Vignette, OpenText Retool For Enterprise 2.0

For those of you who think Web 2.0 is a fad, you might want to take a look at what's on tap for some of content management's household names.Up this time are Vignette and OpenText, two companies that have more in common than just wanting to manage your content. Each also could use a bit of a PR jump-start. And it appears they've put the PR machine in motion.

Vignette's updates to its Web Experience platform are rife with Web 2.0 and social computing capabilities. The company describes its latest efforts in the context of what it calls the "three most important dimensions of the online experience." From its press release, we get a glimpse of how the company is reengineering its approach around those areas.

Personal -- Enhanced version of its Rich Media and analytics package -- Recommendations delivers content to users based on their intent -- Social search technology (sketchy details at this point)

Social -- Two community products will include social computing features like ratings, reviews, polls, tagging, tag clouds, comments, usage analysis, blogs, wikis, forums and moderation support

Multichannel -- Enhancing process automation and interaction capabilities, enabling connectivity to users regardless of device and platform

The Vignette announcements are clearly meant to capitalize on the user-focused trend in the ECM and Web content management market. And it definitely has a head start in certain areas, namely the personalization segment. Vignette always was an early pioneer in delivering tailored content based on user profiling, something that should pay off as its enterprise 2.0 platform materializes. More on that next week.

And OpenText is apparently prepping its own set of Web 2.0 enhancements to be released during the big AIIM show in Boston next month.

I received a note from its PR firm recently that made it pretty clear how one of ECM's heavyweights views the importance of social computing.

"A major reason for the slow adoption (of Web 2.0) is that enterprises are reluctant to give up proven infrastructure like content management systems and ERP integration while at the same time potentially running afoul of regulators and compliance requirements."

While there's validity to the compliance and proven infrastructure message, I couldn't help but think of the classic fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) pitches that big software companies are so good at.

I liked their second effort much better. "What's needed is a way for enterprise IT managers to give their users all the collaboration benefits inherent in wikis and social networking sites, but with the back end of an industrial-strength enterprise content management system." According to a spokesperson, OpenText's enterprise 2.0 strategy will include Web 2.0 tools that will give enterprises Web 2.0 tools that are "enterprise ready".

Well, what did you expect them to say?