Web CMS vendors

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."

The technology marketplace has seen consistent growth in the acceptance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models, and Web Content Management is certainly no exception. Yet, the major SaaS-based Web CMS vendors that we evaluate - Clickability, CrownPeak, and OmniUpdate - are all relatively small players, and they have had to evolve to meet changing customer demands. In particular, our recent research for the latest edition of The Web CMS Report 2009 uncovered several inter-related trends in the SaaS Web Content Management space:

Web CMS vendor Bitrix announced new editions of Bitrix Site Manager for managing enterprise portals, media portals, large e-stores and other sites with high traffic or content volume. You can now choose from the Bitrix Site Manager Premium or Ultimate Editions — both touted as “robust and proven technology frameworks.”

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.

Over the past two years, Web Content Management vendors have fallen over themselves to provide more interactive services on the front ends of websites, closely tied into traditional content production services on the authoring side. Put another way: in an attempt to appeal to the ever-alluring (but often elusive) web marketing manager, CMS vendors are increasingly binding website management to content management. Even Percussion -- onetime stalwart defender of the decoupled approach, advocate for flexible delivery environments, and ardent supporter of the website developer working separately from content people -- now talks avidly of combining content and interaction management.

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.

Last week The Malcontents invited me and Tim Denby (formerly of Web CMS vendor Ektron and now an independent consultant) on their podcast to banter about a few of my favorite topics, taxonomies and folksonomies, and the advantages/disadvantages of each. It was particularly timely for me to be part of a podcast on this topic, as I'm just getting acquainted with my new iPod. Admittedly, obsessive about metadata as I am, very little bothers me more than how bad most CD metadata is when you rip the songs into iTunes. There's a lesson to be learned by importing 20 CDs of Beethoven's symphonies and piano concertos: no two collections of recordings list the composer's name the same way: Beethoven; Ludwig van Beethoven; van Beethoven, Ludwig; Beethoven, Ludwig van; L. V. Beethoven, and so on. Some put his name in the "artist" field (as if he's playing on the CD!), others, the "composer" field, which at least makes good sense