Austrian CMS and Portal vendor Gentics is relatively unknown on the international scene, but happen to be used by some of our Austrian members in our community of online professionals. Like most other vendors, Gentics brand themselves as being the leading vendor, at least in Austria, but is there anything unique beyond the all too familiar marketing?
I recently received a briefing and short demonstration of Gentics and their Java-based offering called Gentics Content.Node. As a company, Gentics generate about 90 % of their €2 million annual revenue from German-speaking Austria, which means that several of the more established CMS and Portal vendors does more revenue in Austria according to our research. Perhaps Gentics is leading in other ways than revenue?
When I initially took a closer look at Gentics, one of our members, Silvia Puttinger, Lead Manager Internal Communication at Austrian luxury brand Swarovski shared the following quote:
Content.Node from Gentics is our strategic CMS, used for all our web pages (Internet / Intranet). In 2006 our IT department compared several systems – including the “big players” – but Content.Node met our requirements the best. The big advantage of working with a local supplier is the excellent customer support and the close cooperation when it comes to necessary enhancements of the CMS.
Of Gentics’ 30 employees, only 9 are actually working on product engineering, which is a bit low compared to other vendors of the same size. The lack of engineering focus can be explained with the fact that Gentics are fairly involved in implementations according to Klaus-M. Schremser, VP Marketing and co-founder at Gentics.
Beyond the usual home market advantage, the differentiators for Gentics seems to be their low entry price at €16,000, the Java-based architecture and the tight coupling between CMS and portal.
Most of the brief demo I saw looked like something I have seen a few hundred times before, but to be fair, two things were noteworthy:
1) They seem to have a pretty advanced inline control activated by right click:
Super users and regular editors might like the advanced editing feature activated by a right click. Plan for some training to get around potential usability quirks.
2) Like most other vendors in 2009, Gentics also offer social media features, such as commenting on pages. It looks like they either need to spend some time proof-reading their English translation or perhaps I was shown something that no customer is actually using in production:
In Gentics Content.Note you can activate commenting on pages. This shows an English site, but the weekdays have not been translated from German
It seems like every country has their share of significant local vendors, some with more international success than others. To name a few, Denmark with Sitecore, Germany with e-Spirit, Netherlands with Hippo, Norway with Enonic and Sweden with EPiServer. Most of these did not make it to our CMS Shortlist 2009, as they are still far from global. However, if you are in their home market, they may be a both satisfactory and viable option.
Are you a Gentics user? Do you have any experiences to share? Does your country have a few local vendors claiming to be “market leaders” as well?
Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer November 18th, 2009 17:53
When you look at it from a global versus local perspective, then I definitely think that their is a big difference between closed source & open source.
With closed source you have to push your sales guy through the door & tell the potential clients why your product is great. So the only way to become a global player is by having sales offices in multiple country’s around the globe.
With Open source it works the other way around. Company’s look for a better product and don’t want to (completely) rely on the sales guy (because this brought them in their current situation).
They know what they want (& not want) and start downloading products.
The internet makes these boundary’s disappear. This is how F.E. organisation like Thomson Reuters, the Vatican, Incisive media, etc. started using Hippo and I know this is happening with other Open source CMS & portal products.
Matthias Redl November 18th, 2009 17:53
Hi Tjeerd,
I agree with you in some parts, but not all, so I would like to add something:
With closed source you not always have to “push” your sales clients to the customer, quite often it also works the other way around, actually the same way as with Open Source. Especially Companies often invite closed source vendors to present their software to them, because they need software and open source might not be an option. And if a product is good, it will become more and more know … bla .bla. bla.
Anyway, I think this is and old discussion, which actually does not fit that well below this article.
Greetings from the country of the “CMS King”
Matthias
Klaus-M. Schremser (Gentics.com) November 18th, 2009 17:53
Dear Tjeerd,
I think that open and closed source cms have their advantages. Yes, commercial systems (they often stand for closed source) have their own sales-persons and often their distribution is based on local offices and it’s not so easy to get a demo before talking to them.
But today our customers and/or prospects are testing all kinds of software before buying it (commercial (closed source) and free (open source) software). We have to go through prototypes and prove our promisses and the free systems have do that too. And then the customers don’t have to rely on sales guys. And if you’re honest, you are the “sales guy” for an open source system and your customers have to rely on your statements.
Closed source (commercial) systems, like Gentics, offer the customer the possibility to talk to the creator of the software and have binding contracts, so they have a fundamental base for discussing problems/enhancements in the software. This is a big advantage! Especially the bigger the company is the more important is this.
br, kms
Michael Kräftner November 19th, 2009 17:53
Dear all,
Being a fellow Austrian software vendor celum of course looks very much intersted on Gentics. Alsow e have a handful of joint customers, where celum’s Enterprise DAM and gentics Portal/CMS solution interlink. celum has approx. 330 customers in 27 countries, and local subsidiaries in Germany, France and upcoming, the US. We see a lot of “local heroes” in the commercial/closed Source CMS field, and integrate with them, as well as global and local Open Source CMS systems. Gentics, from our point of view, is definately one of the most interesting players – globally, not only in Austria. Sure, as of now they are just “world famous in Austria” and it will be a long way to become internationally active. A vivid Partner landscape is the ONLY way to succeed in that. So our best wishes to gentics and we look forward to many joint projects in the future. In Austria and hopfully internationally!
Yours, Michael
Michael Hafner November 20th, 2009 17:53
actually there never was a Koenig in Austria – you have to look for a Kaiser
Klaus-M. Schremser (Gentics.com) November 20th, 2009 17:53
Thanks Michael, so Janus should rename the article to “Gentics – the Austrian Kaiser of CMS”