Chaos Content Management: Is RedDot Dead?
Comments by Jörn Bodemann, CEO of e-Spirit
Jörn Bodemann, CEO, e-Spirit
A market consolidation might do the industry some good. But earlier this year when the American content management system flagship Vignette was purchased by Open Text, many observers were taken by surprise. Having just presented RedDotas the company’s CMS reference product, now with Vignette it suddenly had a second option in its portfolio. To continue developing both platforms in parallel makes little sense from a financial standpoint. But at the same time it seems unlikely that the two solutions will be combined, as one is based on .NET and the other is JAVA-based. The question of which solution will be the focus of development going forward and what direction the migration should go in becomes critical. And this was also borne out in the latest quarterly numbers from industry analysts.
Open Text’s answer that the migration may go in the direction of Vignette, would end up causing even more bewilderment. Are those users who have just made the officially recommended trek from Gauss to RedDot really going to want to make yet another move to Vignette? Are new customers who choose RedDot saddling a dead horse? In any case, Open Text-CEO John Shakleton seemed to indicate as much in his statements. The question thus remains: Is RedDot dead?
Too many questions remain unanswered. In my view, a migration from RedDot to Vignette may well prove to be technically infeasible. This might work for data, but not for entire projects. The architectures of the two systems are too different to pull it off. But from the perspective of a CMS provider, I’m critical of the way customers have been put in an awkward spot here. They’re investing in a technology today that might be obsolete tomorrow.
This strategic uncertainty is detrimental to the content management industry as a whole. Yet, CMS vendors are still struggling to shake the perception that what they’re offering is merely a “nice to have” solution. Content management systems are an essential component of corporate communication and thus of a company’s overall strategy. Especially now as market requirements for CMS solutions extend into the area of compliance, the technology becomes ever more critical. A back-and-forth maneuver in product strategy in no way helps the industry build the trust it needs.
About Jörn Bodemann
Jörn Bodemann studied Information Technology at Dortmund University and wrote his final dissertation on the subject of “Problem area analysis for selected medical areas”. After graduating, he was employed as a research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST), before founding e-Spirit together with Stefan Walgenbach in 1999. The company was formed with support from adesso AG, which is also based in Dortmund, Germany.
Bodemann was Managing Director of e-Spirit since the company was first formed. When the company was incorporated under the name e-Spirit in 2007, Jörn Bodemann took on the position of Chief Executive of the Management Board. His areas of responsibility include sales, corporate communication, professional services and product and business development.
You can reach him via email and monitor his activities via Twitter.
About e-Spirit
e-Spirit is the manufacturer of FirstSpirit, a content management system for companies with high expectations of their solutions. e-Spirit is a reputable, internationally-oriented product supplier with global brands in all sectors. International clients such as Pentland, Airbus, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, Commerzbank, OTTO and the Schaeffler Group are all using FirstSpirit as a CMS platform within their IT infrastructure. FirstSpirit is increasingly becoming the integration platform of choice, replacing existing content management technologies in large businesses.
e-Spirit was founded by former members of the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and System Technology (FhG ISST) in 1999 and is headquartered in Dortmund with branch offices in Europe located in London, Zurich, Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt.
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[...] UPDATE 1:And here we go… The first attack comes from Jörn Bodemann, CEO of e-Spirit, almost the same headline.Didn’t take too long. http://thecontentwrangler.com/2009/09/14/chaos-content-management-is-reddot-dead/ [...]
I’d love to hear from the folks at OpenText. Our readers are always interested in what’s happening in the content management space. Consider this an invitation to tell us what’s going to happen to RedDot customers and whether what Jörn Bodemann says is accurate. We reviewed the comments from your analyst briefing, and we think Jörn seems to be on target.
Are we wrong?
[...] Blogeintrag von Jörn Bodemann aus September: Chaos Content Management: Is RedDot Dead? Open Text’s answer that the migration may go in the direction of Vignette, would end up causing [...]