04.01.08
Timing is everything
In 2 and a half years, we expanded the use of Collage, our content management system (CMS) at work. And not just by a little bit, but by a whole lot. We had 9 separate sites that are all supported through this tool, and it was great. Then came the Web Server Crash of March 2008. In stark relief it became apparent that all of the sites that were in Collage were in the perfect position to be deployed to a new server within literally minutes.
BUT the few remaining straggler sites were not so lucky. We had to go through a painful re-construction of the sites that were either haphazardly structured, or used a “devageduction” platform (Development/Staging/Production as one server! Bad bad bad!) These sites are supposed to be EOL and the resources consolidated in a whole new project, but since that hasn’t yet materialized, we’re still supporting these sites without a safety net.
Well, worry no more. As of yesterday at about 3 pm, all of our sites were migrated into Collage. We now have the versioning, check-in/check-out functions, deployment tools all set up for every one of our web sites that we can support in this manner.
And at about 4pm that same day, I read this: The Scoop on Serena Collage. The CMS is to be sold or put down. It’s been backed up with some other more official announcements as well, but those are buried or hidden behind secure sites.
Serena’s already committed to supporting the software for another 18 months or so and even after that point, the software will continue to work, but it’s the timing that really gets to me. “Interesting times”, indeed.