RE: Will your chosen CMS vendor go bust?

At 10:00 PM 5/10/2005, Steve Williams wrote:

>Not sure I agree with a number of points you make in the rest of the 
>article though.......
>I was interested to read your comment on "Recognising that the CMS 
>purchased is likely to only have a 2-3 year lifespan" - whilst I 
>agree with it as 'allocate the cost of ownership over three years' 
>as a means to apportion the cost of ownership - I do not agree with 
>it as a 'risk management strategy', CMS is a long way from being 
>seen as an 'FMCG' product which is what you appear to be 
>suggesting....surely the trick is to find a vendor that is stable 
>and pushes the product forward at a rate that does not necessitate 
>preparing for armageddon. In my view is sends the wrong message to 
>the market to suggest to customers that they should be thinking in 
>terms of their vendors going bust and also in terms of thinking of 3 
>year replacement cycles. Your paragraph on "Better Risk Management 
>Approaches" simply seems to be saying they are all just as likely to 
>go bust - so spend as little as possible and make sure you have the 
>source code - which is simply not a true reflection of the 
>marketplace - but please correct me if I have interpreted the 
>paragraph incorrectly.
>
>There are many names in the industry that have been around for a 
>long long time - a number approaching 15 years - or five 
>replacements if they had assumed a 3 year replacement cycle. Thats a 
>pretty low risk for a customer who bought a solution from one of 
>them 15 years ago.......

Glad to see the article has caused a bit of a stir! :-)

To be honest, I'm not tremendously interested if a vendor has
been about for 15 years. A lot has changed in that time,
including:

* the business needs of organisations, and their
   understanding of content management

* the marketplace has changed incredibly over that
   time

While some of the first-generation CMS products are
obviously still about, they are (in some cases) both
fairly primitive and costly compared to current-generation
offerings.

(Content management only a few years ago used to be a
multi-million dollar project. Now it is measured in
tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.)

Having the one product for a long period of time is
only good if it continues to meet your business needs
well (and as well as other newer offerings in the
marketplace).

In far too many cases, I've seen organisations tied into
a straightjacket by the limitations of their over-old
CMS, not providing them with the flexibility or
capabilities that they require...

>Solutions that have a wide customer base, a good brand name that 
>have gone bust in the past have been quickly absorbed by other 
>organisations and given new life - thus protecting the customer - a 
>point which alas argues in favour of the 'larger CMS vendors' and 
>away from the 'spend as little as possible' solutions - in fact I am 
>struggling to think of a solution that had a large customer base 
>that has disappeared (?) You are correct that technology does 
>refresh and re-invent itself every so many years as the generic CMS 
>product goes from its revolutionary phase to more of an evolutionary 
>one - but again I would argue that the larger vendors are in the 
>better position to change - how many developers can a small CMS 
>provider throw at a product - given that the revenue it generates is 
>equally as limited (if I follow your price argument). The moment the 
>CMS stops selling or is costing too much to maintain - its history - 
>along with the company - as at that level there are few takers 
>interested in absorbing the debts to purchase e.g. the customer base.

Actually, I've seen that in many cases it's the smaller vendors that
are innovating much more rapidly than the larger vendors. Some of the
large products I'm familiar with are still struggling to deliver
features that are now standard in 95% of the rest of the products
in the marketplace...

---

Of course, this is a complex topic, one that deserves more than a
single page article. All I'm trying to do is to flag some issues
that seem to get far too little discussion in the marketplace.

If you will be at KMWorld+Intranets this year, please grab me
to chat through all this in further depth. :-)

Cheers,
James

-------------------------
James Robertson, Managing Director
Step Two Designs

Email: [email protected]
Web: www.steptwo.com.au
Phone: +61 2 9319 7901