This is one of those rare posts where I post an article about a change in the executive ranks of a CMS company. However, thanks to Jon Marks and his CMS gurus on Twitter list I've been a Twitter follower of this person. Cheryl McKinnon is moving from Open Text to Nuexo as their Chief Marketing Officer. Nuxeo is one of the leading provider of open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and services.
"Cheryl has a broad spectrum of ECM experience and is a superb marketer, strategist, trend spotter and evangelist, which makes her the perfect match for Nuxeo at this point in our growth," said CEO Eric Barroca. "Nuxeo's open source technology has a deep feature set and rich functionality that rivals far costlier, cumbersome and complex proprietary ECM systems. With 350+ customers, tens of thousand of downloads, nearly 65 percent of sales outside of France, and a strong demand from the North American market, Cheryl will be instrumental in helping Nuxeo evolve into a global force." [Source]
What's interesting to me is that one of the reasons Cheryl made the move to Nuxeo is because Nuxeo is an open source company. On her blog she writes:
So why Nuxeo, why now? The Open Source angle fascinated me. Could something really be Free? And Good? And have a nice UI? Maybe I really have drunk the Kool-Aid on the concepts of transparency, openness, flatness, simplification. Over the last 18 months I've been living and breathing the world of Enterprise 2.0 and what it means to be 'Social' inside business and strive for collaboration with customers and partners. It just all makes more sense now.
I started to imagine a world where companies could just get on with it. Get ECM tools that meet their needs. Implement on their terms. Stop playing sales-cycle theatre. Ignore the middle men. No more shameful ROI spreadsheet gymnastics pleading for permission to do the right thing.
What Cheryl writes in her blog on the move to Nuxeo just confirms my belief that the economic climate currently is placing more attention on, and favoring, open source solutions. I recently blogged about this a few days ago where I wrote:
But, once again I think these type of events emphasize that those content management systems that get the most attention from us these days are those applications that open up and work with other third party applications.
There is a reason why such topics as CMIS, open source, and API are in the spotlight with folks interested in content management. No one really wants to be stuck with a vendor that doesn't play well with others.
Congratulations to Cheryl McKinnon on her new position at Nuxeo. Congratulations also to open source ECM for getting someone who is likely to make the spotlight on open source ECM even brighter. I wonder who else will be entering that spotlight next?
Comments
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Checkout over 100 Open Source CMS
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Stay on topic
Steve and everyone else,
Let's be careful with the comments going off-topic in order to self-promote your own sites. Steve, I'll let this go but everyone needs to stay clear from spamming the comments.
Thanks,
Bryan, CMSReport.com
re: Nuxeo
One of the great challenges in the ECM vendor space is the ambitious nature of putting together the entire package of offerings promised in the ECM vision (covered elsewhere by Tony Byrne at CMS Watch with contrary viewpoints. I have blogged about what I think constitutes ECM).
Nuxeo is the first 'company' that has me excited in a long time. What I'm wondering aloud is how they will execute. Will they stay close to the core of ECM with document and records management? Will they follow Alfresco's approach by trying to go broad with the entire ECM suite -- possibly to get mired in the Web Content management space (thus possibly alienating partners in WCM open-source project camps).?
Will they gun for OpenText or EMC/Documentum's market share -- both those companies have spent billions on developing their product lines as well as acquiring components of the ECM vision that they may have been missing. For me, EMC's vision has been most utopic -- the vision of an entire platform for creation, management, collaboration, enrichment, delivery of all content types is quite an exciting one. Yet so expensive and seemingly not quite attainable from a functionality standpoint (ask any customer about their overall services spend and whether their project is complete).
I'll be curious to observe whether Cheryl brings with her the lessons of excess, bloat, and overcomplicated/overlapping messaging from OpenText, and counsel the Nuxeo team to keep it simple. Or will Nuxeo aspire make the same mistakes of their behemoth competitors in the marketplace.
Haven't had this much excitement in years! I'm rooting for ya, Nuxeo!
ECM core + Web 2.0 = Difficult
I think what you talk about Joe this is one of the biggest challenges for enterprise software developers/vendors. How do you take the features of a quality niche CMS and roll that functionality into an enterprise DMS or ECM solution. I don't know how many times I've been disappointed when I've seen my own workplace implement an enterprise software package and we find that while it may allow for better control/governance...the new Web 2.0 or Social Media features are really lousy.
Personally, I have really never seen a "entire platform" ECM really be the complete solution for meeting my needs. At the same time, I don't want to be stuck with a software package that only does document/records management when I need to tie the DMS into additional content and collaboration tools. This is why I really think customers are better served with an ECM that puts emphasis on interoperability instead of completeness.
Rarely, do I see people get excited about proposed standards, yet I think this is the reason interoptability standards such as CMIS has been gaining so much traction. We want more than basic ECM, but we've learned that it's difficult (some would say impossible) for a single vendor to provide a complete turn-key package that meets all our needs. A solution that allows the best of the best to work together in some type of integrated fashion is the dream customers want to see realized.
re: ECM Core + Web 2.0 = Difficult
All great points, particularly around interoperability. Here's the issue. If you look at the ECM vendors in the market, they all sell DAM, DM, records management, 'collaboration', and WCM (other parts of ECM as well I'll skip for brevity). Some of the vendors have multiple solutions for those components. They all tout that their products are well integrated, and of course, their business model has got to drive 'bigger share of the customers' wallet,' which basically means they've got to pull through their entire stack of applications in the ECM suite.
Unless these companies divest themselves of their products, I don't see them entertaining the 'best-of-breed' approach that follows any interoperability standard.
My earlier point was that the open-source community has an opportunity not to make the same mistake by trying to be everything for everyone. If Nuxeo's management focuses on core functional and business requirements around document management -- including digital asset management -- and plays nicely by integrating rapidly with open-source CMS products like Drupal or the like -- I think that will positively impact the market.
I'll add that while Alfresco is trying to build its own WCMS, they have a partner named Optaros that has done some exciting work integrating Drupal with Alfresco. My advice to the Alfresco people -- ditch their WCMS efforts -- keep focusing on the core strengths of Alfresco and continue to press forward with off-the-shelf- integration modules for other WCMS applications like Drupal.