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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

WebTrends 9 - Fall 09 release

Added By Phil Kemelor on 13-Dec-2009

As I was viewing the demo of the latest WebTrends 9 release, I started to experience those familiar conflicted feelings. I liked some of what I was seeing: a further improvement to report presentation, real time alerts for rule-based changes in traffic. But at the same time, I was thinking ... Continue Reading

Year-end thoughts on WCM marketplace

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Dec-2009

As 2009 comes to a close, let's take a quick look back at the Web CMS ("WCM") marketplace. (We'll offer some separate predictions for 2010 early next week.) I think the most important development was actually a non-event: for the thirteenth year in row, the quite fragmented WCM marketplace did not "consolidate" in any meaningful way. And this, I believe, is a good thing for you the customer ... Continue Reading

Open Text delays DAM v7 (again)

Added By Theresa Regli on 9-Dec-2009

I was first given a preview of Open Text's new Flash-based DAM user interface over a year ago, in the fall of 2008. The release, at the time, was "imminent"; I even put a preview screen shot of the new version in the 2009 edition of our Digital & Media Asset Management research. Fourteen months later, customers of the product formerly known as Artesia are still waiting for v7.0 ... Continue Reading

Time to Tame the Apache Menagerie

Added By Kas Thomas on 8-Dec-2009

Subscribers to our Search and Information Access Research are well aware that we've been increasing our coverage of Apache Lucene lately, in keeping with the phenomenal -- and still growing -- popularity of Apache's well-known open-source search engine ... Continue Reading

2010 Document Management Marketplace Analysis

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 7-Dec-2009

While the ECM mid market is often ignored, we've noticed a recent vibrancy particularly among document management solutions in this tier. We've created a SlideShare presentation ... Continue Reading

Keeping Google Appliances past two years

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 7-Dec-2009

Maybe it's because a Google Appliance is an actual, physical machine, and not just an intangible piece of software. But the question that keeps popping up is "can you actually keep it running once the 2-year license runs out?" ... 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

Three reasons to list CMIS in your Document Management RFP

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Dec-2009

First off let me state boldly and clearly CMIS is an important document management (a.k.a., ECM) standard, the most important standard. But if your world is solely one of HTML and CSS then you can stop reading right here ... 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

Tridion, Forms, and Interaction

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 1-Dec-2009

A press release was sent to me today with the title "SDL Tridion Puts Online Forms at the Heart of Interaction." Which made me smile, in a nostalgic sort of way ... Continue Reading

Day sets up shop in Boston (where tech firms go to be acquired?)

Added By Kas Thomas on 24-Nov-2009

The greater Boston area, no stranger to the Web CMS world (with companies like Percussion, PaperThin, Telerik US, and Refresh Software already based in the area), is about to add yet another content management mainstay to its denizens: Switzerland-based Day Software ... Continue Reading

New Research on the ECM/Document Management Mid-Market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Nov-2009

Today we release some new ECM research. It focuses (as does much of our broader research) on the so called mid-market. ‘Mid’ is a terribly misleading term ... Continue Reading

Coveo Expresso: Free Search, Black, No Sugar

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 23-Nov-2009

Last year I blogged about several free enterprise search solutions, and it looks Coveo is now bringing coffee to the free beer party I described back then. A couple of weeks ago the vendor announced "Expresso," "your free entry to enterprise search." ... Continue Reading

Updated Web Content Management ratings charts

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Nov-2009

We've recently updated how we evaluate the nuts and bolts of the forty-one Web CMS vendors we cover in our Web Content Management research. Specifically, we've expanded and re-organized our ratings categories ... 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

RFI as rich asset

Added By Kas Thomas on 17-Nov-2009

I was talking with one of our Web CMS Report subscribers today, someone who is leading a state government's effort to modernize its WCM system. The question arose as to how to keep vendors from giving softball answers to hardball questions when submitting a Request for Information. I proposed a simple expedient ... Continue Reading

The Death of Taxonomies, revisited

Added By Theresa Regli on 13-Nov-2009

Earlier this year I caused quite a stir when I predicted the death of taxonomies. Taxonomists worldwide told me I was an idiot, nuts, completely delusional. Some were deeply concerned that their jobs were threatened, as if employers would change org charts based on my prediction. Others secretly told me they agreed ... Continue Reading

Is WCM fundamentally broken?

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 13-Nov-2009

Last week I attended the J. Boye Aarhus 2009 conference in Aarhus Denmark. For me, the highlight of the event was the opportunity to kick off the Web Content Management track by serving on a panel with Janus Boye (a.k.a., @janusboye) and LBi's Jon Marks (a.k.a., @mcboof). The theme of this panel was ... Continue Reading

Do you really need in-context content editing?

Added By Apoorv Durga on 13-Nov-2009

Many Web CMS products tout "in-context," wiki-like content editing as an important feature or enhancement. In-context means letting contributors create or edit content from within the context of the site, without actually having to retrieve a content item from the back-end and filling in long forms ... Continue Reading

WCM and DAM in Denmark - J. Boye conference wrap up

Added By Theresa Regli on 11-Nov-2009

Last week I attended J. Boye's 5th annual conference in Aarhus, Denmark, which always attracts a high quality of speakers, and (unlike many other conferences) focuses on case studies and end-user implementation challenges ... 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

IBM, Lucene, and the future of search

Added By Kas Thomas on 11-Nov-2009

I've been covering IBM's search technology (for our Search and Information Access Research) for two years now, and I confess that I've never quite totally understood the strategy (if there is one) behind IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition (OYE) ... Continue Reading

What to make of the next big release of TeamSite?

Added By Apoorv Durga on 10-Nov-2009

The much-awaited version 7 of Interwoven TeamSite finally seems to have been released by Autonomy. While we will cover the details shortly for our Web Content Management subscribers, the key changes come in a new ... Continue Reading

ICANN Welcomes the World

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Nov-2009

Last week the catchily-named organization ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced that it had approved the use of Hindi, Mandarin, Hebrew, Korean, and twelve other languages -- that are not based on the Roman/Latin alphabet -- for use in domain names ... 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

Eight Pros and Eight Cons to SharePoint 2010

Added By Shawn Shell on 29-Oct-2009

If you've been following my twitter traffic as well as others, or following the unending stream of blog entries during and since the SharePoint Conference, you have probably been overwhelmed by the avalanche of information about SharePoint 2010. There is certainly lots of buzz around the new product ... 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

Solr heads for an even sunnier future

Added By Kas Thomas on 28-Oct-2009

Anyone who's been watching the search space for a while knows that Apache Solr -- the popular open-source search server built on Lucene -- is the elephant in the room for a great many product-selection teams these days. It may be an exaggeration to say that most product-selection discussions begin with ... 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

SharePoint strategy on three coasts

Added By Tony Byrne on 26-Oct-2009

How should your enterprise deal most effectively with the SharePoint phenomenon? It's not a simple question to answer, but CMS Watch takes it on in three, full-day seminars coming to a location near you ... Continue Reading

Closing thoughts on SharePoint Conference

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Oct-2009

It's tough to get your mind completely around SharePoint 2010 -- an even bigger and more all-encompassing platform than 2007. Over the coming months we'll be advising our SharePoint research subscribers how to develop effective strategies. In the meantime, I can't overstate the enthusiasm for the new platform at this week's SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas ... Continue Reading

Categorizing the Web CMS marketplace -- A new look

Added By Tony Byrne on 21-Oct-2009

In the latest edition of our Web CMS vendor evaluation research, we went through a fairly intensive restructuring process, and I'm really excited about the results. Over the coming week I'll share some more details, but for today, let's look at how we've recategorized the vendors ... Continue Reading

Google Appliance 6.2 catching up with marketing

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 20-Oct-2009

Google released a fairly significant version 6.2 of its appliance today. There's a very corporate YouTube video summarizing the main novelties, and a quirky one about the one spotlighted for this release -- the "Self Learning Scorer," which uses indirect feedback from clickthroughs to improve ranking ... Continue Reading

First thoughts on the SharePoint 2010 user experience

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Oct-2009

The SharePoint Conference 2009 is a bit of a misnomer, since it's almost all about the forthcoming SharePoint 2010 edition. Microsoft should be commended for the depth of the program, though at this early stage, many sessions still leave you asking more questions ... Continue Reading

Updated Web Content Management Evaluations

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Oct-2009

Today we released our latest Web CMS evaluations, updating reviews of all forty-two vendors we cover. There's a lot to say about the vendors, and over the coming weeks we'll explain how we've updated our criteria as well ... Continue Reading

Record Managers and the threat of Cloud Computing

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Oct-2009

Last week I hosted a panel for ARMA that discussed compliance and records management issues related to Cloud Computing. It proved to be one of the most thought-provoking sessions I have been involved in for a long time. For what became abundantly clear from very early on was that records managers and compliance officers really need to get their head around Cloud Computing, and fast ... Continue Reading

SharePoint -- What's Ahead?

Added By Apoorv Durga on 19-Oct-2009

This is an important week for Microsoft. In the face of a major offensive from Google’s “Gone Google” campaign, they launch Windows 7 and also reveal some interesting developments at the SharePoint conference in Vegas. ... Continue Reading

Usability still improving -- improvement still needed

Added By Kas Thomas on 19-Oct-2009

In evaluating dozens of products for the Web CMS Report 2010 (to be released tomorrow), we've had the chance to see some interesting user interface redesign efforts. Some of these efforts amount to little more than an array of cosmetic improvements, but others do succeed in making the UI more usable ... Continue Reading

SAP to resell Livelink

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Oct-2009

There is a some noise being made today about SAP's decision to become a reseller of Open Text's ECM products. Call me Mr Miserable, but I'm not sure that its really a game changer. SAP and Open Text have been involved in a long, torturous courtship, that so far has failed to result in a marriage ... Continue Reading

SharePoint Conference 2009

Added By Shawn Shell on 13-Oct-2009

The latest Microsoft SharePoint conference is nearly here. Microsoft has been saving all of the biggest announcements about the upcoming 2010 release ... 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

Welcome Apoorv Durga to CMS Watch

Added By Tony Byrne on 10-Oct-2009

This week we welcome Apoorv Durga to our analyst team. Based in Dehli, India, Apoorv has previously served as as a ... Continue Reading

Terracotta offers bolt-on distributed caching

Added By Kas Thomas on 8-Oct-2009

Caching is one of those infrastructural concerns that isn't terribly sexy (unless you're a true IT geek) but is nevertheless key to making a WCM system perform well. It's a notoriously tricky thing to set up, especially in n-tier systems with complex scale-out requirements. ... 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

Software empires striking back

Added By Tony Byrne on 7-Oct-2009

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

Extensis, Canto, and turbulence at Autonomy

Added By Theresa Regli on 7-Oct-2009

Today we release an update to our Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2009. ... 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

Aligning Web and Search Analytics

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Sep-2009

Last week I heard Marko Hurst give a nice talk on search analytics, the topic of a forthcoming book he's co-authoring with Lou Rosenfeld. Marko emphasized the importance of integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis in any user experience effort ... Continue Reading

CMIS already gaining traction?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Sep-2009

I am a fan of AIIM and its market research, so I always make a point of reading and absorbing any new reports that come from them. The latest ... Continue Reading

Dealing with the ECM skills shortage

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Sep-2009

Enterprises are facing something of a recruitment dilemma at the moment -- one HR professional at a major healthcare firm told me this week that ECM-skilled applicants are looking for approximately 40% more in base pay than their peers with a background in CRM or ERP. This healthcare firm simply doesn't have budget to make the required hires, that is not an uncommon situation ... Continue Reading

2009 ECM Market Overview

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Sep-2009

As I have said before, at CMS Watch we focus on evaluating individual vendors. Nevertheless, we do think it is important for every buyer to grasp a basic understanding of underlying market dynamics ... 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

Tail wagging the ECM dog

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Sep-2009

Sometimes a secondary service or subsystem in a content management platform can gum everything up. This came to mind when a couple of our advisory clients ran into trouble with some non-core -- but important -- services. ... Continue Reading

Help elect a new AIIM board member

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 21-Sep-2009

Those of you in the content management world undoubtedly know about AIIM -- the non-profit organization with a long history of providing education and other resources to help you address the challenges of managing enterprise content. AIIM is currently in the process of electing a new board member to join their current board ... 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

Omniture and Adobe - A second take

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Sep-2009

Phil provided some very useful background on the deal and initial thoughts earlier this morning. Here are a few more comments. ... Continue Reading

Omniture and Adobe - a first take

Added By Phil Kemelor on 16-Sep-2009

Well, timing is a funny thing as I just wrote on Monday about the gossamer threads that are web analytics financial stability. No sooner had the proverbial ink dried than Adobe acquired Omniture ... Continue Reading

Contest - Name this Web CMS

Added By Tony Byrne on 16-Sep-2009

Every day on Twitter, we excerpt <140 characters from one of our Web CMS vendor evaluations and challenge you to guess which vendor we're referring to ... Continue Reading

Can ECM ever be Agile?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Sep-2009

The past year or so IBM has been promoting the concept of "Agile ECM" in its marketing for FileNet P8. It is an interesting concept both at a marketing and implementation level regardless of whether P8 itself really fits such a label itself ... Continue Reading

New Course on Web Development Platforms

Added By Kas Thomas on 15-Sep-2009

As you may know, we've slowly and steadily been adding to our list of online education courses over the past year or so. I'm pleased to announce that yesterday, we added yet another course, on Web Development Platforms ... Continue Reading

DAM vendors vs. marketing agencies -- understanding the difference

Added By Theresa Regli on 14-Sep-2009

I'm currently advising two Fortune Global 1000 companies on a vendor short list for their upcoming digital asset management procurement ... Continue Reading

Old Software Never Dies -- SurfRay Releases Ontolica 4.0

Added By Shawn Shell on 14-Sep-2009

SurfRay, maker of Ontolica and twice bankrupt search software company, announced availability of Ontolica 4.0 for SharePoint. This new version, according to the announcement, includes ... Continue Reading

How Important is Web Analytics Vendor Financial Stability?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 14-Sep-2009

Financial stability among web analytics vendors is a curious topic. What does it really mean and how does it really affect your investment in web analytics? History shows that it's not a question with a neat answer ... Continue Reading

Optimize SharePoint 2007 before you fantasize about SharePoint 2010

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-Sep-2009

Today we released an update to our SharePoint evaluation research. It includes lots of new goodies about 3rd-party applications and an initial assessment of SharePoint 2010. However ... Continue Reading

Beware the Open Text synergizer bunny

Added By Tony Byrne on 4-Sep-2009

ECM mega-vendor Open Text has a successful track record of acquiring smaller competitors, then absorbing their revenue streams and selectively improving certain "winners" going forward. ... Continue Reading

EMC Acquires Kazeon

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 2-Sep-2009

Yesterday, EMC announced the acquisition of e-discovery vendor Kazeon ... Continue Reading

Thoughts on the Future of Content Management

Added By Kas Thomas on 31-Aug-2009

Blogger Julian Wraith recently asked CMS pundits to comment on The Future of Content Management. This is a topic I get asked about a lot, not only by CMS Watch customers ... Continue Reading

Tagging your web content

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 31-Aug-2009

It's one of those elusive dreams of web content management: a completely metadata-driven publishing model. Especially when there's lots of content, and a variety of sites or channels targeting different audiences. Wouldn't it be great if content more or less automatically found its way to the right places? ... Continue Reading

Be wary of self-described SharePoint killers

Added By Shawn Shell on 31-Aug-2009

As any product gains in popularity, especially if it's seen as dominant, you tend to see more and more news about alternatives that inevitably get dubbed "killers." The news media and the product's competitors are continually trying ... Continue Reading

Twitter, Facebook, and your Web CMS

Added By Tony Byrne on 28-Aug-2009

A recent trend in Web Content Management is publishing to social networks -- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et. al. -- out of your Web CMS. Not surprisingly, some of the hosted CMS vendors are more advanced here ... Continue Reading

Shadow IT and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Aug-2009

One of my favorite technology terms is "Shadow IT." The term is not employed often enough, and its role in undermining good information management should be more widely broadcast, because Shadow IT represents a plague on content management ... Continue Reading

Adding structure to DAM and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Aug-2009

"Unstructured Data" is the fancy term we use to refer to "Content." Historically we've employed this term to differentiate "structured" data (sitting in neat rows and columns in a database) from complex files that typically need attached metadata for essential context ... Continue Reading

Back-end designs and the CMS cycle of disillusionment

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 27-Aug-2009

Over the years, I've seen a large number of web content management functional designs, technical designs, requirements, wireframes and mock-ups. And usually, the one thing missing is what's most likely to shoot the implementation in the foot ... Continue Reading

ECM Capture Specialists

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 26-Aug-2009

Capture Specialist vendors play in a very specific part of the ECM spectrum ... Continue Reading

Cost of storage for ECM & DAM: Part 2

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Aug-2009

I recently posted a piece regarding storage costs for ECM that seemed to garner some interest, so I thought I might just flesh out some of the assumptions I made in that a little further ... Continue Reading

ECM Where You Work

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 24-Aug-2009

The "places" where we work have changed and continue to change. To those of you reading this blog entry on your iPhone, Nokia E-Series or Blackberry device ... Continue Reading

Goodbye Morello, Hello Alterian CME

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 21-Aug-2009

Contrary to what you'd might have heard, in the Web CMS space, products rarely disappear without a trace. However, product names do often vanish in acquisitions. So as a public service, if you're reading this because you were searching for either Mediasurface Morello or Immediacy ... Continue Reading

Do SharePoint right before SharePoint does you wrong

Added By Tony Byrne on 19-Aug-2009

I recently advised a global consumer goods firm about how to integrate their various Social Software implementations and where to place SharePoint in that mix. This was that rare company who had not yet implemented SharePoint hardly at all ... Continue Reading

Recommind productizes its categorization engine

Added By Kas Thomas on 18-Aug-2009

Anyone who's been involved in a corporate-taxonomy project knows exactly how the terms "tedium," "tiresome," and "taxonomy" are related. Each derives from the other. ... Continue Reading

How much should vendor sales and marketing skill really matter for customers?

Added By Tony Byrne on 17-Aug-2009

A few weeks back I suggested that a vendor's sales and marketing acumen shouldn't really matter to prospective customers. In a nice comment, Bex Huff argued that ... Continue Reading

Updated ECM vendor evaluations available today

Added By Tony Byrne on 17-Aug-2009

Today we released a major update to our Enterprise Content Management technology evaluations. Our release highlights some important trends ... 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

Storage costs for ECM and DAM Systems

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Aug-2009

We have had an interesting internal discussion at CMS Watch the past few days, surrounding the cost of storage for content technology systems. It is a discussion that too few buyers have before embarking on costly ... Continue Reading

ECM: Transforming the US Healthcare System?

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

During a conversation with a journalist today about ECM and the US healthcare sector, we discussed why so little progress has been made toward electronic document and records management ... Continue Reading

Looking beyond the magic quadrant to find the nitty-gritty

Added By Tony Byrne on 7-Aug-2009

At first I was hesitant to write a critique of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM. They're a worthy competitor, we could learn from them about the value of high-level summaries, and the MQ makes an easy target ... 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

Historical Perspective on Web Analytics at X Change

Added By Phil Kemelor on 4-Aug-2009

On a day-to-day basis, I tend to view web analytics through the lens of my roles as both an analyst and consultant. For me, this takes more of a ... Continue Reading

Thinking beyond the RFP

Added By Kas Thomas on 3-Aug-2009

There's a saying in Hollywood, made famous by screenwriter William Goldman, that "nobody knows anything." It's a lament that sometimes seems to apply to the IT world as well. ... Continue Reading

IBM leading with consulting but finishing with WebSphere

Added By Tony Byrne on 31-Jul-2009

IBM surprised Wall Street earlier this month with unexpectedly good Q2 financial results ... Continue Reading

We are hiring - Sales Administrator

Added By Tony Byrne on 30-Jul-2009

We're seeking a Sales Administrator, based in New England, USA, ideally Massachusetts ... Continue Reading

Day reports sunny results for 1H2009

Added By Kas Thomas on 30-Jul-2009

It's always encouraging to hear that, despite the dour financial environment in which we live, there are companies making money in the WCM space ... Continue Reading

Let us now praise metators

Added By Tony Byrne on 29-Jul-2009

Longtime information management guru Bob Boiko is a modest guy. You won't hear him blowing his own trumpet, so I will ... Continue Reading

Are we reaching the limits of UI buildout?

Added By Kas Thomas on 28-Jul-2009

As you can imagine, in the course of covering more than 200 software products, my colleagues and I get to see and touch a lot of different user interfaces, and one thing we've all noticed lately is the trend toward larger and larger interfaces ... Continue Reading

The boondoggle that is software maintenance fees

Added By Tony Byrne on 28-Jul-2009

Annual software support and maintenance fees are something every customer loves to hate, and yet, for the most part we keep paying them ... Continue Reading

New evaluations of Google, Coveo, and ISYS

Added By Theresa Regli on 24-Jul-2009

This week we released an update of our Search & Information Access Report 2009 ... Continue Reading

Participate in Global Intranet Strategies Survey

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Jul-2009

Jane McConnell of NetJMC is organizing the 4th edition in her annual survey of global intranet strategies ... Continue Reading

Know your relevance

Added By Theresa Regli on 22-Jul-2009

Today I took part in a lively panel about enterprise search at ACM's SIGIR (Special Interest Group for Information Retrieval) conference in Boston ... Continue Reading

SharePoint 2010 has new pillars

Added By Shawn Shell on 16-Jul-2009

As many blog articles have noted (including the SharePoint Team Blog), Microsoft has released the "technical preview" of SharePoint 2010 ... 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

Interest in Lucene continues to accelerate

Added By Kas Thomas on 14-Jul-2009

A while back, I wrote about our decision to expand our coverage of Apache Lucene for the Search and Information Access Report, based on what seemed like an accelerating rate of adoption of Lucene and related technologies ... Continue Reading

Bluenog angers Hippo

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 13-Jul-2009

Bluenog, an upstart web content management company, continues to make waves. But not always the kind of waves they'd like ... 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

XAM your ECM RFP

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jul-2009

One standard/specification that gets little attention in the ECM world is XAM ... 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

In defense of silos

Added By Kas Thomas on 9-Jul-2009

The word "silo" (referring to a single, monolithic resource repository of some kind, often dedicated to a single vendor's applications) has such negative connotations these days that to suggest silos are actually good or necessary is to risk excommunication from the IT priesthood ... Continue Reading

Is there a best CMS tool for your industry?

Added By Tony Byrne on 3-Jul-2009

I frequently receive questions like this: "We're a major regional hospital, what's the best CMS for us?" Or, ... Continue Reading

What Wimbledon and vendor selection have in common

Added By Theresa Regli on 2-Jul-2009

As Murraymania swept the UK, I settled into my seat on Court No. 2 last week, on Wimbledon's always-action-packed middle Saturday ... Continue Reading

Clickability shows how not to write a white paper

Added By Kas Thomas on 1-Jul-2009

White papers are not something we typically critique or comment on, but Clickability's new white paper ... Continue Reading

The Omniture Drag - and your quest for aligning web content and analytics

Added By Tony Byrne on 1-Jul-2009

In recent months I've encountered several customers of web analytics mega-vendor Omniture who had a very specific gripe about the platform: ... Continue Reading

Will NYC go with Google Analytics?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 1-Jul-2009

Just read an interesting post on Tom Miller's blog summarizing NYC Mayor Bloomberg's keynote note from the Personal Democracy Forum ... Continue Reading

A browser is a search engine?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 30-Jun-2009

In a clip on YouTube, an interviewer asks passersby in Times Square what a browser is.The surprising result: many think it's a search engine ... Continue Reading

Lucene can read almost anything: Lucid and ISYS team up

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 30-Jun-2009

A few months ago, I blogged about ISYS offering their document converter filters as a separate component. My thought was these would come in handy to add on ... Continue Reading

Really Strategies acquires DocZone

Added By Ann Rockley on 30-Jun-2009

Today Really Strategies announced the acquisition of DocZone.com ... Continue Reading

XYEnterprise Acquired - First Thoughts

Added By Ann Rockley on 29-Jun-2009

UK-based SDL remains in a spending mood. The trend began with acquiring longtime ... Continue Reading

Will the success of SharePoint 2007 keep 2010 from leaving the station?

Added By Shawn Shell on 29-Jun-2009

Those who have studied physics might be familiar with the "story" of the penny and train. The story goes that if you place a single penny under each wheel ... Continue Reading

The Coming Acronym Crisis

Added By Kas Thomas on 25-Jun-2009

As I talk to people in the content-technology industry (if I may call it that), I'm struck by a common thread that has begun to emerge in conversations involving roadmaps and futures ... Continue Reading

2009 Enterprise Portals Market Overview

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Jun-2009

We are not market researchers, but we do think it is important for every buyer to grasp a basic understanding of underlying market dynamics ... Continue Reading

New Social Software and Collaboration research

Added By Tony Byrne on 23-Jun-2009

We released the latest edition of our Social Software & Collaboration research at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today ... Continue Reading

Some lessons out of ECM vendor demo hell

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Jun-2009

Self immolation is a rare, some may say mythical event. Yet in the world of content management it is more common than you might think ... Continue Reading

Contribute to key debates in Enterprise Social Software

Added By Tony Byrne on 18-Jun-2009

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, MA next week I'll be facilitating a discussion on "Social Software: Key Debates" ... Continue Reading

Vignette bets big on beta-SaaS

Added By Kas Thomas on 18-Jun-2009

So many things have gotten the "aaS" (as-a-service) suffix in the past year that it's hard to imagine anything new or noteworthy being added to the list at this point. But I'm starting to think ... Continue Reading

Are Times Changing for US Government Web Analytics?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 17-Jun-2009

It may be that we are on the verge of significant changes to the US Federal government policy on the use of persistent cookies ... Continue Reading

Portals are Everywhere

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 17-Jun-2009

Another reason for portals' resurgence in popularity is the current ubiquity of portals outside of the enterprise ... Continue Reading

iManage and iPhone - something new, something old

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Jun-2009

This past week Search-cum-ECM vendor Autonomy announced that it was releasing an integration for its recently acquired WorkSite product with the iPhone ... Continue Reading

New Enterprise Portals Research: Portals Back in Fashion

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 15-Jun-2009

While we're not exactly saying that "Enterprise Portals are the new black," ... Continue Reading

SharePoint does not give you Web Governance

Added By Lisa Welchman on 15-Jun-2009

Last week I attended a conference keynote session where Microsoft's Tricia Bush (Group Product Manager, SharePoint) asserted that SharePoint was helping to provide Web governance with its workflow services ... Continue Reading

eXo merges with JBoss - a game changer?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Jun-2009

In the past week two open source portal initiatives decided to merge efforts: going forward eXo will now be a part of the Red Hat JBoss Portal ... Continue Reading

ECM thought of the week...

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

....Go to 10 companies with Documentum. In 8-9 of them you will find end-users that know the name ... Continue Reading

In DAM, Flashy does not always mean Flex

Added By Kas Thomas on 11-Jun-2009

I mentioned in an earlier post (about the recent Henry Stewart DAM Symposium) that one of the big trends right now in the DAM world is a shift toward client apps built on Adobe Flex technology ... Continue Reading

Is Drupal Over-hyped?

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-Jun-2009

I'll disagree with Gartner as frequently as the next person, but their Hype Cycle is surely genius ... Continue Reading

Making sense of CMS Watch....

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

At CMS Watch we evaluate an awful lot of products, and making sense of all this research can be a challenge. ... Continue Reading

GSA6: Google Billions, Revisited

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 11-Jun-2009

Last week, I posted a highly critical comment on Google's marketing of the Appliance, version 6 ... Continue Reading

SOA and Records Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Jun-2009

An announcement caught attention the other week, though I don't have much insight into the details yet. In short a new RM (Records Management) standard has emerged ... Continue Reading

EMC Documentum opens the kimono

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Jun-2009

Earlier this week EMC announced that it was providing more extensive development support for Documentum. This is something we had to comment on, as in our various product evaluations we have long called out EMC Documentum for providing relatively poor support ... Continue Reading

Chatting about SharePoint tomorrow

Added By Tony Byrne on 3-Jun-2009

Please join CMS Watch as we participate in the Earley & Associates "SharePoint Search & IA Jumpstart" series ... Continue Reading

Google Search Appliance v6: don't believe the hype

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 2-Jun-2009

The release of a new major version of the Google Search Appliance usually creates lots of excitement, but that excitement fades quickly once people start to use the machines for real ... Continue Reading

At Henry Stewart DAM Symposium: A Grey New World

Added By Kas Thomas on 2-Jun-2009

One of the most striking trends underway in the DAM space right now (indications of which were abundantly present in the exhibitor booths at this year's Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in New York) is the rush toward Adobe Flex-based client interfaces ... Continue Reading

DAM suppliers make big promises for H2 2009

Added By Theresa Regli on 1-Jun-2009

Today we release a major update to our Digital & Media Asset Management research, in tandem with the Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in New York City ... Continue Reading

Google Wave: Tsunami or Wipe Out?

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 29-May-2009

Somewhat stealing the thunder of Microsoft's almost-released Bing search, Google presented a preview of Wave yesterday at the I/O Developer conference. So what kind of wave is this? ... Continue Reading

Venture Capital likes XML

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-May-2009

I noticed a bit of news from Mark Logic, one of the key vendors we evaluate in the Publishing Tools section of our ... Continue Reading

When customers are unreasonable

Added By Tony Byrne on 27-May-2009

At CMS Watch, we're advocates only for you, the technology customer. But sometimes the customer is unreasonable ... Continue Reading

Learn more about business process management

Added By Tony Byrne on 26-May-2009

If you're like most other professionals, the economic downturn has you looking critically at business processes. Want to learn more about that? ... Continue Reading

Wolfram Alpha search engine: just the facts

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 25-May-2009

After months of high anticipation of what this "Google killer" would bring, Wolfram Alpha was finally opened to the public a week ago ... Continue Reading

SaaS ECM marketplace is partly cloudy

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 25-May-2009

Earlier this week, I blogged about ECM and Open Source -- and the different landscapes buyers will encounter in the Enterprise Content Management marketplace versus the Web Content Management marketplace. I think there's a similar paradigm when it comes to SaaS ... Continue Reading

Has Omniture stalled?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 25-May-2009

When Omniture announced its Q1 2009 earnings a few weeks ago, there was a bit of heartburn among its investors because ... Continue Reading

Social Computing and Unified Communications -- coming together?

Added By Tony Byrne on 21-May-2009

I participated in an interesting panel yesterday at the Interop 2009 conference, Unified Communications Meets Enterprise 2.0 - Social Computing Love Fest or Battle Royale? ... Continue Reading

Microsoft finally uses SharePoint on its own public site

Added By Shawn Shell on 21-May-2009

Perhaps it doesn't strike you as a surprise, but Microsoft just launched the new SharePoint product site using SharePoint 2007 ... Continue Reading

When will ECM open up?

Added By Jarrod Gingras on 20-May-2009

We're often asked why there are so few ECM open source options, when at the same time the Web CMS marketplace supports so many open source alternatives? ... Continue Reading

Search, query syntax, Google and Starbucks

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 20-May-2009

There's too much here to write up in one blog post, so I'll pick one of the cherries for you here. Last week's Enterprise Search Summit in New York ended with roundtable discussions ... Continue Reading

Web Analytics vs. Web Design: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 13-May-2009

One of the many great discussions at last week's JBoye conference in Philadelphia centered on Douglas Bowman leaving Google for Twitter ... Continue Reading

DITA for the masses?

Added By Ann Rockley on 12-May-2009

DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) was originated within IBM, and later adopted by OASIS, yet until now ... Continue Reading

Search, Portals, and SharePoint at Interop-Vegas

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-May-2009

Next week you can find Alan and I at Interop 2009 in Las Vegas. We'll have a booth there to show some of CMS Watch's latest research, so feel free to stop by and say hello ... Continue Reading

Evaluating SharePoint for larger enterprises

Added By Shawn Shell on 11-May-2009

I just finished up my session at the J. Boye Philadelphia conference. Speaking in the SharePoint track, I was able to interact with a number of the attendees, getting great insight into SharePoint implementations across very different businesses ... Continue Reading

Our latest Web CMS evaluations

Added By Tony Byrne on 11-May-2009

We've just released the latest major update to our Web CMS research. (That's Version 17 for those counting.) ... Continue Reading

JBoye 2009 conference wrap-up

Added By Tony Byrne on 8-May-2009

I had the pleasure of participating in the JBoye 09 conference in Philadelphia, USA earlier this week ... Continue Reading

Why Open Text bought Vignette -- the real story

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-May-2009

This morning as I awoke at an ridiculously early hour (jet lag), to find my mailbox full of questions from journalists, commentators, and CMS Watch research subscribers asking for my take on the deal. ... Continue Reading

Objective plus Limehouse

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-May-2009

A couple of weeks back ECM vendor Objective announced that they had acquired Limehouse, a UK social software provider ... Continue Reading

Search in New York next week

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 6-May-2009

I'm excited to be headed over to New York next week. The Enterprise Search Summit 2009 brings together a veritable who's-who in search ... Continue Reading

Open Text buys Vignette: Investment or impulse?

Added By Kas Thomas on 6-May-2009

The business world is full of tumult these days, and times like these are known to give rise to strange bedpartners. But few would have expected the kind of union announced by Open Text just a few hours ago ... Continue Reading

What does the Google Analytics API mean for you?

Added By Phil Kemelor on 5-May-2009

You might have missed the 21 April announcement from Google Analytics regarding the public availability of its Data Export API ... Continue Reading

Adobe: an elephant in the DAM room?

Added By Kas Thomas on 4-May-2009

Usually, as an analyst, I'm on the receiving side of briefings, but yesterday I gave one to a CMS Watch subscriber wanting to know more about ... Continue Reading

CMIS gets new momentum, thanks to Chemistry

Added By Kas Thomas on 27-Apr-2009

There's been an interesting development with regard to Content Management Interoperability Services ... Continue Reading

Join us at Internet World UK

Added By Theresa Regli on 24-Apr-2009

When I think of Earls Court, London, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the many Led Zeppelin concerts I grew up listening to that were recorded in this hallowed venue ... Continue Reading

CMS Watch Releases Web Analytics Association Vendor Compliance Results

Added By Phil Kemelor on 23-Apr-2009

When the Web Analytics Association (WAA) reviewed the 2008 edition of the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report, they noted that while ... Continue Reading

A match made in Benelux: SDL Tridion and ADAM ink a deal

Added By Theresa Regli on 21-Apr-2009

WCM and DAM systems have historically been on two separate sides of the dance floor ... Continue Reading

Vivisimo - still searching for real social marketing

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 21-Apr-2009

Meet Stan, the everyman, who'll try to sell you on Vivisimo Velocity enterprise search software ... Continue Reading

Oracle proves the value of static web content delivery

Added By Adriaan Bloem on 20-Apr-2009

An early joke on Twitter about the Oracle/SUN acquisition: "Oracle buys Sun just to see if Twitter can handle the resulting noise" ... Continue Reading

Oracle buys Sun

Added By Tony Byrne on 20-Apr-2009

Well, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Here's the Sun press release. At one level, the move fits a definite pattern: ... Continue Reading

SharePoint 2010: Still confused?

Added By Shawn Shell on 16-Apr-2009

Microsoft has recently announced that the new SharePoint version will be called "Microsoft SharePoint 2010" ... Continue Reading

The new KISS: Keep Implementations of SharePoint Simple

Added By Tony Byrne on 15-Apr-2009

As customers of our SharePoint research know, we've been detailing for some time the paradox of SharePoint 2007: that Microsoft markets it as an out-of-the-box information management system, while Redmond's ample partner channel sees it as an infinitely extendable development platform ... Continue Reading

Too early to judge WebTrends' new look

Added By Phil Kemelor on 14-Apr-2009

Since Alex Yoder took over the reins as CEO at web analytics vendor WebTrends in August, the company has been on an active campaign to make itself over on both the image and product development fronts ... Continue Reading

Where's the Enterprise Portal at JBoss?

Added By Janus Boye on 13-Apr-2009

Since Red Hat acquired JBoss back in 2006, it has been very hard for JBoss Portal to meet its roadmap plans ... Continue Reading

Open Text goes to the (eye) candy store

Added By Kas Thomas on 10-Apr-2009

Until Open Text came along and bought the company (in a deal announced earlier this week), Toronto-based Vizible Corporation was not exactly (ahem...) visible.... ... Continue Reading

New Compliance Course

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Apr-2009

Compliance is one of the watchwords of 2009... ... Continue Reading

Why watch The Masters on your television?

Added By Theresa Regli on 9-Apr-2009

The golf fans among us have already tuned into The Masters -- but not on our televisions... ... Continue Reading

We live in interesting DAM times

Added By Kas Thomas on 8-Apr-2009

We've been talking to a number of DAM vendors lately, and it's exciting to see so much new R&D and "capability buildout" going on at a time when activity in certain other spaces is (by comparison) rather slack, due to cost-cutting and other factors. ... Continue Reading