Yesterday and today I’ve heard from several usually reliable sources that Danish CMS vendor Dynamicweb has made a deep cut in their ranks, and fired 9 full-time employees, including the last 3 remaining Synkron Via engineers. A technical writer, a sales executive and a marketing resource are reportedly also among the staff that was let go.
Instead of having Synkron Via engineers on the payroll, the plan seems to be to use engineers based in the Vladivostok, Russia development team for future development. While other CMS vendors also have some of their engineering work done in countries with lower operating cost, the significant point here is that Dynamicweb has no staff left with deep experience in Synkron Via to lead their engineers.
I spoke to a Synkron Via customer earlier today who is also a long-time member of our community of practice. According to the customer, Dynamicweb had not (yet) made any announcement to the customers, nor is there, as of writing, anything on the Dynamicweb website about the news.
In the short-term this news has little impact for existing customers and is mainly a warning flag to any prospective customers. In the longer-term, I expect that we might see the end of the platform (worst case). Alternatively, Dynamicweb might come out of this crisis as a more partner-friendly company, which could keep the product going and breathe new life into the future development (best case).
The new UN Climate Conference Copenhagen 2009 website is based on Synkron Via. The restructuring might make the organisers’ web team a bit nervous, but since the solution, as with almost all other Synkron Via customers, is implemented using a partner, it might not have much impact.
As I mentioned in my review of the Dynamicweb annual report, the company did not do very well in the last fiscal year and it is known for being less generous with information than competitors. This is an unfortunate combination. Back in December 2008, Dynamicweb still did not appear to be in a crisis. My advice to existing and prospective Synkron Via customers is to request an update from the vendor and be careful with future investments.
What’s your take on this?
UPDATE Feb 11: Version2 has more details (in Danish)
Soeren Laursen February 5th, 2009 20:40
Hi Janus
Indeed you are absolutely right in the sense that Dynamicweb has completed a restructuring effort to ensure the business is in proper shape to deal with the international downturn of 2009. We do expect customers to be a little more conservative in their IT spending the next year at least. So essential we are positioning our company to ensure the survival of both our ecommerce and cms products. As one of only few vendors in Scandinavia a significant amount of our revenues consist of stable and recurring fees from thousands of customers on maintenance contracts, hosting contracts and support agreements.
Our decision to move Synkronvia day to day development to Russia is hardly controversial considering that we have gradually increased the number of the developers in the Russian team and invested heavily in onsite training and regular face to face meetings. The Danish head office still retrains full control of product development and quality assurance. Besides most of the innovation comes from sitting down with customers and discussing their pains not really from extensive R&D. Dont forget succesful products like Skype was technically built in Eastern Europe. This is just globalization Janus
As for the UN Climate Change portal you are absolutely right. We did beat Sitecore in a selection process which to our knowledge included a substantial research effort by among others Ramboell Management and other IT/CMS experts.
We are upbeat when it comes to our earnings for the fiscal year of 2008-2009 where we expect a significant positive result although our revenues will be somewhat lower than last year due to our recent sale of our Danish consulting department.
Feel free to write or call us if you want more information about this or our future plans.
Regards,
Soeren Laursen
Janus Boye February 7th, 2009 20:40
Thank you, Soeren for confirming the news. To other readers, I’ll just point out that Soeren is Director of Marketing & International Sales at Dynamicweb.
J. Boye » Blog Archive » HyperContent: A dead open source CMS? June 8th, 2009 20:40
[...] in to buy Synkron in 2007 and in 2008 CMS Watch dropped coverage of Synkron Via. Earlier this year Dynamicweb slashed the last remaining Synkron Via engineers. To be fair, Dynamicweb is still signing up new customers, so time will tell whether Synkron Via [...]
Søren Laursen December 21st, 2009 20:40
In all fairness… since this post was made Dynamicweb Software has:
1. Released two major Synkron VIA versions. 3.3 in April and 3.4 this November.
2. Developed a completely new demo site.
3. Installed Synkron Via licenses for well known companies like Zendium, NRGI, FERNOX, ATP, SYSTEMATIC, Bang & Olufsen to name a few.
4. Maintained rock solid Synkron Via performance on UN Climate Change portal (“Copenhagen” was in December the most searched term on Google and majority of traffic went to google rank #2 “www.Cop15.dk” and #1 Wikipedia)
5. Posted a profit of 3 million DKK in June 2009.
Søren Laursen December 21st, 2009 20:40
Oh yes and Dynamicweb was ranked #2 in Holland by Emerce as one of the leading CMS ahead of Sitecore. I think this speaks volumes about the business and the soundness of the strategy the company pursues.