Jun 18, 2008
There has been some interesting posts and white papers (for example, CrownPeak's whitepaper "Open Source Isn't Free (It's not Even Cheap)" (registration required)) about the trade-off and relative merits of open source and hosted solutions. I think this is an important topic because, as I have said before, both strategies are worth considering for companies looking to lower their up front costs of deploying (or redeploying) a website on a new platform.
As someone who covers open source software and who hosts their blog on Blogger, you would think that I would have something to say about the matter... and of course I do.
It all boils down to a simple question of "what business are you in?" In the world of content I think there is a clear breakdown into two categories of businesses: content businesses and content distribution businesses. A content business competes on the basis of the quality and/or exclusivity of the content. A content distribution business competes on the accessibility, reach and engagement of the content consumption experience. A content business will often partner with several content distribution businesses through syndication relationships. Content distribution businesses often have the same content as their competitors and need differentiating technology. Product companies (and other companies whose content is about their products) tend to operate and behave more like content business. They shouldn't care about the stickiness of their own website (I am reminded of the Web 1.0 bubble when Internet strategists tried to convince their clients that their business, whatever it was, would suffer if they failed to do something fancy on the web). Content businesses (and product businesses) need their web presence to serve their customers, support their brand and reinforce their credibility. They don't need to be sticky. Professional, well organized, stable, and up to date is good enough (sadly, better than average).
Content Here is a content business. You can read the articles here and here and here and probably other places as well (I am just happy you are reading them). The tools I use to compose and publish content are cheap and simple. I don't care if other websites have similar branding treatments (as a matter of fact, other websites have used this template). I am satisfied with the average uptime standards that Google is able to provide. Yes, blogspot does go down from time to time but at least when it does go down I don't have to frantically troubleshoot to get it back up - I just wait. And, yes, I would like to to have a slick little friendfeed commenting plugin. But I have more important things to worry about like finishing my next report and blinding my consulting clients with value.
When there is a good fit, I include a SaaS products in CMS short-lists for my clients. However, I often find that business users are drawn to the promise of what could be done on high end commercial platforms (with adequate levels of customizations that will probably never be done). A solid, simple, basic feature set on a product that is well managed is not sexy to a buyer. Business users don't usually sit through a product demo and visualize what the UI would look like if it was broken because their I.T. department didn't invest the right time and resources to adequately configure, customize, host, and maintain the platform. I.T. departments don't think enough about how hard these applications can be to upgrade. The hosted solutions in the marketplace succeed with good customer service and smooth upgrades that lead to high retention rates - not through feature/function/flash competitions. The UIs tend to be boring but functional. Business users like feature/function/flash competitions.
If you make the right choices, hosted solutions can give you better than average service at a lower cost (in terms of time or money) because they can take advantage of specialization and economy of scale. For example, an outsourced data center is going to have better failover and redundancy than an average corporate server room (much better than the converted desktop server with the noisy fan under my desk). A hosted application is going to have better administration support than an average installed application. Better than average is good enough for the context aspects of your business but not the core (I knew I would be dropping a little Geoffrey Moore knowledge before this post was through). For the core, you want excellence and to be excellent you have to invest disproportionate resources and ownership. You can't settle with a service that your competitor can also buy and, therefore, have just as good you.
If I were in the content distribution business, I would make the investment to achieve greater than average uptime and continually add new features to the website. I would do a lot of custom development on the platform to make the functionality unique. Open source would be a key component of the technical strategy because it would help achieve an optimum mix of a commodity foundation, fast-follower (me-too) features, and unique features that I built myself. Instead, I am pleasantly surprised when I log in and notice that a new feature (that probably has been available on alternative platforms for ages) has been added.
There is actually a lot of overlap between hosted and open source. Most of the Software as a Service providers rely heavily on open source frameworks and components to deliver their services. There is also a great opportunity for systems integrators and commercial open source companies to deploy highly managed, turnkey solutions using open source content management systems. The customer doesn't even need to be aware that the solution is open source because they go directly to their partner if they need any help.
Recent developments in cloud computing and third party services allow businesses to specialize even more. With a service like Amazon's EC2 and S3 and Google's App Engine a company can specialize in software development and outsource the management of the underlying architecture and infrastructure. This is great for companies that want to run research and development teams to rapidly execute and test out new business ideas. But, to use these services companies need to be satisfied with the level of uptime that Amazon and Google are willing to provide. Some cloud computing resources are delivered using excess capa
city so we don't know what will happen when there is no surplus available. I would feel better if the market for cloud computing was mature enough to establish a sustainable price and service level agreement. Until that happens, if five nines of uptime is important to you, these services are not for you. Better to run your own software at multiple data centers on different continents and have well vaccinated, highly caffeinated support staff monitoring things around the clock.
There is also a marketplace for add-on widgets (as an aside, what word do business school professors use to describe a fictitious product now that there are actual products called widgets?) like JS-Kit that can be plugged into nearly any existing platform. This trend allows a content distribution company to differentiate its offering by creating a unique assemblage of commonly available components. To win with this strategy, the company has to get very good at vetting partners and integrating their solutions. Trend spotting, partnership building, and integration become the core competencies rather than just software development.
If you are in the content distribution business, you are in the technology business because technology is how you distribute your content. You need to be able to be able to execute a strategy with an appropriate balance of outsourcing, development, and assembly. Outsource where you want to be good. Build where you want to be great or unique. Or, if your special sauce is going to be breadth, get really good at finding the right third party providers to partner with and integrate their solutions in ways that allow you to nimbly shift from parter to partner.
Jun 17, 2008
I have been on a Mac since I started Content Here a little over a year ago. The migration for me has been an unqualified success. I won't go back. Here is a list of apps that have made the experience that much more pleasurable.
Mail, Calendar, Address Book: Mac Apps
I decided to go with the Mac defaults: Mail.app, iCal, and Address Book. Since these applications are pretty much always open, I wanted them to be stable, well integrated, lightweight, and just good enough. They work as advertised and I have absolutely no complaints.
Blogging: MarsEdit
When I started taking longer trips for client projects and conferences, I realized I needed an offline blogging tool. For a while I used a simple text editor and then copy paste into the Blogger web UI. Then I went to Ecto which I used for around a month until I got annoyed with its quirky notions about HTML. I bitched a little on the support forums to no effect and then decided to vote with my feet and went over to MarsEdit, which I love. It doesn't try to give you WYSIWYG editing features and that is OK by me.
Simple Editor: TextMate
I started out with TextWrangler because it's free. I tried TextMate because I like to be able to set up "projects." Before I discovered you could set up a "disk browser" in TextWrangler, I fell in like with TextMate. I seem to be in good company because I keep recognizing TextMate in screencasts.
XML: oXygen
I write my reports in XML (DocBook) so a good XML editor that validates as I type and runs my transforms is important to me. I was disappointed to learn that XMetaL doesn't work on the Mac. I bought oXygen. I first used the Eclipse plugin but then I transfered my license to the stand-alone version, which is a lot faster. I am pretty happy with it. It comes with the Syncro SVN Client which works well enough.
IDE: Eclipse
I rarely do serious coding anymore but when I do, I use Eclipse. Eclipse takes so long to load that it makes me think twice about whether I want to get sucked into my programming head and lose track of time for the next few hours.
Source Control: SVN via Wush and the Syncro SVN Client
Old habits are hard to break and I am a religious source control user for my website and my reports. Wush.net takes care of the Subversion hosting. Syncro is my client when I am not in a command line mood.
Office: iWork
When I bought my Mac, I felt obligated to throw in a license for Microsoft Office. Big mistake. I thought I hated Office for Windows. The Mac version is worse. I am very happy with the iWork applications and tend to write deliverables and presentations in Pages and Keynote and then export to the Microsoft formats. It is a good thing when your office applications don't suck your will to live. I have NeoOffice installed for the occasional Open Document file I receive. It sure would be nice if iWork would support Open Document. Maybe if both MS Office and iWork supported it, ODF would realize its vision.
Drawing: OmniGraffle
The one Windows application that I thought I was going to miss was Visio. Then I found OmniGraffle and I have moved on. Although there are not as many stencils as Visio, you can read and write from Visio's XML format with relatively good accuracy.
Image Capture: Command-Shift-4, Flickr, Skitch
For work I look at a lot of software and I take a lot of screenshots. Typically, I use the key command Command-Shift-4, then space to get a .png image of the active program saved to my desktop. Then I upload the files to Flickr and tag them appropriately. After doing that for about a year, I have a nice little library of screenshots that is organized by keyword. When I want to blog a picture immediately I tend to use Plasq software's Skitch because it lets me quickly post the picture with all my cheeky annotations.
Browser: "CaminoFoxIfari"
I have absolutely no loyalties to any browser and I switch whenever the wind changes direction. Today I am using Firefox 3 because I wanted read my feeds offline with Google Gears. I think I like the Camino keyboard shortcuts the most though. I also like how Safari and Camino share a password database. For some reason I have been leaving Opera out of my rotation. I guess even fickleness has its limits.
Time management: OfficeTime
When you run your own business, you need to be very careful to manage your time efficiently. No one else is going to do it for you. In addition to keeping track of billable hours, I also track time for internal projects including research, reports, conferences, blogging, and general admin. OfficeTime is like a little stopwatch that you can start and stop when you work on different things. There are reports that tell you how you spent your time today, yesterday, this week, last week.... I find that tracking time in this way helps keep me focused on doing the important work and prevents me from task switching inefficiently. OfficeTime is not the prettiest application in the world but it works. I even like the sound effect of the clock ticking for a second when you start it. It gives a sense of urgency to get started on your task.
Accounting: QuickBooks
QuickBooks on a Mac is lame but my accountant uses QuickBooks so I am stuck with it. The Windows version (which my accountant uses) is totally different from the Mac version but I can export a Windows friendly "Accountant's Copy" of my "Company File" and I can translate his bookkeeping instructions to the Mac UI. I don't care enough about accounting software to switch even if there was a cooler Mac-oriented accounting package that could export a QuickBooks Company File to share with an accountant. For personal finances, I use Mint.
Project Planning: Concept Draw Planner
Usually having a white computer gets you out of being responsible for making Gantt charts. However, on the off chance that I need to put together a project Gantt chart, I use Concept Draw Planner. It's good enough.
Task Management: Things
I didn't like the changes to iCal's task feature that came with the Leopard upgrade so I started to use Things. I organize my work into "Areas of Responsibility" like "blogging," "household," and "research" and "Projects" a particular client project. Content entry is very quick and the "Next" view gives you a nice hit list of what to do when you have a free moment. Amazing piece of software. Try it!
FTP: Transmit
I like Panic Software's Transmit.
Bit Torrent: Transmission
I am not saying that I use Bit Torrent but if I did, I would probably use a client like Transmission. :)
Twitter/Friendfeed: Twhirl
It just keeps on getting better.
Chat/IM: Adium and Skype
You can get me on pretty much all of the IM services as sggottlieb. Funny thing is that I have been using IM a lot less recently now that I use Twitter and Friendfeed.
IRC: Colloquy
When I am on IRC, I use Colloquy
Mailing lists
I subscribe to a bunch of open source mailing lists and the best tool for that is Gmail. I really like the rules feature so I can automatically delete some messages (like a build failing) and tag messages by the open source project that they are from. I usually bulk read a project at a time to get caught up on what is going on.
My absolute favorite app isn't really an app. It is an app launcher: Quicksilver
Quicksilver is a program that runs in the background. When type Ctrl-Space, a little window pops up. I start typing and Quicksilver filters down its index of files and applications on my computer. For example, when I want to launch Camino, I hit Ctrl-space then "ca" and I see Camino. Then I hit enter and Camino launches. Or I type "web" and a bunch of files that have the word "web" in them pop-up including my slide presentation for WebContent2008. That reminds me. I have have to finish that presentation :).
Jun 12, 2008
The June 2008 edition of the CM Pros newsletter has a short interview with yours truly. I was asked
-
What were the drivers behind your latest report, "Open Source Web Content Management in Java?"
-
You have published numerous reports addressing the intelligent selection of content management solutions. In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake that enterprises make when trying to identify and select a solution?
-
Based on current trends in content management strategies, where do you see this ever-growing and ever-changing field headed over the next five years?
Click through to see my answers.
Jun 09, 2008
A few weeks ago I slid in a subtle mention that the Alfresco WCM team had some significant departures (I'll say who it was now: chief WCM architect Jon Cox, and lead programmer Britt Park). Since then I have been wondering to myself how long the remaining WCM leadership (that is, Kevin Cochrane) would last. Well, I don't need to wonder any more. John Newton just announced on his blog that Kevin is leaving Alfresco to "to pursue other opportunities in the US."
Kevin has been a very important member of the Alfresco team. He fought hard to bring an understanding of the web to a bunch of Documentum alumni (to Alfresco's credit they recognized WCM as their blind spot and invited him into fight that fight). His energy and experience was critical in product development and sales. Alfresco's WCM offering has come so far since it was initially introduced. Right now, many of its challenges stem from being stuck in an Enterprise Content Management user interface. It may be that Kevin was running up against similar constraints.
I guess the next thing to wonder about is how Alfresco will backfill for the valuable role that Kevin played. Hopefully they will bring in someone with similar wisdom and passion. But that will be hard to do.
I am sure Kevin will have a similar (or even greater) impact in his new role wherever that may be.
Jun 06, 2008
Steve Ballmer predicts the end of printed media in 10 years. "there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network." I guess you wind up saying things like that when you force yourself to repeat "I will not underestimate the Internet" 100 times a day.
If this is true, I wonder if that will lead to better (portable and stationary) electronic displays or a huge jump in the home printer business.
On the content production side, I wonder if content will still initially be produced for a print format (creating print-ready PDF using InDesign/K4) or in more presentation neutral contribution environment (like classic the web content management model).
Jun 04, 2008
As a follow up to an earlier post about tracking all that chatter happening around content, I thought I would mention a new(ish) site called Summize. I had heard the name before but never bothered to look. Then I read this post on Dave Kellog's blog that described what it is all about.
Summize is a search engine for Twitter. Twitter itself has really weak search engine so this is a welcome service. Summize is pretty cool but I think it falls short of piecing together a conversation about a topic. Since each tweet is 140 characters or less, tweets can be less meaningful out of context. For example, if personA tweets "I am trying product X" and someone else says in reply "@personaA I tried it too and it totally sucked," Summize probably won't be able to associate the second tweet with the first.
One thing that Summize is good for is seeing trendy topics. For instance, in the screenshot you can see that Plurk was on the top of the list. If you religiously follow Twitter, you know that over the last 7 days everyone has been talking about it as a possible successor to Twitter. If you don't Twitter you wouldn't know a Plurk from a Pluck.
FriendFeed does have a search engine and you can subscribe to the results over RSS. The nice thing about FriendFeed is that you can see comments too.
Jun 02, 2008
Sacha Chua, whose blog keeps me hopeful that smart and creative people can thrive in huge companies not called "Google", has started to play with Drupal. I like how she starts by addressing the configuration management problem. Her method is to have a script that blows away everything and then reloads from an installation profile (note, like many Drupal modules, the Profile Wizard module is not available yet for 6.x. However, many of the features should be included in the Drupal 7 core). Most people wait to tackle configuration management after it is too late.
Sacha is just getting started with Drupal. We will have to see if she moves her blog off of
WordPress.
Jun 02, 2008
Louis Gray has written a post about a trend that has been on my mind a lot recently: traffic and other activity shifting from the information source to social and aggregation sites. Louis has some compelling data showing that people are increasingly using sites like FriendFeed and Twitter to comment on provocative articles and blog posts.
The overall trend started with blogs and social bookmarking sites but is really accelerating with FriendFeed and tools like Twhirl that bring content right to your desktop and make it amazingly easy to comment.
.
There have been a number interesting discussions about who owns your comments and how to control the conversation. Many of the ideas are summarized on this blog post on Read Write Web and the related comments. Not surprisingly, there are even more comments about this post on FriendFeed.
There are interesting implications for publishers. Publishers that depend on advertising revenues are justifiably concerned that traffic is being pulled away from their site. To be sure, some traffic is lost especially when the conversation about the topic goes astray and eclipses the topic itself. But there is also a gain in traffic as people click through to the article to create their own informed opinion on the topic (although less people do this than you would expect. Often they just comment on the other comments).
If a publisher is more interested in mindshare than eyeballs and advertising revenue, this trend is a great opportunity because it gives higher visibly to the idea or business. In particular, companies that publish content for marketing purposes benefit. As Web 2.0 marketing strategies take hold, more and more companies are trying viral communication to get their message out. Of course, because no one controls it, the attitude can easily turn to the negative. Some companies are hurt more from negative commenting than others. Companies that create physical products (and shipped software) are hurt the most because they can't easily address people's complaints. SaaS companies can use the feedback to make their products better and then jump into the conversation and tell everyone that they were listening and made the correction. Many businesses can take the P.T. Barnum's attitude ("I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.") because any publicity is good publicity. Publishers that hope to prevent the expression of negative opinion by disabling the commenting feature have no hope at controlling the conversation.
While the good news is that conversations are happening digitally and out in the open (rather than verbally around a water cooler in some office park or through point to point emails) so it can be tracked, tracking and monitoring a conversation that is happening all over the web is a challenge. Conversations on Twitter are fleeting but the impression left in the reader's mind is much longer lived. You can't bookmark a tweet (even if you could, you may not be able to follow the link because Twitter is often down). You can bookmark and link a FriendFeed post (and its related comments) but Google doesn't index these detail pages very well (it only indexes the listing pages that rapidly change). It seems like the best thing you can do is subscribe to searches for each of the services and more seem to be popping up every minute. Another good strategy is to pay close attention to web server logs (using an analytics package) and look for traffic spikes and referrers. The spikes are likely to be more subtle than a Digg, Reddit, or Stumbled upon reference but the significance from a marketing perspective may be more profound depending what is said about you.
This is a fascinating topic. Please discuss (where ever you want to).
May 27, 2008
Donna "Snow Write" Snow has an update on the Aftermath of the 2008 Plone Strategic Planning Summit (my notes from the event). Donna is an early user and (one could say) matriarch of the Plone community (her analogy of Plone as a teenager certainly strengthens the case there). I like her description of GloWorm and other tools to soften the adjustment to Plone's new Zope 3 oriented architecture.
May 27, 2008
Jeff Potts has a nice post about how Alfresco and Drupal complement each other today but will wind up competing as Alfresco develops its front end capability (Alfresco is all back-end. Drupal is all front end). Jeff, who is writing a book on Alfesco and was the 2007 North American Contributor of the Year for Alfresco, lists five areas that we can expect Alfresco to improve on the front end.
When a project moves, it is important to consider where it is coming from (and potentially what it is leaving behind) as well as where it is going. Sometimes a product's heritage holds it back other times the product leaves a trail of frustrated customers. Both Drupal and Alfresco are on the move. Drupal has evolved to be more suitable for very large, commercial websites. Several people commented that Drupalcon 2008 in Boston saw a much greater commercial presence than earlier events. Drupal employers and Drupal related businesses are now active in the Drupal community and are helping to shape its future. But the Drupal community still has to consider the many small non-profit, departmental and personal sites running on the platform. Many of the improvements designed to help the enterprise will also help the small guy. Others times there may be conflict around priorities (do you spend more resources on improving caching and clustering or making it easier to install on Plesk or cPanel?).
Alfresco is facing similar questions but it is coming from the other direction. It's early base was the "ECM for the rest of us" market - medium to large companies doing simple document management. While the latest improvements on the WCM side are very excited to people wanting to build innovative Web 2.0-style web applications, they may be less relevant to the core customer base. Alfresco has a lot of resources, but they still need to make choices around prioritization.
It is all a matter of not being able to be all things to all people. Alfresco and Drupal are both fortunate to be in the positions that they are in. They both have achieved high levels of success in their original target market and are looking to expand their range. But it is not all about expansion, it is also about focus - what to focus on and what to turn away from.
