Well said Stewart. But enterprise customers are looking for further end to end solutions due to the following reasons:
1) Out of the box realizable business benefits within their core processes; 2) Less custom development when automating processes within their business scope; 3) Easier maintenance; Within this scope except from a few industries (except new media, and publishing industry) customers and IT managers are realizing that CMS don't help that much for the price they pay (misguided cost effectiveness). Within the Portal industry pretty much the same (more or less) thing is happening. The 10/80 rule promoted by Portal vendors is not what most customers are looking for now. They want deeper integration and more value added features while minimizing custom development and maintenance costs. It's not surprising that both Plumtree and Vignette acquired complementary platforms for their products to further extend user experience on end solutions (collaboration Vs automated content management) and generic business applicability in both #1 and #2 areas (huge battle). But this would not make much of a difference IMO if it was not completed with a holistic view of content and CM and Access as IT Managers are realizing concerning business process automation beyond generic Content Management and Portal applicability. "Vignette, which to date has focused on the content-management niche, is readying a product strategy that would result in new document-management, E-learning, E-marketing, collaboration, and portal applications in the next 12 months, CEO Tom Hogan says." According to Information week: Expansion Beyond Content Management For Vignette http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021022S0003 The juice of Plumtree strategy seams to be pretty much the same. This is a thing that I've been advocating way over from a year now In this list. In a previous email from mine regarding Consolidation of CMS, KM focusing on the problems of the commercial CMS market and I argued the need for a renewed strategy. >I don't care less if something that works is KM or CM but I do care if >it does not work (as cost effective) regarding a specific business context. >The details for me is actually the development of modules like CM4Training, >CM4SupportCenters, CM4HelpDesk over CM from the point of view of marketing >and sales. But note that this will happen for sure if CMS vendors want to >fight against Open Source contenders and propose new valued added solutions >leveraging on existing investments (customers). This will be the next >generation CMS vendor. There are lot's of things left to be said regarding these moves from the point of view of business and the impact on the market landscape (both Open Source and Commercial). But one can figure out the rest I believe. Best regards, Nuno Lopes Independent Consultant PS: Think big, act local. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
