Community

Why the acquisition by Open Text was bad for RedDot CMS

Open Text’s externally focused growth strategy.
Is it a CMS graveyard and how can you benefit from it?
(image by Jon)

I read an article yesterday from J.Boye and you should read it too, here.

Killing a product might make commercial sense for the vendor,
but customers are left to pay for the consequences
- J.Boye

Is it too late to wake up from the buyout fatigue?

RedDot CMS is alive and Open Text confirmed that they will continue their RedDot product line for the next couple of years. Still, there is not much buzz about OpenText’s leading enterprise CMS for the mid market these days. And the discussions about the buyout fatigue last year seem to be more than justified.
After the 2005 acquisition of RedDot Solutions by Hummingbird it was expected that things needed to settle in and development would take some time to gain traction. Another buyout 3 years later gave RedDot consultants and customers the impression to have stopped any momentum for innovation for almost 4 years.

RedDot CMS is still a leader in the ECM market

The CMS remains one of the leading ECM solutions on the market.
New modules and innovations were only available through Open Text partners and motivated RedDot CMS freelancers. Those were for a long time the only ones able to extend the core product functionality while the vendor appeared to be too busy planning new marketing strategies.
Until the release of version 10 not many new features were introduced by Open Text.

History repeats itself – Obtree to be replaced by RedDot CMS to be re.. – hold on – again?

Obtree is another acquisition victim of Open Text and was meant to be replaced by RedDot. Rumor has it that RedDot CMS will be replaced or merged with Vignette.
Now imagine a customers IT manager or marketing director having to explain why they had to move on from Obtree to RedDot CMS and now have to face something completely new again.. Cruel much? Yes. Indeed.
Even in a far future merging those two product lines is not feasible or will end in a disaster as Jon Marks pointed out last year.

RedDot can’t be replaced with anything within Open Text’s portfolio. And it doesn’t have to!

The Marketing 2.0 people at OpenText just seem to be looking at the Executive Summary and the theoretical revenue in Sales for Vignette as an option to replace / crossgrade from RedDot CMS. This is not feasible, not just technically. It is also guaranteed that customers and partners will be jaded and/or run away. How is that for revenue? Exactly. Bad.

Can Vignette maybe replace RedDot CMS?
Read more »

Related posts:

1. Is The RedDot CMS Dead? No it’s not – But what’s next Open Text?
2. A RedDot Community – This is where it’s at! & What do you want?
3. Create a community – developer / partner / customer driven
4. Clear the bloody cache in Open Text WSMS
5. No dots for me anymore. Thanks.

About the author:

Markus Giesen is a Solutions Architect and RedDot CMS Consultant, formerly based in the south of Germany. Travelling around the world to find and offer solutions for a better world (in a very web based meaning). He just found a way to do this as part of a Melbourne based web agency. On this blog Markus shares his personal thoughts on CMS and web development. In his freetime you will find him reading, snowboarding or travelling. You should follow him on Twitter!

Tags: Community, Customers, Gauss, Growth, Hummingbird, Innovation, Investors, Livelink, Maintenance, Obtree, Open Text, RedDot, Shareholders, Support, Vignette