Web Content Management System (CMS) News & Articles

IXIASOFT, the native XML database and information retrieval market leader, and Ektron, Inc., an innovator in Web content management and authoring software, today announced a strategic OEM partnership. Under the agreement, Ektron will integrate TEXTML Server into their Web content management solution, Ektron CMS300. The offering is designed for enterprises that want to enhance the manipulation, searching, and retrieval of XML content.

James Robertson of Aussie services firm Step Two Designs recently published a nice article covering the state of the market for open-source CMS. James is a prolific publisher of papers on CMS, KM, and Intranets, and a consistenly informative voice in the CMS community. Following is the CMSWire review and commentary on this article.

The Apache Software Foundation's Cocoon project has announced the upcoming release of Lenya version 1.2.

Apache Lenya is under incubation by ASF, which implies the effort has yet to receive full endorsement by the foundation.

Lenya (formerly known as Wyona) is a Java-based, open-source Web CMS, initiated by Michael Wechner in 1999. Lenya toutes a fairly reasonable feature set and appears to have an active community of developers. Lenya is based upon the Cocoon RAD framework and implemented with support for standards such as XML, XSLT, and XHTML.

As is typical with open-source, feature breadth is not top priority. Lenya is however off to a fairly impressive start.

The software connecting Microsoft Content Management Server and SharePoint technologies (portal|services) is now available for download.

The official name of the connector is “Microsoft Content Management Server (CMS) 2002 Connector for SharePoint Technologies”. Fit that into a TLA.

The Jupiter Content Management Conference & Expo starts today in San Jose, California, so CMS is on the collective tech media brain. Following from this is the usual commentary on the state of the market, including where its going revenue-wise.

Here are a few excerpts:

- trends of the past year include compliance and solidifying the ECM story

- coming this year are futher vendor consolidations, with functional expansion into digital rights management and content security

Rank for $ales recently published an update to a previous article entitled “Search Engine Optimization - Content Management Software & SEO”. As no doubt you know, there's lots of tom foolery going on in the SEO market place. This article has a bit of that, but does make a good point.

The primary point (aside from advertising their services) is that people often overlook the issue of SEO when evaluating WCM tools. Even if they do consider it, the decision makers are not typically versed enough in SEO topics to ask the right questions.

Well this article won't tell you which questions to ask, you'll have to pay for that, but it does raise the issue of auto-generated page titles. Now as far as I'm aware, this is pretty much a non-issue, in so much as most, if not all vendors these days understand the important of the page title and allow you to control that in the content authoring and/or templating tools.

There are other SEO topics that people enjoy debating. Numeric URLs vs. human readable, meta tags, key word density, and content freshness are all good examples. I'm not an SEO expert, but as I understand, most of these factors are largely defunct concerns, but do have some impact and should be considered.

Most of what we understand today about search engine optimization relates directly to the mythology of the “Google Page Rank”. Google's page ranking algorithms are never revealed and never stagnant. They are however increasingly approaching most peoples' idea of “relevance” and at the same time less susceptible to tom foolery to achieve index rank.

Ektron Inc., an innovator in Web content management and authoring software, today announced product integrations with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The company’s flagship content management solution, CMS300, and the world’s most popular editor tool, Ektron eWebEditPro, will now work within SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Organizations can leverage their investment in SharePoint to support intranets and extranets, while gaining a rich content editor and a robust CMS to enhance their content, workflow and overall presentation of Web-based information.

by Gerry McGovern

What makes a great website is focus and clarity of purpose. A great website is unpretentious. It doesn't pretend to be what it is not. It never wastes your time because it always gets to the point. A great website helps you to act.

Microsoft has a great homepage. It has a classic three column layout which looks like millions of other website layouts. This is great because web design is primarily navigational. Good navigation seeks to reduce uncertainty and increase familiarity.

The content on the Microsoft homepage should be studied carefully by every student of web design. It is so sharp, so lean, so action-oriented. It is a webpage that means business.

This article provides some additional context to the recent acquisition of Australian IDM player Tower Technology by the American ECM vendor Vignette. Below are key extracts.

From vnunet.com
by Martin Veitch

Many of the mergers and acquisitions are being driven by the need to comply with regulations such as data protection rules, Basel 2, industry codes of conduct and the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intended to improve corporate governance. But the need to find a fit between managing data held in web sites, emails, paper and electronic documents would be pressing even without such rules.

…

Tower will add document capture capabilities to the skills Vignette has picked up through two other recent acquisitions - collaboration tools supplier Intraspect and portals maker Epicentric.

This is a rant, plain and simple. Ok, so I read lots and lots of news nearly every day. My news is all about WCM, ECM, IDM, DM, LMS etc. etc. I guess I enjoy this stuff.

What I cannot grasp is why companies that make their living selling CMS software and services miserably fail to manage their own content. Here's what I see on a regular basis: a company press release is written internally, the press release is edited, reviewed, and finally approved.

Next, what happens? The press release is sent out to the news wires and depending on how much you're paying, is broadcast in various places on the Internet. Hey this all sounds good so far.

Or in other words, RedDot is moving down market a bit as the big boys such as IBM, Microsoft, and Vignette begin to exert more pressure in the SMB space.

RedDot has launched what they call the RedDot Extended Content Management Suite (XCMS).

From the vendors mouth: “The first comprehensive content management solution designed for the mid-market, XCMS offers companies a comprehensive solution for managing content, fostering collaboration and automating business processes in a way that, until now, had only been possible for large enterprises.”

Gerry McGovern, the prolific and widely-respected Irish web content expert and author of several books on the topic has published his top 10 predictions for the WCM business in 2004.

Gerry has been a trustworthly voice in the industry since 1996. In recent history he has been a holder of many seminars and publisher of numerous articles on content, writing for the web, and content management. The predictions he makes here are no less than poignant. Nerds, managers, and publishers alike should all have a read.

JBoss(R) Group LLC, provider of the most popular Java(TM) application server, today announced the availability of Nukes on JBoss, an open source content management system (CMS) entirely based on Java. Led by Julien Viet, a full-time consultant for JBoss Group, the project grew out of the company's efforts to port PHP/PostNukes to Java and plug-ins with the aim of offering users an open, high performance system equipped with advanced functionalities.

Making the most of J2EE's rich platform and JBoss' own assets, the Nukes on JBoss project has enriched the popular PostNukes CMS with advanced functionality that dramatically improves scalability, robustness and performance to handle enterprise-class web sites. The development of a group management platform falls within the strategic framework of JBoss, which aims to provide all Java users with a comprehensive and dependable set of tools that can be integrated into their current information system.

“Among the open source solutions currently available, Java or otherwise, we were unable to find a single product that met our functional and performance needs,” stated Sacha Labourey, general manager, JBoss Group Europe. “Nukes on JBoss perfectly illustrates JBoss Group's mission to design and offer new-generation architecture for everyone. With Nukes on JBoss, they are assured of having a comprehensive and proven solution at their disposal.”

Advanced Features & Functionality

San Antonio-based software developer GlobalSCAPE on Friday announced that it has established a new Web content management service that the company will host on behalf of client companies.

Earlier in 2003, GlobalSCAPE introduced PureCMS on the market. The company designed the product to allow non-technical employees to manage the content of their companies' Web sites without having to go through a Webmaster.

The new component of the content management service will allow companies to run the PureCMS application remotely from GlobalSCAPE's data center in San Antonio.

Read.

Obinary updates free Java-based Enterprise-Content Management System (CMS) to include highperformance caching and server-side image resizing templates.

Basel, 13 January 2004
Two months and 10’000 downloads after the first public release of Magnolia, Obinary is proud to announce the immediate availability of Magnolia 1.1, the free Java-based Enterprise-Content Management System (CMS). Main new features are high-performance caching and new example templates including server side image resizing. Magnolia installers and updaters for all major operating systems are available for download at www.magnolia.info.

Obinary has released Magnolia 1.1, the free Java-based Enterprise-Content Management System.

Magnolia 1.1 includes an improved caching mechanism that works seamlessly and automatically to deliver the best possible performance for dynamically created web pages, while maintaining full authentication mechanisms. This makes serving even large and complex web and intranet content extremely fast.

IBM's Robert S. Sutor, who will be keynoting at Edge 2004 International Developer Conference & Expo next month when he'll be discussing how Web services have now entered the IT mainstream, has just announced to the developer community the availability of a technical preview of WebSphere Application Server V6.

“WebSphere V6 will be the basis of IBM's strategy to build out a platform for developing and deploying service-oriented architectures (SOAs),” Sutor said, “and will form the foundation for other WebSphere software where it makes sense.”

The full product - and accompanying Java tools for WebSphere - won't ship till the second half of 2004, Sutor added. “IBM is the first vendor aside from Sun to support J2EE 1.4 fully in its application server,” he said.

Read.

LEADING CONTENT MANAGEMENT VENDORS STELLENT AND OPTIKA TO MERGE

Stellent, Inc. (Nasdaq: STEL), a global provider of content management solutions, announced today it has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of Optika® Inc. (Nasdaq: OPTK), a leading enterprise content management (ECM) provider of imaging, business process management (BPM), collaboration and records management software, for $10 million in cash, approximately 4.1 million shares of Stellent common stock and the assumption by Stellent of Optika's outstanding options.

Based on Stellent's stock price as of Jan. 9, 2004 and including the value of the options to be assumed, the transaction currently is valued at approximately $59 million. Immediately after the transaction, the former stockholders of Optika will own approximately 16 percent of the outstanding shares of Stellent common stock, and Stellent shareholders will own approximately 84 percent of the combined entity. The combined company will have an annual revenue run rate of approximately $100 million, and a cash and marketable securities position of approximately $70 million. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive on a pro forma basis, excluding the effects of non-cash or non-recurring charges related primarily to expenses such as amortization of certain intangible assets and acquisition costs.

…

The merger with Optika will strengthen and expand Stellent's document imaging, business process management and compliance capabilities. Optika's Acorde™ family of software products allows companies to manage content and streamline critical transactions related to business processes, such as accounts payable, claims processing and expense reporting. Additionally, Acorde seamlessly integrates with a variety of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and line-of-business systems to drive process efficiencies and cost savings that can result in significant ROI for customers.

…

Optika's product line will enable Stellent to provide customers with a comprehensive suite of solutions to manage both collaborative, consumption-oriented content as well as content generated and circulated during complex business transactions.

…

Optika currently has a base of more than 2,000 customers, including The Home Depot, Merrill Lynch, Georgia-Pacific, Bayer Corp. and Turner Broadcasting Systems.

Read.

My prediction for 2004 is that Oracle acquires an ECM vendor. I'm not the first to say this, nor do I have any information that others don't. It just seems like the right thing for them to do.

What is most commonly associated with the Oracle brand? Yep, data. What is the focal point of ECM? Yep, data. Its not the same class of data and Oracle has not exactly made a name in managing unstructured data. So there are some significant hurdles. Nevertheless, spending in this segment of the IT market is slated to surpase spending on relational databases sometime in the next 3-5 years, and as of today Oracle has no play. Will they stand by and watch it pass? That doesn't seem likely.

Here are some supporting extracts from an Ovum research article:

There's been more shaking and shifting in the Microsoft org charts this week. As we reported previously, Microsoft recently integrated the Microsoft Content Management Server and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal engineering groups.

Ektron is the latest Web CMS vendor to offer hosted solutions. There are a number of folks moving in this direction. Its a worth dwelling for a minute on the implications here. Its possible that the web cms market will fragment into two camps - those with an ASP model and those with ECM growth paths. The land in the middle could get a bit rough in the next 12-24 months.

From their press release:
Amherst, NH, January 6, 2004 – Ektron today announced that as part of the company’s commitment to offer a complete solution, customers can now deploy content management solutions in a private hosted environment. With hosting provider Verio, Ektron provides its customers a stable infrastructure to rapidly implement Ektron Content Management Solutions. The combined offering delivers enterprise Web content management functionality backed by the NTT/VERIO Global IP Network at an affordable monthly fee.

Read.