E-spirit News & Articles

Touting its international roots, Germany-based e-Spirit, the CMS industry’s most recent European transplant to the US, is announcing a new module for integration with Microsoft SharePoint 2010. While numerous organizations are already using SharePoint as an enterprise CMS, CMS system FirstSpirit offers multisite presentations and multilingual web project management that go beyond the powers of SharePoint.  

"The CMS functions of SharePoint are frequently not enough to meet the requirements of large, international businesses with multilingual websites," says Robert Bredlau, COO North America of e-Spirit Inc.

Change is the premise of next week's featured event with Forrester Analyst Stephen Powers. To quote Powers, "Enterprises need to forget the single vendor customer engagement dream and wake up to the multi-vendor reality."

There was a time when Web CMS (WCM) platforms were selected based on the needs of IT. It was a technical decision. But today, many marketers are under pressure to deliver more intelligent experiences across more devices, all while integrating with social media channels and numerous other enterprise systems. 

To get a better idea of what you need to consider when defining your Web CMS and Engagement strategy, join Stephen Powers, Principal Analyst at Forrester, and e-Spirit next Wednesday May 18th at 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 GMT for a free webinar entitled Reinventing Your Web CMS Strategy to Support First Class User Experience.

During the event, Stephen will discuss:

• How the Web Content Management maturity model has been changing
• Forrester's market research on the functionality critical for a modern Web CMS -- specifically the "The Seven Cs": content, creation (tools for content contributors), context (personalization), consistency (across online experience), community, channel, and customer intelligence
• How to intelligently approach a customer experience ecosystem that includes DAM, CRM, OMS and Web CMS systems
• Your next steps for defining a best of breed Engagement and CMS strategy

If 2011 promises big changes in your digital strategy, or if you're facing mobile or other engagement challenges, then sign up for this event and benefit from the latest Forrester intelligence.

European firm, e-Spirit (news, site), creates a central system for integrating almost any app into its content management system.

e-Spirit (news, site) released a new version of the FirstSpirit Web CMS in the spirit of better communication with office applications.

e-Spirit, the makers of FirstSpirit CMS (news, site), announced the second release of version 4.2 (4.2R2) of their Web CMS.

Here at J Boye 2009 the Web Idol competition is about to start. In the line-up we have 23 Video, e-Spirit, Kapow Technologies, Microsoft, Sitecore and TERMINAL Four.

J Boye '09 -- Web Idol Contestants Exhibiting Pre-Contest Commencement Consternation

For those unfamiliar with the concept, Web Idol is a semi-serious but mostly humorous event loosely based on the extremely popular (with people we don’t know) American Idol TV show.

The event is a fast-paced set of competitive demos. Select vendors present short demonstrations of their products, showing-off their fanciest features -- often the stuff most recently developed. For those that prefer succinct, comparative presentations to long-winded demonstrations, this is a session for you.

The judging is done by an expert panel of judges who primarily offer pithy commentary, but it's the audience who holds voting power over the final outcome.

[UPDATE: The votes have been tallied. It was TERMINAL Four in 3rd place, 23 Video in 2nd place and Sitecore who has taken home the massively awkward 1st prize trophy. Congrats to all for an entertaining reprieve from serious thinking.]

See more J Boye 2009 coverage:

• Web Content Management: Inconvenient Truths and Industry Challenges
• Design for Behavior Change: Why Facebook and Twitter Are Winning
• Persuasion: How to Make Your Media More Persuasive
• Selecting a CMS - Pitfalls and Best Practices

e-Spirit, the makers of FirstSpirit CMS (news, site), released a new module called Database Pool that goes on top of the core content management platform.

The new product was developed by ARITHNEA GmbH with the goal of distribution and synchronization of content stored in databases and better content re-use across multiple websites.

Who’s hiring these days? e-Spirit is! Well, that is, they’re recruiting partners.

The Enterprise Content Management System providers recently announced the launch of their UK Alliance Partner Program. Currently on the lookout for partners in all industry verticals, e-Spirit hopes that the program will ensure their future success through formally built networks and partnerships. Additionally, linking their electronic arms with those of Content Management System vendors is expected to help place e-Spirit among reputable CMS suppliers in the UK market.

Already on board is ecomplexx, a UK based Web services provider with rich internet and Content Management offerings.

“Alliances play a critical part in e-Spirit’s overall business strategy for delivering and implementing e-Spirit systems,” said Jeremy Pitt, Head of UK Sales, e-Spirit UK. “We are delighted to welcome our new partners.”

Members of the Elite Partner Program can look forward to both training and education to ensure that they have a deep understanding of customer challenges, the CMS market and the benefits of the technology.

Additionally, further enhancements to the Partner Program are reportedly to include the launch of a certification program later this year.

For more information about e-Spirit, check out their websitee here, or, for the skinny on ecomplexx, here.

Continuing in the spirit of making content management as simple as possible, e-Spirit launched FirstSpirit 4.2.

Having done some research, e-Spirit is reporting that content volumes are growing, and more effort is needed to keep content from snowballing out of control with efficient content management systems and practices.

We've written a lot lately about mobile solutions in content management and social media. The market for mobile content is trending strongly upward especially with the release of the iPhone and the enhancements to the Blackberry.

Oddly enough though, e-Spirit has found that only 35% of organizations they surveyed in the UK have optimized their websites for mobile devices. This a potentially huge market. Failing to address it is a mistake.

Ease of Use. That has to be the most requested feature of an Enterprise CMS today. The user experience is critical not just to the customer viewing the website, but to the editors writing the content for it.

One U.K. CMS vendor has launched a new solution designed specifically to provide this feature. e-Spirit has announced FirstSpirit 4.1 — a content management system designed with ease of use in mind.