I am also obviously going to talk about Web Content Management, which I think is interesting as this turns the discussion from the theoretical and well ordered filing system that your organisation should become, to being about achieving something. WCM is about publishing to the web, not about having well ordered drawers of stuff.

I’ve been in this WCM industry awhile, so lets put aside the crystal ball a minute and ask if we have yet delivered on the CMS promise of 10 years ago? (That’s we as in our industry, rather than we as in our company). Of the democratisation of contributing content, of connecting our Knowledge and Information Workers (as Forrester refers to them), the people that know stuff – with the people that want to know stuff?

And I don’t mean those projects where we have hundreds of content authors or an Intranet, I mean connecting the real people (not hundreds of marketers) in an organisation with your audience through the web.

Connecting people? That sounds like a job for social media. With Social Media we are now breaking down communication and marketing barriers in 140 character chunks. Are our websites, or the messaging and brand values they are used to project now being blown apart and deposited in crumbs around the web? We are now potentially all becoming the messengers, representatives, dare I say marketers for our organisations and any other brands, products, destinations, services we interact with and comment upon. But, for all that, websites are still the destination – the majority of tweets are linking people with web content.

Peng T. Ong (founder of Interwoven) in a the forward of the 2001 book “Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach” – he talks about the motivation behind founding Interwoven – of enabling users and ‘web masters’ (it was 2001) who are “enmeshed in trying to launch websites” amidst the “chaos of building websites” – pains that organisations still feel today.

We are also seeing the “enterprization” of social media, corporate twitter governance, of paid bloggers and of a greater profile for blogging on corporate sites. We are all becoming accustomed to consuming opinion and news when researching products and services and I think we are become less tolerant of and less attentive to the polished sales and marketing message – people want to meet and understand the people behind the brand, we want to hear their opinion and see them. This appears to be to be convergence, as the ownership of the message is moving from marketing to ‘the people’ as at the same time the consumer becomes more accustomed to and expectant of a less formal, blogger, opinion based style of content.

This gets me back to my point, publishing web content is about the people – tools will need to be adopted by engineers, consultants, product managers and customer service reps – not just sales and marketing – the people our audience want to get a feel of.

The news of OpenText planning to gobble up Vignette and the recent Interwoven acquisition by Autonomy sees a new chapter for these grandees of content management and I think is further evidence in the shifts that have been occurring in this market around Enterprise Content Management and what organisations really want to do.

I’ve often described ECM as turning your organisation into a filing system, a necessary activity that keeps everything neat, ordered and regulatory compliant. It brings operational efficiencies and it can even help save the planet as you de-dupe and remove all that redundant server room kit.

The functionality and products of an ECM suite are all about that business function of keeping stuff ordered, records management, document management, asset management etc. Over the past 5 years this is the path that both Interwoven and Vignette set themselves strategically on, mainly through acquisition.

This was the path to becoming the new SAP or IBM and to becoming the System Integrators friend through alignment with big business change and major IT projects. Documentum, arguably the ECM pioneer was swallowed up by a storage company EMC (which kinda emphasises the point).

In the meantime, specialised Web Content Management vendors had stuck to their knitting, detected the shift toward agile solutions for business users and away from big IT projects. Technically organisations started to go “small IT” to bet their on-line business on Open Source, SaaS, Microsoft and away from the traditional platform of the web (Sun/Oracle).

Many vendors have prospered in a vibrant space that Vignette and Interwoven originally helped shape, driven by new business focused mantras of “ease of use” and “quick time to value” – of engaging the marketer, the communicator or anyone outside IT who has a message to deliver over the web.

These are things that I have always considered as delivering on the promise of content management software – yes you need the IT stuff to work, yes you need governance, but to truly deliver it’s about democratizing the contribution and user adoption. The web site as a business tool.

To put it very simply, you have a divergence of ECM and WCM – but I don’t identify myself with you as a brand because you have a neat and tidy warehouse or you are Sarbanes-Oxley complaint – it’s good to know, but it’s not what I like about you.

The challenge to the marketer is not about simply publishing content, it’s about what our websites are for – the audience – or more specifically the websites role in persuading, encouraging, educating, communicating – engaging the audience to act.

This is a trend that really came through at Internet World this year in London, with vendors and speakers talking engagement (some based solely on a screenshot of Google Analytics).  

So, what interests me about the two acquisitions (so far, it’s still early) is that the OpenText path appears to be doggedly ECM (with a bit of social media), whilst Autonomy is talking the language of engaging with the visitor making the Interwoven acquisition look far more interesting.

Also published on our corporate blog.

It’s really too early to comment and as a vendor in the same space, rather than as a partner or analyst, it’s probably not my place to contribute the insightful commentary that existing customers or prospects need right now. I suggest you stroll over to Jon Mark’s blog  and I am sure folks like CMS Watch and Forrester will have something cooking for us in a minute… But, someone suggested I comment and as a shocked Vignette alumnus, I am…

It is of course arguably bleaker for Vignette compared to Interwoven as there is clearly wiggle room for the core Interwoven WCM to add value at Autonomy, with the clashing happening around some of the more recently acquired and (dare I say) more peripheral products. The early commentary of it being about a legal customer acquisition were soon disproved as they were fairly quick to start to talk about discovering meaning through IDOL to deliver better content (although that’s a big old beast for someone to tame!).

Not so much Vignette, as the voracious appetite for CMS systems and their customers at OpenText seems unfulfilled and I can’t imagine that previous history being much comfort to the hard working folks from Austin or Maidenhead, which can only be sad for the WCM business and less choice for our future prospective customers.  As I say, very early to comment, be interesting to see what comes out of these organisations in the next few weeks and months ( here’s the official press release for starters). 

On the other hand and in contrast to the Interwoven acquisition, the peripheral bits that have come more recently to Vignette, the portal and social media stuff will be the bits OpenText will (I assume) cherish and nurture. I also have to mention here that in terms of engagement through the social media, Vignette have been doing the right things through folks like Dirk Shaw.

People are are starting to crow about watching this titan’s unbelievable fall, giggling at the state of their finances, bewildered by the product strategy. But, like a faded musician – you have to remember that back in the day these guys really rocked and were there at the birth of our industry. 

I tweeted that it was like realizing for the first time that your Dad was no longer the strongest man in the world, which probably sounded weird abridged to 140 characters. But, for me it’s an odd feeling, I’ll be honest I have been proud when we have closed those major deals having beaten Vignette, but I also have to say I am not exactly ashamed of being an alumnus either.

Crikey, this took a turn I wasn’t expecting and I’d best emphasise my blog disclaimer, these are my own personal views. 

So thanks Vignette and good luck!