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Mass High Tech August 11, 2003
Percussion ECM
system puts Dollar in its pocket Half the people who rent cars from Dollar Rent A Car do so online. All of those renters will soon encounter the technology of Stoneham’s Percussion Software, named not for a drum-playing founding member but less lyrically by a focus group. Percussion has announced that Dollar selected its Rhythmyx 5 Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system from a pool of candidates to create and manage Dollar’s content production and Web site. Neither party will disclose the value of the deal, but both sides sound pleased. Peter Osbourne, Dollar’s group application development manager, said he gave the thumbs-up to Percussion because other products he reviewed required software on all eight of the company’s Web servers, with more to follow as the company grows. That means more licensing costs and complexity, something he was happy to avoid. Osbourne said Dollar also likes Percussion’s model because Web site content is modeled on one central server, then deployed to the others. In an unexpected twist, Osbourne also reports that Rhythmyx 5 improved morale between the company’s marketing and IT departments, because it allows marketing to make frequent text changes to follow promotions and specials, while IT can avoid the process altogether. As an example of how relevant this is to his time, Osbourne reported last Monday morning that he’d been assigned to make marketing-initiated text changes “five to eight times” since Friday. He was due to have the first full day of deployment later that afternoon. “Marketing liked the ability to make changes and IT liked not having to make changes,” he said of the company’s limited trial. “It’s been a great success.” Percussion differentiates itself in the ECM market as the sole provider of “decoupled delivery architecture.” According to Percussion chief technology officer Vernon Imrich, this means the content management system is separate from other applications, allowing changes to be made outside of the Web site until it’s ready to be sent out. He says other systems run the risk of crashing the site. Osbourne endorses Percussion’s re-use ease, for example, allowing images of cars to be picked up from a central repository and used over and over. It’s something he says IT professionals discuss with some frequency. The product is standards-based and backed by Web services technology, allowing, as Osbourne says, “to bridge the technology wars.” Andy Warzecha, analyst and vice president of Meta Group, calls Rhythmyx 5 “a darn good product,” particularly in regard to the fact that ramping up doesn’t mean buying more software, the feature Dollar found attractive. Consumers faced with tight budgets have forced tech players like Percussion to consolidate services, he said, in addition to paying more attention to cost. He calls Rhythmyx 5 architecture “functionally quite good,” but warns IBM’s recent acquisition of Aptrix, which has a Lotus product similar to Percussion’s, formidable competition. Founded in 1994, Percussion is private, self-funded and boasts 2,500 customers including Amway, The Arthritis Foundation, FAA, Genentech, Pacific Corp. and the Toronto Stock Exchange. Armstrong, a manufacturer of floors, ceilings and cabinets, uses the product to manage 55 Web sites in different languages. Percussion also has partnerships with BEA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, Netegrity, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Sybase. Imrich attributes
the company’s success to a focus on “real world solutions,
not products that are cool because they’re cool.”
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