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Ingeniux is a smallish U.S. vendor with a solid feature set, a mature business posture and a steadily growing list of enviable clients. Here's a background snapshot on the company and our review of release 7 of the Ingeniux Web CMS product.
The Ingeniux CMS Story
| Vendor | Ingeniux Corporation |
| Product | Ingeniux CMS 7.0 |
| Product Category | Web content management, web publishing |
| Typical Scenario | Online publishing, Educational institutions, Membership institutions, etc |
| Bad Fit Scenario | Intranets, Document collaboration, Community sites (unless combined with Cartella) |
Company & Product History
Company Snapshot
Ingeniux Corporation was founded in 1999 by Jim Edmunds, who is currently the President and CEO. The company has been organically funded and reported to CMSWire that they are currently profitable.
A small to medium sized vendor in the Web CMS space, Ingeniux has between 35 and 40 full time employees in Seattle, 10 developers on contract and a number of freelancers (many of whom support the consulting services arm of the company).
Along with working with key partners Ingeniux also offers Ingeniux 360, a site administrator and developer support program. This offering is over and above what is offered as part of the typical Ingeniux CMS support license. Ingeniux 360 offers direct access to Ingeniux Professional Services developers, training and other services that help organizations ensure they are making the most of their implementation. Roughly 70% of Ingeniux customers are now enrolled in the 360 program.
Product History
Ingeniux sells a few different products with the primary offering being the Ingeniux CMS. The full list of options includes both an on-demand (via hosted virtual machines) and an on-premise version of Ingeniux CMS, then you have Cartella, a social software platform (they refer to it as social content management software), and finally clients can purchase or use a number of add-on application modules.
The Ingeniux CMS product is a .NET and XML-based web content management system. It has its roots in various projects undertaken by Microsoft Corporation, where the current CEO, Edmunds, and others developed the MSNBC website. Using the knowledge gained from this project, Edmunds left Microsoft and started up Ingeniux.
Currently in version 7, the Ingeniux CMS product has undergone significant enhancements in recent years, and appears to be sustaining a rapid pace of innovation. In May 2006 the company released version 5, which included extensive usability improvements to the back office admin interface, a new WYSIWYG editor and native support for single source business documents.
The product really took off about two and a half years ago when version 6 was released — the company reportedly doubled license sales in the subsequent 12 months. This update included a multi-format content deployment model, opening the door to customers who already had an existing delivery environment but were looking for improved content management capabilities. Other v6 enhancements included an AJAX-enabled web client, enhanced asset management and an improved core taxonomy system.
David Hillis, VP of Business Development for Ingeniux, helps direct product strategy. According to Hillis, Ingeniux puts out a large number services releases and has an aggressive product roadmap. We'll discuss the roadmap after we take a closer look at the current version.
Market & Pricing
When we inquired about the Ingeniux CMS target markets, David Hillis spoke of "fat-tailed customers" or customers who had a large number of users. Higher Education is one of the key targets in this case, and it seems Hillis and company have executed well in the space. They report that more than 150 colleges and universities are currently using the product. Over 50% of their current customers are publicly funded organizations who need enterprise web content management on a budget. Life Sciences is currently their fastest growing market.
Some of Ingeniux's customers include:
- General Electric — GE recently selected Ingeniux to support web publishing for their 300,000 employees, including websites, handbooks, and blogs.
- US Army — Ingeniux powers the benefits portals for the US Army and other branches. Sites are delivered in multiple languages and integrate with the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) system.
- Workday — The high-flying SaaS ERP vendor uses Ingeniux OnDemand to manage their websites, blogs, and sales collaboration.
- Amadeus — Amadeus provides technologies and services to the travel industry. Their website has a decoupled deployment via Akamai. Ingeniux is used to manage over 75 websites localized for 215 markets, and over 300,000 pages of content.
- Champlain College — The Vermont based educational institution utilizes the hosted Ingeniux OnDemand service.
Pricing
Ingeniux comes in two specific flavors: on-premise and on-demand (SaaS). Over half of Ingeniux customers use the on-demand offering, which became available in 2003. Each product licensing approach has three editions: Essential, Professional and Enterprise.
On-Demand Pricing Basics:
| OD Essential | OD - Professional | OD- Enterprise | |
| 1 Website | 3 Websites | Unlimited Websites | |
| 15 content contributors | 50 content contributors | Unlimited content contributors | |
| Shared Application Hosting | Dedicated VM | Dedicated "large slice" VM | |
| Dedicated VM Available | |||
| US$ 1,800 per month | US$ 2,800 per month | US$ 3,800 per month |
On-Premise Pricing Basics:
| OP Essential | OP - Professional | OP- Enterprise | |
| 1 CMS Server | 2 CMS Servers (1 CMS, 1 DDS, or other combination like CMS Prod, CMS Dev) | Unlimited sites and users | |
| 5 concurrent users | 15 concurrent users | All Ingeniux App Modules | |
| One Domain | 3 Domains | ||
| All Ingeniux App Modules | |||
| US$ 25,000 license | US$ 35,000 license | US$ 60,000 license (starts at) | |
| US$ 4,500 annual S&M | US$ 7,500 annual S&M | US$ 12,000 annual S&M |
These prices were all updated in 2010 and there are discounts available for non-profit and EDU customers. Ingeniux offers several hosting options, including a managed services offering and a PCI-compliant hosting option.
Key Features and Ratings
Core Technologies
Some people who know of Ingeniux refer to it as a .NET Web CMS. Well, it is and it isn't. At its core you find an XML repository — so all content is created as XML and stored as XML documents in a flat file system on the server. Although other systems have taken a similar approach, namely Documentum and Stellent (prior to the Oracle acquisition), Ingeniux is one of the few mid-market CMS solutions to develop their own content repository. Hillis refers to the XML repository as their "special sauce" because it’s specifically designed to optimize content reuse in the CMS..
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