SaaS CMS

In theory, these things strike many as a good idea. And, most notably, they might actually be. But they also strike fear in the hearts of CIOs world-wide. Is the cloud secure? Is the cloud compliant? Is the cloud performant enough not to frustrate the entire company?And then beyond these questions, there are the economic realities.SaaS vendors argue that their approach saves you money. Start-up costs are certainly lower, but long term TCO may be another story. The scenario needs to be modeled for your specific organization, if you want to decide with confidence.

Call it rubber-necking or whatever you want, but when one company buys another company in this business we want to know the details.Such is the case with the announcement that Pennsylvania based Really Strategies has just bought out DocZone, a Dutch-based SaaS XML content management provider under — you guessed it — undisclosed terms. DocZone’s DITA solution is known as being one of the most affordable on the market, while Really Strategies’ RSuite is a browser-based web content management system for publishers.

Vivvo, the simple PHP-based Web content management system that we noted lacks basic capabilities but is still suitable for small publishers, is extending its arms.In what’s undoubtedly an attempt to nab some extra fans (and do away with the burden of downloading), the company is now offering hosted trial versions of their solution, free for the asking. The next step, according to the founder, is to provide a full SaaS CMS offering.

Here’s a song you’re probably familiar with: What do companies need? To save money. What else do they need? To increase efficiency. How these things are usually achieved? Through collaboration. We sing it here at CMSWire on almost a daily basis, and the latest to join in on our tune are Enterprise CMS provider SpringCM and Kodak. The two companies are now working together to provide a SaaS platform that enables rapid digitization and remote, subscription-based access to information. Through both faster processing time and lower ownership costs, an increase in productivity for less money is surely on the horizon.

Today we released the latest update to our Web CMS Report 2008, which evaluates 40 vendors across 2 editions (Global and European). As always, we saw some incremental changes in certain tools, and bigger shifts in others. With this edition, we start to pay closer attention to hosted ("SaaS") solutions, including coverage of Marqui and OmniUpdate. Our press release highlights some of the growing energy we see around SaaS-based web content management solutions, at least in North America.

I follow several Software as a Service (SaaS) web content management vendors for the The Web CMS Report. This includes SaaS vendors Clickability, CrownPeak, OmniUpdate and Marqui, a small SaaS-based content management and campaign management vendor headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. In the last version of The Web CMS Report 2008, we recommended that potential buyers of Marqui "perform due diligence before signing deals." While this is good advice when preparing to make any software acquisition, Marqui's previous management overhauls and financial secrecy presented warning signs of potential financial difficulty.Recently, I was alerted to TechVibes' news that Marqui was in receivership (Investopedia defines receivership as: "A type of bankruptcy a company enters when a receiver is appointed by bankruptcy courts or creditors to run the company."). Our multiple attempts at contacting Marqui through calls and e-mails have been unreturned

On the heels of my article about the difference between "managed services" using traditional software vs. native SaaS offerings, I got a message from a friend whose company may be in a bit of a jam.It turns out they use a native SaaS Web CMS provider, a local vendor. They're worried because the vendor's biggest customer has left the service. Now, this is a risk with any software model: if a single large customer or two is driving development and support, and they exit, it's a risk for all the other, smaller customers. In this case, my friend's company is wondering whether the entire service will remain viable going forward, particularly because it's a "coupled" CMS that also serves up their website. Seems to me they have much more at stake than a traditional software customer running their own application. Among other things, the SaaS customers might have to migrate quickly in any crisis

While Yahoo! has offered its PageBuilder for a while, Google has also recently entered the market with its own Page Creator and Amazon.com with an Associate Program CMS (developed by a third-party). Essentially these well-known companies are offering hosted, "page-building" services aimed at personal or small business websites. To that extent, they don't compete directly with hosted CMS services vendors -- yet. But with their awesome brands, and the general trend towards SaaS, they could all be expected to try to compete as real alternatives for the enterprise.