In a throwback to 2003, the Interwoven blog has a post spreading some good old fashioned FUD about open source software. The general message is that, while the software is free, open source will wind up costing you more money in the long run because it lacks the functionality of commercial software (presumably like TeamSite). Like most blanket statements about whole categories of software, the accuracy is dubious. However, like most myths it is built on a grain of truth. Here is how…
In the choice of build vs. buy, it is nearly always cheaper to buy – or share (in the case of open source software). The trick is finding the software that most closely matches your requirements to minimize the amount of customization that you need to write. If the best fit is TeamSite (and sometimes it is), buy TeamSite. It will be cheaper to buy TeamSite than to take another product and make it just like TeamSite. Nevertheless, be forewarned; even if TeamSite is a slam-dunk for your needs, the license is not the only thing you will be paying for. Like any web content management system, expect to spend a considerable amount of money on customization (unless you are totally satisfied with having your site look exactly like the mutual fund demo that the sales engineer prepared for you and 100 other prospects). Having done TeamSite implementations, I can assure you that TeamSite is not cheaper than average to implement. I guess you could say that all CMS are like puppies: some are free, some cost lots of money, but they are all expensive to take care of.
Depending on your requirements, the best fit may be a platform that just happens to be open source software. To give a concrete example, just look at the Interwoven Blog site . You would be crazy to buy TeamSite (at over $100,000 in licensing) to manage a site like this. That is, unless you were Interwoven, in which case it would be very embarrassing not too. In addition to the high licensing cost, the amount of configuration to turn TeamSite into a simple blogging tool would be many multiples of what it would take to set up and theme a pure blogging tool like WordPress or Moveable Type.
I think what is most interesting about this post is why Interwoven felt the need to write it. Are they feeling threatened by open source software in general or a specific open source application? I would much rather them spend the effort in improving their own product than spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about others.
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I would agree 100%. At the end of the day TCO of your CMS project cannot be addressed by a blanket statement. The TCO of your CMS project is defined by your project requirements. In some cases Open Source makes sense, while in others, packaged software like TeamSite gets the nod.
It really comes down to selection and I would advise anyone who is about to make a CMS buying decision to work with an agnostic partner to help define product selection and implementation strategy.
Working directly with the vendor gets you nothing but biased opinions and FUD.
My 2 cents.
This is an interesting post; I ignored when I first read, as I’m pretty familiar with both Interwoven and open source (being VP Product Management at Interwoven for 10 years and most recently VP Product Management at Alfresco).
Implementation times for open source – specifically Alfresco – versus Interwoven for base WCM (read: TeamSite and OpenDeploy) are not higher. The additional functionality you have to build into an open source product in Interwoven’s case isn’t free: you have to buy additional products like LiveSite, MetaTagger, Targeting, WorkSite, MediaBin … the list goes on.
Aside from those licensing costs, you also need to account for training different development teams on different APIs and managing multiple repositories, workflow systems, and more.
I think the person that wrote this (Annie) is talking about the nicely packaged demos pre-built by a crack SE team … regular customers, however, don’t deploy SE demos. They need to invest in lots of licensed products and figure out how to build and manage everything on their own.
Like I said, I ignored this because I thought it was a bit laughable. But it’s good that you’ve highlighted Seth. Annie isn’t referring to just base TeamSite.
I think this post proves that Interwoven still doesn’t get open source, and worse, Interwoven is fighting against the open source wave (which is unfortunate, because it is critical to the future of robust and usable enterprise software).
Kevin Cochrane
CMO, Day Software
At the broadest level, I cant disagree. For some folks, Open Source makes sense, but for others, Interwoven makes sense. The requirements that open source makes sense for will tend to be smaller or medium size companies, and Interwoven TeamSite and LiveSite will make sense for larger enterprises.
Interwoven blog post is referring to those companies – and most Interwoven customers are either large enterprises or companies for whom the web presence is complex.
If I agree, why I am I commenting ?
As a former Interwoven SE, I do feel that both the original post and Kevin’s response are out of date.
I certainly was not a ‘crack SE’, but certainly show the same demo to every customer (cetainly not 100 times, and never a mutual fund). Making it work with a customer’s site takes a day, even for one as inexperienced at the time as me. The same priciple applies for production systems. Real customer implementations for doing what customers used to do – has got a lot shorter. If projects today take same time they used to, it is because customers are simply doing a lot more – content targeting and user experience testing for example.
Partly thanks to decisions Kevin made while he was at Interwoven, their offering (TeamSite + LiveSite)is lot more comprehensive and a lot easier, than when he was there.
So bottom line, I am backing my old friend Annie’s blogpost. I think she is up to date with current open source offerings – the question is, are you up to date with Interwoven ?
I recently left Interwoven to work for a non-WCM part-competitor, so would rather not leave my name.
As a tip to others…don’t be tempted to blog about Annie’s blogpost.
For me, it’s classic blog baiting..designed to raise the shackles of OS fans giving rise to a lot of blog posts discussing it and linking back to the original post..which also happens to be the product site for interwoven.
What’s a little disingenuous about Annie’s post is that it’s basically a rip-off of Scott McNealy from 2005.