Vcm V8 News & Articles

It’s been 7 years since the last major release of Vignette Content Management (7.0). If you wondered about the fate of the promised last year VCM V8 in the light of Vignette’s (news, site) various tribulations and the Open Text acquisition, worry not. It is officially here.

Open Text Content World is coming to a close today. Like most user conferences and industry events, I find everyone gets the highest value from connecting with other people.

Everyone loves the networking, sharing stories and best practices, bouncing ideas, building friendships and having fun. The breakout sessions and PowerPoint decks are almost secondary.

I would like to share some of my observations from this week resulting from talking to partners, colleagues, customers and friends. These are the topics and trends I identified.

With Open Text Content World under way in Orlando, here comes the announcement on Open Text’s (news, site) 2010 product roadmap and plans for its Enterprise CMS, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, DAM and Web CMS product lines.

Among the highlights -- we know ya'll are curious -- are rebranding changes to Vignette and Web Solutions (formerly RedDot).

Open Text (news, site) has finally revealed a bit more information about what the giant plans to do with its multiple WCM offsprings. More specifically, where the recently adopted Vignette child may be placed in Open Text’s Enterprise CMS and Web CMS families.

Enterprise CMS provider Open Text (news, site) announced unaudited financial results for Q4 and FY2009.

Despite the current economic climate, OTEX reports achieving bottom line target, although net income for fiscal year 2009, and license revenue and operating cash flow in the fourth quarter have dipped.

Conversations on Vignette's fate and product integration strategies are ongoing.

Open Text (news, site) said it’s a done deal. The planned acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of Vignette (worth approximately US$ 321 million) has been completed late yesterday following a shareholders’ meeting where the voting and approval took place.

While Vignette (news, site) is busy nostalgizing, Open Text says it’s working on the strategic aspects of what may come next. Let’s not forget that Open Text already has a WCM-centric group called Open Text Web Solutions. Offering an even broader range of (quite similar) products is going to take some brain activity. Then again, this would not be the first quilting exercise for Open Text.

In the meantime, there’s still some Vignette cash to recognize on OTEX’s balance sheet.

According to the “big brother,” support will continue for Vignette's products and (the relatively quickly decreasing) installed base (bringing in the licensing revenue). The same applies to existing Web Solutions products and customers. No comment has been made in regards to new(er) Vignette products.

There is a talk about a “combined product,” but no details on what it will be, except for providing a supersized meal of a “full set of feature options, from… fast-to-deploy web publishing application, to… enterprise-class e-business platform for large-scale deployments.”

Vignette's social media, DAM and personalized content seem to be some of the most palatable notes in this content management connoisseur combo. Open Text also expressed intent to potentially leverage some of Vignette’s components in its ECM Suite.

More details on the product strategy and the product roadmap are not likely to be announced earlier than October, when Open Text’s annual conference -- Content World 2009 – will take place.

Restructuring is expected. We should know more about the range of that initiative around the end of August.

ACE is the internal code name for the upcoming release of Vignette Content Management (VCM) product, which will see its better-than--V7.x light this summer.

Within an ace of the VCM V8 launch, we're giving you exclusive sneak peek into what to expect from Vignette.

Vignette has been thoroughly scolded for poor usability and outdated technology, among other things. But it does look like some positive changes are coming.

In an impressive feat of kicking-software-to-the-door timing, virtualization champ Parallels unleashes an update on steroids, mere days after Vista’s release to the not-so-breathless public.

The short ‘n sweet of it is that those who’d still like a perfectly integrated Microsoft OS experience on their Macs, in tangent with OS X, need waste nary a week feeling stone-aged.