The RedDot Content Management System brand had been around since the mid 1990s, and my review was done when I was looking for a CMS for my company back in 2005. Though my review was favorable, we selected a different CMS. Several RedDot users who visited my blog, though, were less than complimentary.
Regardless of that, the RedDot brand may be gone, but the software continues to be delivered by publisher Open Text under their Web Solutions family of products.
This brand evolution has been a couple of years in the making, and the interview with Open Text’s SVP for Corporate Strategy, Daniel Kraft, provides the details.
Every couple of months, I contemplate whether or not I should take the time to re-review some of the Content Management Systems (CMS) that I had looked at a few years ago.
Recently, there has been a fair amount of traffic at this site about the Demise of KM, but the CMS reviews done several years ago - particularly those on RedDot and Ektron continue to get the most amount of search engine hits bringing people to this blog. So I continue debating.
Meanwhile, anyone wanting a truly thorough review of the top CMS applications (about 1000 pages) in the industry should visit CMS Watch, their 2009 Web CMS Review is now available. A 67 page 'preview' can be downloaded for free, but anyone looking to spend any amount of money on a CMS (and even with an Open Source solution, you will still pay to have it customized), should invest in the full report. It reviews and compares 42 Content Management Systems, including Open Source, inexpensive commercial applications, mid-range solutions and the high-end powerhouses.
I had the pleasure to run into water&stone a vendor that focuses on web applications and also on installing and customizing Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) for clients. A few weeks back, Cody Burke of Basex, suggested - in their TechWatch newsletter - this very approach of using an Open Source CMS with a vendor capable of customizing it to a company's requirements.
The purpose of the report was to look at 19 of the most well known of the Open Source Content Management Systems. They attempted to assess these CMSs on the basis of Rate of Adoption and Brand Strength. As they disclose in the report, metrics
in the industry are lacking – so the report is very open in its approach, results and any extenuating circumstances, with an end result of attempting to determine the trends and patterns in this marketplace.
Overall, it is a very satisfying report...open in its methodology and replete with necessary footnotes.
The goal of the report as described early on is, "to present a variety of metrics in one easy to
access document and thereby help inform our readers about what is happening in
this dynamic market."
As a part of the study, they included traditional Open Source web content management (WCM)
systems, wikis, and blog-style approaches to publication. The report comments on the blurring of lines between these
three types of applications, so they sought to be inclusive. Hosted and commercial solutions are not included (Ektron, Red Dot, as well as Blogger are among those not included).
With no standard metric in the marketplace, the report's author began by brainstorming methods of tracking popularity and adoption, and all cards are on the table on how they did this.
The report segments each area of Rate of Adoption and Brand Strength, looking for Leaders, Movers and Laggards, this is similar to Aberdeen Group research projects that groups their studies into Best-in-Class, Industry Average Middle, and Laggards, they are both easy ways to look at and evaluate the results.
The report admits that there were challenges, such as b2evolution (blogging
software that I’m familiar with) which badges many of the pages created by
users with their name (effectively skewing results), and MediaWiki, and Open Source Wiki – which is on millions of pages due to its
use as the engine for Wikipedia.
Adoption figures looked at Downloads, Installations and Third Party
Support…and they list the problematic aspects of each category. But where
available (not all applications track this), the total downloads and average weekly download rates were
reported. It was not possible to even try to track live installations. For third party support they looked at Developers using the application and
Publishers (books written).
Brand strength looked at things such as Search engine
visibility, Popularity Metrics, looking for evidence of mind share and evidence of
reputation.
For search engine visibility, they actually include the search
terms used and rated/ranked accordingly, giving a) clues to their methodology, and
b) taking into account a variance in response.
Google Search and Alexa Rankings were employed for Brand
Strength metrics, and the Alexa rankings were done for both February and July
of this year (they checked twice for demo downloads as well to track trends and totals).
Google Trends was also used in the method.
They even used blog mentions to help provide a sense of goodwill, since bloggers do not have to mention these solutions, so they checked Technorati, BlogPulse (from
Neilsen) and IceRocket as well as Google’s new Blog Search. They even pulled out the social networks, tracking fan activity by looking at Facebook, MySpace
and Google Groups looking for collections of like minded individuals on each.
As a part of the results section (that includes the Leaders, Movers and Laggards), they named the 3 top solutions. I won't get into details, but WordPress and Joomla! far exceed the others in the two categories combined....but the report also lists projects they feel may be at risk due to
declining statistics in the areas that they were looking at, and those Open Source solutions whose window of opportunity may also be closing...Oh yeah, and the systems on the rise and worth watching.
The report was done by Ric Shreves, one of the founding partners
of waters&stone. He writes and speaks on Content Management systems and web
applications and has worked with Open Source CMSs since 1999.
I've been thinking a bit about Content Management recently since receiving the Basex newsletter that discussed the benefits of an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) versus a Commercial CMS (of course I blogged my two cents worth).
As I started to get back into things, I noticed that the majority of hits to this site are those coming to check out the CMS Reviews I did on Reddot and Ektron (I reviewed 5 or 6 CMS systems, but these 2 get all the hits), and they were not all that favorable. The posts on my reviews are now three years old, and apparently are still pretty high up on the search results, which leads me to believe that perhaps I should be reviewing and blogging about various CMS systems, but I hate that idea when I think about the different requirements that users have.
The primary force preventing me from writing about CMS systems is that there are already some great resources out there for finding this type of information. CMS Matrix is a good for getting started and finding out key feature availability for each of about 1200 CMSs. From there, CMS Watch kind of owns the review market. But perhaps there's a middle ground.
All of this is leading to the fact that there is a new industry report out that I need to read...a 2008 Market Survey on Open Source CMSs....at 50+ pages, it looks like a properly done research project.
The folks at Eat Media have put together as a part of their blog, the Top 10 Half-Assed Content Marketing Solutions. Actually, it's an old posting from earlier this year, but I'm back thinking about Content Management again, and it caught my attention.
There's not really much preamble to the posting, just the list of 10 bad ideas with some details and an example. The list includes things such as having multiple people responsible for content without management, creating a content strategy without seeing what the competition is doing, and shooting at too wide an audience in one message.
Great list....good advice. Many I have violated such as not blogging often enough and the too broad an audience suggestion. Good things to keep in mind.
The Eat Media folks are very creative, I've mentioned them and their advice here before, and they are also insouciant in their approach, so I'm sure they will not mind me poking a little bit of fun at them....a top ten list?...I think #11 of poor content management and content marketing strategies is resorting to top 10 lists, no matter how good it is.
Hey, everyone has done it...I have definitely done it before. But I think this eleventh lesson learned is to keep lists punchy - and always less than 10 items...maybe prime numbers only.
When it comes to a Content Management System (CMS), what is better: to build your own system?...or to buy one of hundreds of available applications on the market? Cody Burke, analyst, posed this question as a part of this week's Basex TechWatch eNewsletter.
[If you want to be completely amazed, alarmed and possibly even
overwhelmed, go to CMS Matrix to see how many Content Management System
are available on the market today]
Years ago, as Mr. Burke points out, companies only had the two choices....build from scratch a system that perfectly fits your requirements and can be modified to changing needs, but can be expensive by using internal resources; or, spend to buy a system that has more than you need, is not custom, but can be implemented quickly and utilizes Content Management experts to shape the system to needs?
The answer usually came down to corporate philosophy...those with NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome building their own, and those short on internal resources, but strong in need, opting to find an existing commercial system.
While the argument is far deeper than these couple of positions posted here, it is not the purpose of the Basex news article, which set its focus on Open Source. In a relatively "old" (maybe mature is a better word) market such as Content Management there are now many offerings that can compete with commercial applications, but remain free of charge. As Burke points out:
There are multiple open source content management solutions available today that come with the benefit of zero cost and full access to source codes. Instead of building completely from scratch, setting up an open source CMS means downloading, integrating, and customizing the system initially, and ongoing work to support and maintain the system.
The article also mentions the fact that more and more companies are going into business as Open Source experts (Vendors), able to customize one (and in most cases more than one) CMS system to meet a company's requirements. More on this is a future post, but the point is that an organization can now find an Open Source solution (no-charge software with source code available) that competes with commercial software offerings, and hire a vendor that is expert in that system to customize it to meet requirements. Cody Burke reminds, though, that the price of admission may be 0.00, but you still must have the resources to either customize and support the system yourself, or find and pay a vendor to provide these services. From Burke:
By using open source tools, the cost is significantly lower than a commercial product, the customer possesses the source code, and the system can be fitted to exactly the needs of the user, getting rid of excessive bloatware and unused features. The negatives of open source, and building a CMS in general, are mitigated by the commercial level of support and pre-integration that negates the need to shift or hire staff to set up and maintain the system.
About 3 years ago, I was part of a team that made such a decision to go with an Open Source CM Solution and hire an outside Vendor to customize it to meet our requirements (and they were expert in more than 1 Open Source CMS system and a few other Open Source applications). It helped us solve an immediate problem, and In the end, we ended up hiring a full time employee to keep developing the system.
This leads to a final point that I feel is critical in any discussion about using a CMS.
For any 'first time' CMS implementation, I would strongly recommend going with an Open Source solution. The nearly 100 point Requirements Document that we created for our CMS did not adequately cover what our real use would be, once the system was implemented and accessed by Users (some things we ended up never using, while other minor requirements became major features, etc). By implementing an Open Source CMS, hiring a Vendor on a project-by-project basis, and then taking over development, our CMS was a dynamic tool that evolves as our needs do.
This is even a good path for those with NIH Syndrome, as going this route has helped us develop requirements for a system that we could build from scratch, but again, we can do it based on several years of experience using a CMS, instead of creating something from a set of requirements emanating out of a few brainstorming sessions.
A few years back I attended a Content Management conference in San Francisco hosted by the Gilbane Group. I was quite surprised to find several of the break out sessions devoted to "search." At the time I had not yet put as much value on search as the rest of the content market had. Of course, I came back a believer.
So I was very interested in Jack Vinson's Knowledge Jolt post on Google Insights. I was notified of this post through (of course) Google Alerts, watchword: Knowledge Management.
Google Insights is designed to analyze the words that people are using to search via Google. As with all Google products, it has a very basic interface. You select the search term and then filter by geographical location, time period, and category...then press 'search'.
The location is a selection by country or worldwide; the time periods are pretty flexible allowing 2004 - Present, a specific year, last 30, 90 days, last year, and even allowing a specific date range; the category provides some typical industry breakdowns.
Within a couple of minutes, you can enter a search term, choose your filters and then search to see how active that term has been on Google. To compare 2 terms, separate by a comma and re-run your search. Add a comma and another term - get a comparison of the three terms. Change a filter (different date) - run again. Drill down into a specific county - run again. The results are a very basic line graph, but warning: this can be habit forming. It quickly becomes very interesting to see what is popular, what is fading in popularity, how search terms compare, and how they compare across countries.
According to Tech Observer, Google Insights has been up and running since April, but based upon a simple search, there are a lot of recent (August) mentions of this new service, and a Google Insights on Google Insights shows no interest (searches) until the end of July.
The realization that I came to was how valuable this could be to Content Managers in gaining insight (yeah, sorry) into what search terms are being used within a system, and helping that manager ensure that users can find what they are looking for or that content is created for failed searches. I don't think this point is missed by anyone who discovers this tool. Tech Observer predicts this tool will be a big hit with bloggers....
Disclaimer 1: "Google Insights for Search aims to provide insights into broad search patterns.
Several approximations are used to compute these results." (from the Google Insights home page)
Disclaimer 2: Tom Godfrey is not an employee of Google.
Content and Content Management continue to be critical strategies for business and the individual. Search, as mentioned yesterday, is an important related technology. More evidence of this -->
CMS Watch, a company that evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions, has announced their 12 predictions for 2008 in the content arena.
Four of these are directly related to what I would classify as Content and Search....they are:
Archiving becomes a prime focus for E-Content Management vendors
Google will make a bid to become the World's Content Repository
Search is NOT dead!
There will be a move toward productization of Search Platforms
So I hesitate to use the words "Information Overload" which is overused
- but it will continue to be an issue, and the above predictions by CMS Watch as strong strategies for 2008 would tend to support this. There are some recent articles on I.O. that I'll need to note here over the next couple of days.
But the other predictions...just for the sake of watching them over the next year are:
These next four predictions are just plain interesting:
Finally bridging web analytics and online marketing (this one begs for some research and blog-watching)
Social Software vendor collision (social networking is another category at this site, so this could spark a few posts)
Facebook backlash in the enterprise (yeah - just the sound of it is intriguing)
Security and Identity Management trump functionality for buyers
And three more are:
MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) enters the valley of disappointment
Return of the buyers' market (in content services)
Web 2.0 exhaustion (and the rise of Enterprise 2.0).
Of course, the 12th prediction is that there would be 12 more predictions for next year!
Well, it's all interesting on January 1st....let's see how the year unfolds.
I received a few interesting facts in my email box today from the insouciant, yet prolific company, Eat Media. Eat Media is a Content Management (CM) company that can provide some or all of a company's content management needs. They had gathered and were passing on some this-year survey statistics related to Content.
Out of 9 content related subject matters, including email campaigns and online analytics, Search Engine Optimization is now ranked as the number 1 priority, but was ranked 4th in terms of time and budget.
Eat Media also reported that the Coremetrics Second Annual Face of the Media survey indicated that Email campaigns demand most of marketers time, at 22%.
As might be expected, the largest part of the budget at 33% is online advertising.
It's interesting that at last year's Gilbane Conference, Search and Search optimization were well attended sessions that generated a lot of questions and a lot of interest. I remember returning from the conference hot to make some changes and additions to our CM strategy to make our content more accessible.
With information overload an existing and growing problem, search will continue to be at or near the top of the list.
Last week, Monday through Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the GilbaneConference for Content Management in San Francisco. Great conference and worth every penny.
I'm hoping to create some time to write a bit more on the details of the show, which covered a number of content management issues, such as:
Content Management
Long Term Strategies for Successful Content Management
Enterprise Search
Six Sigma and Content Management
Blogs and Wikis for the Enterprise
Digital Assets Management
Key Technologies to watch in the next 12 to 24 months
It was a diverse group that attended the conference from CMS developers to large corporate and city content managers, serious CM veterans to those of us who were there to drill into the management of content.
Typically these conferences are light on substance, but it seemed that nearly every breakout session and roundtable had something to take away.
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