[CMS-PR] Content management’s hot trends and issues -- from your global CMS authority

[Kristie Hughes - CMS Watch]

MEDIA ADVISORY

Consider the following when planning editorial about content management or related topics:

"Content management, like any maturing industry, has seen growing pains," says Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch (www.cmswatch.com.)  "Despite modest supplier consolidation, the industry remains very young, and vendors and buyers alike are only now figuring out how to get the most value from content technologies."

CMS Watch, a vendor-neutral analyst firm focused entirely on content technologies, identifies today’s hottest issues: 
 
1) Renewed attention to Web Content Management

Vendors and customers alike are exploring the proper place for "Web 2.0" technologies in the enterprise.  Some web content management vendors have incorporated blog and wiki functionality, but sometimes underestimate the level of effort required to duplicate the subtler functionality (comments, extensible tagging, spam prevention) found in pure-play blog and wiki products.  Meanwhile, several best-of-breed WCM vendors are supporting expanded forms of customer interactivity. 

2) Continued struggles to align around a single content management supplier

There remains a fairly wide gap between customer expectations and what "ECM" products can really do. Most of the major ECM suites consist of platforms and toolkits, but customers are often led to believe that a pre-packaged solution exists for their particular business scenario.  CIOs who hope to unify around a single platform vendor often find out that the various individual tools in that vendor's suite often target radically different customer verticals, size, and regions.  So customers seeking to unify around a single supplier almost inevitably end up with "worst-of-breed" in one particular functional area (like asset management, document management, or web content management).  

3) Elusive goal of better usability

The dirty little secret of most content technologies is that information workers don't like them.  With Microsoft on the verge of releasing a set of integrated Office tools for managing content, pressure falls on mainstream content management and search vendors to invest in better usability.  AJAX techniques have expanded the realm of possibility for web interfaces, but smart vendors are beginning to realize that usability is situational, and are creating means for customers to create task-specific interfaces.  

4) More enterprise search choices than ever

The search marketplace continues to roil with strong new entrants (Entopia, Siderean), healthy skepticism about Google's aptitude for the enterprise market, and powerful, low-cost players exploiting the long absence of Microsoft from the middle tier of the search marketplace.


What’s the good news? A falling price/feature ratio... 
Many may not realize it, but organizations today can obtain significant benefits with modest outlays.  Buyers have more choices than ever before -- as a stable line-up of vendors offers an expanding number of systems to meet their needs.  

CMS Watch analysts are available to provide expert comment on:
• content management systems
• enterprise portals
• enterprise search
• records management 
• enterprise content management

CMS Watch has recently published:
• The CMS Report (9th Edition): An overview of Web CMS products and best practices, including comparative surveys of 32 CMS solutions.
• Enterprise Portals Report (1st Edition): Covering key trends in portal adoption, best practices, and detailed surveys of 13 portal products, based on 60+ interviews with enterprise portal users, integrators and vendors worldwide.
• Enterprise Search Report (3rd Edition): A comprehensive overview of search solution providers and best practices. The bulk of the report entails 12- to 24-page comparative evaluations of 28 enterprise search offerings.
	
NOTE:  Report samples available on request.

CONTACT:
Kristie Hughes
Marketing Director, CMS Watch
www.cmswatch.com
Tel: 1-202-966-6999