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Get the NewsletterWho's Working on Vignette 7.6 After the Layoffs?
Vignette is proud to announce a new version of its content management suite.
Unfortunately, there are fewer people available to support it than there were before Christmas.
The Bad News
In what is becoming an all too common theme in the content management market, Vignette surprised its employees two days before Christmas with news of a layoff.
While the timing comes as a bit of a shock — two days before Christmas, seriously? — the news should not surprise anyone who has kept even a casual eye on Vignette in recent months. Vignette's poor financial performance is well documented, and it doesn't help that competitor Interwoven appears to be thriving.
The Austin-American Statesman broke the story on Christmas Eve, and CMSWire's own Irina Guseva covered it several days later. As interesting as the Statesman's coverage is, the comments are even more compelling.
Several commenters, claiming to have been impacted by the layoff, suggested that the number of let go employees is closer to 20% of the workforce — as opposed to the 10% number that Melanie Brenneman of Vignette Public Relations stated. Prior to the layoff, Vignette had approximately 600 employees with over 200 located in Austin, TX.
Sources within the company are unwilling to share specifics on how many were affected and from which areas. Rumors continue to swirl that more layoffs are forthcoming and a bunker mentality has developed within the organization. While a disgruntled commenter is by no means a credible source, the assertion that the team supporting Vignette's imaging product was let go is the most probable scenario.
Vignette's strength, both on the sales and engineering side, is web content management. Any attempts to diversify the product line with forays into the enterprise content management space are going to be prime candidates for cuts during tough times.
With regard to Guseva's speculation that Vignette is a potential acquisition target, I think that is unlikely. The company is certainly a value in its present state, but there are precious few companies that are:
- in the market for an enterprise web content management suite
- could absorb the considerable risk that would come with such an acquisition.
The president of a user experience consultancy posited that Microsoft could be a potential suitor. Sound crazy? Microsoft has the cash to buy Vignette purely for its cache of existing customers. Then, after establishing a painless migration path from Vignette V7 to Sharepoint, Microsoft eliminates a competitor and increases its marketshare.
But enough bad news…
The Good News
There may be fewer people filling the cubicles of Vignette's Austin, TX, headquarters, but that doesn't mean that work has stopped. As a matter of fact, enhancement and expansion of the Vignette Content Management Suite (VCM) forges ahead with the release of version 7.6.
The primary focus of this point release is on an improved administration experience:
- Publishing is simplified and file management enhanced in an attempt to save time for customers
- Over 250 customer-requested improvements are included
- Expansion of the "Supported Platforms Matrix" and continued support for skip-level upgrades (from version 7.3.1.1)
- Inclusion of Dynamic Site Module 7.6 and Dynamic Portal Module 7.6
More information on the latest release of VCM can be found here.
Like every other layoff, the sun comes up the next day and the show must go on. Vignette still has customers to support and those customers have requirements that need to be met.
What is your take on the current state of Vignette? Have you played with VCM 7.6 or seen a demo? Do you think Vignette is on life support, or will they emerge from the ashes of this recession as a stronger, more focused organization? Let us know in the comments.
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Anything Vignette do to the VCM at this point is little more than lipstick on a pig. The product's fundamental architecture is so broken that no amount of make up will hide the cracks.
Speaking as a Vignette customer, we’ve had some transformational results using their software and support has continued to be available and responsive. Sure, there are always ups and downs in a company but the bottom line is this: We use them and will continue to do so.
As a Vignette customer, we've acheived amazing results using their product! Their support team is very responsive and always works an issue to resolution. They have been a big contribution to the transformation of our company with increased value and efficiencies.
The initial part of this article refers to the documentation of poor financial performance. Really -- did someone actually look at the numbers?
I looked at the balance sheet and Q3 2008 financial results show that their debt ratio is fairly stable (hovering at 27%) yet liquidity has shown improvement. And while we won't know how liquidity will be impacted by Q4 (and I'm not holding my breadth for good news), cash is going to be critical for survival, especially as Vignette finds that they need to borrow money. Don't forget -- credit is fairly frozen at this point.
Vignette seems to be positioned to weather this storm.
The comment above (#1 from Anonymous) is bogus. We are a Vignette customer and their architecture has served us well. I'll grant that any compnay who grows by aquistion of other roducts presents custoers with challenges, but frankly I thnk the 7.4 + releases have been very positive. We use their VCM to single source content to many different formats and their handlig of rich media is very good. I hink their Collaboration product is much better thn Sharepoint, especially from an enterprise standpoint. Sharepoint is simple a shill for MS to sell more Office suites. The rich text/WYSIWYG editor in Vignette Collaboration is top notch and it includes awesome email and notification features.
I'll will state that pre-Christmas layoffs is not very kind. I would recommend that Vignette focus on Web Cotent Management, Collaboration and Video and not spend too much on recods management or marekting automation.
We have been a Vignette customer for 4 years. We have had great results with our Collaboration application. With a small development team and support from VPS, we have been able to leverage the architecture and template language to create a customized document management/intranet site that continues to hold the satisfaction and enthusiasm of our user base.
“When life gives you lemons…”
Being part of a financial services company, we too have suffered staff reductions due to changes in the market. Our philosophy is to view change as an opportunity to show our dedication and professionalism to our customers by taking customer service to the next level. We are also going back to our entrepreneurial roots, using our strategic and innovative thinkers to develop new products and refine existing processes. This will strengthen us for the future.
If Vignette has these same philosophies, they should also be able to “…make lemonade.”
I worked in Vignette for years until V7.2 came out. It should stay out of ECM and get back into web content and light document management. Although their collaboration stuff (thanks to Intraspect) is good, it is comparable to WSS ("free" SharePoint) and in these economic times, that's a hard sell.