You make an excellent point on First Mover Disadvantage. I was super-impressed when Vignette bit the bullet and completely rewrote the CMS for V7. Their CMS Core is much newer than some other ECM vendors. I just think they were a bit unlucky to do the re-engineering at a time when everyone thought J2EE was the best thing out there for everything. So ended up with this very complicated implementation.

If your theory is true, maybe Vignette are in a reasonably place. They’re work though the current bump, and come out the other end smiling while all the other vendors hit problems. Time will tell …

There is NO doubt we have faced tough times. But I feel very optimistic about our pipeline of development, more so than in the three years i have been employed at Vignette. Last week we released the next version of our Social media solution which was well received at the web 2.0 expo and are well under way working on the next major release of our core WCM offering that we believe will make inroads into changing perception & reality.

We have been listening very closely to our customers and are completely aware of the issues they’ve had. We are working on solutions to simplify their experience. There has also been a number of changes in our channel model which will drive more revenue for our partner organizations.

A meme, blog or twittering certainly cant change market momentum, only delivering on the promise of your brand, its products and creating raving fans will. This is not an overnight transition, but is one we are working to accomplish.

Look forward to keeping the dialog going.

dirk

What that illustrated to me was the advantages and disadvantages of being the ‘first mover’. The advantages were clear from the many millions of dollars that the company I worked for was prepared, and able, to pay out for its ECM deployment and no doubt Vignette’s earnings during its lifespan eclipse anything a Web Content Management provider can hope for in today’s highly fragmented and competitive industry.

The main disadvantage is the ability to re-invent yourself and maintain relevancy in a fast moving industry. As Luis Sala’s post shows, Vignette’s approach to buy rather than build/innovate newer technologies may have made for topical and widespread press coverage to keep investors happy at the time but has not improved customer experiences and was undoubtedly a distraction from its core competencies.

The other disadvantage is that if you develop complex systems to help complex organisations (like global telecommunication companies with tens of thousands of employees across 150+ countries in 20+ languages) manage their global web presence then there simply aren’t many of those organisations who need such systems. Therefore you have to look to ways of extracting more revenue from the ones you’ve already sold to – hence the growth of the PS functions in more established CM providers.

When I saw inside the Mediasurface operation after the acquisition of Immediacy, a similar scenario was playing out and, indeed, the acquisition itself was an attempt to maintain relevancy as organisations were shifting to simpler, lower cost alternatives. I certainly don’t think the issues identified are specific to Vignette – it’s just that as it was first into the WCM space it’s always the first to feel the pain.

> Maybe the main takeaway here is that vendor memes can’t be subclassed. They’re public and final.

Damn, you’re a geek! I’d add that this meme is also pretty static

Vignette is obviously facing some difficult issues now, not least of which is how to prevent the kind of irreversible brand deterioration that can set in when a highly visible onetime market leader lets things get so out of hand, for so long, that it actually becomes fashionable to throw stones at the company. It’s much easier to gain momentum going downhill than uphill. That’s a real problem for Vignette right now. Somehow it has to reverse the downward momentum. That’s a hard thing to do in good times, let alone in the middle of one of the worst economic downturns in recent history.

If turning things around were as simple as having interesting and useful products, and restructuring a company for better operational efficiency, Vignette would be doing much better than it is. But you can’t cost-cut your way to success, and an interesting product catalog doesn’t translate directly to market share.

I don’t know the answer to Vignette’s problems. But I have a feeling it doesn’t involve vendor memes.

Maybe the main takeaway here is that vendor memes can’t be subclassed. They’re public and final.