I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got
- JUST LIKE TOM THUMB’S BLUES

Gather round, children. Let me tell you about my Dad. He’s a wonderful, smart man. He taught me to play chess when I was 3. He is also an orthopaedic surgeon, which means he fixes broken bones and things. He comes from a long line of doctors, which I broke when I turned out to be a computer geek. He worked for many many many years in government hospitals until, about ten years ago, he moved from the operating theatre to the courtrooms, working in the medico-legal world.

Here is how it works. Someone gets injured somehow. In South Africa where I grew up, it is normally a car accident. South Africa has one of the worst road safety records in the world. It is often whiplash. Don’t ever get my Dad started on whiplash. Seriously.

Anyway, the insurance companies need to reimburse the victim for medical bills, loss of earnings, psychological trauma and other goodies. And this is where it gets tricky – you need to put a dollar (or ZAR) value onto all of this. It is complicated even more when some victims (either fraudulenty, subconsciously or due to lawyer’s pressure) fake or exaggerate their situations.

Which is where the experts come in. Both the insurance fund lawyer and the victim’s lawyer need to ensure that they have medical experts on their benches. And here is the cool bit. All the senior orthopods in South Africa know and respect one another. Most of them will represent both the patient or the insurance fund – they don’t play favourite.

So the two doctors will sit in the courtroom, recognise each other, and think to themselves “Oh look, they’ve got Doctor {insert name here} . He’s a good guy who knows his shit and will fairly represent the situation.” And, more often than not, they’ll quickly come to a fair and equitable agreement. The doctors normally don’t even open their mouths in court. They just sit there like finely tuned bullshit detectors and only get involved when the bullshit levels rise. However, if either side lacks a respected expert, things can drag on a whole lot longer and end in a mess. Of course this isn’t always the case but, as I understand it, it is pretty close.

So what? Well here is my point. I’ve recently been engaging a lot of third parties product and service vendors. And I’ve been really fortunate to work with people from these companies that really really know what they’re doing. And, they seem to think I know what I’m doing. Which has made the entire process quick, painless and fair. Both sides know what a fair day rate for consultants is. Both sides know which products are real and needed for the solution, and can smell snakeoil a mile away.

So, the moral of the story. When engaging third parties, make sure that you have someone on your team that knows the industry backwards, and make sure the third party knows that you know. Secondly, make sure that the third party has someone that knows their industry backwards and doesn’t just sprout hot air.

You’ll save yourself a fuckload of time and stress. Trust me. I’m a Doctor’s son.

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.

You say my eyes are pretty and my smile is nice
Well, I’ll sell it to ya at a reduced price
You don’t understand it – my feelings for you
You’d be honest with me, if only you knew
- HONEST WITH ME

We’ve all read plenty of CMS Evaluation RFP response documents. And we’ve all sat through many a long CMS Vendor demo. Maybe it’s just me, but they’re all starting to look pretty similar. Most vendors say yes to nearly everything, and the top products have interfaces and patterns that are converging. Many experts are agreeing that having long lists of requirements doesn’t help anyone anyway. So, how do you differentiate between these things?

When picking a CMS, I think the actual product is only about half the story. The other half revolves around the intangibles including the vendor themselves, their support, their roadmap and priorities and, very importantly, how much you trust them. So, to mix things up a bit, why don’t you ask the vendors a few of these questions during your next RFP or Q&A session. When you interview a candidate for a job, you always throw in a few odd questions to keep them on their toes. Let’s do the same to the vendors.

1. Who was the last vendor to beat you in the last round of a selection exercise? Why do you think they won? – This doesn’t have a right answer, but every vendor has lost a few. It would be interesting to see how they answer this.
2. If, in a few years time, we decided to move away from your product, how would I go about migrating all my content into a new system? – I want a system with a nice content export and a vendor willing to admit it is a possibility.
3. How many active developers do you have on your developer forums? – This is something you can check. If you ask in the demo and you think they’ve made up a number, say “Show me”.
4. All of these are important, but please rate these in order of your priority: a) Product Features b) Performance and Stability c) Usability d) Security – Again, no correct answer. I’d expect most to say c) as customers give this as the biggest selection criteria. But still interesting to hear what they say after they’ve repeatedly said they’re all important.
5. How much would I expect to pay a contractor developer that is skilled with your CMS, and are they easy to find? – If a vendor says they don’t know, they’re probably talking horseshit.
6. Assuming your CMS license cost 10 groats, how many more groats would you guesstimate we need for our entire implementation? – I’d expect them to say somewhere between 10 and 40, depending on the project. But fun to hear what they say. Implementing costs more than buying.
7. Why are the URLs on your demo site/corporate site so ugly? – Most of the demo sites have crap, non-SEO friendly URLs. If the implementation of Friendly URLs is as easy as the vendor claims, what haven’t they done it on their own sites.
8. If we selected your CMS, how would you recommend we went about selecting an implementation partner? – Three kinds of answers here: a) we’ll build it for you b) we have an extensive partner network or c) we recommend Company XYZ. I’m skeptical of a), but even if you like that option it’s a good discussion to have with the vendor.
9. How important is accessibility to you, and why doesn’t your site (which is presumably built with your CMS) validate? – They almost never do. I did a W3C validation test here not so long ago. Most will blame the implementation. Say will say it wasn’t a requirement, which I don’t buy. They fact that they don’t validate 100% isn’t a disaster, but it has got to look like they’ve tried.
10. Your product also includes modules for analytics/search/community/collaboration/outbound email. When should I use these instead of the existing products I own for these, and what benefits do your products give? - Many vendors seem to use features that I wouldn’t consider core to Content Management in order to differentiate. I like my CMS to be focussed, but I’ll concede that sometimes getting other components as part of the same product might be interesting. But ask things like “So, how does your analytics compare with Omniture” and see what they say.

Even better, during the meeting you could have a screen running a Twitter search for the vendor’s name. You’ll see a fair bit of “Looking at XYZ” and “XYZ Industry News”. But you’ll also see a lot of  “A Pox on XYZ and all of their houses” from angry developers.

Assuming it isn’t illegal to ask this kind of thing, I’d love it if people gave it a try. Or do you already have similar questions you ask that I could add to the list? One day I might be sitting as the same meeting as you and we can both enjoy some questions we haven’t heard twenty times before.

He cocked his rifle
And began to shout,
“You’re that travelin’ salesman
That I have heard about.”
- MOTORPSYCHO NIGHTMARE

I work in a very cosmopolitan area of London. Our office is on Brick Lane , which is known for its curry houses, vibrant night life, art, fashion and live music. If I work late or have a couple of brews after work, it isn’t uncommon for someone dodgy to sneak up on me and say something like “I got some ‘ash man“, “Yo, want some pure bomb?“, “I have some LSD, wanna trip?” or “Dude, you wanna fly?“.

But I find all this far less annoying than the advances I repeatedly got at Internet World . “Pssst. Do you do Web Content Management?“. I’m not even sure I know what that means. Do I *do* content management? It’s always an annoying salesman sidling up to me and popping some flyer into my hand. Most of the time I just smile and walk on by but every now and again I stop of a chat and wish I hasn’t.

Now, I’m not into drugs. Drugs are bad. But at least the dealers know their products. These CMS Flyer guys seem to have very superficial (if any) understanding of their product, and always seem to be disappointed when it turns out I’m from a potential partner, not a potential customer with a cheque book. Some stands have girls in hot pants or tinkerbell outfits that look pretty, smile, give you a flyer and point you to their stand. But at least they don’t also start babbling about their products. The CMS Salesman say things that they don’t really understand like “Oh yes, it supports <something> perfectly”. Their products do everything. And they like to sell hard. And watch out for the licensing models that try to get you hooked first, then fleece you when you’re dependent on the “product”.

It seems that the CMS vendor stands have two different kind of salesman. They have the people that really know their stuff and are extremely interesting to talk to. These guys are pretty honest, and I can really engage with them and share war stories from the past. These are the guys I enjoying sharing a beer with, and all vendors have a few of them. They sell indirectly. But then there are the walking commission calculators that don’t seem to know much about their products or their industry at all. They might as well be selling cars or shoes. And every vendor seems to have a couple of them too. I know that times are hard and cold-calling (or proactive selling) is probably a necessary evil. But it’s an evil I’d rather avoid and one that make me get depressed about these shows. The smell of desperation in the air doesn’t make for good conversation.

If any of you have seen The Wire, you’ll also know it isn’t cool for rival drug gangs to be selling their product in the same place. Imaging four gangs selling from the four corners of a busy intersection. It would be pretty awkward, and get messy quickly. Yet this is exactly what happens at Internet World. Really convenient for people like me that want to see as many vendor demos as possible, but you do sometimes get the “How Dare You Also Speak To Our Competitor” evil-eye from across the way. Some of the sales guys also have their standard line for slagging off each competitor. Something like “Oh yes, XYZ is a good product. Unfortunately, they don’t have <feature> X or any support in <region Y>”. These are targetted and XYZ = the vendor from whose stand you were previously at seeing they know exactly where you’ve come from.

Another thing the dealers and CMS Vendors have in common is that they both refer their customers as “users”. One main difference between them is that the rival vendors at Internet World don’t shoot at each other when the competition gets tough. Sometimes I think it might be more fun if they did.

I’ll go to some bar room
And drink with my friends
- MOONSHINER

Today was Day 1 at Internet World 2009 a.k.a. #iwexpo for the Twitterrati. I got there nice and early, got myself a coffee and settled in to CMS Watch’s Theresa Regli talking about “Findability in a Web 2.0 World”. It is really difficult for the speakers to pitch these at the correct altitude as the audience is so varied, but I quite enjoyed the talk. My favourite part was when she called most marketing “crap”. A nice relaxed, honest presentation.

I spent most of the day chatting to vendors. Got the lowdown from (in alphabetical order) Alterian, CoreMedia, Ektron, EPiServer, EZ Systems, FatWire, FirstSpirit, Gomez, Hybris, Jadu, Kentico, OpenText (nee RedDot), SiteCore, Squiz and Vyre. I enjoyed my chat with Ian about the crazy CMS shit we all got up to in the late nineties.

I am alway interested to see who has the biggest stands at these events. A few years ago, Tridion were all over Internet World but they aren’t at here at all any more (maybe the SDL influence?). Vignette and EMC weren’t there either. Autonomy/Interwoven were there although their collateral isn’t merged yet. Last year, Vyre had the biggest stand but they’ve decided to spend their marketing budget elsewhere and went for a normal stand this year. EPiServer seemed to have biggest stand and the most people this year. SiteCore had a big one too. Peer 1, a dedicated hosting company, had a massive stand and some really hot chixors in hotpants who looked nothing at all like network engineers.

There was a stand labelled “Plone” which made no sense and smelled a bit like a systems integrator trying to pull a fast one. It was actually manned by a company called Netsight that were trying to hijack the Plone brand. I don’t like those guys at all. Don’t give them any money please. [UPDATE: I got this very wrong. They did actually get permission to do this and are, by all accounts, good guys. So you can give them money. See the comments below or the Netsight blog for their explanations. Apologies to Netsight, Matt and everyone else. Although I'd still be happier if the booth company name said Netsight. ]

One of the cool things about these events are the freebies. I couldn’t find many stress balls this time. I did pick up one from Kentico and another from SiteCore. I’ve recently defined a new approach to Vendor Selection Exercises, so thought I’d ask the expert (my 11 month year old son) to perform an one:

After much thought, he picked SiteCore over Kentico. I’m pretty convinced he went for the rugby ball shape over the football shape, but it might have been down to cost or the developer API. As soon as he can talk, I’ll let you all know. Sometimes vendor selections can be rather random.

I watched LBi’s Dom Collier and Jill Lloyd (and our friends at the British Red Cross) talking to a packed session about a recent LBi project. For the LBi groupies, Mikey and Mark are talking about British Gas tomorrow at 13:00. One of my personal favourite projects. Get along and have a listen to that one.

The highlight of the event was, for me, the drinks afterwards. Was lucky enough to share quite a few pints with Tony Byrne from CMS Watch, Lau Andreasen from JBoye, LBi’s very own Microsoft guru Riaz, wise man James Hoskins and some other top secret guests. I can’t think of many things I enjoy more than a few pints of Guiness and a chat about CMS. Hope we can do it again some time soon. And I hope Tony has a better photo than my crappy iPhone one below.

All in all, a really interesting and enjoyable day! More tomorrow. I love this game.

Well, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, they were the best of friends.
So when Frankie Lee needed money one day, Judas quickly pulled out a roll of tens
And placed them on a footstool just above the plotted plain,
Sayin’, “Take your pick, Frankie Boy, my loss will be your gain.”
- THE BALLAD OF FRANKIE LEE AND JUDAS PRIEST

Corruption in Tech Paradise?

Janus Boye recently posted a thought provoking article on his blog (Is corruption an issue?) which highlights various activities in the online industry which he considers extremely dodgy. He gives some examples of some goings-on which sound pretty shifty. After listing these issues, he goes on to say:

I’ve seen many examples of contracts being signed with a vendor that was not actually the best fit for the project. As my old mentor always used to say: “The best product never wins”. Perhaps he was referring to the fact that many buyers are corrupt.

This got me thinking. He is, of course, correct although the “influencing” happens at many different levels. At one level, the corruption and kickback can get rather big. About two years ago, the US Justice Department sued Accenture, Sun and HP for fraud relating to exactly this. Many technology companies were also looked at (including a few vendors I deal with), and IBM and PWC have each coughed up more than $2 million. I’ve got no idea if the case has ended, or still going on. EMC are being investigated at the moment for similar things, although the events in this case are 10 years old.

But I digress. Before I get to the dilemma, here’s a bit of background. I work for a “full service” digital agency. I’ll write a post on what the hell this means at some point in the future, but in a nutshell the client hires us to do everything. This includes strategy, branding, research, media, creative design, user experience work and a whole lot more. Importantly, it can also include vendor selections, site build, rollout, hosting and support. There are many good reasons to want to have a single supplier perform all of these tasks for you. There are also many reasons why it might be a terrible idea. Maybe another blog post on this later too. I strongly believe that in most cases the positives outweigh the negatives – or I wouldn’t be working where I do – and for the purposes of my argument I’ll trust you to humour me.

A Hypothetical Project

Phase 2 (the implementation) isn't defined yet

Picture the scene. Client X has an idea for a large public facing web site, and engages a full service agency. At the risk of horribly over-simplifying, someone needs to do the following:

• Step 1: Firm up the requirements to an appropriate level, help with a business plan and plan the project
• Step 2: Perform some user research and testing to ensure the idea is a valid one
• Step 3: Design the user experience (UX), and do the creative work
• Step 4: Pick the tools (for example WCMS, Search and Analytics) that will satisfy the requirement, design and UX
• Step 5: Build and launch the site, which includes integrating the selected third party products
• Step 6: Continually support and improve the site post launch

Now this seems like a sensible order of events to me, with the vendor selection exercises being performed as late in the project as is sensibly possible. The more information we have at point of vendor selection the better. On all large projects, these exercises are formal and involve the customer’s Procurement department, who exist partly to combat the very corruption mentioned by Janus.

The Dilemma

So here is the dilemma. Even assuming no vendor kickbacks, no bribery and pure hearts everywhere, how can the agency/systems integrator that is going to do the build possibly be impartial?

Regardless of size, all implementers will be more skilled with certain products. As it is highly unusual that only one of the candidate products in a vendor selection exercise is fit for purpose, the deciding factor will often be which can be implemented in the most low-risk manner. Which boils down to selecting a product that your implementer is confident enough to guarantee delivery on. If using a formal scoring system, and Product A which I know well and have implemented many times scores 86/100, while Product B, which I’ve never heard of, scores 90/100, it will be better for everyone if we pick Product A. A different integrator would correctly select Product B if they have the appropriate skills. Experience is everything in the CMS implementation game.

So does that mean it isn’t ethical to select the implementer before selecting the tool as the “best product” may not win? If that’s the case, many projects are going to suffer horribly. And full service agencies like mine wouldn’t be able to offer the full service with a clear conscience. We’d have three options (referring to the simplified steps earlier):

• Perform Steps 1-4. Do the upfront planning, research, requirements and design. We’d help the client select the objectively best tools for the job (which I believe we can do), and walk away. The client would need to find an expert in the tool(s) we recommend for the build, who’d we would need to work closely with. Even if it was a tool we knew very well, we still couldn’t build as is it may look like the tool was selected for the wrong reasons.
• Perform only Steps 5 and 6. Build the site only once someone else has defined the solution and selected the products. We do a fair bit of this, but this isn’t full service so the client still might end up with all the issues associated with The Agency Finger Pointing Game.
• Perform all Steps except Step 4, and pray to all that is holy that the non-corrupt, impartial vendor selection exercise decides on a tool we can actually use.

In the first two cases, we aren’t performing our “Full Service”. The third case simply wouldn’t work. So if you can’t select the implementation team before selecting your tools, how do we take heed of the advice of one of Janus’ Web Content Management Inconvenient Truths:

It’s the crew and not the tool – forget about finding the best CMS, but do work hard to find the best implementation crew

A Little Crisis of Confidence

Wait a sec. What does this actually mean? I’ve always taken it to mean you pick an Agency/Systems Integrator (the Crew) first and then let them pick the tool (the CMS) for you? And tell Procurement to look the other way? Is this ethical? Maybe it doesn’t mean that at all. Do you pick the Crew and the CMS as a team, using another consultant with no ulterior motives to help you? If this is the approach you choose, you need to select the CMS very early in the process. It certainly isn’t a workable model for an agency like mine. Or do you pick the CMS first (maybe just flip a coin?) and put the real effort into the selection of the crew around that CMS.

Hmmm. Confusing. I’m starting to wonder if we (agencies and systems integrators) should offer formal vendor selection exercises at all. And which does comes first: the Crew or the CMS? Answers on a postcard. Help. Somebody. Please.

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line.
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine.
- STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES AGAIN

The good folks at CMS Watch have released another version of their Subway Vendor Map. This thing is quite brilliant, and easy on the eye. In my office, the walls are plastered with pretty A2 posters of work created by our strategy, creative, experience, marketing and other teams. It’s great to be able to stick the Vendor Map post on the wall for the Tech Department – it looks much better than a technical architecture diagram. Click the diagram for a large version.

A few things I’ve also been wondering about.

• Does the order of items on a line mean anything? Why is Lithium closer to the centre than FaceBook? And poor WebTrends seems to be quite far into the suburbs.
• I find the size of the stations slightly misleading because, to me, they imply vendor size or market share. In reality, I think the size is simply proportional to the number of lines on which the vendor sits.
• I think the fact that this map shows Vendors could be misleading. Maybe it should show Integrated Product Suites or something similar. This becomes especially true when talking about the recent merged companies, such as Autonomy/Interwoven.
• I am glad to see EPiServer has made it onto the map (pretty close to Nichy), but I would have thought that they would also be on the Social Software and Collaboration line near Fatwire. They have a large community product, not just a Web CMS.
• I would like liked to see Vyre having a station on the DAM line, somewhere near Day. It is their heritage.
• We’re seeing a surprising number of clients talking about building their public facing sites using SAP Portal. The fact that SAP still isn’t on any CMS lines encourages me. Does anyone consider SAP / Netweaver a viable CMS / ECM option these days?
• The red SoCo line is a real jumble of vendors, which shows that the terminology is still being defined. Probably the only line on which the vast majority of the vendors don’t really compete with one another. I’m not sure why IBM is on there.
• I find the XML and Component Management line quite alien (my lack of understanding, not the report’s fault). I don’t see many of those products. I’d like to understand the rationale for including EMC and SDL Tridion on there ahead of other CMS vendors.

For those that like a bit of history, here is the version from 2008. Note the death of the Email Archiving And Management line, being replaced with XML Component Management. Is this because Email Archiving and Management is commodity now, or just not interesting any more? And the Social Software line suddenly has a whole lot more stations, which seems to be a sign of the times.