One on One with Con O'Connell of Vignette

Conleth O'Connell, Ph. D. is chief technology officer at Vignette Corporation where he is responsible for driving the corporate vision for innovative technology and solutions.  He joined Vignette in 1996 as one of the company's first engineers and developed Vignette's original product offering, StoryServer. We asked him about the portal, the current content management market and what the future looks like for him with purchase of his company by Open Text.

FCM: Portals and content management are often talked about in the same breath, but they're different. Can you talk about the similarities and differences between the two systems?

CO: Absolutely, I'd be happy to share my perspective on this topic. I've always viewed content management as trying to empower the business--usually the marketing department--and ease the burden on IT. IT doesn't like change because they think too many things can go wrong when change occurs. But marketing is constantly changing: Adding new sites, working on promotions and campaigns, and creating leads for the sales team. These two departments are in conflict with each other. Content management is an approach to provide IT with change management support to meet marketing's needs. A core principle, or tenet, for us has always been to manage content (information under management) separately from a particular use of it (presentation being the main use case). That tenet provides flexibility to the business to repurpose and leverage the content in various contexts: Multiple websites, campaigns, product descriptions, digital signage, direct mail campaigns, corporate communication, etc.

Portals have a heritage based on exposing enterprise applications through a single access point--being the aggregate home page across those applications, if you will. A common use case would be a sales manager’s interface into the CRM, GL and forecasting systems. Its purpose is presentation, making it contextual and as personal as possible to reduce the effort to access the information needed by the user. Many of the functions a developer would want to create for a particular user experience are built into the portal product, such as enabling the user to have their own "my page," drag-n-drop application views, multi-site support, login and registration pages, and integrating views of more than one application.

As you can tell these systems have very different purposes. However, what we found is that the combination creates a compelling environment for delivering experiences: Content management provides the content and portal provides the presentation of it. Without portal, IT usually develops the user experience on top of the content management system. Without content management, IT usually develops the integrations to expose the applications and the content through the portal system. In combination, the burden should be eased on IT, making it easier for the business to get what they want and have some direct control.

FCM: Do traditional portals still have a place in the enterprise or are they being displaced by a less centralized, more organic system built around social software?

CO: Portals are even more important now. A common use case for portal software is to aggregate and consolidate multiple websites into a single portal that provides access to all the applications that an organization provides to its employees, partners, suppliers and customers. That continues with social software. Social software allows the end user of a portal (or site) to provide feedback directly via comments, ratings, tags, etc. It also provides for a lightweight editorial environment for blogging, wiki editing and video management. The need for portal software grows because the classic problem remains: It's easy to get a site up and running. It's hard to maintain it and keep it accessible to all the users who need it or want to participate. Portal has evolved. It's no longer just the access point to get to applications. It provides the gathering point for us to participate with each other.

FCM: How has SharePoint affected the portal market and customer perceptions?

CO: In my opinion, Microsoft has done an admirable job at democratizing collaboration and portal software. SharePoint has changed the conversation from, "Why do I need a portal?" to "What do I do with all of these portals?" Although it's perceived as being "free," the reality is that the cost is reminiscent of when IT started the consolidation of websites after the dotcom bust--but many times larger. For us, we've focused on the value and how we integrate with SharePoint. We've consolidated thousands of sites into one portal at enterprises such as Hewlett-Packard and Bank of America and now we're doing it again. However, the difference is, those sites aren't being shut down. Thus, we have the need to integrate with Sharepoint and its uses as an enterprise application.

FCM: What impact has social software had on portal developers and content management vendors, and what has your company done to incorporate more social functionality?

CO: As we see it, social media requirements have become mainstream. It's very similar to what happened in the mid-90s when websites and domains were becoming critical requirements for marketing organizations. Websites and domains began as point solutions used to achieve a tactical goal and they eventually were embraced as a strategic platform within the enterprise.

Unlike the mid-90s though, the need to provide the capabilities as a service is more important today as well as the ability to work within a hosted environment. We have our own social software that works intimately with our content management and portal software. Our latest release incorporates 10 major community applications onto one platform and includes more than 100 JSR-286 portlets that work in our portal product and other JSR-compliant portals. As in the 90s with websites, social experiences mean new requirements that marketing is demanding from IT organizations. Our goal is to continue to ease that burden and to provide social software as part of the enterprise platform.

FCM: You've been with the company since the beginning. How do you feel about the sale to Open Text and the future of the software you helped design?

CO: I feel that the opportunity ahead is what you make of it. Whether it's Open Text or Vignette, or any other enterprise software vendor, the problems and conflicted priorities our customers are trying to address continue to grow and get more challenging. For me, those challenges are energizing because I can visualize the solutions--we have the technology, infrastructure and environment to put the vision into practice. The label on the shirt or product isn't what matters. What matters is the value of the solutions to our customers. I'm dedicated to prioritizing the delivery of the right solutions to our customers during the transition.

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