Open Text Web CMS Saga Continues, Party Lines Collide

I'm starting to think the Vignette acquisition was more focused on their continuing revenue stream from maintenance payments.

Think of it this way. Vigtnette was probably not strong enough to stand on its own any longer, and possibly not even sell any more licenses, but with it's large and heavily invested user base, it probably won't be a bad medium-term revenue stream that won't be sucking up too much R&D money. All OpenText needs to do is to put just enough effort into it not to scare away all the current customers, and they're set for a while.

Thank you for quoting my tweet. I would like to add that the message of Open Text on the german usergroup (rdug) meeting in hamburg to support/develop Web Solutions until 2013 and beyond helped a lot. It's been good to get some first answers from the Open Text reps directly on this issue for weeks. Partners and customers in Germany were positive about the high-level “sneak peek” on what will be presented in detail on the Content World in Orlando. (some details in my german blog post: http://www.netmedia.de/blog/2009/09/reddot-usergroup-in-hamburg-kurzbericht).

As Irina points out, the strategy for the WCM future at Open Text is a positive one - one that sees continued investment and support long term. As one of the leading Enterprise Content Management AND Web Content Management solution providers in the world, Open Text is strongly dedicated to all of our customers and the solutions they rely upon.

We are excited about the plans we have outlined in the short 60 days since the acquisition. And, in an effort to provide as much transparency that we can this time, I encourage you to read the longer description of our strategy here:

http://conversations.opentext.com/
Exciting Road Ahead for WCM at Open Text

That is a lot more clarity and begins to fill in a lot of the puzzle. it also makes a lot more sense.

Just one puzzle remaining, having ruled out all the options to how it might work, there is still the plan to provide a new offering. It won't be a hybrid and won't merge code and won't be something new developed from the ground up, but it will take capabilities and technology from both to make a new offering….huh? I'm guessing they mean a hybrid offer on a modular level where it makes sense, but ruling out a code hybrid.

I think what Open Text are struggling to come out and actually say is “we're still working it all out and we'll announce it at Open World. And as much as we hate your feedback and insistence on knowing things before we've worked it out ourselves, we are listening and it is guiding our thinking into what the asnwer is so keep it coming”

The plot thickens. Using my terminology, this sounds like a combination of The Long Winded PurpleDot Brundlefly, The SKU Jedi Mind Trick and a long term Maintenance Milking Machine. And I'd be really surprised if they can launch a brand new product in two years time. People fear version 0.1 of any new enterprise product.
http://jonontech.com/2009/09/15/when-cms-genes-wont-splice/

And I'm still very keen to know if this product will replace the CMS (VCM/Management Server) and Delivery (VAP/LiveServer) products. Or just the CMS ones.

Very interesting comment from Daniel: http://myifridge.blogspot.com/2009/09/its-over-isnt-it.html#links - a more or less inside view.

I guess he adds some really good new thoughts about the business perspective. And at least in my opinion the most import point is: There is no innovation.

The WCMS market mainly based on stoneage concept and solutions which are more or less developed by accident. Think about the term “Content Management” - do you really want to manage content? Do you have the time to manage content? Do you like managing content?

It is time for a house cleaning and new concepts. Hopefully OpenText will think about that issue too and Marci will present us the “best-in-class web business product line” soon.

Irina,

As always nice to read your posts. I would like to point out that consolidation comes with territory. We should not forget that markets sooner or later disappear and maybe it is about time for WCM to go. See my recent comment about that on myifridge.com.

Looking forward to your feedback and a fruitful debate!
Cheers,
Daniel

An important point which is mentioned all to rarely - it's not only the product. It's the project! The software is important, but still it is just a means to an end, an important tool but nothing more than a device to get your ideas and visions transported to your customer's target audience.

From that point of view I would like to encourage any CMS vendor to concentrate on the existing features of their solution. The solution has to work in a stable and user-oriented way. In a more figurative language - any discussion on a new super product coming “when it's done” has a bit of a luxury discussion as project life continues in the meantime. If I was responsible for a new CMS product line I would not start a discussion on what will be in a few years that early but try to focus on my current releases. And as I see it right now Open Text customers (and partners as well) tend to be irritated and irritation is never a pleasurable feeling.

I still think that Open Text can impress the CMS universe if they will manage to create a sophisticated new product - but only if existing customers can choose to migrate their existing projects without suffering from a complete reprogramming.

The fact that another WC product is facing its sunset is not particularly surprising.
If you follow the WCM timeline of over the past 10 years, many products and companies have been bought/sold/merged/dissolved. The WCMS product offerings in today's timeframe have now become much more concentrated - from this I mean that there are fewer of the major products available as a new purchase today - and the loss of a more prominent product today is much more noticable.
However, many of the products that are no longer being licensed are stable viable business choices. So if a product is stable and meets the requirements of a business then that decision to migrate may well not need to be made.
Outside of the WCM environment, hundreds of products are supported by specialist companies LONG after that product or company have left the building - anyone who has worked (as I have) outside of the WCM industry will know this and know that there are very few problems.
I wonder how many companies who have sites powered by Gauss, Obtree, Stellent, or old (no longer officially supported) versions of Vignette or RedDot are confidently moving forward with their (so called) legacy systems - I certainly know of many

In the next 24 months, existing Vignette and Web Solutions customers are going to have to live with products that likely aren't going to keep pace with the innovation in the WCM market. Both OpenText Web Solutions and Vignette already have some catching up to do with competitive WCM offerings and I can't see how this will happen without massive R&D investment. Prior to the acquisition, both products were rapidly losing market share and I don't see how the latest news will reverse that trend in the short term.

Post the release of the new product in 24 months, OpenText is going to be competing with a “1.0” product in a mature WCM market that will itself have evolved during the 24 months of development its going to take. The immediate issue with this release will be migration- how will OpenText handle the migration to the new product? Vignette customers will be especially wary of any “migration” given their prior experience.

Maybe OpenText will prove me wrong, but I don't see how this strategy is going to work. It certainly puts a lot of pressure on OpenText to do something really special with this new product.

The perception that WCM is somehow over is largely because of the 'vacuum' the ECM players have caused by swallowing the 'prominent' WCM players and then killing the focus (and dominance) those players had on the WCM sector. This for now has created a chasm - but not a 'death' at least not for many WCM players.

Lets not forget that all the 'ECM players' have purchased one, two, three and in one case four web content management solutions - and in each case it could be argued undone (very successfully) all the brand and success the WCM solutions had prior to being taken over - as Daniel put it “do you even remember Stellent?” - there are of course other names you could substitute Stellent with to enjoy a nostalgic moment…… but does that mean the WCM market is dead ?!?

Daniel also quotes the impressive market cap as an example of 'doing something right'. Whilst financial stability is an desirable metric for any organisation - with tongue in cheek I would suggest it does not always go hand in hand with customer centricity / interests - or the future of a product under any organisations control ;-) - but as a shareholder I would of course be VERY impressed…..

The bigger issue surrounding the WCM marketplace imo seems to be that the 'ECM players' who have created the vacuum are essentially document management vendors who either dont understand the web - or dont want to understand the web - or in some cases both……

But this is GREAT news for the rest of the WCMS marketplace. The rise of 'speed boat' entry level products like Ektron, Episerver and Sitecore - who were unheard of five years ago is a clear indication that WCM is far from dead - and they are not alone - mid market products like Fatwire, Alterian Enterprise are picking up where products like Interwoven and xxxxxx left off. As long as there are websites - there will be Web Content Management solutions - in the same way that as long as there are documents their will be Document Management vendors (or are they less prone to 'death'?) and every time the ECM players take one out - another will take its place…….. simple economics of demand and supply…. especailly when the ECM players fail to capitalise on their purchase.

My take is that customers have been waking up to the fact for a while that they are not 'married' to their WCM technology - and ironically the instability being caused by the ECM players is helping them feel it - customers are now starting to take a much shorter 'commodity' view over their installed solution. Just check out the new faces and positions on the Gartner and Forrester WCM quadrants.

Nope - far from being over - I think that WCM - for some players - is set to boom again - as companies who bought 1st generation 'meccano kit WCMS solutions' realise they can replace their entire technology for less than they are paying in annual support and maintenance to their current vendor - make a year on year saving to appease the FD - AND get a better more innovative product on top with no baggage…… no brainer right ? What a great time to be in the WCM space ;-))))

The CMS industry has a credibility problem. Too often vendors in a confusing market have made big promises only to have their customers invest money in projects that ultimately fail.

A market consolidation might do the industry some good. But earlier this year when the American CMS flagship Vignette was purchased by Open Text, many observers were taken by surprise. Having just presented RedDot as the company's CMS reference product, now with Vignette it suddenly had a second option in its portfolio. To continue developing both platforms in parallel makes little sense from a financial standpoint. But at the same time it seems unlikely that the two solutions will be combined, as one is based on .NET and the other is JAVA-based. The question of which solution will be the focus of development going forward and what direction the migration should go in becomes critical. And this was also borne out in the latest quarterly numbers from industry analysts (http://seekingalpha.com).

Open Text's answer that the migration may go in the direction of Vignette, would end up causing even more bewilderment. Are those users who have just made the officially recommended trek from Gauss to RedDot really going to want to make yet another move to Vignette? Are new customers who choose RedDot saddling a dead horse? In any case, Open Text-CEO John Shakleton seemed to indicate as much in his statements. The question thus remains: Is RedDot dead?

Too many questions remain unanswered. In my view, a migration from RedDot to Vignette may well prove to be technically infeasible. This might work for data, but not for entire projects. The architectures of the two systems are too different to pull it off. But from the perspective of a CMS provider, I'm critical of the way customers have been put in an awkward spot here. They're investing in a technology today that might be obsolete tomorrow.

This strategic uncertainty is detrimental to the Content Management industry as a whole. Yet, CMS vendors are still struggling to shake the perception that what they're offering is merely a “nice to have” solution. Content Management Systems are an essential component of corporate communication and thus of a company's overall strategy. Especially now as market requirements for CMS solutions extend into the area of compliance, the technology becomes ever more critical. A back-and-forth maneuver in product strategy in no way helps the industry build the trust it needs.