Open Text Is Putting Vignette Out of Its Misery by Buying It

I just got notification that Open Text is buying Vignette for approximately $310 million; it will become a wholly owned subsidiary.

Vignette is one of those classic high tech stories, full of drama. The story I was told by Vignette management was that in its early days, as the company was starting to get into web content management, it went around to a variety of enterprises to get a feel for what clients needed. In the course of this research, they talked to Halsey Minor at CNET, who showed them what CNET had done. Impressed, they bought the software and that was the beginning of Vignette.

In the dot.com era, Vignette was unstoppable. Headquartered in Austin, TX it grew by leaps and bounds and started to feel invincible. I remember spending a day at Vignette at the height of its growth and being shown the multiple fussball tables for developers, the many flavors of microwave popcorn, and the conference rooms full of Aeron chairs. At that point, I knew Vignette was heading for a fall, and told them so. Incredulous, they basically told me I had no grip on reality. Two years later, when the dot.com bust came along, it turned out I was right and they were wrong.

Vignette has never really recovered from those days. Competitors began offering somewhat similar web content management systems for a lot less money, and the portal business became a lot less trendy as well. So Vignette has survived, but it was only a matter of time before the company got bought. Now we know who the buyer is.

Comments

[Ronit]

Weird coincidence - I came upon this post as I was speaking to an OpenText sales person who was discussing Red Dot with me.

We're trying to choose a CMS and we're looking seriously at Red Dot for an off-the-shelf solution or Drupal for a roll-your-own alternative. Would love to know if you have any previous articles on the whole CMS-selection process, or what you'd recommend for a good CMS on a limited budget.

[Guy Creese]

Well, if you have a limited budget I wouldn't look at Vignette. Burton Group has issued a report on web content management, but you need to be a client to access it--we don't sell one offs.

Besides Red Dot and Drupal, I'd look at Ektron if you're a Microsoft-centric shop. There are also some SaaS solutions (e.g., CrownPeak, Omniture) that let you avoid running the server yourself.

[Ronit]

Thanks!

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