Ektron Moves Further East

By Brice Dunwoodie (@cmswire) May 16, 2007

Crossing paths mid-flight with many a European CMS contender, Ektron, a New Hampshire based Web CMS vendor, has set up camp in the United Kingdom. Their new UK division will include business development, partner support, technical consulting, customer service and an in-house training center.

Ektron has stated that the move is a response to growing customer demand in the UK and Europe for their popular CMS400.NET WCM product.

CMS400.NET is an ASP.NET web content management solution that provides a broad set of web content management and publishing features, as well as the option to integrate Ektron's document management solution.

“A key factor behind the growth of Ektron in the U.S. and the U.K. has been our commitment to the ongoing development of our core product CMS400.NET,” said Mike Watson, managing director of Ektron Europe.

“The latest version 7.0 demonstrates that not only do we anticipate the evolving needs of our global customers, but we consistently develop sophisticated functionality,” added Watson.

Version 7.0 of Ektron's CMS400.NET focused on enabling Web 2.0 content management implementations. The release added new Wiki functionality, better forums, advanced search-driven navigation, tagging, enhanced blogging tools and advanced navigation features.

When version 7.0 hit the streets back in March, Ektron's COO, Ed Rogers, stated that the company's primary strategy was “to replicate their client successes in the U.S.” in the European market.

With competitors such as OpenText/RedDot, SiteCore, Tridion (now SDL), EpiServer and others, the EU market is an increasingly crowded one for Web CMS vendors. Nevertheless, Ektron has been making a solid play stateside and no doubt the strength of their brand and their strong focus on crowd pleasing features will continue to serve them well.

The new offices are in Maidenhead, Berkshire in the United Kingdom and the company has appointed Mike Watson as managing director of the operation.