I think we can safely say that the last two week have been quite lively for Alterian Content Manager, as after an incubation with partners, customers and analysts we took our product strategy and roadmap to the social web. I’ve tweeted, interviewed, commented, posted and now (finally) blogged our message to the CMS community – [...]
Packt is pleased to announce Magento 1.3: PHP Developer’s Guide, a new book that helps PHP developers build applications that interface with the customer, product, and order data using Magento’s Core API. Written by Jamie Huskisson, this book is packed with examples for effective Magento development.
Magento is an Open Source, e-commerce web application that was created by Varien, and built on components of the Zend Framework. Magento is the hottest and most powerful e-commerce software and has gained popularity in a short period of time. Users can control the look, content and functionality of their e-commerce web site with the help of Magento’s powerful theming engine.
Magento 1.3: PHP Developer’s Guide will help developers extend and customize the Magento e-commerce system using PHP code. They will get familiar with the architecture and internal structure of Magento and learn about the best modules available. Developers can then build a shipping module for their Magento store to give users options for receiving their items once they have paid for them.
Here are my AppGap posts for February. I am also writing in
another Corante blog, FastForward (see right side bar for links), The AppGap
posts began toward the end of January 2008. Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few
other things thrown in. Below are the ones for February. There will be more in
March.
Designed for Enterprise Adoption
Half of all organizations use a commercial content management system (CMS), according to a recent survey of content professionals. Just over 17% of survey respondents said their organization created their own, home-grown CMS, while 10.1% said an open source platform was in use in their firm. Interestingly, 15% of respondents said the organizations for which [...]
Since the early days of CMSReport.com, I have been providing a list of the top 30 Web applications that interest me the most. This list is called CMS Focus. If you take a close look at this list, you will find that I currently need three additional content management systems to complete the list of thirty. Which CMS/ECM would you recommend be placed on my list?
One of the three CMS that I’m considering to focus on is EPiServer. Deane Barker, a CMS guru from Blend Interactive, has a lot of good things to say about EPiServer. I have a lot of trust in Deane and if the WCM is good enough for his company then it’s likely good enough to be placed on my list.
If you prefer to see your product comparisons placed in a matrix or quadrant you have come to the wrong site. I don’t believe in complicating the simple as picking 30 preferred CMS isn’t really that difficult to do. The 30 Web applications on my list are what I consider “game changers” or “attention getters” in the world of CMS and ECM. If I’m not completely sold on the product, it is often the user groups and support communities behind the CMS that convinces me or not on whether I should focus on the Web application here at CMS Report.
So if you would like to recommend a CMS or ECM to CMSReport.com, this is the time to do it. Feel free to leave a comment below or send it my way via Twitter. I’ll be anxiously listening to what you recommend.
I’ve regularly covered annual reports, earnings announcements and other financial news about software vendors. These commentaries tend to stir debate and I am frequently asked why I bother to look behind the numbers. Is it really important?
Many vendors, in particular privately-held US-based ones, don’t publicly release audited numbers. Instead they carefully select a few positive numbers to share via a press release. An example of this is seemingly successful CMS-vendor Ektron, which claims to be open and transparent, but will tell you only that their sales grew 38%. If you are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, they’ll share more details on profitability, but can a vendor really claim to be transparent when you need to sign a contract to get some fundamental numbers about the financial health of the vendor?
In my view financial numbers and annual reports are a great way to gain insights about a vendor. These are the numbers you should indeed care about:
After looking at a few vendors, you’ll discover that the accounting models tend to differ hugely. Some will list licence sales straight away, while others will break it down and only list it partially over a given period. Some might also divide their revenue between a corporate entity and different geographic regions, e.g. CMS vendor Sitecore. Details like this obviously make it difficult to compare the numbers.
Finally, I would say that the past decade has showed that positive financial numbers by no means guarantee that your favourite vendor will not be acquired or that your favourite product will not be discontinued. 2009 saw quite a few acquisitions, most notably Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture and Opentext which bought Vignette. I’m sure we will see more in 2010. These might not impact customers in the short-term, but down the road, they always also have significant impact, e.g. with closed regional offices, a new partner strategy or a cut in engineering spending.
by Stephen Powers
Just got back from the Lotusphere conference in Orlando (which sure beats Boston these days in the weather department – thanks, IBM!). At one of the sessions, IBM execs gave their take on the Web content management (WCM) and portal markets. Or should that be market? IBM is betting that the WCM and portal markets will converge and cease to be separate markets, with vendors offering combined WCM/portals suites that have one administrative tool set, one presentation management structure, one repository, and so on. From a road map standpoint, IBM is also making it clear that they don’t have a “portal plan” or a “WCM plan”, but rather an “experience” plan that includes both portal and WCM.
Will it really happen? Certainly, many intranets and extranets rely on content/experience delivery via portals. Also, many companies utilize public-facing Web sites for customer self service – a good fit for portal delivery. Already, SharePoint has made some noise with WCM and portal functionality within a single product. And given many firms’ clunky customized WCM/portal integrations, IBM can look attractive with its combination of Websphere portal and Lotus WCM.
So what are the obstacles to total WCM / portal convergence?
From our inquiries, there is some demand for a WCM product suite that includes a truly integrated – but optional – portal delivery. Vendors offering both don’t necessarily have to license them together (many already have a la carte options in their WCM suites), but they could be part of the same product suite with truly integrated environments and user experiences. In addition to IBM, Oracle and Open Text could possibly compete in this area as well, as both have portals.
What do you think?
One of the final chapters in Nortel’s history has now been written. Nortel’s vaunted Enterprise Solutions unit has been acquired by Avaya, a company that, similar to Nortel, traces its origins back to Alexander Graham Bell’s original patent for the telephone in 1874.
The end of an era
This week, Avaya announced its roadmap for the integration and continuation of products and services from Nortel and it’s good news for customers of both companies as Avaya management has found a way to meld the best offerings from both companies into a unified set of products. However, there are a few speed bumps ahead.
First, customers not on the platform that becomes part of the merged product line face a forklift upgrade and significant cost in the not so distant future as the product portfolios from Nortel and Avaya were largely proprietary and incompatible with one another.
In addition, based on how past mergers of similarly-sized tech firms have fared, Avaya faces multiple challenges as it integrates multiple platforms and workgroups while trying to maintain its ability to service its customers at the levels they require and are accustomed to. In addition, Avaya expects to support its newly-expanded product portfolio with a newly-shrunk workforce.
The flagship unified communications offering for Avaya will be Avaya Aura. Aura will be enhanced with the addition of Avaya (formerly Nortel) Agile Communications Environment (ACE) as well as the inclusion of technology from Nortel for a common management infrastructure. For existing Nortel customers, Aura can be added and will sit on top of existing deployments. Likewise, Aura customers can add Nortel solutions to their deployments.
In the roadmap, Avaya laid out a move towards a SIP-based system that is multimodal with an open rules engine and conference-based communications. To this end, Avaya Contact Center Elite will continue as the flagship enterprise solution, and Nortel Contact Center 7 will remain as a mid market solution. The release of Contact Center 8 will add features and technology from Contact Center Elite, with the ultimate goal of improving scalability in order to enable the company to offer one contact center solution to cover everything from the middle market to high-end deployments.
For the small- and mid-sized enterprise market, Avaya plans to continue to supply Nortel Business Communications Manager, Norstar, Partner, and Integral 5, but it will eventually merge these solutions into Avaya IP Office as the flagship hybrid offering. Nortel’s Software Communication System will be the flagship offering for SIP environments.
With regard to data products, Avaya announced it will adopt the current roadmap of data products from Nortel, including offerings for Ethernet Switching, Routers, Wireless Networking, Access Control, and Unified Management.
What Avaya has released thus far is a roadmap and there are many details that have not yet been released that should clarify further what Avaya’s combined offerings will look like. Avaya did have plenty of time to contemplate and prepare for the merger and, if nothing else, we give them an A+ for effort here.
Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.
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It is always interesting to come back to a new product as it moves through the beta process and see what has changed.
Not so dangerous liaisons
A few months ago we wrote about Liaise, an inbox add-on for Outlook that scans e-mail messages as they are being composed and creates a task list based on any action items it finds in the e-mail.
Liaise recently moved into public beta with the addition of several new features. What we liked about Liaise when we first heard about it was that it captures the action items that lurk in every e-mail and keeps them from falling through the cracks. With the public beta offering, the company has added some new features which improve its functionality and fine tune how the tool works.
Liaise has added calendar integration for Outlook so due dates for action items pulled from e-mail appear in the Outlook calendar, as well as in the calendars of mobile devices that are set up to synch with Outlook. This is the logical step for the product and links tasks, e-mail, and the calendar together. Not having the action items integrated into the calendar was not a major problem, but the tool’s utility is definitely enhanced with this feature.
Another addition to Liaise is the ability to control more of what is displayed in e-mail messages. In some situations, it may be preferable to have an e-mail appear normal to the recipient, particularly if that person is not a Liaise user. At other times, for instance if the e-mail is internal only and all recipients are using Liaise, it may be useful for information about the action items pulled from the e-mail to appear in it. The private beta of Liaise displayed this information by default. More control is almost always a good thing and this makes the tool more likely to be used.
Liaise also had added support for cloud-based synching of project information among teams. Particularly useful for keeping partners, clients, and disparate project teams up-to-date on project and action item statuses this allows information on projects to be updated when changes are made, without the use of e-mail. Updates to projects can also be condensed into a single e-mail, in the event that the knowledge worker wishes to see a list of changes in one place. Anything that cuts down on overall inbox traffic is to be applauded, although we do have lingering concerns about combining items in a single e-mail, as something may get overlooked.
As Liaise moves through the beta process the company is adding features and tweaking the user interface. From what we have seen so far, the company is focused on improving integration, control, and the ability to synch information between users. We like Liaise and think it has the potential to fix at least several of the problems that e-mail is plagued with relative to project and task management. Looking towards the general release of the product as it moves out of beta, first on our wish list for future enhancements would be the expansion of the tool beyond Outlook.
Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.