Cms400.net News & Articles

The long-awaited and rather-delayed release was prematurely leaked a little while ago, but now it’s all official. Ektron CMS400.NET version 8 is live and brings a slew of new features, including usability enhancements, integrated web analytics, API changes, first attempts at CMIS support and new social media capabilities.

In addition, Ektron (news, site) reports growth this year and plans a takeover of the enterprise-level market.

Apparently, there was a little mishap with Web CMS vendor Ektron's (news, site) scheduled publishing process. Not that we're one to be calling a kettle black -- this sort of thing happens around here more than we'd like to admit.

The new v8.0 release of CMS400.NET wasn't supposed to see the light of day for about another week, yet surfaced late yesterday in its full video-and-all glory via a company microsite. In case it's no longer available when you read this, we've got a few screenshots below.

The cloud appears to be the new black in the fashion of web content management. One after another, vendors are conquering the cloud in hopes of dazzling their customers with more hosting options and improved scalability.

Ektron’s (news, site) CMS400.NET content management system is now also cloud-friendly, thanks to their eSync technology that can do bi-directional synchronization with the cloud.

Hosting is also part of the offering. Ektron is using the Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) as a hosting option, allowing customers to run and manage their production, development and staging environments in the cloud, in any combination.

Ektron’s eSync technology can be used for bi-directional synchronization between the cloud and a customer’s local environment for the entire web site, specific pages or select pieces of content; giving developers the ability to code locally and sync up with the cloud.

Ektron says it will provide a set of free Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), on which customers can deploy their CMS400.NET instances. Using these Ektron-provided AMIs, new virtual machines can be provisioned with CMS400.NET. Developers can take advantage of the provisioning and automated software deployment.

While the cloud option may not necessarily work for all Ektron Web CMS customers, it is certainly worth looking into.

With budgets the way they are at the moment, you could not be faulted for a bit of skepticism around Forrester Research’s January report, which said Web Content Management activity remained, and would remain, high for 2009.

But they may have it right because Ektron (news, site), a provider of scalable Web Content Wanagement and authoring solutions, has just reported a 26% growth in year-on-year revenues for the Q1 of this year.

      
Everyone loves to appeal to the non-techie, including Ektron, a player in the Web content management software game. The company is set to unveil its new CMS400.NET PageBuilder technology during the third annual Local User Group tour. The tour starts February 11th and includes 12 cities worldwide.

Ektron has a really good .net Web CMS. At least so says Gartner, KMWorld and Inc 5000. So why would they want to go and add a slew of professional services that may possibly take away from their ability to provide a quality solution? Probably because they know their customers need more than a good piece of technology. They need to know how to properly implement it to support their business requirements.

And so Ektron’s Complete Services Solution was born…

Ektron, a Web CMS vendor, released feature-packed Ektron CMS400.NET version 7.6. Many of the new features and pricing structure changes were made to improve performance and affordability. Other new features like multisite support ensure that the scope of Ektron is virtually unlimited.

Another one bites the dust — er — makes the list. KMWorld’s List of Trend Setters for 2008 also includes Ektron and their CMS400.Net content management solution.

Now you all know who Ektron is, they are the little guy that beat out the likes of Vignette, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, EMC and others for top spot in Gartner’s MarketScope for Web Content Management 2008. The only one they didn’t “beat” was Interwoven.

According to Hugh McKellar, KMWorld editor-in-chief, “Ektron has proven that they are committed to providing both quality and excellence in their solutions that benefit the customer experience.”

Other than winning all these awards, Ektron’s been pretty busy this year. They opened offices in Canada, brought social networking into the office as part of their solution offering, integrated CMS400.net with Silverlight, launched a new partner portal and more. Whew…busy little beavers aren’t they.

Now on version 7.5 of the web content management solution CMS400.Net, we expect to see even more from these guys over the next little while.

While we don’t argue with these vendors making the list — in fact, in most cases it’s easy to see why they do — it would be nice if KMWorld was a little more specific on what “trend setting” really means and how it applies to each vendor. Maybe we’ll see more detail in the Septemeber issue of the magazine when the list is released in full.

Ektron is getting so busy it opened up a Partner Portal to help meet the needs of their customers worldwide. We are fairly certain that it’s not because Gartner gave them the highest ranking possible in their Marketscope for Web Content Management — but it probably didn’t hurt.

Ektron Inc., the New Hampshire-based Web Content Management powerhouse, and VML, a major digital marketing agency, have announced that they have integrated Ektron’s CMS400.NET CMS and Microsoft’s Silverlight media web browser plug-in.

Ah it all becomes clear now…Americans do believe there’s more to Canada than seal hunting and polar bears. At least Web Content Management Provider Ektron does.

Ektron has announced that they are opening their first office in Toronto, Canada. Home of the Blue Jays and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

What has encouraged this movement North? “Significant growth” in sales from Canadian companies over the last year according to William Rogers, CEO of Ektron.”We saw a need to establish a local presence not only to better server our clients, but also to build closer relationships with our partners and provide them with the support they need.”

Kevin McCloskey, formerly of Momentum Advanced Solutions Inc., will be the Director of Ektron Canada and is tasked with not only growing the business but also ensuring that Ektron’s Canadian partners and existing client base are well supported.

Ektron’s core product is it’s Web CMS CMS400.Net. They also offer built on social networking and web 2.0 features like wikis, blogs, forums…you know…the stuff every CMS vendor is adding on now.

It’s good to see vendors recognizing the potential in Canada, especially since our dollar is now on par. We got a little bit of money to spend, eh!

Fresh from this month’s launch of a UK-based operation, Ektron’s expansion continues into the southern hemisphere with the opening of new offices in Sydney, Australia. Ektron has chosen Sydney’s business hotbed, Norwest Business Park, as the location for their Asian-Pacific presence.

Ektron has today announced the general availability of Ektron CMS400.NET, a native .NET XML content management solution that supports organizations committed to the Microsoft .NET environment.

CMS400.NET shares the same content management benefits and features found in Ektron’s award-winning CMS300. It enables business users, like your marketing team, to take an active role in turning sites into marketing engines, while reducing the burden on IT staff.

Read CMSWire's CMS400 product briefing.