Ektron Web CMS (Ektron) News, Reviews

Bridgeline Digital is gearing up for some major selling of its web experience management platform and it has brought former Ektron VP Sales, David Maffei, on board as Senior Vice President of Business Development to help make that happen.

Ektron has announced that it now uses FAST Search Server for more than a search engine. It's now Ektron's answer to automating the creation of personalized content for your website.

On our last day at Gilbane Boston 2011, we learned how to work together better to achieve better results and innovation. Remarkably, much of the conference emphasized people processes rather technology to improve the way projects are streamlined, websites are built and content strategies are aligned.

Countless industry studies have been published confirming something many of us already know -- content volume and diversity are increasing rapidly in organizations of all sizes. This rapid expansion along all dimensions is driving enterprises to adopt content management solutions to gain better control and visibility of their information. Increasingly, many of these organizations are selecting cloud-based platforms to flexibly handle content growth without the complexities of managing a highly available environment. Microsoft hopes that at least a portion of this growing market will select Azure to power their deployments. Will they?

Ektron kicks off its Synergy conference in Las Vegas today with some big platform news. What's more interesting to you -- the new Digital Experience Hub (DXH) or the Azure edition?

If it's time for a change, we've got a shopping list of hot jobs in our spiffy little corner of the world. Our bi-weekly featured jobs list is a great collection of opportunities spanning specialties and continents. Here's who's hiring this week.  

Forget about making Forrester's list of the top online customer experience platforms, that's a nice to have. Look instead at Ektron's latest financial report and the launch of its new global community practice to get an idea of where this Web Experience/Web Content Management vendor is headed.

We've long considered Web CMS vendors like Sitecore and Ektron to be mid-market players. And to some extent they still are. But with the evolution of web content management towards customer experience management has come a shift in the .NET Web CMS vendor landscape. Here's a look at where the players are today.

We knew there was some partnership in the works back in late July when Ektron announced the latest version of its web content management/customer experience platform, but now it's official and a little more detailed.

Brightcove provides the Web muscle for thousands of video content sites and recently launched its own app builder. With these two boom areas under its belt, what better time to go to the stock market?

Both Forrester and Gartner have recognized Web CMS vendor Ektron in their respective Web Content Management reports, and both have said that Ektron still needs to prove itself enterprise ready. Today, that's what Ektron is doing with the announcement of release candidate Ektron 8.5. There are a number of major changes in this version, is it enough?

The Forrester Wave: Web Content Management for Online Customer Experience (CXM) has just arrived and it reads like a who's who of web content management. Seems there are few WCM vendors who don't make some attempt to support the delivery of a complete online customer experience, but most still have a lot of work to do. Who leads and who challenges? Read on.

"We'll make our website mobile friendly." A common phrase heard these days among organizations who have finally accepted what you've all known for a while now -- the mobile channel must be addressed.

Nice to get to this point, but the solution is not as simple as taking your existing website and creating a mobile friendly version. Not at all. The prevailing wisdom is that you must re-think the mobile experience. Luke Wroblewski, previously Yahoo!'s Chief Design Architect, advocates for this approach, giving you three points to consider:

1. Mobile is exploding
2. Mobile forces to you to focus on what the user really needs. Here getting the user experience right is critical.
3. Mobile extends your capabilities to include things that a traditional browser based website does not, such as location awareness.

"We really need to shift to start thinking about building mobile first. This is an even bigger shift than the PC revolution", Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe.

In this shift we are all students again. Addressing that reality, Ektron is holding an educational webinar tomorrow May 19th at 10am PST / 1pm EST entitled The Mobile Revolution -- Moving Beyond Mobile Friendly. The event is hosted by Morehead State University and Ektron's Chief Marketing Officer, Tom Wentworth. During the live session you'll learn about the business case for mobile as "the" primary customer channel.

Some say this is a bigger shift than the Internet revolution. That may sound a little over the top, but it may be closer to the truth than you realize. Register here to learn more.

Ektron (news, site) is singing the happy song a little louder today as it announces first quarter results for 2011. The main takeway? Web Engagement Management (WEM) is on everyone's mind, even SMBs.

There are many different perspectives on what's big in web content management (WCM) this year, and where better to hear them then from the crow's nests of WCM vendors themselves? Following are a number of brief interviews we conducted at the recent Gartner PCC and Forrester Marketing Forum events.