[Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail"

[Patrick Neeman]

Let me preface this by saying that I've never worked with a enterprise level CMS because everywhere I've worked, we haven't had the
coin to use a Documentum as such, but some of my friends have, and they had good things to say about it.

Now the fun part...

I don't want this to sound like a lecture, but...

a) "It is impossible for a vendor to know YOUR requirements."

With proper product management (talking to customers, reading the market), the vendor >should< know your requirements and built a
product or platform that meets those requirements. That's how most businesses should work, or already work (this is the moral
equivalent of Microsoft marketing Office and wondering why sales are sluggish, finally figuring out, "oh geez, I didn't know you
wanted word processing!").

b) The amount most of these document management systems charges is insane.

If I'm an IT director, and someone from a content management vendor walks in the door and tells me that it's going to cost a cool
million for a CMS, and that it's going solve all my problems, and then six months later, after it's installed, the cost overrun was
another half million and I have to hire three full-time people to support all of the extra tasks, and I >still< can't share my
content across multiple platforms, as promised, there's nothing to defend. That's just a poor platform, or the company was sold
something that couldn't meet their requirements, and it's the sales person's fault.

This isnt just a problem with CMS systems -- this is many, many enterprise level products.

But that's my opinion. I could be wrong.

Patrick Neeman
pat at nexisinteractive.com <mailto:pat at nexisinteractive.com>
949 643-0910 land
949 633-3054 cell
949 215-1659 fax

nexis interactive
our skills. your solutions.

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> David Heller
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 4:00 PM
> To: sigia-l
> Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail"
>
>
> Why does open source help? Plone is actually the opposite problem in
> that it is too simple. No Zope on the other hand is a great solution b/c
> it is a platform solution as is Documentum on the non-open side. It
> takes more to implement these, but you can custom tailor your solution
> to be whatever you need. They just provide the building blocks.
> Solutions like red dot, ePrise, etc. don't have that type of flexibility
> and customizations.
>
> It all depends on if you as an IT person want to get your hands dirty in
> order to make the right experience for your users. It is impossible for
> a vendor to know YOUR requirements. All they can do is give you the best
> platform on which to build that solution on. Of course having some type
> of out-of-the-box solution is very helpful as both Zope and Documentum
> (and everyone else) has as well. But these are barely suitable for
> anyone.
>
> -- dave
>
> David Heller
> Sr. User Interface Designer
> Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
> 925.600.5636