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	<title>Jon On Tech &#187; fatwire</title>
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	<link>http://jonontech.com</link>
	<description>Just a nerd trying to save the publishing industry. Again.</description>
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		<title>Drifting Yellow Dots &#8211; Gartner CMS MQ 2010</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/27/drifting-yellow-dots-gartner-cms-mq-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/27/drifting-yellow-dots-gartner-cms-mq-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:08:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alterian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[autonomy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coremedia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gartner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oracle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quadrant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sdl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tridion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1753</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lordy, has it been a year already? Sure has. The 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM is out. You can get the report here courtesy of our friends at SiteCore. As usual it is worth a read, but here are the juicy bits.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>I began to think what a deed I&#8217;d done.<br />
I grabbed my hat and I began to run.<br />
I made a god run but I ran too slow;<br />
They overtook me down in Jericho<br />
- IN SEARCH OF LITTLE SADIE</p></blockquote>
<p>Lordy, has it been a year already? Sure has. The 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM is out. You can <a href="http://www.sitecore.net/Products/Resources/whitepapers/Gartner-Magic-Quadrant.aspx">get the report here</a> courtesy of our friends at SiteCore. As usual it is worth a read, but here is the juicy bit:</p>
<p><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wcmmq20101.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1755" title="wcmmq2010" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wcmmq20101-279x300.png" alt="" width="279" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve marked the guys that have improved a reasonable amount with a green line, indicating  where they&#8217;ve moved to since 2009. No-one has really slipped, although a few have vanished. EMC have given up on WCM and are partnering with Fatwire instead. <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/06/omg-open-text-buy-grandpa-vignette/">Vignette</a> and Nstein are also now part of the Open Text dot. Expect to see <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/07/28/a-fine-day-for-adobe/">Day replaced by Adobe</a> on here in 2011.</p>
<p>They&#8217;ve stuck with the same Big Three (Oracle, Automony/Interwoven and Open Text) in the lead as last time. Two other Big Guys &#8211; Microsoft and IBM &#8211; are inching closer to the Leader Quadrant. It does seem that to be near the top of the &#8220;ability to execute&#8221; axis, you need to be a massive company and have technology that is at least ten years old. I <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/08/10/what-has-the-ministry-of-magic-quadrants-got-against-me/">ranted about this last year</a>, and the same thoughts apply. I should point out that this dimension is defined as &#8220;<em>how well a vendor sells and supports its WCM products and services</em>&#8220;, not on the success of implementations or happiness of customers. If you want to get the products with the most marketing dollars behind them, this is the axis for you.</p>
<p>The Open Text logic still confounds me. Here is how I see it. In 2009, Open Text was one of the three leaders, based on what I can only assume was The Product Formerly Known As RedDot. Vignette and Nstein were lingering in the shitty quadrant (VIGN on the border, admittedly). So my only conclusion is that RedDot was the favoured product in the eyes of Gartner. However, my spider senses (and OTEX staff layoffs) tell me RedDot is on its way out and the Vignette WCM product is the Chosen One. So I&#8217;d have expected the Gartner folk to move OTEX further into the danger zone, but the uncertainly and product direction have actually given them a boost.</p>
<p>The tussle between the younger upstarts is as close as ever. The Java vendors (FatWire and Day) have gained slightly on the .NET ones (SiteCore, Ektron). The Java/.NET hybrid, SDL, keeps its nose in front. I think we&#8217;ll see bigger gaps in 2011.</p>
<p>Last year, I noted that poor EPiServer had got a bit of a raw deal. That&#8217;s been fixed. I&#8217;ve always felt they should be sitting right next to SiteCore on this thing. And CoreMedia also got a big bonus. Alterian got a little boost, but they&#8217;re still in the quadrant of despair.</p>
<p>There are two new vendors on there, Atex and Dynamicweb. I&#8217;ve heard of the latter but never seen them. And only heard of Atex when they aquired Polopoly as few years ago. Never seen their product either, so not comments here.</p>
<p>Still no Open Source vendors on here, for the same revenue related reasons as last time. I&#8217;m not going over all that again.</p>
<p>Most of these little yellow dots haven&#8217;t drifted very far in a year &#8211; the report is pretty similar despite the M&amp;A activity that has kept us bloggers busy. So pretty much a repeat of last year. And, like last year, here is hoping Gartner&#8217;s lawyers don&#8217;t serve me any takedown notices.</p>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>What has the Ministry of Magic Quadrants got against me?</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/08/10/what-has-the-ministry-of-magic-quadrants-got-against-me/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/08/10/what-has-the-ministry-of-magic-quadrants-got-against-me/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:34:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alterian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[analyst]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magic quadrant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oracle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tridion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1002</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Web Content Management has progressed from a Gartner MarketScope in 2008 to a Magic Quadrant in 2009. I’m normally quite a fan of Gartner, and was fortunate enough to hear Mick MacComascaigh (the lead WCM Analyst)  give a great presentation at a recent event. We even had a nice chat about WCM Maturity Models afterward. However, I’ve got to say that it’s quite difficult not to treat this research as a giant advert for Oracle.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>I went into a restaurant<br />
Lookin&#8217; for the cook<br />
I told them I was the editor<br />
Of a famous etiquette book<br />
- BOB DYLAN&#8217;S 115TH DREAM</p></blockquote>
<p>So, Web Content Management has progressed from a Gartner <a href="http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/article31/article31.html">MarketScope in 2008</a> to a <a href="http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/article91/article91.html">Magic Quadrant in 2009</a>. I&#8217;m normally quite a fan of Gartner, and was fortunate enough to hear <a href="http://gartner.co.uk/AnalystBiography?authorId=31763">Mick MacComascaigh</a> (the lead WCM Analyst)  give a great presentation at a <a href="https://www.squiz.co.uk/resources/seminars/seminars/July-2009/The-Future-of-Web-Content-Management-Debate-Exclusive-Executive-Panel-Session-with-Gartner,-eConsultancy-and-The-World-Health-Organisation">recent event</a>. We even had a nice chat about WCM Maturity Models afterward. However, I&#8217;ve got to say that it&#8217;s quite difficult not to treat this research as a giant advert for Oracle. To start, here it is:</p>
<div id="attachment_1006" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 410px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/GartnerMagicQuadrantWCM_Aug2009.png"><img class="size-full wp-image-1006" title="GartnerMagicQuadrantWCM_Aug2009" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/GartnerMagicQuadrantWCM_Aug2009.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM Aug 2009" width="400" height="410" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM Aug 2009</p></div>
<h3>Who Is It For?</h3>
<p>I think the introduction to the research is interesting. It starts by listing who would benefit from it:</p>
<blockquote><p>This Magic Quadrant will help CIOs, and business and IT leaders that are analyzing their Web strategies to assess whether they have the right WCM offering to support them.</p></blockquote>
<p>This seems to list everyone except the people that are actually going to use the thing and, as a result, seems to place very little weight on the things I care most about: usability for the editors and a warm fuzzy feeling for the developers. The report is far more concerned about market share, geographical penetration and long term company prospects. History shows us that a typical WCM implementation have an average lifespan of only three years. Is this because the buyers aren&#8217;t thinking about long term CIO/Business/IT issues? Or is it because the world changes fast and we shouldn&#8217;t worry our pretty little heads too much about things too far in the future?</p>
<p>CMS Watch had <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1660-Assessing-WCM-vendors">something to say</a> about the report, mainly around the fact that it is too high level and strategic, and tends to ignore the &#8220;nitty gritty&#8221; details that can be so important. CMS Wire also <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/parsing-gartners-2009-magic-quadrant-for-web-content-management-005255.php#evt-never">talk about it here</a> but they seem more happy with the whole thing.</p>
<p>As an aside, I also don&#8217;t necessarily think that a large stable company always leads to a large stable product. Just look at all the recent acquisition activity. The road map for some of the big boys is far from clear and some well established products might start to fester due to lack of R&amp;D investment.</p>
<h3>Gartner vs Forrester</h3>
<p>So, how much to the two big analyst firms agree? Let&#8217;s have a look at the Forrester Wave from a couple of months ago:</p>
<div id="attachment_1005" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 420px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ForresterWave2009_2_tcm113-22225.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-1005" title="ForresterWave2009_2_tcm113-22225" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ForresterWave2009_2_tcm113-22225.gif" alt="Forrester Wave WCM - June 2009" width="410" height="419" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For External Sites Q2 2009</p></div>
<p>So they do agree on a most things. Both have Autonomy/Interwoven and SDL Tridion in the Leader area. Fatwire, Open Text (pre-Vignette acquisition) and Day are all up there. Microsoft is struggling on both, although Forrester prefer their strategy while Gartner prefer their current offering. IBM, Vignette and EMC are also put into the same ballpark.</p>
<p>Gartner covers a few more vendors. The three smaller .NET vendors (<a href="http://www.ektron.com/">Ektron</a>, <a href="http://www.sitecore.net/">SiteCore </a>and <a href="http://www.episerver.com/">EPiServer</a>) all make the grade. I&#8217;d have expected to see the EPiServer dot in almost the same place as SiteCore as, in my experience, the two always come extremely close in all evaluations I&#8217;ve seen. I&#8217;d have put them both ahead of Ektron, but maybe that&#8217;s just me. I guess EPiServer are only just starting their US invasion which might have penalised them a bit.</p>
<p>The two reports also agree on not including Open Source vendors for various reasons. Quite a few people in the blogosphere are upset about this. The cynical amongst you might think that this is because Open Source vendors don&#8217;t pay analysts as much to include them on reports, but this couldn&#8217;t possibly be anything to do with it.</p>
<h3>But What About Oracle?</h3>
<p>Aaah, yes. The anomaly. <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/content-management/ucm/index.html">Oracle UCM</a> nee Stellent comes first in the Gartner report while a distant tie sixth in the Forrester one. Oracle is going mental about this on Twitter and any other advertising channels it can find. The research cites Oracle&#8217;s strengths as the ability to integrate with other Oracle products, including their CRM system. I&#8217;m not a fan of these so-called &#8220;tighter integrations&#8221; which are diametrically opposed to my view of loosely-coupled separation of concerns. Sounds like Gartner want Oracle UCM to become a monolith which reaches far beyond the boundaries of what I&#8217;d define as Web Content Management. Interestingly, Gartner&#8217;s three leaders are all vendors more traditionally associated with ECM. Price doesn&#8217;t seem to be a factor at all in the quadrant.</p>
<p>For the very observant among you, note that all the URLs to Gartner&#8217;s public &#8220;sponsored&#8221; research contain /oracle/, not just this one. So I wouldn&#8217;t get hung up on that &#8211; I presume it&#8217;s the platform they use? [<strong>UPDATE</strong>: See the comment about this below]</p>
<h3>Niche Players: Good News and Bad News</h3>
<p>Here&#8217;s the good news. Gartner advises that maybe a Niche Player is good for you:</p>
<blockquote><p>Gartner advises organizations against simply selecting vendors that appear in the Leaders quadrant. All selections should be buyer-specific, and vendors from the Challengers, Niche Players or Visionaries quadrants could be better matches for your business goals and solution requirements.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here&#8217;s the bad news. I can&#8217;t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to look at a Niche player according to Gartner&#8217;s metrics. They have no ability to execute, and no complete vision. Sound like a bunch of losers. In fact, in my view it&#8217;s probably better not to be on this MQ at all than to be a niche player. You&#8217;ll save yourself a bunch of money, and a bunch of bad publicity. Nstein tweeted happily about being included on the quadrant for the first time. On the other hand, I&#8217;d be furious if I was an established vendor like Alterian and got stuck in the bottom right. So, a question to all you vendors &#8211; would you rather be on this as a Niche Player, or not on it at all?</p>
<p>Note that in the MarketScope from 2008, both IBM and MediaSurface (Alterian) were &#8220;Cautions&#8221;. IBM have progressed safely into the Challenger zone while I&#8217;m not sure exactly what they&#8217;ve done in the last 12 months to get there. And poor Alterian seem like the victims here, being penalised primarily, it seems, for having more than one WCMS product. Now while this can be confusing, they certainly aren&#8217;t the only vendor in this position.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve decided I certainly prefer the research that doesn&#8217;t rank the vendors and serve as self-fulfilling marketing for the vendors that do well. The strengths/weaknesses listed are really high level and vague, so you need to take a leap of faith. This kind of advertorial isn&#8217;t for me, I&#8217;m afraid. Maybe if Gartner published the complex calculations (and they are complex) that go on behind the scenes I&#8217;d trust it more.</p>
<h3>So Why Trust Me?</h3>
<p>Well, I&#8217;m Head of Development for the company that came first in the most recent <a href="http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/wave%26trade%3B_european_interactive_agencies_%26%238212%3B_web_design/q/id/43561/t/2">Forrester Wave™: European Interactive Agencies — Web Design Capabilities</a>. What more proof do you need?</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Arthur Weasley</strong>: This is very, very peculiar. It seems as if your hearing is to be in front of the entire Wizengamot.<br />
<strong>Harry Potter</strong>: I don&#8217;t understand. What has the Ministry of Magic got against me?</p></blockquote>
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		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
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		<title>A Quiz, Some Beers and a Celebrity Visit</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/06/29/a-quiz-some-beers-and-a-celebrity-visit/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/06/29/a-quiz-some-beers-and-a-celebrity-visit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:20:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alfresco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alterian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[documentum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drupal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moss]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Notepad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opentext]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SDL Tridion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=777</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A light hearted post. I created a CMS quiz on QuizTweet which turned out far more popular than expected, so some information on that. Plus a plug for CMS geek events in London.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>It ain&#8217;t that I&#8217;m questionin&#8217; you.<br />
To take part in any quiz.<br />
It&#8217;s just that I ain&#8217;t got no watch<br />
An&#8217; you keep askin&#8217; me what time it is<br />
- IF YOU GOTTA GO, GO NOW</p></blockquote>
<h3>A Quiz</h3>
<p>Right, the quiz. It all started when I got invited to play some dumb-ass quiz on <a href="http://quiztweet.com/">QuizTweet.com</a>. Something about Which Mixed Drink Would I Be. Now I only drink beer these days, so I ain&#8217;t no mixed drink at all. But all the CMS cool kids were turning out to be Martini&#8217;s, so I bowed to the pressure to prove I was different. QuizTweet is pretty sneaky as once you&#8217;ve invested time and energy answering the questions, it then asks you for your Twitter creds so it can tweet your results. You find out how you&#8217;ve done at the same time as the world finds out. So I break my own rules and give the QuizTweet app access to my Twitter account. And it doesn&#8217;t really warn you either. @QuizTweet &#8211; if you&#8217;re reading this, I really think you need to add in a notification screen so people realise what is about to happen.</p>
<p>Once I&#8217;d sold my soul and creds to QuizTweet, I figured I&#8217;d try to set my own quiz up. The interface is pretty sweet and I was done in 20 minutes. You first define the different possible outcomes (with a description and an easy-to-select image), and then write the questions. For each question, you need to write an answer for each outcome. Which means I needed 13 possible responses for each question. This is far too many &#8211; I wish that I could assign multiple outcome to the same question response. The screenshot belows shows the kind of interface you get for each question. I&#8217;ve only shown 4 of the 13 response form elements though.</p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><img class="size-full wp-image-783 alignnone" title="CreateQuestion" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/CreateQuestion.JPG" alt="CreateQuestion" width="545" height="211" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve no idea how the system selects the outcome. I presume that it picks the outcome with the most responses, and is random in the event of a tie. In my quiz, I&#8217;m guessing selecting 3/10 questions for a certain outcome will be enough. If I&#8217;d known how popular the stupid thing would become, I&#8217;d have given the questions more thought! As of now, <strong>over 600</strong> tweeps have taken the quiz and it has made page 1 of the<a href="http://quiztweet.com/quizzes/top"> Top Quizzes</a>. It&#8217;s even &#8220;Trending&#8221; which isn&#8217;t bad considering the small target audience. The annoying way that it tweets the results for you also makes it very viral. I think QuizTweet has potential.</p>
<p>For those that are wondering, the 13 possible outcomes are <strong>Alfresco</strong>, <strong>Alterian</strong>, <strong>Day</strong>, <strong>Drupal</strong>, <strong>EMC Documentum</strong>, <strong>EPiServer</strong>, <strong>Fatwire</strong>, <strong>MOSS (SharePoint)</strong>, <strong>Notepad</strong>, <strong>Open Text</strong>, <strong>SDL Tridion</strong>, <strong>Vignette</strong> and <strong>WordPress</strong>. Day was added late. Alfresco and MOSS added even later. The choice of what was included was pretty random &#8211; they are systems I know something about, and are not too close to one another.  I really liked the cheap marketing stunt from <a href="http://twitter.com/martinvm">@martinvm</a> with <a href="http://twitter.com/martinvm/statuses/2375171542">this tweet </a>claiming to have done the quiz and got GX WebManager &#8211; even though it wasn&#8217;t an option. Nice work, Mr Product Manager.</p>
<p>As QuizTweet doesn&#8217;t let me see the results, I am monitoring them via a <a href="http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%22Which%20Content%20Management%20System%20%22">Twitter Search</a> and am getting them emailed to me via <a href="http://www.twilert.com/">Twilert</a>. If people are interested, I&#8217;ll post them in a couple of days.</p>
<p>In case you were wondering, it turns out I&#8217;m not different from the other CMS nerds. I&#8217;m also a Martini. If you have the urge, you can <a href="http://quiztweet.com/quizzes/250/take">play the CMS Quiz here</a>. And if you&#8217;re really impressed or truly horrified by the result it gave you, please leave a comment.</p>
<h3>Some Beers</h3>
<p>If you don&#8217;t live near London, you can stop reading now. Maybe do the <a href="http://quiztweet.com/quizzes/250/take">quiz </a>again. However, if you do live near London and you&#8217;re still reading, I figured I might as well plug the <a href="http://www.meetup.com/London-CMS/">Last Thursday CMS </a>drinks. A few people get together over some beers and talk about Content Management, the web industry and other random things. We meet on the last Thursday of every month. It is a bit like the <a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.cms.cms-forum.general/255">CMS/Pub/London</a> drinks we used to do about 5 years ago. If you&#8217;d like to find out more, have a look at <a href="http://www.meetup.com/London-CMS/">Meetup.com Event</a>. Everyone is welcome. The only rule (especially for CMS vendors) is no hard selling please. Any attempt to sell anything to anyone must be preceded by buying a round of drinks for everyone within earshot. Note that although one of the organisers works for <a href="http://www.squiz.net/">Squiz.Net</a>, the event is in no way affliated with or sponsored by any vendor.</p>
<p>So far there have been about 5 meetings, and they&#8217;ve been good fun. Hope to see some more of you there for interesting discussions. By the way, did you know that there is a <a href="http://freebeer.org/blog/label/">Free Beer </a>published under a Creative Commons License? That&#8217;s free as in speech, not free as in beer.</p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Freebeer_nz.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-780 alignnone" title="Freebeer_nz" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Freebeer_nz.jpg" alt="Freebeer_nz" width="500" height="132" /></a></p>
<h3>A Celebrity Visit</h3>
<p>Some breaking news. There is going to be a <a href="http://twitter.com/janusboye/statuses/2342873999">Danish celebrity</a> having some beers in London on July 2 &#8211; that&#8217;s next Thursday. <a href="http://twitter.com/janusboye/statuses/2342873999">Come along</a> and get a beer and an autograph. The Danes don&#8217;t make beer, but if they did, it would probably be the best beer ever.</p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-779" title="Danish Beer" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/denmark_standard.jpg" alt="Danish Beer" width="298" height="224" /></p>
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		<item>
		<title>A FatWire In Shining Armour</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/06/15/a-fatwire-in-shining-armour/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/06/15/a-fatwire-in-shining-armour/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:09:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[autonomy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interwoven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kapow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[migration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opentext]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vamosa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=754</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An interesting play by FatWire. Our knights in shining armour have heard the shrill cries of distress from the damsels stuck at the top of Tower Vignette and Tower Interwoven and have gallantly offered to migrate them away to the safety of Castle FatWire for free. The name of the package (FatWire Rescue Program) implies the damsels are in serious trouble. Maybe this is a marketing stunt, maybe it is a genuine way for customers to save time and money.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>Nobody to rescue me,<br />
Nobody would dare,<br />
I was going down for the last time,<br />
But by His mercy I&#8217;ve been spared<br />
- SAVED</p></blockquote>
<p>An interesting play by <a title="Fatwire" href="http://www.fatwire.com/">FatWire</a>. Our knights in shining armour have heard the shrill cries of distress from the damsels stuck at the top of Tower Vignette and Tower Interwoven and have gallantly offered to migrate them away to the safety of Castle FatWire for free. The name of the package (<span style="color: #000000;">FatWire Rescue  Program) implies the damsels are in serious trouble. </span>According to the <a title="press release" href="http://www.fatwire.com/cs/Satellite?c=FWText&amp;childpagename=FW%2FLayout&amp;cid=1218037054147&amp;p=1218036432307&amp;packedargs=cname%3DFatWire%2BLaunches%2BRescue%2BProgram%2Bfor%2BVignette%2Band%2BInterwoven%2BWeb%2B%26ulclass%3Dapproach-list&amp;pagename=FW%2FWrapper">press release</a>, they have a lot to worry about:</p>
<blockquote><p>This limited-time program enables organizations that are constrained by the rigidity of their current <strong>legacy</strong> WCM products, or concerned about the future direction of their current WCM vendor</p></blockquote>
<p>I love the sneaky use of the word legacay here. Vignette and Interwoven are suddenly legacy simply because they&#8217;ve been bought by OpenText and Autonomy respectively? Looking forward to seeing a response from VIGN/OTEX and IWOV/AU.  Interwoven is the <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&amp;STORY=/www/story/06-15-2009/0005043538&amp;EDATE=">fastest growing ECM vendor</a> and Vignette, despite recent troubles, are still fighting and releasing some cool new things. They certainly aren&#8217;t legacy in my books.</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/huge.65.325914.JPG"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-755" title="A Knight In Shining Armour" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/huge.65.325914.JPG" alt="A Knight In Shining Armour" width="450" height="337" /></a></span>It is going to be cheap and painless to migrate. No license costs! Woot! The <a title="press release" href="http://www.fatwire.com/cs/Satellite?c=FWText&amp;childpagename=FW%2FLayout&amp;cid=1218037054147&amp;p=1218036432307&amp;packedargs=cname%3DFatWire%2BLaunches%2BRescue%2BProgram%2Bfor%2BVignette%2Band%2BInterwoven%2BWeb%2B%26ulclass%3Dapproach-list&amp;pagename=FW%2FWrapper">press release</a> tells us that</p>
<blockquote><p><span style="color: #000000;">The program enables customers of these recently acquired companies to upgrade to FatWire’s industry-leading solutions at no license cost, when they employ FatWire’s proven migration tools and services that reduce the risk and increase the speed of migration.<br />
</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Oh, wait, maybe it isn&#8217;t that cheap at all. Our knight comes with strings attached. You need to use FatWire&#8217;s migration tools. These come in the form of partnerships with </span><span style="color: #000000;"><a title="Vamosa" href="http://www.vamosa.com/">Vamosa</a> and <a id="q5ww" title="Kapow" href="http://www.kapowtech.com/">Kapow</a>, two heavy hitters in the world of automated content migration. My first observation here is that these two, while both offering an excellent service, normally compete with each other. So I&#8217;d be interested in learning more about the way a company (or FatWire) decides which of the two products to run with. My second observation is that both of these products can come with a reasonably large price tag. I presume the model here is that FatWire will take some cut of the migration cost in return for referring customers to Vamosa or Kapow.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The other piece of the revenue pie will come from the associated implementation services, either from <a href="http://www.fatwire.com/cs/Satellite/Page/Main/Services/Services">FatWire Professional Services</a> or an implementation partner. As Irina mentioned earlier today, <a href="http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/implementing-a-cms-costs-more-than-buying-a-cms/">implementing a CMS costs more than buying a CMS</a>. And what if it isn&#8217;t only a CMS in the mix. For example, you might have <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/06/omg-open-text-buy-grandpa-vignette/">Vignette Portal</a> in there too. Or one of <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/08/a-date-with-autonomyinterwoven/">Autonomy Interwoven&#8217;s many other products</a>. FatWire don&#8217;t have a <a href="http://www.fatwire.com/cs/Satellite/Page/Main/Products">product suite</a> to replace all of these components quite yet, so this offer seems to focus primarily on customers that only use the WCM product from their current vendor.</span></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know enough about this offering to guess whether this migration will only cover the content management and migration aspects. Any delivery side &#8220;migration&#8221; will involve a significant amount of work. Maybe FatWire already have tools in place that can either statically deploy the same files generated by a baked Interwoven site, or replace the Vignette/Interwoven API with the FatWire one for fried sites.  All three products have a Java API so at least we don&#8217;t need to worry about language-level changes too.</p>
<p>Maybe this is a marketing stunt. I received my email from FatWire marketing as the announcement was made. But maybe it <span style="color: #000000;">is a genuine way for customers to save time and money if they are planning to migrate from their current platform. FatWire is a solid choice (Forrester just patted them on the back in the <a href="http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/wave&amp;trade%3B_web_content_management_for_external_sites,/q/id/48024/t/2">WCM for External Sites</a> wave) and the content migration products are industry leaders.<br />
</span></p>
<div id="attachment_757" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 368px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ForresterWaveResults.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-757" title="Forrester Wave" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ForresterWaveResults.jpg" alt="The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For External Sites, Q2 2009 " width="358" height="388" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For External Sites, Q2 2009 </p></div>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">If you are considering this option, I&#8217;d love to hear more from you once you know the costs involved and how the process will operate. They are many ways that this could work, and it&#8217;s all going to come out in the wash.</span></p>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 299px; width: 1px; height: 1px;">
<h2 id="post-1144"><a rel="bookmark" href="http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/implementing-a-cms-costs-more-than-buying-a-cms/">Implementing a CMS Costs More Than Buying a CMS</a></h2>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Clash of the CMS Titans</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/04/01/clash-of-the-cms-titans/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/04/01/clash-of-the-cms-titans/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:31:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ECM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interwoven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meme]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opentext]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oracle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tridion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=346</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Vignette have posted a new set of questions, which they've called the "Enterprise Web Content Management (WCM)" Meme. This takes the CMS Vendor Meme to the next level. Will there be blood?]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>Dear landlord,<br />
Please don&#8217;t dismiss my case.<br />
I&#8217;m not about to argue,<br />
I&#8217;m not about to move to no other place.<br />
Now, each of us has his own special gift<br />
And you know this was meant to be true,<br />
And if you don&#8217;t underestimate me<br />
I won&#8217;t underestimate you.<br />
- DEAR LANDLORD</p></blockquote>
<p>So, the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/17/celebrity-cms-deathmatch/">CMS Vendor Meme</a> has come and, it seems, gone. 20 vendors of all sizes joined and in provided us with some valuable insights. Not to mention a list of <a href="http://gilbane.com/blog/2009/03/content_management_vendors_on_twitter.html">vendors to follow on Twitter</a>. Interestingly, all of the &#8220;Enterprise&#8221; vendors claimed the questions weren&#8217;t really suitable for them.</p>
<p>As promised, Vignette have posted a new set of questions, which they&#8217;ve called the &#8220;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=66185026034&amp;id=51429368686&amp;index=0">Enterprise Web Content Management (WCM)</a>&#8221; Meme. Personally, I don&#8217;t really like the WCM abbreviation for this and so I&#8217;d suggest we call it the #ECMMeme, even if it is quite focussed on the web part of ECM and ignores many of the dimensions of classic ECM.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ecmmilitia.com/store/shirts.php"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-347" title="Buy Your Meme Shirt!" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/tanktop_ecm_lg.jpg" alt="Buy Your Meme Shirt!" width="443" height="332" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;m not sure if the vendors will respond to this one as readily as they did the last. The first one was certainly a brilliant, original idea. I think this is great, but there is a chance that it could be considered the start of what <a href="http://twitter.com/kirstenpetra">@kirstenpetra</a> calls &#8220;an ongoing &#8216;meme-off&#8217;&#8221;. I for one hope that they do respond.</p>
<p>Onto the questions. They cover traditional Content Management, but some stray into delivery services and products such as the delivery portal and social media solutions. They feel quite &#8220;By Vignette, For Vignette&#8221; and lack the authority of the last meme as those questions were drawn up by a trusted third party in Kas Thomas. Have a read of <a href="http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/vignette-and-its-enterprise-wcm-vendor-meme-really/">Irina Guseva&#8217;s thoughts</a> on this.</p>
<p>I remember a long long time ago doing plenty of CMS selection exercises that ended up with Vignette against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadvision">Broadvision </a>(remember them!). Back then, Broadvision offered a whole range of products, while I favoured Vignette as they were &#8220;just a CMS&#8221; and &#8220;focussed on the core competencies of the product&#8221;. How times have changed, with every major vendor becoming an End-to-End eBusiness Solution.</p>
<p>A few additional questions I&#8217;d have like to have seen:</p>
<ul>
<li>The different products in our offering are fully integrated, and feel like they are part of the same family</li>
<li>Our products are easy to upgrade, with most customers running on the latest version</li>
</ul>
<p>Vignette have tagged Interwoven, Fatwire, SDL Tridion, Oracle, Day &amp; OpenText &#8211; three of which didn&#8217;t reply to the first meme. Interesting that no-one is bothering to tag Microsoft. And does anyone count SAP as an ECM vendor these days?</p>
<p>And just so you know, you can actually comment on their FaceBook page. You just need to be a fan of Vignette!</p>
<p>Game on.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Dog Food, CMS Accessibility and a Nice Surprise</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/03/18/dog-food-cms-accessibility-and-a-nice-surprise/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/03/18/dog-food-cms-accessibility-and-a-nice-surprise/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:39:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accessibility]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[front-end]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ibm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[percussion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[validation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.wordpress.com/?p=118</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Now that we know most vendors use their own product for their site, we test the home pages for many major vendors. We need to ask why so few of them have markup that validates and discuss possible reasons.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>You&#8217;ve been avoiding the main streets for a long, long while<br />
The truth that I&#8217;m seeking is in your missing file<br />
What&#8217;s your position, baby, what&#8217;s going on?<br />
Why is the light in your eyes nearly gone?<br />
- SOMETHING&#8217;S BURNING, BABY</p></blockquote>
<p>Following on from the wonderfully entertaining &#8220;CMS Vendor Meme&#8221; (a.k.a. the &#8220;<a href="http://jonontech.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/celebrity-cms-deathmatch/">CMS Celebrity Deathmatch</a>&#8220;), I&#8217;d like to drill slightly deeper into Item #9 &#8211; Dog Food. For the uninitiated, &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one&#39;s_own_dog_food">Eating your own dogfood</a>&#8221; means that the vendor uses their own software to run their own site. All of them do, according to the responses to the Vendor Meme so far, although not always on the very latest version.</p>
<p>So, do the vendors&#8217; sites, written on technology which is sold as fully accessible and built by experts (at least, one hopes the vendor has experts), actually produce markup that validates? I guess the first question one has to ask is does it matter if a site is accessible. And the answer: Oh yes. For many many reasons which I&#8217;m not going to go into here. I understand that<a href="http://validator.w3.org/"> W3C validation </a>≠ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility">Accessibility</a>, but that is another discussion for another time too. Validation is still an important part.</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 460px"><a href="http://www.cvwdesign.com/txp/article/242/web-standards-in-the-bedroom"><img title="XXXHTML by Rob Cottingham" src="http://www.cvwdesign.com/txp/images/116.gif" alt="XXXHTML by Rob Cottingham" width="450" height="399" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">XXXHTML by Rob Cottingham</p></div>
<p>I know that it isn&#8217;t always easy to make complex site that validate. Where I work, sites should always validate when they&#8217;re launched &#8211; it is part of the User Acceptance Criteria. However, we are guilty of back-sliding when sites are in support /maintenance mode, and editors break things when abusing Rich Text Editors. Shock, horror &#8211; there are still a lot of CMS products that allow editors to enter broken markup.</p>
<p>WordPress do a pretty good job. <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://jonontech.com/">This blog validates</a> at the time of writing, no thanks to me. Admittedly, I did have to fix the <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/">FeedBurner </a>RSS link which left the closing slash from the img tag, but that wasn&#8217;t WordPress&#8217;s fault.</p>
<p>I digress. I thought I&#8217;d test the home pages of a few major commercial Web CMS vendors &#8211; those listed as Enterprise or Upper Tier in the latest <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/CMS/Report/Vendors/">CMS Watch Web CMS Report</a>. I tested the vendor home page, which may not be CMS related at all, especially for the big boys. The results are tabulated below. The numbers below were generated on 18 March between 21:00 and 23:00 GMT using the W3C HTML Validator. I didn&#8217;t check the CSS or Feeds, just the markup. Both encoding and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Declaration">doctype </a>were left on &#8220;Detect Automatically&#8221;. I didn&#8217;t look into the details of the errors. The ones with a large number of errors might actually only be a few errors that are repeated, or have knock-on effects.</p>
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Vendor</th>
<th>URL Checked</th>
<th>Detected DOCTYPE</th>
<th>Number of Errors (2009/03/18)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>EMC Documentum</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://uk.emc.com">uk.emc.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>121</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span style="color:#339966;"><strong><span style="color:#000000;">IBM</span></strong></span></td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.ibm.com">www.ibm.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Strict</td>
<td><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;">0</span></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Autonomy Interwoven</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.interwoven.com">www.interwoven.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>254</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>OpenText</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.opentext.com">www.opentext.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>205</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Oracle</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.oracle.com">www.oracle.com</a></td>
<td>HTML 4.0 Transitional</td>
<td>39</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Vignette</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.vignette.com">www.vignette.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>39</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CoreMedia</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.coremedia.com">www.coremedia.com</a></td>
<td>HTML 4.01 Transitional</td>
<td>49</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span style="color:#000000;"><strong>Day</strong></span></td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.day.com">www.day.com</a></td>
<td>HTML 4.01 Strict</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Fatwire</strong></td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.fatwire.com">www.fatwire.com</a></td>
<td>HTML 4.01 Transitional</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Alterian Mediasurface</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.mediasurface.com">www.mediasurface.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Strict</td>
<td>41</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Percussion</strong></td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.percussion.com">www.percussion.com</a></td>
<td>XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SDL Tridion</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.tridion.com">www.tridion.com</a></td>
<td> XHTML 1.0 Strict</td>
<td> 41</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Microsoft</td>
<td><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.microsoft.com">www.microsoft.com</a></td>
<td> XHTML 1.0 Transitional</td>
<td>177</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The nice surprise mentioned in the title is IBM. Big Blue really does care about standards, and maybe Java is going to safe place should the SUN deal materialise. Hats off to Fatwire, Day and Percussion who get really close and clearly try to ensure the markup is good. The other 9 out of 13, however, don&#8217;t look so promising.</p>
<p>So, what am I saying? I am not for a second implying that the products that do badly in the above are &#8220;not accessible&#8221;. I just think the question we always see in an CMS Selection RFP is incorrect. Asking about an accessible editing interface (which comes out of the box) makes sense. Asking about an accessible front end (which is different for every implementation) makes no sense at all.</p>
<p>So, instead, the question on the RFP should be &#8220;<strong><em>Does your CMS allow the developer full control over the markup. If not, please specify where</em></strong>?&#8221;  Now, it is highly unlikely that any product can answer an unequivocal &#8220;yes&#8221; to this. For example, every .NET based product mandates that a FORM tag containing the VIEWSTATE exists. However, this does not cause a problem.</p>
<p>But as we add products into the solution, we hit more restrictions. Portals are notoriosuly bad at giving control. I promised myself I wouldn&#8217;t rant about Portals for Public Facing Sites here, so I won&#8217;t. Many AJAX libraries (e.g. some JavaServer Faces implementations and ASP.NET AJAX nee ATLAS) give you very little control at all. JavaScript libraries are normally pretty good.</p>
<p>I believe the problem in most of the examples in the table above could be rooted in one of:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The technology makes valid markup impossible</strong> &#8211; I think this could probably be worked around in many cases. But sometimes you simply can&#8217;t get around the bad markup you&#8217;re given.</li>
<li><strong>Nobody knew it mattered &#8211; </strong>Ignorance isn&#8217;t an excuse any more.</li>
<li><strong>Someone decided it wasn&#8217;t important</strong> &#8211; this doesn&#8217;t need further comment. Give them some concrete shoes and send them for a swim.</li>
<li><strong>There isn&#8217;t time and/or budget to ensure it validates</strong> &#8211; in some cases it is more expensive to create a validating, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Enhancement">progressively enhanced</a> site. However, in many cases I believe it is cheaper to do it properly.</li>
<li><strong>The front end team lacked the skill </strong>- This I can believe. Hopefully this improves with time. Many server side developers aren&#8217;t any good at client side work. I know I fall into this camp. When I was coding, CSS didn&#8217;t exist, HTML still had TABLES in it and the BLINK tag was cool. I&#8217;m not allowed anywhere near the front end code where I work. We have professionals for that.</li>
<li><strong>Showing off with fancy client side technologies </strong>- There are far too many sites that use Flash/AIR/Silverlight for no good reason, without providing an accessible fallback. Now this won&#8217;t affect the W3C validation, but it annoys the hell out of me. Use these technologies where they are needed, not for the sake of it.</li>
</ul>
<p>I&#8217;m sure there are other reasons I&#8217;ve missed out, and I&#8217;d love to hear about them. I believe the responsibility for convincing management of the importance of doing things properly lies with us, the technologists. And if they seem not to care too much about accessibility, play the Increased Revenue cards (SEO, multi-device target market, maintainable code, integration with as yet unknown services, working on <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/beta/">IE8</a> and other future browsers, etc) instead.</p>
<p>And once again, nice one IBM for winning the Home Page test. I apologise for my behaviour in some meetings in the past about the markup from WebSphere Portal. But let&#8217;s not get complacent &#8211; it would be nice if you could make the deeper pages in the site validate too.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE</strong>: Does anyone have the energy to publish a similar test for the mid-range and Open Source vendors? I might do it in a week or three if no-one else does it first.</p>
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		<title>Celebrity CMS Deathmatch &#8211; The Beginning</title>
		<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/03/17/celebrity-cms-deathmatch/</link>
		<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/03/17/celebrity-cms-deathmatch/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:38:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alfresco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coremedia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dotcms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ektron]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[escenic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interwoven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jahia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magnolia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[midgard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nuxeo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opentext]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.wordpress.com/?p=102</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A post from Kas Thomas at CMS Watch has inspired Day to start an intriguing CMS fight. I think everyone is going to wade in. This is Part I of the story.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan"><p>&#8220;There must be some way out of here,&#8221; said the joker to the thief,<br />
&#8220;There&#8217;s too much confusion, I can&#8217;t get no relief.<br />
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,<br />
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.&#8221;<br />
- ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER</p></blockquote>
<div><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong><strong>Part 1: The Beginning<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color:#810081;"><br />
</span></span>Part 2: <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/21/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-2/">The Meme Spreads</a><br />
Part 3: <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/25/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-3/">The Aftermath</a></strong></strong></span></span></div>
<div><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong><strong><br />
</strong></strong></span></span></div>
<div><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong></strong></span></span><em></em></div>
<div>Now it is really getting interesting. When I first read the &#8220;<a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1518-A-reality-checklist-for-vendors">A reality checklist for vendors</a>&#8221; article by Kas Thomas, I didn&#8217;t pay too much attention. Seemed like a nice article about common sense. The article outlines 15 items in a checklist which Kas believes all CMS Vendors should comply with. But it seems to have sparked off something which has a whole load of potential.</div>
<p>CMS Vendor Day has responded to this in the &#8220;<a href="http://dev.day.com/microsling/content/blogs/main/cmsvendormeme.html">CMS Vendor Meme</a>&#8220;, and challenging other vendors to do the same. They &#8220;called out&#8221; the vendors they consider to be their main competitors &#8211; <a href="http://www.opentext.com/blogs/ecm_briefs/index.html">OpenText</a>, <a href="http://blog.coremedia.com/">Coremedia</a>, <a href="http://interwovenblog.com/">Interwoven</a>, <a href="http://www.vignette.com/">Vignette</a>, <a href="http://www.fatwire.com/cs/Satellite/Page/Main/Ideas">Fatwire</a>, <a href="http://blogs.nuxeo.com/">Nuxeo</a>, <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/home/news.html">Magnolia</a> and <a href="http://www.tridion.com/">Tridion</a>. I won&#8217;t repeat the rules of the challenge, which are outlined on all of the vendor sites linked to below. But the general idea is that the vendor rates their own product against the 15 categories, giving themselves a total score out of 45.</p>
<p>This feels like it is done in a very different spirit to the recent <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/sxsw-web-content-management-system-showdown-update-2-004124.php">CMS Showdown at South by Southwest</a>. The SXSW event involved three Open Source Vendors (Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress) competing in a good humoured manner, with the general feeling being that all three entries, and Open Source CMS in general, were the winners. The Day Challenge feels more like a declaration of war.</p>
<p>I think I really like this. According to the Daily Show tonight (the UK is a day behind the US), &#8220;angry popularism is all the rage&#8221;. I think that the community should put pressure onto the other vendors to respond to the checklist, and let the <a href="http://ebooks.ebookmall.com/ebook/234923-ebook.htm">Herd </a>decide how honest the answers are. Any vendor that elects not to rise to the challenge should be given a mental black mark. The response from Day is shown below. Very cheeky giving themselves a 3 star rating for Reality and justifying it with a smiley face only.</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 426px"><img title="Day's Self Evaluation" src="http://dev.day.com/microsling/content/blogs/main/cmsvendormeme/docroot/score.png" alt="" width="416" height="254" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Day&#39;s Self Evaluation</p></div>
<p>I&#8217;m not for a second saying that I agree with Day&#8217;s self evaluation, but that isn&#8217;t the point. It&#8217;s quite brave of them to put their thoughts out there. It didn&#8217;t take Open Source Vendor <a href="http://betterfasterbigger.blogspot.com/2009/03/cms-vendor-meme.html">Magnolia </a>long to trump the 40/45 from Day with 42/45.</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 345px"><img title="Magnolia Responds" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_W30bQac4R1s/Sb_ZSqVBIpI/AAAAAAAADmo/RsfUOBVG_M8/s400/vendor+challenge+score.jpg" alt="Magnolia Responds" width="335" height="308" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Magnolia Responds</p></div>
<p>Magnolia also tagged <a href="http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/luissala/2009/03/17/the-cms-vendor-meme/">Alfresco</a> (and many other open source vendors), who responded extremely quickly. They decided (wisely) that the Magnolia score was verging on the incredible, so toned it down a notch giving themselves an average 41/45. I like their honesty on the Help &amp; Docs front. [ <strong>UPDATE</strong>: They have just lowered their score to 40. ]</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 349px"><img title="Alfresco's Response" src="http://s3.alfrescodemo.com/luis-blog/CMSVendorMeme.png" alt="" width="339" height="306" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Alfresco&#39;s Response</p></div>
<p>I&#8217;m sure that this thread has a lot of life in it left, and hopefully more vendors will join in and someone will tabulate the results. And the crowds will tear into any responses they feel are not as true as they could be. Maybe the vendors could go a step further and put some votes or surveys on their sites to see if the users believe their answers. I am really hoping on of the big 3 (OpenText, Interwoven or Vignette) respond to this. I think this kind of honesty (if it is honesty) is more difficult for them.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m going to leave it at that for now. But I am wishing that I hadn&#8217;t stuck with my Bob Dylan song lyrics theme for post entries, and could use something like Guns and Roses&#8217; <a href="http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/guns_n_roses/get_in_the_ring-lyrics-28083.html">Get In The Ring</a>.</p>
<p>Tagging with Meme ID: <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&amp;q=9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf">9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf</a></p>
<div><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong><strong>Part 1: The Beginning<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color:#810081;"><br />
</span></span>Part 2: <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/21/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-2/">The Meme Spreads</a><br />
Part 3: <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/25/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-3/">The Aftermath</a></strong></strong></span></span></div>
<p><em><span style="color:#339966;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong><strong></strong></strong></span></span></em></p>
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