The Steve Jobs quote, absolutely – that was the point I was trying to make. In that engagement is about gaining credibility and therefore trust. Good point too about font, would people take this post seriously if I wrote it in Comic Sans?

Thanks!

@iantruscott

Thank you my friend – Let me know when you are next on our coast, I definitely owe you a Martini – just for shaming me into writing here!

Cheers!!

Ian

I’m hoping that this is just the start of a regular reason to come hopping back to Hovering Over The Back button…

Cheers, Mate…

~rr

BTW – It’s a shame SDL Tridion has dropped out of the CMS-Connected events – the last one turned out to be an excellent debate on proprietary versus open source and I was hoping the Adobe/SDL Tridion would be similarly enlightenning on areas such as multi-lingual customer engagement

Being a complete cynic, I always assumed Tridion paid a fortune to keep riding the top of the ‘Wave’

Sounds like CMS Connected are pulling in some healthy audiences for these debates even if, as you rightly say, it always is and always has been about the requirements.

Tiers in this business are fairly arbitrary and reflect an understandable need for analysts specifically and commentators in general to make broad comparisons. We both know that a customers needs are more sophisticated than that and what is hugely important for a specific client could throw up a short list that would bring together unlikely bed fellows if one were to look at the these analysts lists. I recall a huge amount of discussion when RSG tried to justify and explain the tier system a few years ago.

I like the way Forerster go about this, in terms of the way they are very clear about their criteria and show their working (as it were) and their customers can get access to the spreadsheets and tweak the rankings to better suit the needs of their business. Clearly they cover a fairly narrow band of vendors, but from a buyers perspective I can imagine this is a useful tool. (By the way, been a fan of this for years, prior to working for a vendor that tops the current wave).

That’s not to say that I don’t respect the work of RSG and have pointed folks to their reports, I also respect what Sitecore are doing, the ‘bumping up’ comes hard on the heels of Forrester including them in the wave for the first time – at the cost of some previously established players. But, being in the same tier and being on the same short list are two different things – we’ve certainly seen that in the past with the Gartner MQ that had Oracle (pre-FatWire) in the top right, that left the industry scratching it’s head somewhat.

I think what CMSConnected are doing is entertaining and whilst it is something relevant for us at CMPros (in the shape of Scott) to be involved with – I am not sure we can draw too many conclusions from that match-up, I think the debate will be more about open source vs commercial.

However in a way I don’t really see the significance of these match-ups, folks that are looking to kick off a WCM project should absolutely look at all their options, listen to the analysts sure, but it’s ultimately down to their requirements.

Anyway, good to hear you’ve overcome your writer’s block. It is indeed getting harder to differentiate against all the noise out there and the fact that “opinions are like arseholes” as they say

I must admit I’m bored of the SM/Arab Spring debates now but would certainly be interested in hearing your views about Sitecore being bumped up a level by RSG to the upper space occupied by SDL Tridion. The Danes versus the Dutch as I believe Irina has described it

I’m also looking foward to the upcoming debate about Sitecore versus Drupal being chaired by your former colleague Scott next week. Presumably if Drupal and Sitecore are worthy of comparison and Sitecore is now deemed on a level with SDL Tridion it won’t be long before we are seeing Drupal/Tridion debates too?