In a short article in AIIM's E-Doc Magazine we organize the major search players into 8 categories and try to say something meaningful about each. Pay closer attention to the accompanying article -- also excerpted from the CMS Watch Enterprise Search Report -- "How Enterprise Search Works," by Steve Arnold. Steve describes in some depth the various subsystems that comprise an "ordinary" enterprise search package. Read on and you'll discover that search technology is anything but ordinary...
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We participate regularly in the semi-annual Enterprise3 Conference (former Portals and Collaboration Conference). The next event, in San Diego, CA in May, covers a wide range of topics, mostly around the nexus of Portals, SharePoint, and Social Software. Jarrod and I will both present on a number of topics (e.g., Facebook).
As a pre-cursor to the event, I'm leading a free one-hour webinar, "Evaluating SharePoint from a Business Perspective," on Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT. Use the "CMS" priority code when you register. Hope you can join in!
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How do you know when major corporations are beginning to consider open-source CMS packages? When major analyst firms start writing about them; this means they're getting questions from their corporate customer base. Witness this draft analysis by Gartner (thanks to Pascal Van Hecke for the ref.). It's typical Gartner fare: very intelligent analysis of the broad landscape combined with highly inaccurate evaluations of specific packages. However, the analyst does win points for soliciting the opinions of real developers. But more importantly, the fact that Gartner (and Giga and Jupiter) are examining open-source solutions for content management should tell you something's afoot out there...
Check out the Gartner Draft
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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
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In a brief press release Swedish CMS vendor ElektroPost today announced that
they have signed a partnership agreement with search giant Google. Under the
agreement Elektropost will integrate their flagship Web CMS, "EPiServer"
with the Google Search Appliance to "provide the same level of search as
google.com on their own Web sites." This early partnership likely presages
more to come between Google and other CMS vendors. Google does a fine job of
searching websites (but searching enterprise content is a different story --
consult The Enterprise Search Report for details), and hungry CMS vendors
will want to try to hitch a ride on Google's star. Google should be happy to
get more traction on in Scandinavia, home turf of enterprise search competitor
FAST.
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Vendors will tell you that most of the CMS action is now in the mid-market -- that is, point web content management (WCM) solutions where product licensing starts at $40-80,000 USD. We find it interesting that there are very few pure Java solutions at this level. Among the major players, seemingly just Merant and perhaps FatWire fit the bill. Despite its name, "J2EE" is not just for the enterprise anymore; many mid-market firms have standardized on Java appservers. Moreover, even major enterprises often want to buy lower-cost departmental-sized WCM packages that can nonetheless plug nicely into their existing architectures. There's a market opportunity here...
Read about Merant Collage Visit Fatwire
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CMS vendor Percussion
is pitching their latest
Version 6.0 of Rhythmyx not so much as an ECM product solution – but
as the core of an interoperability strategy that enables ECM. This
seems like a smart approach for a niche solution. The company has added a WSDK
(Web Services Software Developer's Kit) and web services API, making it easier
to pull and push content into and out of the Rhythmyx repository. Percussion
also productized a WYSIWYG web forms tool (à la Ektron)
previously developed by a channel partner. That all sounds good, but Rhythmyx V6
doesn't actually release until the end of July and it will be some months
before Percussion's customers have put it through its paces. We'll let you know...
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CMSWatch has noted IBM's strategy of pushing its enterprise CM products while partnering with other Web CM vendors to push DB2 and WebSpehere licenses. Now Lotus announces its "Content Management Solution." A change in strategy? We think not. Look deeper and you'll see that the solution is really an amalgamation of (mostly pre-existing) product and service offerings that gives IBM a Web CM story -- for its existing Domino clients in particular -- without a major investment in new software....
See what you can glean from the Lotus press release
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CMSWatch has recently chronicled major changes in the enterprise and mid-market CM spaces. But the lower end of the CM software marketplace is evolving too. Today, Ektron announces an upgraded version of its US$3,000-12,000 CM package, rebranded as "CMS200." This version runs on MS Active Server Pages (ASP) instead of Cold Fusion, and is generally more extensible than previous versions. To squeeze marketshare from the larger departmental players, Ektron will need to prove that its offering is scalable, too...
See the CMS200 Product Specs
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Over the years we've helped many enterprises select appropriate content technologies -- be it a Web CMS, Portal, Search tool, or a larger ECM Suite. We're now also pleased to offer Web Analytics advisory services (for buyers only, of course). If you're managing a Web Analytics program and want to optimize its value, educate key decision makers about web analytics, or make the right technology purchase decision, we can help. Just drop me a note.
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