Vignette Letting Customers Start SmallerVignette Letting Customers Start Smaller

Growing numbers of companies want to give business-unit managers and department heads more control over their content while also preserving precious IT budget dollars. As a result, content-management vendor Vignette has changed the way it packages and sells its new V6 content suite, letting customers initially deploy content-management capabilities to individual departments.

V6 had previously been available only for enterprisewide deployments. But by releasing a standard edition, Vignette lets customers reduce their initial investment while preserving the ability to upgrade to an enterprisewide content-management system. The standard edition of V6, which initially was released in September, is priced at $200,000, while the more comprehensive enterprise edition runs $400,000.

Santi Pierini, VP of product strategy for Vignette, says the primary difference between the two editions is the number of CPUs that power the system. The standard edition is equipped with six processors, enough to take advantage of application server capabilities, but not enough to support a global content-management environment. The enterprise edition's 14 processors can handle the entire content life cycle, globally, from creation and collection to delivery and presentation.

Vignette's move was spurred by customers like Ball State University. The school last year deployed Vignette's StoryServer, which made it possible for 300 independent Web authors to publish content with the university's branded look. The goal was simple: Ball State wanted its myriad of colleges and departments to be able to develop individual Web portals without sacrificing the university's uniform look and feel. Al Rent, director of marketing for the university, says that compared with the university's past software purchases, the $100,000 investment--the school received a deep discount--was large. But the licensing and maintenance plan will let the school upgrade to Vignette's newer V6. That will allow the school to add features like personalization and customization to college and department portals, while also relieving IT staffers of hands-on content-management tasks.

Delphi Group analyst Hadley Reynolds says content-management vendors should expect growing numbers of customers looking for more flexible products and pricing. Responding to such demand the way Vignette has, Reynolds says, will help such customers tackle a dilemma. "You want to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time," he says. "You want centralized syndication, but also the ability for your lines of business and departments to manage their own portals and Web sites." According to Reynolds, if all the larger content-management vendors start packaging products for smaller deployments, medium-sized vendors could find themselves facing new competitive pressures.