Here’s to Cisco an’ Sonny an’ Leadbelly too,
An’ to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.
- SONG TO WOODY 

 As everyone knows, I think the CMS Watch Content Techonology Vendor Map is awesome. They’ve just released the 2010 version. As far as I can tell, the main differences between this and the 2009 version are shown below:

Get the high res version from the CMS Watch site. 

 So, what’s changed? Firstly, the big mergers and acquisitions:

• Adobe decided to buy Omniture for reasons I haven’t figured out yet. It’s made the map more topologically tricky.
• OpenText has gobbled up Vignette, removing another of the big dots
• Oracle has bought SUN, which hasn’t changed much since Oracle had a few of everything already.
• JBoss and eXo have merged Portal platforms
• ClearStory is now The FeedRoom, who have been recently acquired by KIT digital.

New Kids On The Map:

• Vyre isn’t new, but it’s now recognised as a DAM product too. This was discussed last time. OpenCms has made the WCM big time, along with Hannon Hill, Telerik and Omniupdate.
• Mark Logic storms onto the XML Component Management line after creating quite a buzz in the last few months. Quark is on there too, Revolutionizing Publishing. Again.
• Cisco’s new tools get them onto the Social and Collab line. It’s busy there though – they’re joined by Salesforce (the Daddy), Yammer  (like Twitter for the Enterprise), MindTouch (Open Source Enterprise Networking Platform) and KickApps (another community builder).
• Three ECM platforms I know nothing about: Fabasoft, DocuWare and Objective.

And finally:

• FaceBook has gone. Maybe not enterprise enough. Which is probably why Twitter isn’t on either.
• Poor EPiServer still hasn’t made it onto the SoCo line, even though they’ve got a very mature Community product
• SAP still isn’t considered a CMS, which is fine by me.

So that’s that. A 300 page report costs about the same as an overpaid consultant researching badly for a couple of days to prepare that disappointing Google-fleeced document you were embarrassed to show your boss. It’s a no brainer. Buy the reports. All of them. They rock.

We grew up together
From the cradle to the grave
We died and were reborn
And then mysteriously saved.
- OH, SISTER

I gotta admit, this one took me by surprise. Open Text has just announced that they are aquiring Vignette. There were the usual rumours in the air, but I don’t think many people took it seriously. I know I didn’t. First RedDot. Then Vizible. Now this. Anyone remember Gauss and Obtree? I’ve been using Vignette since 1999 and have become very fond of it. Maybe this is the Stockholm Syndrome, but anyway.

I’m not going to write much now – I need time to digest things – but there is a lot to think about here. But off the top of my confused head:

• The Vignette name will probably vanish in the same way that the RedDot name recently did. How about “More Open Text Web Solutions”? That’s catchy. The end of an era, as I blogged about here.
• I suspect that Vignette Content Management is going to be around for a while. A lot of customers have been through a lot of effort recently to get onto the latest versions. I can’t see Open Text messing with that baby. So it looks like three Open Text CMS choices for a while – the original, the ex-RedDot and the ex-VCM.
• Vignette have a Collaboration product, and have recently announced their new Vignette Community Services. OpenText have a large Collaboration and Community Management component. Something is going to happen here.
• I think the Portal will stay as it is. Open Text currently have the Open Text Portal Integration Kit. Expect to see this become tightly ingrated with VAP via the JSR-168 portlets. Hopefully it will replace Dynamic Portal in the longer term. Open Text don’t have their own portal.
• The needs to be some Records Management consolidation I would think. No point have both Open Text Records Management and Vignette Records Manager is there? I’m guessing one of these will become dominant, and customers will be (slowly) migrated. This will take many years, though.
• Maybe there will be a similar product collision in the Imaging/Workflow/Capture area, and the Business Process Management areas. I don’t know much about this stuff, so ain’t going to guess anything.
• Open Text have a more more mature DAM offering in Artesia. I wonder if the much heralded, newly launched Vignette Rich Media is going to have a long and healthy life. Maybe some of the fancy front end technology will get used (Vizible is more fancy). I suspect the Vignette’s DAM days are numbered.

I really really hope that this is going to be a good thing for Vignette. Maybe it is exactly what they needed. But, on the other hand, maybe it isn’t. In my experience, these things are never that smooth for the company that gets absorbed. I do worry about the existing Vignette employees. These kinds of deals are never without pain, and I hope that the people that have been sweating blood for VIGN aren’t badly affected. I also worry about the existing Vignette customers – I see roadmap changes on the horizon. I’m sure the customer-centric analysts will have a lot to say here.

And finally, I wonder how much fun Tony Byrne is going to have drawing the 2010 Content Technology Vendor Map. The number of big stations is getting smaller every day.

Can’t talk any more now. Got a call with a Vignette OpenText client.

[UPDATE: It seems not everyone was as surprised as me! Laurence "@piewords" Hart gazed into his Crystal Ball and called it in January. And the Big Men On Content picked it up last August. Matt Asay even had the numbers right back then. They've got their ears to the ground.]

Come gather ’round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
- THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

As some of you may be aware, the ECM Maturity Model (ECM³) was recently released. The aim of the model is to provide a structured framework that allows an enterprise to measure their level of capability in various ECM areas, and provide a roadmap for improvement. If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, maybe you should read this instead. If you don’t know what ECM is, have a look at this excellent AIIM Slideshow. If, like me, you think this is super cool and long overdue, read on. Also, if you’ve ever seen anything like this in your directory structure at work (names deleted to protect the guilty), read on too …

The model is released under a Creative Commons license and is the result of the collaboration between four firms – Wipro, CMS Watch, Smigiel Consulting Group and Hartman Communicatie. No-one is trying to make any money out of this. Just a bunch of smart people trying to provide some rigour in an area which certainly needs it. Importantly, the model does not cover Web Content Management (WCM) but instead looks at traditional ECM (Document Management, Digital Asset Management, Knowledge Management, Records Management and Business Process Management ). It has a handy glossary if you want more information on any of these.

In summary, the framework provides 13 maturity dimensions, categorised as one of Human, Information or Systems. The general idea is that a company should rank themselves on a scale of 1 (unmanaged, you suck) to 5 (pro-active, you rock) against each dimension. This figure taken from the document shows all the dimensions. A fuller description of each is included in the framework.

So, how do we categorise ourselves against these dimensions? And what does each level mean for each dimension? That’s the genius – a really well thought out single page chart provides the tool to do this. In my humble opinion, this chart is worth its weight in gold. When I first looked at it, it just felt right. Logical, well thought out and user friendly. Here it is (click to enlarge):

I downloaded the 37 page document about a month ago, but felt I had to test it before writing about it. So on Monday a guest speaker canceled and I was able to hijack my company’s weekly Technical Architects’ meeting. Sweet!. I gave the others a 10 minute summary of the model, handed out the 5 copies of the chart, and we all independently rated our own Enterprise. We then took the average (did somone say crowd-sourced?) and drew our own ECM Maturity chart which is now stuck on the wall next to my desk.

After performing this exercise, I like the model even more. The independent rankings provided by my colleagues were all remarkably close. No-one was ever more than 1 point away from the average score on any dimension, which tells me that the framework is generally logical and unambiguous. The whole meeting only took an hour.

“So what is the point?”, you may ask. The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. This exercise really highlights where your efforts should be focused. For example, there is no point buying expensive software if you don’t have executive buy-in, if you have not performed a thorough content audit, or if your IT function cannot support you. It helps you “understand where you are over- and under-spending in one dimension or another”. The document even provides suggestions describing how best to progress to the next level in each area. It’s your free ECM roadmap in a box and a great tool for getting sponsorship from those that hold the purse strings.

According to this posting, the model has already been downloaded nearly 1000 times. I would really like to send my appreciation to the 5 people (Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Apoorv Durga, David Smigiel, Erik Hartman and Tony Byrne) that devoted a large chunk of their valuable time (2 elapsed years!) to create this so that people like me and my clients can benefit. I’d urge you all to test it internally or with your clients and feed your thoughts back to the community via the team blog.

I do have some thoughts and suggestions around improvements to the document. If anyone is interested, you can read my more formal feedback (some of which is pretty anal) here: ecmmmfeedback20090403.txt.

Finally, before anyone asks, I am not going to lift the corporate skirt and reveal our scores. Suffice to say, we didn’t have enough 4′s and 5′s and we even had a 1. And we’re meant to be experts. No-one ever said ECM was gonna be easy.