So I was just casually heading over to look at an older Big Men on Content post when I saw their latest. It seems that Interwoven was purchased today by Autonomy. Uh, WOW! Okay, maybe a bit of an over-reaction, but with Vignette in a death spiral, what is next for them?
Before we get to Vignette, lets look at the news itself.
Happy New Year Everyone! It has been a while since my last post. Things have been returning to normal and I took some time off during the holiday season to hang out with my wife and boys. Upon returning to work, there was the normal small post-holiday backlog accompanied by the chaos that is the Presidential Inauguration. I understand that it is an important event in American history, but the loss in productivity for what is essentially Obama’s first day of work is staggering.
Maybe I should request a parade on my first day of work the next time I decide to start interviewing for a job.
In the midst of all this, on Wednesday evening I had quite an enjoyable evening at the monthly Web Content Mavens event here in DC. It was, as always, a fun time talking to various people about their challenges implementing WCM and ECM systems. I even ran into a few Documentum people. The highlight of the night was listening to, and talking with, Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch.
I like Tony, and not just because he has bought me a beverage or two in the past. Tony doesn’t mince words. He tells his honest opinion in his drive to educate people on the world of ECM. Previously, he had spoken to the Mavens on Social Media, but tonight was focused on the Web Content Management (WCM) marketplace as it stands right now.
A couple of weeks ago, the Big Men were speculating on potential buyers for OpenText. I opined that maybe HP would be looking to enter the market to compete with EMC. It was a brilliant piece of insight for all the wrong reasons. Right buyer, wrong target.
Turns out that HP has decided to buy their way into the market, but only with a single product, Tower Software. Like EMC, HP is looking to broaden their Information Management offering by adding Records Management and eDiscovery. If that is all they were looking to add, then buy Tower was a great move. I have always heard good things about their software for those purposes, though I always had doubts as to their complete ECM capability.
Word of Pie 