Content Management Matters ™

Continuing it's expansion into the Nordic Market, EPiServer has announced it's newest office now opened in Finland. They are a provider of web content management based on the Microsoft.Net platform.

Although it's their first Finnish office, they are not new to the market, having a number of existing customers and several partners located there for the last two years.

"Finland is a natural next step for us and we see great possibilities for a quick expansion. We stand by our established sales process via our partner network, which allows us to keep our focus as a product company," says Peter Larsson, CEO at EPiServer.

The work EPiServer has done has proven that Finland is very similar in needs to the rest of the Nordic market. Areas including accessibility and the need to provide e-services that integrate with back-end systems are key to business-based websites.

In addition, EPiServer has recognized a trend towards more up-to-date content by a wider range of editors -- something that speaks volumes to the needs for a CMS.

This is EPiServer second office opening announcement in the last couple of weeks. At the end of April, they announced a new hosting office in Sweden. Early in April they also announced the acquisition of Netstar, a community platform provider.

It would appear they are driving forward, strengthening existing markets and offering new integrated services that should help push their Web CMS further into European organizations.

The Swedish company Episerver, one of the world’s fastest growing providers of Web Content Management (WCM) platforms, has made the strategic investment of acquiring Netstar, enabling Episerver to offer its clients a Web Content Management solution with an integrated community component.

Web CMS vendor EPiSERVER has just opened an office in Bangalore, India, a site aimed to better address its partners in Asia, the Middle East and American markets.

An R&D team was also posted in Bangalore to assist in expanding its product into new realms.

"Our India team will be a key factor in our strategies to enhance these possibilities," said Mikael Runhem, the founder and CTO of EPiSERVER AB.

President Sunny Ghosh of EPiSERVER India observed that India will need 300 EPiSERVER developers in the coming two years. To assist in supporting this expansion, the company will be providing EPiSERVER Training and Certification programs in the country.

Amadeus Capital and Northzone have just joined hands with Peter Larsson (via Monterro Holdings) to acquire a majority stake in EPiServer.

Stockholm-based EPiServer, a web CMS purveyor, significantly exceeds estimated industry growth of 13 percent per annum.

CMS Watch points out this is a pretty ambitious series of changes for a company that only hired its first employee outside Sweden last year. But scaling in Scandinavia isn't as easy as one would hope.

EPiServer's biggest competitor, reach-wise, is Sitecore. There's also Polopoly, I guess, but we haven't heard much about them since that pay-per-view blogging thing.

The Amadeus/Northzone/Larsson transaction cost about US$ 23.5 million. Peter Larsson will be taking on the mantle of CEO.

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.

Enterprise Search and Analytics software maker Mondosoft has been recogized by Gartner as a visionary in enterprise information access and related business intelligence. As a horizontal service, Mondosoft continues its push, and its success, into the Microsoft Server space as well as with leading mid-market CMS vendors.

Though home to many vendors, the European CMS marketplace is in many ways still up for grabs.

And if you EU types would care to see some of these vendors go several rounds in the ring. Get on over to Denmark for the 2nd International Content Management Forum (cmf2006). The Danish CM event kicks-off Nov. 7th and runs through the 9th.

Choices, choices, choices... but no big players yet. That's the message for European CMS technology buyers, according to the European edition of the CMS Report by CMS Watch, released today. "Standard", and "Enterprise" -- for large multi-site projects -- editions are available.

Swedish Web CMS vendor, ElektroPost, today announced the addition of a Skype-based visitor interaction module for their popular Web Content Management product. The new module, the EPiServer Webchat will be sold as an add-on base content management system.