Cms suites

CMS Watch report buyers will recall that we have been wondering just how long Web CMS vendor eGrail would stay independent. Now we know. For FileNET, the acquisition represents a sort of U-turn back into the CMS space after the company focused deliberately on enterprise DM and business process automation software over the last few years. For eGrail, which had suffered from undercapitalized R&D efforts, the sale is clearly a boon. It remains unclear, however, how much the present eGrail technical architecture dovetails with the rest of the FileNET suite, and that should give current eGrail users some pause amid what appears otherwise to be very good news...Check out the FileNET press release

You might be sick of "Why-XYZ-Is-Like" jokes that cicle the Internet, but this one -- "Why Content Management Systems are like relationships" -- is pretty funny (from BBC's Brendan Quinn). Written by a BBC developer, the points are mostly well-taken. The most distressing analogy, "When you get into one, you have to adapt your behavour to suit your partner," is particularly worth noting. CMS products are becoming more open, but vendor implementation methodologies remain too product specific, rather than business-flexible...Read the Article

The French content management marketplace -- like others worldwide -- remains distinctly national. Check out this interesting survey by "Le Journal du Net" showing 8 leading CMS vendors in France, few very active outside francophonie. The piece seems to confirm my earlier impression, though, that French vendors are inclined more towards multi-functional suites (rather than point solutions), even in the mid-market. It would seem the technology buyer in France has a greater tolerance for having all their eggs in one basket -- or "aventurer tout à un seul coup," to make a rough translation...

US-based web analytics company WebSideStory recently announched the launch of its Active Marketing Suite in Europe. The company has had an office in Europe for a while, but mostly sold their flagship Hitbox analytics package there. Now they intend to sell their broader "suite" -- which includes the former Atomz website search and web content management services -- on a hosted basis in Europe. The SaaS market here remains quite open, and while WebSideStory is a lesser known brand than some other plausible big players, they do have a broad market focus, unlike many current European services. Meanwhile, UK vendor Mediasurface has relaunched the hosted CMS service it acquired last year, now called "Pepperio."

We've previously noted Stellent's drive for the local eGov marketplace. Recently, the company has come out with a newly-branded "City/County" suite. Stellent's forms and document processing capabilities probably fit well with local eGov needs. But what is truly novel about this package is the pricing: a per-year fee based solely on the number of residents. We don't know if this is a winning approach and wonder if it is a loss-leader to upsell optional modules that carry Stellent's traditional seats+servers cost formula. But we note it as yet another marker in CMS vendors' ongoing experimentation with pricing models...Read more about Stellent's local government suite

The latest Intranet Journal reviews PHP-Nuke. [UPDATE: The ever-observant Seth Gottlieb of Optaros points out that the review is 2 years old....sorry about that.] We link to a lot of trade-press product reviews, but remember they are almost uniformly glowing. You will find few comparative analyses, and this article is no exception. The author does point out that PHP-Nuke (like all the other Nukes, we wish he'd add) is more than a CMS and really represents a website-in-a-box application potentially well-suited for certain collaborative Intranet environments. The review also helpfully advises caution in examining the provenance of optional add-ons. But what about documentation? "It is likely that a documentation project will be launched in the future"...

Some CMS vendors are "tweeners:" too small to dominate the marketplace, but too big to fit into a comfortable niche. Forbes is reporting that Standard & Poor's Equity Research has maintained "avoid" ratings on two such tweeners, Interwoven and FileNet, both of whom have seen declining share values of late. We should point out that other analysts have been less bearish on the two companies. And, we would not counsel prospective buyers to shy away from FileNet and Interwoven CMS solutions based solely on stock price fluctuations, especially because both companies have sizable cash troves to weather major turbulence on the revenue side. However, falling valuations does make them more susceptible to acquisition, even if the number of plausible suitors has dwindled lately...Read the Forbes blurb

Day Software promotes its "unification" approach to content management centered on a "Content Bus" that is designed to connect disparate corporate content repositories to the core CMS. We're not sure we want to ride on that bus. But Day's CMS offers another differentiator that does make prospects' eyes light up: it will allow non-designers to manage and manipulate images within the browser interface, including generating typographic nav images on the fly. It's not a full-blown DAM like some of Day's competitors have acquired (and are now trying to bolt on to existing suites), but most companies don't need all that...Visit Day

Percussion Software originally started out as a purveyor of Lotus tools. As its subsequent Web CMS business grew to substantially outstrip the Lotus side, those tools became a sometimes confusing appendage for prospective customers. Earlier this week, Percussion announced that it was splitting off its Lotus products into an entirely separate company called "Axceler." Of course, whenever this happens, one wonders if the company is preparing one part or another for an acquisition. However, over the years Percussion has garnered a reputation of playing hard-to-get when suitors come calling, which doubtless comes as a relief to its own customers. Interestingly, with the recent revivification of IBM's Lotus platform, Percussion's (former) Lotus offerings may be attracting more interest as well.

Like all Web development snobs, we are typically quick to disparage MS FrontPage. The awful HTML!...the buggy interface!...the server-side security holes!...the proprietary code!...and so on. But FrontPage 2003 seems worth a fresh look, and perhaps more importantly, even if you don't use the product, a lot of other people are likely to give it a whirl. The latest version (still in beta) proposes cleaner HTML and native integration with the XMLized Office 2003 suite. In the latter case, FrontPage generates XSLT scripts, which you can also edit at the code level. It might take a company like Microsoft to finally make XSLT accessible to the people who -- from a CMS perspective -- might need it the most: non-technical template and page designers...Check out FrontPage 2003

IXOS, a major European DM vendor, has purchased struggling Swiss Web CMS company, Obtree. This news (by way of Creuna's Jens Hoerup) continues the trend of established players snapping up smallish CMS and DAM companies to broaden their portfolios and achieve greater economies of scale. Note that, continuing this trend, such an acquisition decidedly does not represent "consolidation." No product is going away here. If anything, the Obtree offering will likely emerge stronger. But one caveat emptor: buyers should never mistake a broad portfolio of products from a single vendor for a truly integrated "suite"....Read the news off Yahoo, because ixos.com is getting hammered right now