CMS tools

I frequently receive questions like this: "We're a major regional hospital, what's the best CMS for us?" Or, "What would you recommend for a mid-sized manufacturing firm?" Or, "What's the right WCM package for a consumer goods company?" Or, "What's getting traction among not-for-profit organizations?" And so on. First, let's dispense with the idea that there is such a thing as a universally "best" or "leading" CMS. Instead, different vendor offerings "fit" better or worse against individual business scenarios. And of course your budget, architecture, and locale matter too.

As I wandered around the Gilbane Boston 2008 show last week, the question I heard people asking each other most often was some variation of: "How's business?" Almost everyone is trying to figure out what the economic train wreck is doing (or might do) to IT spending.The Good News is that showgoers were, by and large, surprisingly optimistic. It seems in particular that government spending on Web and Search technologies hasn't abated (yet). "We've seen deals take longer to close," one vendor told me, "but they do eventually close. They don't just evaporate. At least, not yet."

At a client meeting this morning, I was reminded that the Percussion Rhythmyx Web CMS supports roles, but not groups. For larger, distributed enterprises, or those with multiple web properties, the distinction can become important. As Web CMS Report 2009 readers know, a surprising number of tools support roles but not groups, or groups but not roles. (To be fair, Rhythmyx has a kind of poor substitute called "communities.") Why does this matter? Well, roles helpfully circumscribe what a contributor can do, but groups are handy for defining where and how. And groups can often be nested, which is useful within larger or more complex operations. The screen from our WCM Education course shows some example roles and groups.

In research for the Web CMS Report 2009, just released today, I've undertaken vendor briefings, customer de-briefings, product demos, and miscellaneous discussions with key personnel (including some senior VPs) from more than a dozen Web CMS vendors, ranging in size from tiny 20-person boutiques to billion-dollar behemoths. It's interesting to compare where the various companies are now to where they were six months or a year ago. Not just the companies themselves, but their products, customers, partners -- the whole CMS ecosphere.

In the crush to support public websites, I think (too) many Web CMS vendors are ignoring Intranet scenarios. Nevertheless, the practice of managing Intranets continues to march ahead globally at a rapid clip. Today at KM World and Intranets 2008, I had the good fortune to catch up with several Intranet leaders and gurus alike. If you care about Intranets, two things you should know about: StepTwo Design has issued its second annual Intranet Innovations Awards. A quick perusal of just a handful of the global winners suggests that at least within some enterprises, Intranets are alive and well.

Bambuser, a developer of live video technology, has entered into a partnership with Polopoly, a Web CMS vendor, to provide users with an integrated solution that will bring live mobile broadcasting technology and standard publishing technology together. The Polopoly CMS contains “cutting-edge” functionality. It offers live layout content management and a slew of other features, including search, user ratings of content, polls and more. Bambuser provides the ability for companies and individuals to communicate with an audio-visual broadcast by way of a mobile phone or webcam.

Ektron is getting some love… again. The Web CMS vendor has made it to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies for 2008. This marks Ektron’s second consecutive appearance on Inc.’s annual list – this year, at # 1,607. The 2008 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2004 through 2007. To qualify, companies must be U.S.-based, privately held and have had at least US$ 2 million in revenue in 2007.

Fresh out of the Google Labs is a nice new tool -- Google Trends -- which enables you to "compare the world's interest in your favorite topics." So if you type in CMS, portal, and intranet, you'll notice that it seems like portals are getting most the attention, while CMS and intranet are trolling behind. Of course "portal" is a much misused term, but it still gets more news, even when subtracting the less relevant bites about AOL portals and such. Vendors are smart; more and more CMS vendors are beginning to use the term portal. So be a smart buyer and avoid locking yourself into "just" looking at CMS or portal. Instead, look for solutions to your problem, independent of their labeling.

Wikis -- collaboration environments where vistiors can edit pages -- are becoming more popular and could provide some interesting models for content management projects at a time when many organizations are looking for more ad-hoc collaboration on content than a linear workflow engine can typically provide. In short, a wiki could make your CMS more sticky. One major open-source wiki project, "TikiWiki," has achieved remarkable velocity over the past year, building out a platform of modules that includes some impressive CMS tools (all written in PHP). One downside to the project is its sheer number of features, which could overwhelm a developer seeking a simple CMS solution. But the breadth and depth of participation and energy here make us think that TikiWiki could become the next Zope... Check out TikiWiki

In one of our dreams, we can build a highly custom CMS out of independent Java components. Well, at least part of that dream has been reality for some time: you can get fairly good standalone and embeddable workflow engines and plug them into your existing J2EE architecture. We've previously highlighted Oak Grove Systems; you might also want to check out Dralasoft, who are partnering with repository component vendor, Xythos. Don't let all their "Business Process Management" verbiage fool you. These are straightforward workflow tools, and both are already getting OEMed into commercial CMS packages...Visit Dralasoft    And Oakgrove Systems

Judson College's Web project involved two key components: redesigning the old site, and adopting a Web content management solution so many users — including the admissions team — could update, manage, and publish compelling online content. After evaluating several Web content managementsoftware solutions, Judson College adopted Ektron CMS400.NET. Submitted by Ektron

For mixed PC/Mac authoring and editing environments, CMS tools still present a dilemma. If you want to dispense with hand-coded HTML tagging in a browser, there are a wide variety of WYSIWYG tools that can generate pretty good XHTML (and some are migrating to XML). But the ActiveX-based controls leave out all the Apple people, and Java versions can be buggy and less conveniently configurable. Flash is showing some promise for those who don't mind a plug-in, but the tools are incomplete. Many European vendors are coming out with JavaScript+DHTML interfaces that we find quite slick, but most major CMS competitors have been slow on the uptake here. Our wish for the New Year: true, cross-platform, XHTML-compliant, super-configurable, crash-less authoring from any browser...Check out Paul Browning's (U. of Bristol) excellent list of WYSIWYG editors

It's been a busy month at CMS Watch. Today we announce the release of another evaluation report, The XML & Component Content Management Report 2008. Developed in conjunction with The Rockley Group, the report evaluates 14 component content management vendors and 5 XML editor tools. From today's release about the report:"Component Content Management (CCM) technology allows enterprises to manage text content as componentized chunks of information rather than whole documents or web pages. It has become increasingly important to modern enterprises, especially given the rapid emergence of the DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) standard. However, CCM technology remains largely the domain of a wide collection of smaller software vendors targeting narrower use cases..." Subscribers will receive copy shortly; others can download a free sample here.

...does it seem like Day has become more interested in their newish repository software ("CRX") than their longstanding CMS product, Communiqué? Check out this (uncritical) profile of Day by ZDNet blogger Dana Blankenhorn. As CMS Report readers know, Communiqué was ahead of its time earlier this decade, but in recent years the product has seen only minor enhancements as the the company has increasingly focused on its new JSR-170 based infrastructure tools. Hard to predict what will happen to Day. I thought they were a prime acquisition target for FileNet (who has tried to resell Communiqué), but with the IBM take-over of FileNet, it would seem Day will stay independent a bit longer...

People frequently ask me about where their Web Publishing efforts should end and Social Software begin. Like so many things, the answer is, "it depends." For example, one important question is whether you are talking about intranets versus a public site, which will likely exhibit very different interaction and security models. I can certainly understand the confusion. Our recent research on Web CMS and Enterprise Social Software suggests a definite overlap from a tools perspective. But our research also found most Web CMS tools coming up short when it comes to deeper forms of Social Networking and Collaboration. (See today's press release for more details). Meanwhile, most Social Software tools lack -- in some cases deliberately lack -- the sort of heavier-duty systems and administrative services that you would want behind an enterprise website.

Nearly every CMS product has some sense for maintaining discrete versions of changed content. But only a handful offer user-friendly ways of comparing the differences between any two versions. MS CMS is one exception: they inherited a nice "redlining" system from nCompass Labs. Other products perform side-by-side comparisons of the code or rendered page, but that's a bit clunky. Now along comes Advanced Software Inc. (ASI) -- makers of the DocuComp module that is OEMed into most desktop word processors to provide comparison capabilities -- with a server version of their tool explictly targeted for OEM into CMS packages. Sounds like a good strategy....Find out more about DocuComp

The Perl scripting language has fantastic text-manipulation tools, broad support, and now an object-based orientation, so the apparent dearth of Perl-based CM packages has sometimes become a source of jokes in the community. Lines like "last thing a Perl hacker wants to do is build a tool for end-users to manage websites." Well, look closely under the covers at Interwoven and eGrail (i.e. bypass their whitepapers singing about J2EE) and what do you see? Back ends written wholly in Perl. Of course, CMS Watch Report readers know eGrail and Interwoven don't need to use Perl at run-time (where it is slow), just to pregenerate static pages for production webservers to dish up... Visit eGrail or Interwoven.

Earlier this month we posted about a government-funded open-source solutions centerin the UK. In Denmark, the government is active too, but in a different way. WebOffice is one of 181 registeredactive CMS tools in that small country.WebOffice stands out from the crowd, as it has been developed by KMDa publicly-funded systems integrator. Sold by KMD, the system isused by several municipalities, counties, and other public organizations. KMD has recently also partnered with local vendor Sitecore, which they tendto implement on larger projects. Still it seems awkward that Danish tax funds aregoing to subsidize a proprietary CMS when there are so many other options, commercialor open-source, small or large, available.

After a string of noisy acquisitions, OpenText found itself inconveniently in possession of no less than 3 Web content management solutions -- Obtree from Ixos, Gauss, and the Web Publisher within its own collaboration tool, Livelink. (OpenText also supports a handful of competing DM products, but that's another story.) Today the company announced the forthcoming release of a new Web CMS package to rule them all, "Livelink Web Content Management Server." OpenText will wisely continue support for the other tools, because inevitably, "upgrading" any time soon could prove prohibitive for much of its client base...Read about Livelink Web Content Management Server

Much has been made of IBM's acquisition of boutique CMS vendor, Aptrix. It was a nice pick-up for IBM, but not likely to shake up the CMS marketplace very much. The Aprtrix toolset is all Big Blue: it's built around Lotus and Domino. That's useful for CMS buyers who have already made an investment in those platforms, but not likely to provide a general solution in the marketplace at large. Also, a lot of Lotus Notes shops want to manage their web content in a different, friendlier interface...Read more about Aptrix