“The Web content management market is mature and expanding,” says Gartner’s latest MarketScope for Web Content Management (MacComascaigh, Gilbert, Bell, Shegda, Andrews). “Vendor consolidation has fallen (slowed)… functions such as workflow, ease of use and multi-site management are no longer differentiating factors; they are the norm.”

 

Findings:

 

  • Open source solutions (OSS, represents only 3% of the total WCM market) are increasingly stable, robust and growing in market share
  • Web 2.0 phenomenon is driving WCM innovation
  • Change management and user adoption will need to be applied to both internal and external users
  • The total WCM market, at $750 million per year, will grow at an annual rate of 15% through 2012 (representing 25% of the total ECM market)

 

Recommendations for implementing a new WCM system (CMS):

 

  • Develop specific business goals and link these to business objectives
  • Understand the cultural shift represented by Web 2.0
  • Interoperability (multiple systems working together or migrating from one to another) needs to be considered, as does rationalization of multiple WCMs
  • Hosted SaaS solutions are not growing as fast due to business and technical reasons
  • Total cost (TCO) of OSS solutions should take into account initial price tag

 

Highest rated vendors (strong positive):

 

  • Interwoven
  • Ektron

 

Lowest rated vendors (caution advisories):

 

  • IBM (Lotus)
  • Mediasurface

 

Also of note:

 

  • Vignette gets a positive rating but with caution due their financial performance (also read Vignette still in transition)
  • Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS) is listed as a very average “promising” with lots of caveats and listed weaknesses (see What the experts say about SharePoint (MOSS)
  • Gartner estimates a typical replace of a WCM system to be around 5 years

 

My analysis:

 

Gartner’s MarketScope is somewhat different from the average Magic Quadrant in that the qualifying vendors must have $10 million in licensing revenue to qualify, and there is no magic quadrant but rather a 5-point rating scale:

 

  • Strong negative
  • Caution
  • Promising
  • Positive
  • Strong positive

 

While there are hundreds of WCM solutions (thousands, really) only 17 qualify.

 

The report is concise and solid intelligence for a representative snapshot look at the current marketplace. This report is a good starting point to understanding the market, but is not an adequate tool for helping an organization select a CMS. If you have significant experience with WCM (CMS) and have very detailed and documented requirements and plans for WCM, then a better report is the CMS Watch Web CMS Report 2009. If you don’t have a solid understanding of the market and solutions, and what to watch out for then you better consider Prescient’s CMS Blueprint service.

 

Additional notes on vendors:

 

  • Interwoven – Though due for a major tech upgrade, I like how Interwoven has evolved in the past couple of years. The updated, AJAX-powered U; the campaign management functions, etc. This is a very powerful system, but overkill for an intranet… it’s sweet spot is the external, product marketing website.
  • EPiServer – the Swedish-based vendor is a real up-and-comer – and it’s average contract value is below $10,000 which gives all the others a run for its money.
  • IBM (Lotus) – despite its caution rating, this is still a reasonable solution… if you’re a Lotus shop and/or use WebSphere. Outside that, there are far too many good-looking alternatives.
  • Microsoft – I think it’s generous to label SharePoint (MOSS) as WCM. It really is a portal / development platform that is really quite weak bang-for-the-buck for WCM. Garter cites its weaknesses particularly “ease of content reuse, multisite management, workflow and enterprise-level federation capabilities such as replication and multi-farm synchronization.” MOSS is a good enterprise portal solution in a small to medium-size organization.

 

What is absent:

 

The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification or standard was ignored in this report.  CMIS defines a model or framework ensuring that content can be used by one or more Enterprise Content Management repositories or systems. Frankly, I wouldn’t buy a WCM (CMS) if the selling vendor hasn’t agreed to implement this standard.

 

ALSO SEE:

CMS Blueprint service for selecting a WCM (CMS)

 

CMS Watch Web CMS Report 2009:

 

ALSO READ:

Content Management Proves Costly Without Planning

SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)


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