Content Management Matters ™

Oracle is stepping up their game through the acquisition of two new software companies that will enhance their enterprise content management offering in very specific industries. Some say it may finally put them in front of the pack of big boys like IBM and EMC. But how will this new offering stack up against rival Interwoven?

The Interwoven enterprise content management product suite has been getting quite a lift this last week or so with announcements coming out of their GearUp Conference on new product enhancements and partnership opportunities.

One of these new partnerships is with a company called Informative Graphics (IGC). IGC specializes in viewing, collaboration and redaction technology and they have created something special for Interwoven WorkSite.

Interwoven a global CMS leader, highlighted a series of significant innovations designed to allow organizations to maximize their online business performance while at their annual GearUp Conference in San Francisco this week.

Interwoven's acquisition of Optimost, which occurred earlier this month, is official and all indicators point toward Interwoven having gotten a real bargain.

It doesn't happen often, but within many organizations both the business users and the IT staff are asking the same question:

Why can we only deploy two new web applications in a month?

At GearUp in London this week (the EU variant of the Stateside conference in April), Interwoven announced its acquisition of Optimost, which specializes in content optimization and real-time multivariable testing.

Multivariable testing enables you to test out more than two types of processes -- means for displaying or promoting your product or content -- on your website. This process is a cut above AB testing, the process for testing one variable against another.

Interwoven will pay US$ 52 million in cash for outstanding Optimost shares.

New enhancements have also been made to Interwoven's Composite Application Provisioning (CAP), which automates the execution of customized web applications in a uniform manner. It also unites source info and deploys it on application servers like J2EE.

Enhancements include support for .NET in addition to J2EE, as well as reinforced source code management and a prettier user interface.

Interwoven is hosting a webcast at 10am Pacific time today. The event will feature Forrester Research industry analyst, Stephen Powers. The topic is the latest trends in Web content management and which next-generation Web CMS capabilities are enabling companies to get ahead and "drive top-line growth." You can register here, and should do so quickly if you want to attend -- you've got exactly one hour before cast-off.

[[Update: The full webcast (slides & audio) is now available from Interwoven (Windows Media).]]

Of late, law is getting a lot of help from the enterprise CMS side of the fence.

Interwoven has just announced the availability of a solution for the legal world, which just today also earned a committed pledge from Open Text and Microsoft.

But while OT and Microsoft focus on the document management and collaborative aspects of the lawful entanglement, Interwoven has devoted its energies to search. The new suite improves indexing for email, contracts and other documents, thereby simplifying the process for finding what you need.

Icing on the cake? Hierarchical access privileges enable use of the platform on mobile phones. (We're going to blame the iPhone for this one.)

Interwoven has deep legal roots, having set foundations in the realm of law as early as 2004, if not earlier.

This, and the company's history in the ECM realm, are two good reasons why Salans, an international law firm, has chosen Interwoven to assist in its One Firm, One Approach Initiative.

After evaluating 11 web content management vendors and providers across 190 content management and delivery criteria specific to external sites, Forrester ranked Tridion, Fatwire and Interwoven as leaders in the recently released Web Content Management for External Sites report.

In an effort to cope with growing quarterly revenues and an increasing employee base, Interwoven is relocating its global headquarters from Sunnyvale to San Jose, CA.

The new headquarters (now located at 160 East Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA, for those who’d like to visit) is designed to better meet the needs of the growing enterprise CMS giant.

Global enterprise CMS player Interwoven has announced its financial results for the three and six months ending June 30, 2007. Total revenues for the six months preceding July hit US$ 107.3 million, a 12 percent increase from US$ 95.5 million in the same period last year.

As more companies jostle to take advantage of the white-hot Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution space (also known as "on-demand software"), SpringCM hopes to strengthen their leadership position by releasing an updated version of their SaaS Enterprise CMS.

The globe-spanning CMS leaders at Interwoven recently announced the availability of the enhanced Interwoven Collaborative Document Management, which promises to increase the actual agility of an enterprise. How? The real question is, how else?