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 been away for a few days but the Salford City Council migration project has charged relentlessly towards a successful conclusion. The five smaller sites have all gone live and the main site is with the Council for UAT. There is still a bit of work to do at their end getting all of their forms, workflow processes etc in place but it looks like we have had a very successful project migrating the content of 6 sites from Obtree (Livelink WCM PS) to RedDot.

We are putting together all of the metrics from the project (number of pages, time to migrate, tolerance levels etc) into a case study which will be available once the project is signed off. In the meantime if anyone is interested in finding out more about our Obtree migration tool or would like to see a demo migration from Obtree to RedDot, EPiServer or Immediacy, please get in touch.

We're looking to expand the development team here at Mimtech and at this time we have a requirement for a senior developer. Rather than list all our wants & desires here I've attached the job description as a PDF. We anticipate growing again early next year and will be looking to fill a less senior position at that time so ideally we'd love to hear from candidates for both a junior and a senior position. I've not included any salary information with the job description, salary will be based on the relevant experience of the successful candidate.

Look very much forward to hearing from you.

Senior Developer Job Description.pdf (48.38 kb)

I have just been shown the new mim:switch EPiServer loader in action. We now have an end to end solution to migrate from Obtree/Livelink WCM to EPiServer. This is great news as we have seen a lot of interest in the EPiServer WCM and rightly so  as CMS Watch put it "Outside of Scandinavia, EPiServer is still one of the better kept secrets in the CMS business."  

Now for Obtree users a simple way to migrate all of your content into a new Episerver site. Call for a demo.

I'm just back into the office having braved the blistering heat to go out and demo EPiServer ro a prospective client. I've done lots of demos over the years of lots of different WCM platforms and I have to say I like EPiServer a lot. It was very easy to show off all the usual WCM features plus using the online form builder, extranet permissions based publishing, embedding flash etc. This system is so easy to use but fully functional. I want one.

I don't think there has been a UK holiday I've taken since 1976 where the sun has shone so much. Just back from a week in Center Parcs in Cumbria (except for Tuesday when I got  train to London for a presentation) and the weather was great. We had a really relaxed time (except for Tuesday when I got  train to London for a presentation) and my kids did so many activities they can't remember any of them. I now understand what my dad means every time he says 'that holiday was wasted on you'. In the nicest possible way.

Anyway back to work today and a boiling hot office. This week sees an EPiServer demo for Bargain Booze, the kick off of a migration project (Livelink WCM to RedDot) for Salford City Council, a migration demo for HS, more work on the Livelink to Immediacy migration project for VisitScotland and a meeting with a design agency with a view to forming a new partnership. Holiday? What holiday?

I have just been pointed at  a news article telling the world that Open Text is to acquire Vingette (see here) for about $310 Million US.  I wonder if someone should build a Vignette to RedDot migration tool or a RedDot to Vignette migration tool.

In reality I would probably choose EPiServer but then you may already have noticed a switch of focus.

I have just watched an interesting video from the Episerver Day 2009 conference entitled ' The End of Web Content Management and Other Welcome Developments' in which Tim Walters from Forrester tells why he thinks web content management has reached the end of its usefulness and what we need to replace it is WEM; web engagement management or web enablement management (working title obviously).

Many of the suggestions Tim puts forward are easily achieved with Episerver tools such as  community building using Episerver Community or making the authoring interface more user friendly with Episerver Composer  (check out the YouTube video for this). Not that Tim was highlighting Episerver as good at these.

Having worked with many WCM platforms over the past 9 years I am very impressed by Episerver and their approach to the market. It won't suit everyone but it is much admired in the Mimtech office and by several of our clients including the British Council. 

I  agree with much of what Tim Walters has to say and we are definately seeing a move towards greater customer engagement and a recognition that a web site is not an IT tool but a marketing and CRM tool that is constantly evolving and adapting to the needs of customer. 

1. Existing users of Livelink WCM Presentation Server (Obtree) may be entitled to upgrade to RedDot for no additional licensing cost where a functional 'like-for-like' migration is required.

2. Mimtech have developed MIM:SWITCH, our migration toolset that can automate your content move to another solution by connecting directly into the repository via Obtree/Livelink’s API.

3. MIM:SWITCH has been endorsed by Open Text and is their migration solution of choice for users migrating to RedDot.

4. Mimtech is vendor agnostic and can supply web content management software from all the leading vendors including; EPiSERVER, Sitecore, Immediacy and RedDot.

5. Mimtech can supply web content management software on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) rental business model.