Vignette Answers IT Call For Standards

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February 28, 2001 (5:52 AM EST)

An increasing number of vendors providing content management software for e-commerce are answering the demand of corporate IT for more standards-based software.

The latest company to follow the trend is Vignette Corp. (stock: VIGN), which on Tuesday started shipping a Java 2 enterprise version of its software suite for aggregating and managing product information.

"It's a pretty big step for Vignette, and you have to give them credit for turning [their software] around," said Shawn Willett, an analyst at Current Analysis, Oakland, Calif.

Vignette, Austin, Texas, is following the industry trend among many content management vendors to port their applications to the Java 2-enterprise platform. Companies that started with proprietary systems are moving to Java and XML, two industry standards becoming popular among IT organizations.

Vignette competitor BroadVision Inc. (stock: BVSN) announced plans last year to release Java 2 versions of its applications this quarter, while a third competitor, Art Technology Group Inc. (stock: ARTG), supports the Java enterprise platform.

In moving to Java, Vignette had to move away from the less popular Tcl scripting language it has used to build, deploy, and customize applications on its platform.

"That was a big rap on Vignette," Willett said. "They were proprietary and you had to know Tcl. I think they've basically solved [the problem]."

Vignette's software supports the market-leading Java application servers, BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic and IBM's WebSphere, and also runs on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT and 2000.

Vignette announced a joint sales, marketing, and technology agreement with BEA (stock: BEA) last week.

In addition, the company on Tuesday started shipping an upgrade of its Vignette Content Management Server, which includes two new tools.

CMS Explorer enables business managers to access documents through a Windows Explorer interface, which is familiar to most users. CMS Generator introduces wizard-based development of business forms.

The Vignette E-Business Application Platform 5.61, which includes the CMS enhancements, sells for an average price of $540,000.