I began to think what a deed I’d done.
I grabbed my hat and I began to run.
I made a god run but I ran too slow;
They overtook me down in Jericho
- IN SEARCH OF LITTLE SADIE

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 is the juicy bit:

I’ve marked the guys that have improved a reasonable amount with a green line, indicating where they’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. Vignette and Nstein are also now part of the Open Text dot. Expect to see Day replaced by Adobe on here in 2011.

They’ve stuck with the same Big Three (Oracle, Automony/Interwoven and Open Text) in the lead as last time. Two other Big Guys – Microsoft and IBM – are inching closer to the Leader Quadrant. It does seem that to be near the top of the “ability to execute” axis, you need to be a massive company and have technology that is at least ten years old. I ranted about this last year, and the same thoughts apply. I should point out that this dimension is defined as “how well a vendor sells and supports its WCM products and services“, 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.

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’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.

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’ll see bigger gaps in 2011.

Last year, I noted that poor EPiServer had got a bit of a raw deal. That’s been fixed. I’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’re still in the quadrant of despair.

There are two new vendors on there, Atex and Dynamicweb. I’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.

Still no Open Source vendors on here, for the same revenue related reasons as last time. I’m not going over all that again.

Most of these little yellow dots haven’t drifted very far in a year – the report is pretty similar despite the M&A activity that has kept us bloggers busy. So pretty much a repeat of last year. And, like last year, here is hoping Gartner’s lawyers don’t serve me any takedown notices.

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.

I went into a restaurant
Lookin’ for the cook
I told them I was the editor
Of a famous etiquette book
- BOB DYLAN’S 115TH DREAM

So, 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. To start, here it is:

Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM Aug 2009

Who Is It For?

I think the introduction to the research is interesting. It starts by listing who would benefit from it:

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.

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’t thinking about long term CIO/Business/IT issues? Or is it because the world changes fast and we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads too much about things too far in the future?

CMS Watch had something to say about the report, mainly around the fact that it is too high level and strategic, and tends to ignore the “nitty gritty” details that can be so important. CMS Wire also talk about it here but they seem more happy with the whole thing.

As an aside, I also don’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&D investment.

Gartner vs Forrester

So, how much to the two big analyst firms agree? Let’s have a look at the Forrester Wave from a couple of months ago:

The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For External Sites Q2 2009

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.

Gartner covers a few more vendors. The three smaller .NET vendors (Ektron, SiteCore and EPiServer) all make the grade. I’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’ve seen. I’d have put them both ahead of Ektron, but maybe that’s just me. I guess EPiServer are only just starting their US invasion which might have penalised them a bit.

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’t pay analysts as much to include them on reports, but this couldn’t possibly be anything to do with it.

But What About Oracle?

Aaah, yes. The anomaly. Oracle UCM 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’s strengths as the ability to integrate with other Oracle products, including their CRM system. I’m not a fan of these so-called “tighter integrations” 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’d define as Web Content Management. Interestingly, Gartner’s three leaders are all vendors more traditionally associated with ECM. Price doesn’t seem to be a factor at all in the quadrant.

For the very observant among you, note that all the URLs to Gartner’s public “sponsored” research contain /oracle/, not just this one. So I wouldn’t get hung up on that – I presume it’s the platform they use? [UPDATE: See the comment about this below]

Niche Players: Good News and Bad News

Here’s the good news. Gartner advises that maybe a Niche Player is good for you:

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.

Here’s the bad news. I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to look at a Niche player according to Gartner’s metrics. They have no ability to execute, and no complete vision. Sound like a bunch of losers. In fact, in my view it’s probably better not to be on this MQ at all than to be a niche player. You’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’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 – would you rather be on this as a Niche Player, or not on it at all?

Note that in the MarketScope from 2008, both IBM and MediaSurface (Alterian) were “Cautions”. IBM have progressed safely into the Challenger zone while I’m not sure exactly what they’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’t the only vendor in this position.

I’ve decided I certainly prefer the research that doesn’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’t for me, I’m afraid. Maybe if Gartner published the complex calculations (and they are complex) that go on behind the scenes I’d trust it more.

So Why Trust Me?

Well, I’m Head of Development for the company that came first in the most recent Forrester Wave™: European Interactive Agencies — Web Design Capabilities. What more proof do you need?

Arthur Weasley: This is very, very peculiar. It seems as if your hearing is to be in front of the entire Wizengamot.
Harry Potter: I don’t understand. What has the Ministry of Magic got against me?

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.
- KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

Okay, I see. It all makes sense now.

Right, that settles it. Let’s dig a bit deeper. Which services and applications currently live in the Cloud (again, from Wikipedia, which is really a good a place as any for this):

• SaaS Applications such as Google Apps, Salesforce – they’re in monster data centers.
• Hosted Social Networking Platforms, such as FaceBook – okay, another monster data center.
• Storage, such as Amazon S3 or Mobile me – more big data centers.
• Operating systems, such as Azure – Okay, so we can host our OS in monster data centers too and access it remotely. Hold on. Are we just going back to the dumb terminal/thin client model? Did we have The Cloud many moons ago and let it slip when we installed big fat operating systems on our home computers?

At least we’re seeing a pattern here. Excellent, we can make a definition – The cloud consists of big data centers with virtualisation. But these also allegedy live in the cloud:

• Peer-to-peer applcations, such as Skype or BitTorrent – now these are the opposite. Not centralised at all. In this case, we’re The Cloud.
• Open services such as OpenID – this is allegedly a “Cloud Service”. It’s distributed too. I can pick my provider.
• Proprietory services such as Google Maps or PayPal – again, “Cloud Services”. Sounds like a Cloud Service is anything that is accessed directly from a client’s browser as part of a mash-up. Server-to-server communication isn’t sexy enough for The Cloud.
• Google Analytics / Omniture / WebTrends – Yep, they must be Analytics in The Cloud. Client side JavaScript integration. Tick.
• What about Social Community in the Cloud, for example from Pluck ? JavaScript integration. Tick. But wait. Each Pluck client has their own hardware. It isn’t shared at all. Sorry, Pluck. You ain’t got no Cloud. Just racks and racks of tin.

Shock! Horror! It’s starting to sound like The Cloud is just another word for The Internet. You’ll be glad to know that many others are as confused as Larry and me. Richard Stallman , founder of the Free Software Foundation doesn’t get it. And Joel on Software, who rocks, doesn’t get it either. Get this, even the Cloud Computing Journal (CCJ) says it is all hype and agrees with Larry. They say:

The current fad of butchering the term “Cloud Computing” to bring sexy back to the *aaS (anything as a service) model is embarrassing. More embarrassing is the fact that I agree with Larry Ellison …

As Kas jokingly said to me on Twitter: You have to have a constant flow of new buzzwords in this business. Otherwise analysts can’t write”XYZ IsDead” articles 2 yrs later. Well I don’t want hype and buzzwords. I want standards. Maybe any protocol or standard with an HTTP binding is a Cloud Protocol? Wikipedia’s list of “Cloud Standards” is a joke at the time of writing. A mix of existing web standards and, well, nonsense: HTTP, XMPP, SSL, Atom, AJAX (what!?!), HTML 5, LAMP (somebody shoot me), XML, JSON, WebServices/REST (like they’re the same thing). What a mess that is. Maybe, just maybe, CMIS is going to give us Content In The Cloud.

Get it yet?

You may ask yourself, is anyone working on Cloud Computing standards? The same CCJ article states that:

C’mon, people. Don’t give into the generalist hype. Cloud computing is real. “THE Cloud?” Not so much.

Now I hear what he is saying, and there is some real work going on behind the scenes, but I don’t get what Cloud Computing really is either. The recent Open Cloud Manifesto seems very vague to me. It is by its own admission “meant to begin the conversation, not define it.” But what is the conversation it is meant to be starting? The Open Cloud Consortium is trying to do something but their website doesn’t explain much to me. They even have a testbed, but I don’t know what they’re testing. The Unified Cloud Interface Project is real and seems to be trying to merge Cloud Computing with the Semantic Web. I haven’t grokked this yet but it seems to me that if the Semantic Web standards (RDF/OWL/SPARQL) are losing out in the real world to Microformats , it’s going to be a while before any standards come out of this. There are many other expert groups that are putting their heads together and telling us that Cloud Computing is in its infancy and needs standards. But I’ve yet to find the detail outlining exactly what we’re trying to standardise. Whatever it is must be a pretty touchy subject, though, as different groups are already falling out with one another and refusing to endorse things.

It’s all too much for little old me. Doesn’t seem like The Cloud is going to help me much in the short term at all. So, what am I going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. I’m going to sit back and ignore The Cloud until some draft specifications start to emerge. Then I’m going to read them, fail to understand them, but understand what I’m failing to understand. And that’ll be a step in the right direction.

In this country, you gotta make the buzzwords first. Then when you get the buzzwords, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

UPDATE 24 April: Since posting this, some helpful experts have helped me enormously by helping to separate the wheat from the crap. The useful stuff is hard to find, so read the comments below. And follow @stevecla and @jamesurquhart on Twitter.

Dear landlord,
Please don’t dismiss my case.
I’m not about to argue,
I’m not about to move to no other place.
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don’t underestimate me
I won’t underestimate you.
- DEAR LANDLORD

So, the CMS Vendor Meme 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 vendors to follow on Twitter. Interestingly, all of the “Enterprise” vendors claimed the questions weren’t really suitable for them.

As promised, Vignette have posted a new set of questions, which they’ve called the “Enterprise Web Content Management (WCM)” Meme. Personally, I don’t really like the WCM abbreviation for this and so I’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.

I’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 @kirstenpetra calls “an ongoing ‘meme-off’”. I for one hope that they do respond.

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 “By Vignette, For Vignette” 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 Irina Guseva’s thoughts on this.

I remember a long long time ago doing plenty of CMS selection exercises that ended up with Vignette against Broadvision (remember them!). Back then, Broadvision offered a whole range of products, while I favoured Vignette as they were “just a CMS” and “focussed on the core competencies of the product”. How times have changed, with every major vendor becoming an End-to-End eBusiness Solution.

A few additional questions I’d have like to have seen:

• The different products in our offering are fully integrated, and feel like they are part of the same family
• Our products are easy to upgrade, with most customers running on the latest version

Vignette have tagged Interwoven, Fatwire, SDL Tridion, Oracle, Day & OpenText – three of which didn’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?

And just so you know, you can actually comment on their FaceBook page. You just need to be a fan of Vignette!

Game on.

Well, the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame,
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain.
- JOKERMAN

It’s been a busy year in Mergers and Acquisition land in the CMS and Search space. I’m always extremely worried about the future of a product that is acquired by a larger beast, and always interested to see whether they survive the acquisition. And the re-branding is fascinating. To summarise some of the recent activity:

• The death of the RedDot brand has been formally announced. So another memorable product name is going to vanish, becoming part of the not-so-catchy Open Text Web Solutions family. I would be surprised if we see the re-branded product on CMS Vendor Selection shortlists as often as we saw RedDot.
• Last month, Microsoft announced their plan for FAST ESP and FAST Search for SharePoint. There was silence for a while, but it looks like FAST does have a fighting chance. It does, however, beg the question: If SharePoint Search was as good as we thought, why did Microsoft acquire FAST?
• In January 2009, Autonomy announced that they would acquire Interwoven. Forrester use the word “swallows” in their recently released report. As a random aside, amazingly parts of the Forrester research site still appears to be running on Vignette 5 aka StoryServer! Gotta love the URL format. It seems like only yesterday that Autonomy and Verity merged into the uber-search company, but that was three years ago.
• Oracle is still going crazy, finalising their BEA deal last year. According to wikipedia, they are now bigger than IBM. The acquisition came with all of the items that BEA had formally acquired. Does anyone remember the Plumtree Corporate Portal, which looked set to be the next best .NET based portal, before becoming BEA Aqualogic Portal and vanishing (although still active, we’re told) into the Oracle family? And remember about 20 months ago when Stellent became Oracle Universal Content Management. Another catchy name. Stellent appears in the Middleware section on the Oracle site!

There was an interesting article in CMS Watch recently noting how many companies unimaginatively name their system after the product or company (Christening your ECM product). It is also interesting how the big vendors are following the Microsoft naming convention. More and more products are being called <Vendor Name> Content Management or <Vendor Name> [Content|Web|Enterprise] Solution. Maybe it is just me, but I find it extremely confusing. Especially now that the big players invariably have more than one product. For example, In July 2008, the Mediasurface group was acquired by Alterian. Immediacy CMS and Mediasurface became part of Alterian’s suite of products described as an “Enterprise Marketing Platform”. I love the fact that Alterian Corporate Edition is Immediacy, while Alterian Enterprise Edition is Mediasurface’s Morello. The description of the products on the Alterian Web Site is extremely uninformative – especially the technology section. I’d be interested if anyone can extract any information for the whole section. Also, sadly, the name Pepperio appears to have survived.

Finally, on the topic of CMS M&A, a thought on CMS companies buying agencies. Now I work for an agency, and find it slightly strange that some of our competitors are actually owned by vendors. About two years ago, Microsoft acquired Avenue A/Razorfish. Even more strangely, about a year ago, EMC (the same people that bought Documentum in 2003) aquired Conchango, a smaller UK based agency. While I appreciate that Conchango was bought to form part of the consulting division, the fact that they also promote CMS products that compete with their parent doesn’t gel for me. I wonder if all the Conchango employees have become Fans on the FaceBook page yet.

I’m not sure what the point of this posting was. I would say that, in summary, the best place to get a decent overview of the CMS offerings from a major vendor is probably a report such as those produced by CMS Watch. The second best place is probably wikipedia. And the worst place is probably the vendor’s site. And if you don’t believe me, try to figure out IBM’s Content Management offering from the IBM site.