Comments on: OMG! Open Text buy Grandpa Vignette

By: Jon Marks

Jon Marks — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:31:49 +0000

Interesting comments, Emerson. I’ve also been using VIGN for a long long time. I actually like V6 the least of all of them and really liked V7 when it came out. But I agree it is a bit of a J2EE beast, which has really hurt them in retrospect. Especially on the upgrade path. However, for the customers that have made it to 7.5 or later, hopefully the upgrade pain is over. V8 looks like it might have potential too, although I’m worried that a lot of the work has gone into DPM rather than VCM. Looking forward to playing with it.

By: Emerson Lopes

Emerson Lopes — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:16:02 +0000

I’ve been working with Vignette technologies since 2001. I really don’t like the V/7 content management approach. Its out-of-box solution is so hard to customize that a few brave companies did it (and even them with very limited success). For the vast majority of customers there is no customization effort done in the CMA, so there are no bonds to break, you are already free to choose another CMS while keeping a lot of logic intact in the CDA (ok, DSM/DPM can pose some treat to this, but not that much if you used some MVC2 pattern).

V/6 was a great product that didn’t evolve correctly. It was simply abandoned in favor of a “modern” j2ee application that didn’t delivery much more than the basic funcionality that you would get creating your own CMA on V/6.

Vignette stopped hearing customers, and became a reactive company, a huge mistake in a dynamic market with (literally) hundreds of similar solutions. Too much effort spent in stuff that no one really used, too much bugs, too complex in all sense, too bad.

I’m not optmistic about V/7 VCM future. VAP, on the other hand, because Vignette failed to really deliver a true integration with VCM, can have a briliant path ahead. It is a very good portal solution, though need improvements in many areas.

Being a VCD I’m really sad with this situation, but that’s life, improve or die.

Regards, Emerson

By: Frank Henry

Frank Henry — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:52:13 +0000

Good news if OpenText breaths new life into Vignette Portal as a standards base presentation tier for scalability and dumps the legacy monolithic concept of combined content (VCM) and non-standards based presentation (DSM). If you didn’t go into production with VCM and portal with standard portlets you’re dead in the water. I found that out the hard way. Vignette media is not even close to a DAM, it’s some javascript on good old VCM, good luck with that. Collab and the new standard portlets in portal that connect to collab are far beyond anything opentext has. And hopefully the Texas mentality that we can beat microsoft will die and we can finally have sharepoint compatibility. Vignette Portal on top of sharepoint and VCM is my dream.

By: Suzy T

Suzy T — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:16:32 +0000

No more V spinning right round, like a record baby, round round, right round? I’m disappointed.

By: James H

James H — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:23:19 +0000

Could of course have been that your insightful blog comments pushed Vignette over the edge and they decided to ‘cash out’ once and for all… http://jonontech.com/2009/04/04/when-cms-memes-attack/

By: Jon Marks

Jon Marks — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:48:30 +0000

Yeah, you’re right. The strategic thinking is certainly the main driver behind this. The technical integration, if they ever try, is a problem for later. But a techie nerd like me doesn’t understand the M&A world much, so I’ll focus on the boring tactics. I’ll leave the strategy for the wise men and the analysts.

But if I had to guess, I don’t think they will attempt much integration at all in the short or medium term. And I don’t think they’ll attempt much cross-sell either. Too confusing. Maybe they will try to leverage the services channel that is currently a significant part of Vignette’s revenue. I can’t see how the aquisition will help new prospects select Vignette technology. Surely the new increased financial stability will be outweighed by the confusing myriad of Open Text products that are now available. Buying a mix of ex-Vignette, ex-RedDot and Open Text products to work happily together in a solution would need quite a brave guinea pig.

Which means I don’t really see how Open Text will make more money out of this. I think EMC and Autonomy/Interwoven are probably overjoyed with the news.

By: James H

James H — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:51:11 +0000

When MOSS launched a couple of years it was interesting to see that Open Text was one of the first big ECM players to form a strategic alliance with Microsoft – which was heavily promoted at the UK’s Internet World show in 2007. I guessed at the time it was probably a case of ‘keep your friends close and your enemies even closer’. Having used Livelink a lot in the past it was clear what a threat MOSS was to that particular product line and no doubt edged into the Hummingbird and Reddot territory too.

So now, with SharePoint 2010 coming into view on the horizon, perhaps Open Text, as a Microsoft Gold Partner, is thinking ahead to how it is going to continue to differentiate itself as Microsoft seeks to commoditise the ECM space further? In many respects, you couldn’t do more to differentiate yourself than add in the granddaddy of Web Content Management Systems that for many years has been at the bleeding edge of Enterprise web content delivery. It will be interesting to see the Open Text positioning when the next SharePoint arrives Technical integration, as and when it comes, is a different matter altogether but I think definitely secondary to the strategic thinking right now.

By: Rory Bernard

Rory Bernard — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:57:33 +0000

I think if you look at the financials Opentext acquire a bunch of great customers and some good long term support revenues for a bargain basement price (<200m after you take out the assets). The cash Opentext are paying basically comes out of Vignette’s short term assets (plus a bit which can be loan financed) and the Opentext shareholders have to take a minor dilution to effectively gain the biggest share of the enterprise market (I am guessing here – someone might correct this). Even without any cross overs it looks after itself in the short term and with some smart management it will work even better long term. People like Maria are not going to change in hurry – times are tough out there especially in industries like hers and investing major sums in changes to these systems is something that is on hold at the moment.

By: Maria Harris

Maria Harris — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:55:44 +0000

Definitely a watch this space moment. In particular, as an existing customer, I’m waiting for some direct communication from Vignette. Maybe it’s just because I work in Communications, but I had hoped to see something already.

I hope you are right that the VCM will be around a while. Our implementation is getting on for 5 years old now so due a review but I know from bitter personal experience what a headache content migrations can be and I don’t relish the idea of being pushed into one.

On another note, I was surprised to get a sales call last week from ‘RedDot’ so the name is not as dead as you’d think. I was busy so asked them to call back – when they do it could turn out to be a very interesting conversation.

By: Jon Marks

Jon Marks — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:51:39 +0000

The real analysts are throwing in their opinions now. So if you're tired of random speculation from nickel-and-dime clowns like me, maybe give these a read:

CMS Watch (Kas Thomas) - Open Text buys Vignette: Investment or impulse?
CMS Watch (Alan Pelz-Sharpe) - Why Open Text bought Vignette -- the real story
Forrester - Can Open Text turn the page on Vignette's recent history?
Gartner (Toby Bell) - Win ‘Em, Wring ‘Em, and Wean ‘Em
Big Men on Content - Open Text the New CA
CMS Wire (Barb Mosher) - Open Text: Why They Wanted to Buy Vignette
AIIM (John Macini) - Get it all in one place -- perspectives on #Vignette and #OpenText