a license

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 13-Jul-2009

A lot of my time is spent evaluating technology, and I have a confession to make: the licensing is one of the least spectacular bits to review. ... Continue Reading

Should you buy Social Software from your ECM vendor?

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Jul-2009

One of the questions at a "town hall" debate I facilitated at last month's Enterprise 2.0 conference addressed the topic of information lifecycle management for enterprise social spaces. Most of the attendees didn't seem to think it was necessary. I disagree ... Continue Reading