Vignette Corporation
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| Type | Subsidiary of OpenText |
|---|---|
| Industry | content management, portal, collaboration, document management, and records management |
| Founded | 1995, Sigma Partners |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas (registered) |
| Key people | Mike Aviles, Chief Executive Officer |
| Employees | about 670 (2008) |
Vignette Corporation was a company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that offered a suite of content management, portal, collaboration, document management, and records management software. Founded in 1995,[1] Vignette was bought by Open Text Corporation in 2009.[2][3]
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Overview [edit]
Targeted at the enterprise market, Vignette offered several suites of products allowing non-technical users to create, edit and track content through workflows and publish it on the web. Vignette provided integration for ERP, CRM and legacy systems, supporting Java EE and .NET.
The company held more than 70 U.S. patents.[4]
Many large websites ran Vignette, including UnitedHealth Group, Disney, Wachovia, Martha Stewart, Fox News Digital, National Geographic, MetLife and BSkyB. Vignette provided the technical platform for the 2004 Summer Olympics website. In 2008, NASA credited Vignette Portal as a "key tool the team uses in-house to keep the content organized."[5]
History [edit]
In November 1995 Ross Garber and Neil Webber started Vignette with the goal of making web publishing easier and more personalized.[1] The company's seed round investors were Austin Ventures and Sigma Partners. Garber and Webber had previously worked with John Thornton[disambiguation needed] of Austin Ventures when they were employed at DAZEL Corporation, and also with Bob Davoli at Sigma Partners, when Davoli was CEO of Epoch Systems and Garber and Webber were early employees in the 1990s.
Vignette's first product was called StoryBuilder and handled large-scale content management workflow. This product was announced but never released on its own. During the initial StoryBuilder development, Vignette partnered with CNET, which had developed its own technology called PRISM that allowed for the creation and delivery of large, database-driven websites. CNET, which wanted a third party to commercialize the product, decided to transfer the technology to Vignette, and invested $500,000, for a 33% stake in Vignette. Vignette rapidly developed the technology into a product called StoryServer, which was released in January 1997. StoryBuilder was later merged into the StoryServer product, and was released in September 1997.[6][7]
In the 1990s, Vignette's IDE and API offered an alternative to conventional CGI/vi/Perl web development, and the company managed to acquire 130 customers by 1998.[7]
In June 1998, Garber hired Greg Peters to succeed him as Chief Executive Officer, and Garber became Chairman of the Board. Vignette's IPO took place on February 19, 1999, and became one of the ten most successful "dot-com" IPOs of the year. Garber left the company later in 1999, and Webber retired in early 2000.
The company made several acquisitions over the years, including e-business application vendor OnDisplay for $1.4B in 2000,[8] enterprise portal software vendor Epicentric for $32M in 2002,[9] CMS vendor Intraspect for $20M in 2003,[10] Tower Technology, an Australian-based provider of enterprise document and records management solutions, in 2004 for $125M,[11] and Vidavee, a SaaS-based Web video publishing company in 2008.[12]
In 2008 Vignette suffered a marked decrease in gross profit and net income (Q2 2008 vs. Q2 2007).[13][14] The company reported a loss of a little over $863,000 in Q2 of 2008, compared to a net gain of $4 million in Q2 of 2007.[13][14] However, the company had no debt and approximately $150 million in cash. Vignette launched a dozen products in 2008 but needed to prove the value of these products by producing license revenue.[13][14]
On May 6, 2009, Open Text Corporation announced its intention to buy Vignette for $310 million[2] and completed the acquisition on July 21, 2009.[3]
Criticisms [edit]
Vignette was criticized for being very expensive. Traditionally Vignette aimed at the high-end of the market with the typical deployment costing over $250,000.[15] Newer offerings (i.e. Video, Recommendations and Social) were priced well under $100,000.
The user interfaces of Vignette's products were considered to be complicated, non-intuitive and hard to learn.[16] Later product versions were aimed at addressing these criticisms.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ a b Ante, Spencer E. (2000-06-05). "Making the Web Go: Sites hum with Vignette's software, which helps publish and manage Net content". Business Week. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
- ^ a b "Vignette to become part of Open Text in $310M deal". Austin Business Journal. 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2009-05-06.
- ^ a b "Open Text Completes Vignette Acquisition". Retrieved 2009-07-28.
- ^ U.S. Patent Office
- ^ McLaughlin, Laurianne (May 22, 2008). "NASA Phoenix Mission to Mars: An Out-Of-This-World Content Management Challenge". CIO Magazine. Retrieved December 3, 2011.
- ^ Festa, Paul (September 16, 1997). "Vignette updates StoryServer platform". CNET News.
- ^ a b Malik, Om (October 14, 1998). "Vignette is the story". Forbes. Retrieved December 3, 2011.
- ^ Sanborn, Stephanie (May 22, 2000). "Vignette to acquire OnDisplay". InfoWorld. Retrieved July 25, 2011.
- ^ Wagner, Jim (October 29, 2002). "Vignette Buys Epicentric for $32 Million". Internet News.
- ^ Becker, David (September 15, 2003). "Vignette buys collaboration company". ZD Net.
- ^ "Vignette to Acquire Tower Technology Pty Ltd". CRM Today. January 23, 2004.
- ^ Diaz, Maria M. (April 18, 2008). "Video Sharing Becomes Part of Vignette Platform". CMSWire.
- ^ a b c Thomas, Kas (July 25, 2008). "Interwoven prospers as Vignette continues to bleed". Real Story Group.
- ^ a b c Guseva, Irina (July 28, 2008). "Vignette's Year on Year Income Falls 73.5%". CMS Wire.
- ^ Clyman, John (September 17, 2002). "Vignette V6 Content Suite". PC Mag.
- ^ Byrne, Tony (November 2, 2007). "Vignette, Ajax, and Usability". Real Story Group.
