• What work needs to be done going from no CMS to SharePoint to configure, plan, arrange for migration of content so that it is then targeted, searchable, effective, etc. (and from cleaning up the content)?
• How can CMS platforms improve such that upfront time/money/effort is reduced (e.g., new features, different approaches, better knowledge, etc.)?
• How does a Web CMS vendor differentiate itself in a saturated market?

Web Content Management–Now It’s Your Turn

What’s on your mind this year in terms of your CMS? Have you been having concerns like the ones above, or different ones?  Any answers or insights so far? Let us know below.

Since the Philadelphia 2009 conference, SilverStripe managed to make it into the the second annual 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report published by CMS Wire with water & stone, an APAC-based interactive agency. While market share numbers are very difficult to track in this industry, the report consisted of 20 of the most significant open source systems. Across several charts, SilverStripe scored somewhat similar to eZ Publish and Umbraco in terms of rate of adoption and brand strength.

As a corporate-backed product based on PHP, SilverStripe might be most easily compared to eZ. With 40 employees today (roughly 30 a year ago), SilverStripe remains around half as big as eZ in terms of head count.

So, why did the DNC choose SilverStripe? You can read the background on the seemingly unlikely selection of an open source package from New Zealand in a posting on Why the 2008 Democratic National Convention used SilverStripe. A great win for SilverStripe surely, but from my perspective, I could not find any unique reasons that could not have lead to the selection of competing open source packages.

SilverStripe was recognized at the 2009 New Zealand Internet Industry Awards. Is this a project you need to take serious beyond the Kiwi shores?

References is a key ingredient when assessing whether there is a viable community as these add experience and can share the hard lessons learned. Unfortunately I too often meet WCM buyers who did not take the time to talk to references before they selected a CMS. Many are subsequently caught by surprises they could easily have avoided by speaking to other customers. We have shared a few case studies on our blog, e.g. on how Danish Rail use EPiServer for their website and keep SharePoint behind the firewall or DIY SharePoint as a local council.

An active developer network is something only very few web content management vendors have. The few that alive ones tend to be full of hidden gems. On one side, the big vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have massive and overwhelming developer offerings, while many of the dedicated WCM vendors, such as Alterian and FatWire have very little. Developers are the real key to success as I wrote recently, but few WCM vendors have managed to make their developer communities come alive and be accessible.

Partners can be tricky for a buyer. You might see claims such as EPiServer with 30+ new partners in the US in the last 12 months or Sitecore with a 100+ long listing of US partners on their website, but how many of these are really active and experienced with more than one successful project under their belts? System integrators can take all the money in the project and you are left with the bill.

On Wednesday May 5th in Philadelphia, you can attend the web content management track and join the final session for a panel discussion on whether the community might be more important than the CMS? The 3 experienced panelists are:

• Nathan Bittinger, technical director at Siteworx, a US interactive agency
• Niels Hartvig, founder of the open source Umbraco WCM project
• Tom Wentworth, VP Web Solutions at Ektron

I’ll moderate the panel and I’m hoping for a lively and constructive discussion. As always, feel free to post your comments below or follow the conversation on Twitter using #jboye10.

Now 12 months later, EPiServer has announced its intention to go public and the US operation has grown to a team of almost 10 employees, signed up 30+ partners and several customers.  EPiServer now confidently and in true American style claims to be “the world’s fastest growing WCM vendor”. From the buyer’s perspective this statement is impossible to validate, but the growth for EPiServer, in particular in the US, is very visible.

Competing with EPiServer in the crowded US marketplace for .NET content management systems are other European vendors such as Kentico, Sitecore, Telerik, Tridion (SDL) and open source Umbraco. Among the US-vendors Ektron is one of the main players in the space.

For prospective CMS buyers, my advice is that both a local vendor team and experienced local partners are really important. At the moment far from all 30+ US partners have got strong EPiServer project experience under their belts, although this might change rapidly.

Equally important is a local community of customers. EPiServer has been serious about building their community for several years and has almost 10,000 registered members on their EPiServer world.  Even though the US based community is growing fast, and everything you need is available in English, the vast majority of the community members are still European.

You can meet EPiServer at our conference in Philadelphia and learn more about their US growth plans.

Predicting the future is dangerous, particularly since few people can agree on the present — somewhat muddled — WCM technology landscape.

This is how Tony Byrne from The Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch) introduced his keynote on the future of web content management at our inaugural European cmf2005 conference. Back then he covered some key topics around usability, scope and consolidation in a potential broader enterprise content management context; topics that remain largely unresolved.

Today 5 years later, the marketplace is still muddled but thriving. Most enterprises have now figured out many of the basics of managing web content. As the public web and private intranets continue to evolve, new opportunities and challenges continue to emerge.

In late 2009, Tony and his team of analysts at The Real Story Group released their annual content technology predictions, which included a few WCM predictions:

• vendors will begin to give more love to intranets
• cloud alternatives will become more pervasive
• multi-lingual requirements will rise to the fore

Next month in Philadelphia, he will kick off our web content management track with a talk on the exact same topic. What do you think awaits web managers in the coming years?

The integration between WCM and portals has been a source of frustration for many customers. Vendors have not been good at telling customers where the integration did have some shortcomings. This has been costly for some organizations as they have been forced to reconsider basic features such as preview and navigation which have a tendency to fall in the gap somewhere between the two systems

CMS Wire recently ran a popular article on 5 Things to Consider when Integrating your Content Management System and Portal, which covered different technology options for integration. The article caused Hippo Chief Technology Officer Arje Cahn to comment that “integrating Portal and CMS is more than just adding a ‘content portlet’.”

In his view content is not simply another application running inside a portlet. as content behaves very differently from legacy applications. To give an example: users expect content to be reused across different sections in a portal, wherever that makes sense.

Hippo is originally from the Netherlands, but also has a strong US-base, which includes David Sean Taylor who has been very active with portal projects at the Apache Software Foundation.

You can meet Arje Cahn with a fellow Hippo colleague at our conference in Philadelphia and discus their take on portals and how to make projects happen. Hippo will also be a part of our Web Idol competition, where you will have the opportunity of experiencing a demo of the product side-by-side with other vendors.

John Petersen of Sutro Software has focused on portals for most of his working life. He has agreed to host a roundtable which will address the intersection between web content management and portals. John has a background with portal pioneers Epicentric, which were later acquired by Vignette.

Our roundtables is a special type of conference session without prepared slides. Join the discussion at the portal table in Philadelphia, where you can work with peers to identify some of the emerging best practices about when or if your web content projects can benefit from portal technology – or add your thoughts below.

Tony Byrne founded CMS Watch in 2001 and today leads a global team of analysts covering various technology marketplaces on behalf of solutions buyers. At the conference, Tony will be hosting a tutorial on Evaluating and Selecting Collaboration and Community Technology. He will also be opening keynote speaker on the Web Content Management track.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe is known for his work within the fields of content, document and web content management making him a highly sought after expert.  As Principal at CMS Watch, he covers ECM technologies and practices. At the conference he will be giving a tutorial entitled ‘Accessing SharePoint 2010’ and a presentation on the online strategy track.

CMS Watch recently released their 2010 Content Technology Predictions. Meet them in May and talk to them about how the marketplace is evolving and what it means to you.