It's been a while since I added anything to this blog but I read an email from Tony Byrne at the Real Story (CMS Watch to you and me) and felt compelled to quote something in his newsletter. I am not saying I agree but he is a highly respected industry analyst...

'The product formerly known as RedDot is losing altitude at a precipitous rate. Alterian is discontinuing its .NET-based offering (the former Immediacy product).'

We have seen a disappointing response to RedDot but I have no knowledge of the discontinuation of Immediacy. Tony does comment in the same newsletter about the vibrancy of other players in the same space including our favourite EPiServer.

We are delighted to relate that our friends at Historic Scotland are up for some awards at The British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB) 2009 awards. The agency is in for several awards but the two we are most pleased by are 'Communications team of the year' for Linda and her team and 'Best website/microsite' for the Stirling Castle website a site which was designed and built by Mimtech. We are looking forward to the awards dinner at the end of February and good luck to HS for all the categories in which they are shortlisted.

I heard a great phrase on the radio this morning that I thought I'd share. The programme was about the use of internet technologies and social media by governments and PR people to their own ends.

SPINTERNET

The argument was along the lines that blogs, wikipedia, twitter etc. are being used to circumnavigate censorship rules and processes to 'put out' ideas and opinions that can't be made through other media. Not a new idea but a great word.

We have finished the migration of Salford City Council's Obtree sites to RedDot. Six sites have now gone live and are working well. The migration itself was, in my humble opinion, a resounding success. The issues we had were not technical but process and you can always learn from those for the next one. Well done to Chandra, Ken and the team for bringing this one in on time and budget. We are preparing a case study to document the project and will make the metrics available so you will be able to see how much more effective the mim:switch software is than the manual or other automated options.

We have already been commissioned to begin the next one and are in discussions about another two.

We are hoping to have the opportunity for a migration from Obtree to EPiServer soon (the test migrations to EPiServer are quicker than those to RedDot) and we are looking forward to that.

If you are a user of Obtree (Livelink WCM PS) and would like to know what options you have for migrating to a new platform please get in touch.

I have just read an announcement about the Open Text 2010 roadmap. This covered the full suite but the bit that caught my eye was...

'Open Text said that 2012 will see the release of a new Web Business app that combines Vignette content management tools with its own web solutions' (that's RedDot to you and me) '. This will create a platform and application framework with enhanced content modelling and "templating", richer in-context editing for non-technical users and faster web site deployment, according to the firm.'

My understanding is that RedDot and Vignette are built on very different technologies (I may be wrong) so I guess OT have a mammoth task ahead to join the two together. I'm interested to see the result.