Vignette (software)

Infobox_Company
company_name = Vignette Corporation
company_
company_type = Public
foundation = 1995, Sigma Partners
location = Austin, Texas (registered)| key_people = Mike Aviles, Chief Executive Officer
num_employees = about 670 (2008)
industry = content management, portal, collaboration, document management, and records management
homepage = [http://www.vignette.com www.vignette.com]

Vignette is a suite of content management, portal, collaboration, document management, and records management software developed by the Vignette Corporation, headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Overview

Vignette's Web Experience Platform consists of several suites of products allowing non-technical business users to create, edit and track content through workflows and publish this content through Web or portal sites.

Many large, content-rich sites on the World Wide Web run Vignette, including Disney, Marriott International, Wachovia, Martha Stewart, Fox News Digital and BSkyB. Vignette provided the technical platform for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Web site.

Recently, NASA credited Vignette Portal as a "key tool the team uses in-house to keep the content organized." [ [http://www.cio.com/article/print/365763 CIO Magazine article] ] Vignette is widely recognized for its ability to handle large, highly customized Web sites. Vignette also provides integration solutions for ERP, CRM and legacy systems. The company holds more than 40 U.S. patents. [ [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=%22vignette+corporation%22&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT U.S. Patent Office] ]

The Vignette platforms provide support for Java EE and .NET. For the former, the JSR 168 specification is implemented. Sites running versions of Vignette software prior to V7 are generally easy to identify by the format of their story URLs, which are mostly numeric strings with several commas as separators.

History

In November 1995 Ross Garber and Neil Webber started Vignette with the goal of making web publishing easier and more personalized. The company's seed round investors were Austin Ventures and Sigma Partners. Garber and Webber had previously worked with John Thornton of Austin Ventures when they were employed at DAZEL Corporation, and also with Bob Davoli at Sigma Partners, when Davoli was CEO of Epoch Systems and Garber and Webber were early employees in the 1990s .

Vignette's first product development effort was focused on large-scale content management workflow processes. This product, which was announced but never shipped, was called StoryBuilder. During the initial StoryBuilder development cycle, Vignette partnered with CNET, which had developed an internal technology called PRISM that allowed for very large scale database-driven web site creation and delivery. CNET, which wanted a third-party to commercialize the product, decided to spin the technology off to Vignette, also invested $500,000, for a 33% stake in Vignette. Vignette rapidly commercialized the technology into a product called StoryServer, which shipped in January 1997. The StoryBuilder technology was later merged into the StoryServer product, and shipped in September 1997.

In the 1990s Vignette's IDE and API were superior to traditional CGI/vi/Perl web development and gained much popularity and customer base because of its convenience and usability. In 1998, after barely three years of being in business, Vignette had already signed up 130 customers.

In June 1998, Garber hired Greg Peters to succeed him as Chief Executive Officer, and Garber became Chairman of the Board. Vignette's IPO took place on February 19,1999, and became one of the ten most successful "dot-com" IPOs of the year. Garber left the company later in 1999, and Webber retired in early 2000.

The company made several key acquisitions over the years including the acquisition of e-business application vendor OnDisplay for $1.4B in 2000 [ [http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/05/22/000522hnvignette.html Infoworld Article] ] , enterprise portal software vendor Epicentric for $32M in 2003 [ [http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1490541 Internet News Article] ] , CMS vendor Instraspect for $20M in 2003 [ [http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5076873.html ZDNet Article] ] , Tower Technology, an Australian-based provider of enterprise document and records management solutions, in 2004 for $125M [ [http://www.crm2day.com/news/crm/EpZuluZyEltXzkCTDr.php CRMToday Article] ] and Vidavee, a SaaS-based Web video publishing company in 2008. [ [http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/video-sharing-becomes-part-of-vignette-platform-002557.php CMSWire article] ]

Products

Vignette Content Management

Vignette Content Management helps organizations create and manage content for enterprise Internet, extranet or intranet applications. It is designed for Web content creators, contributors and administrators in IT and marketing departments. Vignette Content Management's predecessor, StoryServer is widely considered the very first Web content management system.

Vignette Portal

Vignette Portal enables organizations to quickly build and deliver highly customizable Web applications that support customers, employees and partners. Vignette Portal is integrated tightly with Vignette Content Management. The Portal is built primarily upon the Epicentric Foundation Server, which Vignette acquired in 2003.jncvbncvncvncvbncvbn Prasad

Vignette Collaboration

Vignette Collaboration provides organizations the ability to improve productivity and more efficiently direct business processes that require interaction across disparate geographic and organizational boundaries.

Vignette Community

Released in 2008, Vignette Community helps organizations add social computing applications such as blogs, wikis, ratings and forums to their Web sites.

Vignette Video

Released in 2008 following the acquisition and integration of Vidavee, Vignette Video is a hosted video management solution that provides capabilities to upload, transcode, manage and deliver video. The new product also includes a Flash-based media player that allows users to tag and share any segment of a video.

Criticisms

* Financial difficulty. Vignette is experiencing a sad downward trajectory. Vignette continues to bleed: Net profit soared 78 percent (Q2 2008 vs. Q2 2007) [cite web |date=2008-07-25 |title=Interwoven prospers as Vignette continues to bleed|url=http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1324-Interwoven-prospers-as-Vignette-continues-to-bleed] [cite web |date=2008-07-28 |title=Vignette's Year on Year Income Falls 73.5%|url=http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/vignettes-year-on-year-income-falls-735-002937.php] . TradingMarkets.com recommends AVOID BUYING Vignette's share (Symbol VIGN) [cite web |date=2008-08-11 |title=Sad downward trajectory|url=http://charts.tradingmarkets.com/prcharts/index.cfm?from=08/11/2007&to=08/11/2008&prtype=pr&barlen=daily&style=ohlc&months=3&prnumbers=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10&cma200=1&sym=VIGN] .

* Criticisms by Vignette clients at [http://www.cmsmatrix.org/vignette-cmportalsolution/vignette-cms-whos-using-it#WHMvWfCyu2wQihzfn8wiXQ cmsmatrix.org] [cite web |date=2008-07-31 |title=Review by customers at cmsmatrix.org|url=http://www.cmsmatrix.org/vignette-cmportalsolution/vignette-cms-whos-using-it#WHMvWfCyu2wQihzfn8wiXQ] .

* Very expensive: over $250,000 [cite web |date=2002-09-17 |title=Expensive: over $250,000|url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,479068,00.asp] [cite web |date=2008-07-31 |title=Too expensive.|url=http://www.cmsmatrix.org/vignette-cmportalsolution/vignette-cms-whos-using-it?pn=3] [cite web |date=2005-09-15 |title=Too expensive.|url=http://www.cmsmatrix.org/vignette-cmportalsolution/vignette-cms-whos-using-it?pn=2] .

* Complicated interface. Counter-productive tool for employees. Awful workflow. Steep learning curve [cite web |date=2007-11-02 |title=cmswatch.com - Vignette, Ajax, and Usability|url=http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/169-Vignette-Demo] [cite web |date=2008-07-31 |title=Complicated interface.|url=http://www.cmsmatrix.org/vignette-cmportalsolution/vignette-cms-whos-using-it?pn=3] .

Vignette Recommendations

Vignette Recommendations was announced in January 2008 as part of an OEM agreement with Baynote. Recommendations uses the wisdom of the crowd to help organizations recommend new products or content. Vignette Recommendations was named Best Web 2.0 Technology by UK-based Incisive Media at its inaugural Web 2.0 Innovation Awards presentation in London. [ [http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/accolades-demonstrate-vignettes-commitment-to-the-web-experience-002831.php CMSWire article] ]

Acquisitions

* OnDisplay (2000)
* Intraspect (2002)
* Epicentric (2003)
* Tower Technology (2004)
* Vidavee (2008)

See also

* StoryServer

References

External links

* [http://www.vignette.com/ Vignette]
* [http://www.vgndeveloper.com/ Vignette developer community]