This week I led a seminar in Rome on Web Content Management organized by our friends Giovanni and Francesca at Technology Transfer. Both during the seminar sessions and in the ever-important espresso breaks, a key theme that I had noted on other recent visits re-emerged: European web teams are struggling to meet contemporary needs with outdated "enterprise-level" technologies

While nattering to a U.S. attorney while traveling back from Kuala Lumpur last week I was directed to this ongoing story. You can read all about it here, but in short the U.S. Department of Justice is suing Accenture for allegedly receiving kickback-like payments from technology suppliers it recommended and/or implemented at DOJ. The alleged fraud was a collusion with big-name IT suppliers (e.g., HP, Sun) and smaller vendors (e.g., Vignette) to

Back in April I commented on incompatibilities with various Web CMS tool interfaces and IE7 in Microsoft Vista. Now, 4 months later I am busy researching the upcoming 12th edition of the Web CMS Report, and still many vendors (e.g.,

While much of the world was enjoying their vacation, EMC made a quiet announcement of some significance: buying X-Hive, a Dutch company that provides a native XML database and content component management system (called "Docato"). It was so quiet that it almost seemed apocryphal; after all there was no matching press release on either companies' site. Yes, it happened and the acquisition is complete. At first glance, it seemed unusual.

EMC|Documentum's long awaited "D6" was officially announced last week -- though of course it has actually been announced by the firm many times this year at different conferences. Although this official release fills in some of the blanks, there are few surprises. That's not to say this is not a significant event for the sometime market leader - it's a very big event for them - only in the past what Documentum did was a signal for all to follow. The tide has turned somewhat, and Documentum under the ownership of EMC finds itself as much a follower as a leader these days.

Just a year or two ago, a major upgrade to the Documentum ECM platform would have been dominant news in the industry, but things change, and quickly. D6, the latest version of EMC|Documentum's flagship platform, is undertaking a gradual roll-out through Q3 2007 to muted fanfare. EMC and its investors have high expectations for this new version, as the Documentum division of the company has shown only modest growth of 5% in the past year, lower than most competitors.

Today EMC announced it is to acquire XHive the Netherlands-based, XML-focused content management vendor. XHive has carved out a niche for itself

This year's big DIA (Drug Information Association) conference in Atlanta concluded with something of a shock for traditional ECM vendors.

Almost exactly a year after open- sourcing its previously commercial portal product, Sun has decided to make a renewed push with its launch of "OpenPortal." OpenPortal is a new portal community where you can find all the source code to Sun Portal. OpenPortal remains a young project, but the portal package is indeed evolving.

Transactional document management (high-volume throughput of relatively static documents) has long been dominated by IBM and FileNet. EMC today announced that it too wants to compete in this lucrative market. Hence as part of its forthcoming Documentum D6 release, they have announced "TCM" (Transactional Content Management).

How many good people can you lose before things start to suffer? The answer is usually not too many -- but in EMC's Documentum division we have now seen the departure of

Open Text's Web CMS subsidiary RedDot has just chosen Chicago-based interactive agency Purple Monkey Studios, Inc. as their "Partner of the Year." Purple Monkey can certainly boast a decent client list and the obligatory cool home page. To me, this news more than perhaps anything else exemplifies the gulf between enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM)

Are SaaS (Software as a Service) options viable for ECM? I seem to hear that question with increasing frequency, and frankly, it's a difficult one to answer.

AIIM Expo and Conference 2007, Boston...what a week for CMS Watch!

Today Salesforce.com the hosted CRM giant announced it was entering the ECM sector, based on some Web 2.0-style collaboration software it acquired from a start-up called Koral earlier this year.