Interwoven and Dallas Rule #12 August 6, 2008

James Murray, VP Interwoven Europe, in an interview with IT Week advocates (in his words) blowing up ECM because its confusing. Well, as Dallas Rule #12 says “If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.”

So – they are hardly a failure but maybe he’s saying “We’re not a mediocre ECM, we’re a great WCM that you misunderstood.”

For what it’s worth – I actually agree with him. ECM is confusing and there are a good many consultants that work hard to keep it that way. Certainly other vendor strategies to keep major ECM product stacks separated (e.g. Open Text,IBM,etc.) support the idea in action if not in words. I would argue though that if somebody doesn’t understand WCM – it’s not “ECM’s” fault but rather the result of vague messaging from the Web Content marketeers claiming to do things far outside their expertise. Who’s the leader of that club?