SDL – who supply Tridion web content management – first announced it wanted to take over Alterian – purveyors of the CMS formerly known as Morello (Mediasurface) and Immediacy – in October. This week the Financial Times confirmed that an offer had been accepted. You can get the financial background to the takeover from the FT article, but while the companies are close to a formal merger, the software they supply remain poles apart.
As SDL continues to release modules and connectors to enhance the breadth of its web engagement offering, many of its customers find themselves operating dated user interfaces and struggling with the obscurities of Visual Basic scripting. If you put Tridion side by side with newer .Net CMS like Sitecore or EPiServer, you’d see the difference straight away.
Alterian’s WCM has a much slicker editorial user interface and delivers dynamic rather than static content. How you scale your website, integrate with other systems and personalise content therefore requires a completely different technical approach.
This personalisation aspect is particularly relevant as both vendors have been positioning themselves in the web engagement / customer experience market. Even though SDL is at the crest of Forrester’s online customer experience wave (and remains firmly ensconced in Gartner’s magic quadrant for web content management), I would argue that neither tool is that well-suited to handling the kind of user-generated content that some lighter weight open source tools like Drupal can offer. SDL seems to me to be particularly well geared to organisations that have a thought-through web content strategy, while what sets Alterian apart in online engagement is its social media marketing tool, SM2. Indeed, this is what SDL seems to covet most:
“We think that there are synergies with the marketing analytics and content delivery,” Mark Lancaster, SDL executive chairman, told the Financial Times.
Allow me to express some degree of scepticism here. Alterian have owned both WCM and SMM technology for over three years and made little (if any) headway in their integration. SDL may have greater resources to achieve this, but we’re looking at completely different products here. Any quick fixes would simply be a rebranding exercise with no under-the-bonnet coordination. Of course, SDL may have a clever plan and I stand to be corrected on that point.
Overall, I’m quite positive about the takeover. I think SDL will benefit from the niche benefits that Alterian brings, particularly in terms of focus on improving editorial interfaces. I think there’s a great opportunity for Alterian partners who previously worked with Immediacy to get to grips with a Tridion CMS that’s similar but more powerful than what they were previously used to. And I think that customers, particularly in Europe, will get a broader set of implementation partners to work with who have great web experience.
Yes, it’s yet another merger and apparently less choice in the market, but actually for the two software development teams, I hope it’s an opportunity for them to learn from each other and for synergy to mean establishing a really good, forward-thinking product rather than just an excuse to downsize.
You hit the nail bang on the head with your last paragraph Philippe
That wonderful word ’synergy’ which is used so liberally in these M&A scenarios but more than often means Company A is running out of customers to sell to so needs to buy Company B’s customer base as quickly as possible 
The inevitable result of which is that the ‘product/s’ just become political footballs internally that get kicked around at the mercy of financial decisions. Sadly, I think that nail you’ve just hit is yet another one in the coffin for the old proprietary vendors …
Comment by James Hoskins — 9 December 2011 @ 12:22 pm
Firstly, Philippe I think that some of your product information seems a bit dated, so we need to get you an update.
But, I think the main thrust of your post is to discuss the acquisition, rather than a detailed assessment of both products against the market.
I’d suggest that folks need to look beyond the apparent WCM overlap in this acquisition, especially this view that it’s motivated by WCM customer acquisition. A quick look at the numbers just does’t support that.
Alterian are not a proprietary WCM vendor – WCM is just one piece of a broader marketing platform.
I agree Philippe, Alterian were slow to realize the value of the acquired product assets, but consider the value of language technology and SM2 – rather than just WCM.
As this is still ongoing and not done yet, neither company can officially reveal the detail of what the future holds.
Cheers,
Ian
@iantruscott
Comment by Ian Truscott — 10 December 2011 @ 1:17 pm
How do you keep getting yourself in these positions Ian?
I long for the day when you can really speak your mind on these matters and not feel duty bound to follow the corporate line.
Both you and I spoke regularly of the ’synergy’ that was to be had from the acquisition of Immediacy by Mediasurface but we both know it was bullshit. I had a drink last week with the last of the Immediacy folks who have now lost their jobs in the latest rounds of Alterian redundancy. Try telling them it was all about ’synergy’!
Likewise, we both know that the City savvy bosses at Mediasurface sold an underexperienced and naive Alterian a WCM nightmare to save the investments of the chairman et al at a time when the shareprice was plunging.
As Alterian was the only ‘marketing platform’ provider of note in the UK who has gained some market presence beyond the shores of our unilingual island this is as much about the customer base opportunities as it is about anything else.
I really hope that the opportunity Philippe expresses in his final paragraph comes to fruition but in today’s financial climate and with the old guard vendors looking increasingly pressured I fear this will go the same way as other such ’synergetic’ opportunities in this wonderful world of content technologies …
Comment by James Hoskins — 10 December 2011 @ 2:24 pm
James – Just for the record, speaking personally, having spent time at Alterian – seeing what has happened to Alterian recently, to my good friends there across the business and the office closures is a tragedy.
The reasons for it are broader than the WCM business and it was widely reported that the Alterian “review of the business” was not for an acquisition – http://bit.ly/uDTTu1
However, we can hopefully draw a line under that – it’s an exciting prospect to have Alterian in SDL. Also worth noting – Alterian is being acquired by SDL, not our WCM division.
Your view of the Mediasurface sale to Alterian is also a little off. I don’t claim to be on the inside, but I know the other options facing the business would have mean’t your friends and mine (and me) facing the prospect of “spending more time with the family” back in 2007/8.
Philippe – Did you get a chance to look at some of the more contemporary ways of working with SDL Tridion – besides VB?
http://prezi.com/tzxk2w9ic284/developing-with-aspnet-mvc-and-tridion/
Cheers,
Ian
@iantruscott
Comment by Ian Truscott — 11 December 2011 @ 11:53 pm
Thanks Ian,
I don’t think I intimated that the takeover was for WCM customer acquisition, but precisely that SDL want some kind of social media marketing tool to plug into their WCM.
My hope on the WCM side is that Tridion becomes a better product as a result of the acquisition. I don’t think that SDL would object to improving their product, would they? And similarly that the takeover opens up opportunities for partners.
My product information may be dated, but it is based on discussions with people who implement the software on a daily basis and on checking information from the corporate website (which I recognise is often the last place to get up-to-date information).
But my experience of customers is that — irrespective of the supplier — they nearly always survive on an earlier version of the software, so the latest product information is of use to people who haven’t bought licences but not much help to people who have.
Comment by Philippe Parker — 12 December 2011 @ 9:21 am