[thelist] RE:News.com gets a facelift

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Subject:  Re: [thelist] RE:News.com gets a facelift



on 1/24/01 12:52 PM, Nick Koleszar at koleszar at netcomuk.co.uk wrote:

> What a surprise. CNET foists Vignette on the world, then decides it's not
> even good enough for them! Martin, any comments? Mr Greenspun, if you're
> listening, care to comment?

>I think one of the key words that Martin uses is "Enterprise". According to
>Broadvision, their average installation cost $410,000;

That'll include pilots, proofs of concept, small clients and heavily discounted
clients - you're probably looking at 3 times that for a 'normal' case for a
first-time purchase, including the associated costs like....

>ongoing support. I don't know if this includes in-house
>training, hardware conversions, etc.

>In any
>case, with this kind of money, you're talking about a major investment in
>changing the way an <em>enterprise</em> is run.

And 'enterprise' clients may be in the multi-billion dollar *profit* (not
turnover) league. One install may support *several* business areas,
from supply side, to large customers (eg a retail group like
http://www.dixons-group.com or http://www.tesco.com), let along
consumers.

>Another interesting note, is that according to a Giga Information group
>report, the annual market for CMS is right around $250M.

Faulkner "conservatively" (their word) estimate it to grow to
$65billion by 2003.

In the six months ending June 30, 2000, Broadvision grew its revenues
by 374% to $156.8m, while Vignette grossed $55.2m, up over 600%.

>However, their
>research says that about half of all CMSs are developed in-house. That means
>that a lot of people are looking at the alternatives and are not liking what
>they are seeing.
 I would imagine that includes people scared of the cost. Also, a lot were
developed 18 months
or more ago, when there wasn't really a solution on the market unless you were a
news site
(and you then wrote "StoryServer" on the chequestub).

In the next round, when those systems are being replaced, most will go external
for a packaged,
configurable system like BV, Vignette or Spectra.

Cheers
Martin




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