FatWire Swoops on Interwoven and Vignette Customers

Competition in the Web CMS market is cutthroat. Not a single weakness goes unnoticed. Not a single slip goes unattacked. But it’s just business as usual, right? We all seize opportunities, especially in tight times.

FatWire (news, site) is no exception. Demonstrating as much, the web content management vendor has launched a "rescue program" for Interwoven and Vignette customers who are apparently plagued by their recent acquisitions by Autonomy and Open Text respectively.

What is FatWire offering as bait? Free licenses and "proven migration tools" valid until the end of September. Should you consider?

No-Cost Licenses

Waved licensing fees sounds like a great idea. Except, licensing is only the beginning of any CMS total cost of ownership (TOC). Usually, it is a minor cost compared to the actual CMS implementation work, and then there's ongoing maintenance costs.

Licensing costs will, of course end up on your short-lists right next to CMS vendor names as one of the decision-making factors. And, yes, from this perspective the CMS market is competitive across all tiers. If you’re looking for a cheap solution none of the vendors in this article are cheap, even when offered for free.

Migration Tools

Part of the proposed deal is that you ought to use FatWire’s “proven”migration tools and “services that reduce the risk and increase the speed of migration.” By services they mean the partnerships with Vamosa and Kapow Technologies — known migration services providers. And they are not free.

Let’s (once again) not take content migrations lightly, as it is a major (and often very painful) endeavor in the majority of cases.

Do You Need to Be Rescued?

We might question whether Interwoven and Vignette customers need to be rescued.

Vignette’s situation is not quite clear, as the Open Text deal won’t be finalized until the second half of 2009. However, Vignette’s Portal technology is still something that many WCM/ECM customers tend to find compelling. The company is still working on other product lines such as Vignette Media. But none of the above is, by any means, a sign of anything solid. We all must wait until Open Text figures out what to do with Vignette and what direction it will take.

Interwoven, on the other hand, has found a comfortable place under Autonomy’s wing. Autonomy is reporting record revenues, is supporting Interwoven product development, etc. Gartner recently gave Interwoven a nod as the fastest growing ECM vendor based on its performance in document management, web content management, records management, collaboration and workflow.

A quote attributed to Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, comes to mind: "If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth.”

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Tags: autonomy, content migration, fatwire, interwoven, open text, vignette, web cms

Competition in the Web CMS market is cutthroat. Not a single weakness goes unnoticed. Not a single slip goes unattacked. But it’s just business as usual, right? We all seize opportunities, especially in tight times.

FatWire (news, site) is no exception. Demonstrating as much, the web content management vendor has launched a "rescue program" for Interwoven and Vignette customers who are apparently plagued by their recent acquisitions by Autonomy and Open Text respectively.

What is FatWire offering as bait? Free licenses and "proven migration tools" valid until the end of September. Should you consider?