I work at AOL, and think I can speak without giving out company secrets on this matter.
I have not seen any Vignette implementations at AOL (maybe they exist, I just havn't seen anything). In general, if one can make a business case, anything goes, platform wise. Of course it's easier to get approval for AOLsever or Netscape platforms, but I've seen everything else from Websphere to IIS to Apache. I think we make decisions much like any other company, based on the project requirements and available engineering, support, and hardware resources. Of course with the downturn in the economy, we are encouraged to use in-house platforms which are less expensive to support. Luckily, we own two excellent platforms that cover most developer's needs.
Bottom line, AOL hasn't "switched" to anything. AOLserver support in the company is strong as ever in my experience. My educated guess is that AOLserver will be around for a long time. It certainly is possible that there are project(s) at AOL using Vignette, however, and maybe some particular project "switched" from another platform. Saying that all of AOL has switched is a huge overstatement, however.
Keep in mind that AOL is a huge company. No one platform can do everything. We have literally thousands of projects in various stages of development or support at any given time. Even if Steve Case himself issued an executive order to switch platforms, which of course he would never do, it would be nearly impossible and prohibitively expensive to do so.
Ivan Histand
Sr Software Engineer,
AOL Data Warehouse & Reporting
Disclaimer: The above statement is my personal experience, this is in no way an official company statment.
