News

Merant release matches PVCS, web content management

• By Jack Vaughan
• June 17, 2002

[UPDATED JUNE 17, 2001] - Long-time software configuration management player Merant has moved more deeply into the content management software space with the release this week of Collage V.3, a tool for managing code, content and digital assets, for what the company calls “application-driven Web sites.”

Collage results from Merant’s 2001 purchase of assets of NetObjects, makers of the Fusion Web authoring tool. This release of Collage offers full integration with Merant’s PVCS software configuration product line, providing a collaborative environment for application developers and Web design teams.

The product seeks to succeed in a new application world where a user’s inability to book a business trip could be the result of a content problem or a code problem.

“We see a convergence between code and content,” said Martin Frid-Nielsen, vice president of PVCS Development. “People are taking web applications and turning them into components called Web services. That plays very well with our story,” said Frid-Nielsen.

Frid-Nielsen said that IT is increasingly being asked to take over the task of Web content management. That is a plus for Merant, which, with PVCS, has an established standing in IT software development, he said. Workers on the developer side do not want to change their familiar configuration tools, but there is a need to handle other types of assets than code, he suggested.

Although it stands a distant second to Rational in the overall software configuration management market, Merant saw enough promise in the market to spin itself off from merger partner MicroFocus, and to relocate to Hillsboro, Oregon, in order to concentrate on configuration.

As Web sites become more application oriented, the need to manage source code and text content together in a unified way is becomes vital, said Guy Creese, research director at the Aberdeen Group. Merant’s heritage in software configuration positions the company to solve this problem, Creese indicated.

Note: An earlier version of this story mis-identified the new release as V.8.