Open Text announces its plans for Vignette since the Acquisition

Open Text's plans are an extension of the company' strategy to maintain its leadership in comprehensive ECM solutions.

Offered as part of the Open Text ECM Suite, the solutions will help organizations establish deeper connections to customers and use the Web as a channel for new revenues.

“We remain dedicated to all our customers and the Web content management solutions they rely upon. Our plan is not to eliminate products, but to offer solutions that help our customers effectively fulfill their unique, organizational needs from strategic online initiatives to day-to-day site management tasks,” said John Shackleton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Open Text.

Quickly evolving social networking, digital media and mobile applications are moving the Web beyond brand promotion to become a core component of business strategy. Bringing these technologies together for a more powerful online experience is critical to engaging customers in new ways, improving the effectiveness of marketing programs and guiding changes in business strategy that can increase revenue and improve operations.

“Chief Marketing Officers, and now Chief Executive Officers, recognize the need for a comprehensive Web business strategy,” said Scott Bowen, Senior Vice President at Open Text. “We are seeing this trend from more of our large customers, across more industries, and the demand is for more sophisticated solutions that meet the fast-changing expectations in online experiences. Vignette adds the right technologies to our portfolio at the right time.”

As part of this strategy, Open Text will leverage technologies from both Vignette and its existing solutions to deliver new next-generation Web offerings. Vignette Content Management will form the foundation of Open Text's Web business solutions, providing personalized and multi-channel capabilities integrated with the Open Text ECM Suite.

Now the world's largest provider of Web content management (WCM) solutions, Open Text has said it will continue to develop both Vignette Content Management and Open Text Web Solutions as complementary offerings to meet the full range of WCM needs, from easy-to-deploy, departmental applications to more complex global deployments. Open Text will release Vignette Content Management version 8.0 and Vignette Portal version 8.0 in the second half of 2009. The recently released Web Solutions 10.0 will be followed by the release of Web Solutions 10.1 in the first half of 2010. Within 24 months, Open Text will launch an offering that combines key strengths of Web Solutions with the Vignette Content Management platform, making it the undisputed market and technology leader for Web content management solutions.

Vignette Social Media Solutions (Community Applications and Community Services) will be the basis of a new Social Marketplace offering, which will be added to Open Text s Social Media solutions, targeting Internet-style social media interactions and enabling existing Web sites with social content.

Current Open Text WCM customers will be able to take advantage of this new Social Marketplace package. In addition, Vignette Collaboration will continue to be enhanced as part of the underlying Vignette Social Media technology stack.

The company will announce more product plans in the weeks ahead, including related WCM modules and Vignette's Transactional Content Management product line. Open Text will also introduce a new product roadmap, which will include more details about its future Web business solutions, at its annual Content World 2009 Conference in October http://www.opentext.com/contentworld/2009/