Interwoven News & Articles

HP's third quarter earnings release confirms the offer to acquire information management software vendor Autonomy. As CMSWire readers know, Autonomy is also the proud owner of the assets once known as Interwoven. This makes for yet another exciting purchase in our sector, most recently following Oracle's acquisition of Fatwire Software.

While Lexmark announced last week that it was moving into the Enterprise CMS space with the acquisition of Perceptive, Dell continues its move into the managed services market by adding document management to its printers. Alfresco is also making moves by making content migration to its ECM easier than ever.

So, Autonomy (news, site) had a pretty good 2009. No surprise there, considering the company ate up every bit of Interwoven around this time last year.

Demand for document management and record management software is set to grow by over 7% every year for the next five years in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region, according to new research by IT market research company IDC (news, site).

With the M&A activity in the content management space not dwindling down despite the economic crisis, it’s only natural to see the content management industry talent hop around. At times, that happens in a fashion resembling the game called “A Cold Wind Blows.”

Recently, web content management system vendor Ektron (news, site) announced that Tom Wentworth joined them as VP of Business Development. Wentworth comes from the Enterprise CMS player Interwoven (news, site), where he was evangelizing various web solutions that fall under the Autonomy Interwoven ECM suite roof for the past 2 some years. Before that, he worked for over 6 years in Interwoven sales engineering roles.

In the new role, Wentworth will report to Ektron’s founder and CEO Bill Rogers, who is counting on Wentworth’s “experience in driving corporate strategy and revenue.” For Wentworth, working for a much smaller vendor should be a welcome change in scenery.

We’ve seen a slew of Interwoven employees leave for other companies before, so this announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. Yet, it does spur a few questions.

Are things that bad at Interwoven that even the most passionate evangelists are looking for the exit sign? Is it the Autonomy acquisition fallout and the inability to effectively use the acquired talent? Is it because of Autonomy’s reportedly far from nurturing corporate culture and the “fear-and-intimidation style of upper management”? Are we about to see Interwoven navigate the CMS waters a la Titanic?

Expect to hear more from Ektron soon. The recently leaked version 8 should officially be making its entrance any day now...though, ahem, some delays there have been raising eyebrows.

Imagine a combination of SaaS CMS, Web analytics, A/B and MVT testing, and optimization of landing pages -- sounds like a novel idea? Hardly.

Although every vendor wants to make us believe they are the first ever to step on the surface of the hosted Web CMS/analytics Moon, we know that others have approached this endearing to marketers subject before.

Nevertheless, here’s Autonomy’s (news, site) announcement about a new product designed to enamor marketers and allow them to build and test website landing pages in a hosted environment. The Autonomy Optimized Landing Page offering comes hot on the heels of Webtrends’ newest version 9 release. It sure is a hot summer for the web analytics industry.

Since my old company, Document Sciences, was bought by EMC, I have been following the Enterprise Content Management market closely; The Fortune 500 have invested billions of dollars in databases and ERP technologies leading to multi-billion dollar franchises such as Oracle, SAP, etc. focused on the structured data world.

However, the next frontier of productivity will come from the unstructured data that includes your emails, you-tube videos, word document, power point presentations, pictures, etc.

Autonomy (news, site) has partnered with VMS, a provider of media intelligence solutions. VMS will use Autonomy’s meaning-based computing software to build tools for media analysis and competitive intelligence.

VMS is planning to enhance its own PR and advertising solutions for media monitoring, measurement, analysis, competitive advertising and marketing intelligence, workflow management, analytics and PR measurement across all types of media.

Autonomy Interwoven web content management system -- powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer -- will be used by VMS as an integration point for developing tools that can analyze different types of content and act accordingly.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) will also be part of the offering with Virage MediaBin, where meaning will be extracted from video and digital media.

Audio analytics from Autonomy can be used to analyze speech and music files.

VMS is no stranger to Autonomy’s circle, being their customer and partner. You may know VMS by their products, including Vantage and AdSight.

As Autonomy indicated earlier, meaning-based marketing (and meaning-based everything, really) is indeed coming to the forefront.

Hot on the heels of last week's move to "rescue" its competitors' customers, FatWire is back in the news. Fortifying their competitive edge, folks at FatWire (news, site) launched a new partner program aiming to extend reach and consulting capabilities globally.

Once Autonomy Interwoven and Vignette customers start jumping the ship (if they, in fact, do so), a stronger partner network will clearly come in handy. Sapient, Satyam and EMC Conchango are among FatWire’s "leading partners," if that tells you anything.

The Global Partner Program covers FatWire's full portfolio of solutions -- web content management, targeted marketing and analytics, collaboration and community, content integration, and mobile delivery.

Partners will be able to get certified to deliver the technical, business and marketing consulting services to customers, which should benefit all parties involved.

There are three levels:

• Registered Partner: Experience with multiple implementations, offer some services.
• Certified Partner: Experts in best practices with access to FatWire technical resources.
• Premium Partner: “Deepest knowledge” of best practices, highest levels of access to FatWire expertise and technical resources.

According to the vendor, 2008 had brought approximately 40% revenue growth. Without a successful partner network, it would be difficult to sustain growth. In most cases, it’s next to impossible to be a successful partner without vendor support.

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?

Obviously if you make the list of any analyst report -- at least in a good light -- you want the world to know. For FatWire (news, site), that analyst report comes in the form of the Forrester Wave for Web Content Management For External Sites, Q2 2009.

One of three leaders among ten web content management systems listed, FatWire received recognition for “business-user-oriented tools that enable not only the management of content, but targeted delivery, analysis, and optimization of content consumption as well.”

We won't go into the details of the report, we did that in our article SDL Tridion Named Leader in Web CMS for External Sites. Suffice it to say, this report is designed for enterprise level organizations who have money to spare (well, no one really has money to spare these days).

It's worth noting that FatWire is the smallest vendor to make the Forrester Wave list. Does that make it any less good? We doubt it, but sometimes the smaller vendors can give better support.

Get your copy of the Forrester Wave and get more detail on FatWire and the other leaders.

Autonomy reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2009. According to the company, these (unaudited) numbers represent the highest Q1 revenues and profits in Autonomy's history.

One of Q1 2009 highlights is, of course, the completed acquisition of Interwoven, Inc. with “integration ahead of plan” and cash flowing in as well as out.

When Autonomy (news, site) announced its acquisition of Interwoven in late January there were many in the web content management industry who believed it was the beginning of the end for Interwoven TeamSite -- this despite Autonomy's commitment at the time that all Interwoven products would live on according to their existing roadmaps.

Well Interwoven does live on, but the roadmap? It's not quite the same. The existing roadmaps for TeamSite and the other products have been accelerated and the capabilities within TeamSite have taken on new meaning -- meaning based marketing.

CMSWire had the opportunity to talk with Autonomy execs to get a better understanding of what is happening since the acquisition was finalized -- there's been a whirlwind of announcements -- and what it means for the future of Interwoven's TeamSite web content management solution.

Want a peak at the new innovations for Intewoven products? Autonomy (news, site) will provide them during the GearUp 2009 Executive Briefing Roadshow.

The Executive Briefing Roadshow is a series of one day events happening around the globe. These events will showcase both the Interwoven product innovations, which include the new IDOLized Interwoven Teamsite, and Autonomy's iManage solution.

Now that the earlier announced acquisition intent is a done deal, and the planned layoffs are (as we hear) underway -- what would be a better move for Autonomy and Interwoven than to release a new product based on mutual strengths?

And so they did. One of the products from the company now called Autonomy Interwoven -- the web content management system Interwoven TeamSite -- has been integrated with Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) platform.

The IDOL-based TeamSite 6.7.2 will allow customers to use IDOL functionalities like (supposedly) faster search, increased scalability, advanced conceptual content technologies, including customer profiling based on a combination of modes of customer interaction (e.g. e-mail, phone, messaging, web browsing behaviors, etc.)

According to Anthony Bettencourt, CEO of Autonomy Interwoven, the goal of this “injection” is to “enable marketers to derive meaning from all forms of digital information -- both structured and unstructured, text audio and video -- on a single platform.”

It won’t be long until we hear from Autonomy Interwoven again. In the meantime, it would be interesting to see how customers are reacting to the new, IDOLized TeamSite.