[thelist] Fwd: Re: [thechat] Spectra

[Ron Thigpen]

In my experience the much-abused term 'Enterprise', while it is supposed to
connote certain levels of attainment in the areas of availability, scalability,
security, etc., more often simply means that it is being marketed to executives
rather than technologists.  

The fact that Spectra has made perhaps less of splash in the world of big name
CMS software perhaps has less to do with it's merits as a software system, and
more to do with Allaire's typical focus on the developer side of the market. 
The only way the big name CMS systems get on the radar of the consultantcy sales
forces that push them is with large marketing expenditures on campaign with a
distinct focus on the (typically non-technical) business audience.  

As a developer with a significant skills investment in seeing Allaire succeed, I
applaud the fact that they chose not to spend huge money marketing in this
fashion.  The Cold Fusion platform took off because developers liked it, not
because of flashy presentations in executive suites.  Likewise Spectra should
succeed because it gives developers a platform that is efficient in terms of
development effort, is manageable, and supports large deployments.  Development
shops that can win bids for sites based on Spectra will be the ones to sell it. 
Spectra is /so/ cost competitive vs. the Vignettes and BroadVisions of the
world, and fully as capable for the majority of applications. I'd venture to
guess that shops such as Mindseye are probably responsible for more Spectra
sales than any other channel.   

For my mindshare, this approach is far more valid and should be seen as cause
for praise and not derision.  Decisions on the functionality of applications
built on these CMS platforms will always be driven by business imperitives. 
This is good and right.  However, the details of how efficiently these systems
work, their capabilities, power and ease of management are best left to the
techies.  Frankly I admire a software company that is willing to market to the
developers who will be using their product, and bet their fortune's rise on fall
on the product's technical merits.

--Ron Thigpen



Martin Burns wrote:
> 
> 
> To be honest, Spectra (while a great product) wasn't really
> flying as a competitive CMS. Most of the CMS people I talk
> to haven't even *heard* of it, let alone would consider it
> up alongside Teamsite, Vignette, Documentum etc.
> 
> Cheers
> Martin
>