Vignette Layoff? Apply for a Job With Alfresco

Continuing on the sad times for Vignette theme before it’s time to pop that Moet & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot (or whatever it is you’re popping) and welcome 2009 😉

Interestingly (or quite predictably so) enough, Alfresco has been head-hunting for former and soon-to-be-former VIGN employees since April. Alfresco’s Matt Asay has been unashamedly recruiting current and former Vignette-rs to join his “open-source-grass-is greener” own employer, as well as Magnolia and Acquia.

All those talented and fab sales engineers and consultants have to go somewhere, right? Time to update your CV and send it over to what is now competition? Not that I agree with Asay that open source is the answer. Many truly commercial and proprietary Web CMS vendors are still staying afloat, too.  SaaS CMS is getting quite a lot of attention lately as well.

Unless, of course, Open Text continues its acquisition mania and grabs VIGN (but why, they already have the WCM-centric RedDot)…  Or any other ECM vendor… Anyone else needs a WCM addition to the product portfolio?

Not that I don’t feel bad for the Big V folks in fear of losing their jobs… What concerns me is that, as of late, I have been seeing more of moving-away-from-Vignette CMS implementations and sales vs. buying and migrating to Vignette ones. Even in tough economic times like these, it would be kinda sad to see VIGN disappear from the WCM landscape.

Vignette Marks 2008 Year-End With Layoffs

Vignette seems to find itself again in a downward spiral (and has been for quite some time now). After the not-so-exciting Q3 2008 results announced in October (with net loss of $4.3 million), December brought even more not-so-pleasant news. Right before Christmas, VIGN laid off an unconfirmed number of employees.

The Austin American – Statesman (Austin is location of Vignette’s HQ) reported that Vignette’s “spokeswoman Melanie Brenneman said less than 10 percent of the company’s employees were affected.” Out of the total number of Vignette employs — about 600 worldwide — this is still a considerable amount of people hearing “Merry Xmas. BTW, you’re fired!”

Interesting discussion led by (supposedly) former Vignette employees and onlookers is on Statesman’s site in the comments section.  One commenter said “They basically shut down the entire development team for imaging products.”

Vignette Media was one of the latest product releases from the big V. It was *so* media-attention worthy, I covered it twice. Later on, not quite a product but a PS bundle was also announced in a possible attempt to smooth out end-of-year financials – QuickStart. Still didn’t seem to make much difference.

No question, this economy is challenging for many Web Content Management vendors. Vignette: a WCM vendor in transition? Acquisition target (Open Text could grab it, but it already has a WCM wing in the form of RedDot)? Or…

TradingMarkets.com keeps going back and forth on recommending and then not recommending to buy VIGN stock.

Spruced-up Zimplit CMS 1.1: One Small Step Forward

Just in time for stocking stuffing, the (mainly) open source Micro CMS designed for “normal people”? Yes, the simply put Zimplit! Just in time for stocking staffing, Zimplit released version 1.1 with four improvements:

1. Website Menu Reordering
2. Theme Picker
3. Gallery Thumbnails
4. Editor Location Changer

In its nature, Zimplit CMS is not that far from blogging platforms, but still is positioning itself as a Web CMS. Oh well, there must be market for this solution — at least, in Estonia — or elsewhere in Europe.

Full article on CMSWire: Spruced-up Zimplit CMS 1.1: One Small Step Forward

SaaS ECM Gospel According to SpringCM

Right before the release of its shiny and new SpringCM 5.0, the vendor issued the “SaaS State of the Union” kind of address in the form of a whitepaper.  As biased (and, often, useless) as whitepapers usually are, I thought I’d poke fun at this one and add the (clearly missing) cons bits to the glowing approach of SpringCM’s SaaS ECM is the best way to go.

With SaaS CMS being a popular topic nowadays, every CMS vendor seems to have something to say about the Software-as-a-Service model and its hot-hotty-hot future. Enterprise CMS provider SpringCMis no exception. In a recent “SaaS vs. On-Premises Software” whitepaper, SpringCM highlights 12 reasons why SaaS can be a good choicefor a CMS prospect.  What SpringCM (understandably so) chooses to omit is the potential pitfalls of hosting your CMS off premises.  

Full article on CMSWire: SaaS ECM Gospel According to SpringCM

2009 Trends in SaaS Web Content Management

It is an exciting time for SaaS content management: both in the WCM and ECM spaces.  End of the year — logical time to reflect on the year passing by and trend out the year to come. 

I recently pondedred about the future of  SaaS Content Management myself. The Lamborghini of Web CMS researchers, CMS Watch, also announced their take on trends in SaaS Web Content Management for 2009 in conjunction with their 2009 Web CMS Report.

While CMS Watch acknowledges consistent growth in the acceptance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models, at the same time, Jarrod Gingras refers to major SaaS-based Web CMS vendors — Clickability, CrownPeak and OmniUpdate — as “relatively small players” that still need to evolve to meet the changing customer demands.

Major 2009 SaaS Web CMS Trends according to CMS Watch:

1. Customers Want More Than Just Software

2. Vendors Turn More to Implementation Partners

3. Vendors Pay More Attention to Developers’ Needs

Full article on CMSWire: 2009 Trends in SaaS Web Content Management

Open Text Embraces Recommind, Releases New eDiscovery Product

Open Text is in the full swing of things following a slew of announcements at the Open Text Content World conference. This time, it’s a new eDiscovery product in partnership with Recommind, a provider of enterprise search and eDiscovery solutions, to offer a new product called Open Text eDiscovery Early Case Assessment.

The solution promises to minimize the need for third-party processing and help control the high costs of legal reviews by culling irrelevant information before it goes for review by outside counsel.

Full article on CMSWire: Open Text Embraces Recommind, Expands eDiscovery Tool