Episerver News & Articles

After what seemed like much deliberation and preparation, EPiServer (news, site) has finally announced its official U.S. presence.

There is a good chance that competitive temperature is going to rise in the North American web content management market.
 

EPiServer (news, site) is offering a new free addition to its wide range of content management add-ons for its EPiServer CMS 5 product. EventX offers meeting and event management to help wrangle the herds of invitees to your company's latest shindig.

CMS Watch (news, site) has just released the 17th edition of their independent research report on Web Content Management: Web CMS Report 2009.

In this latest release, CMS Watch notes that there is another wave of web content management vendors from Europe entering the North America market. These vendors are offering a greater variety of options especially in the areas of .NET and open source. And these are not new vendors, many have been around awhile, just focused on the European market.

According to Tony Byrne, CMS Watch founder, European and UK-based Web CMS vendors have been trying to break into the US market for over a decade. There are been two previous waves: successful in wave 1: RedDot and Day Software, successful in wave 2: Sitecore and Tridion.

This "third wave" includes some well-known vendors:

• Telerik and EpiServer: Offering solutions to the SMB market and challenging existing vendors like Ektron and Sitecore
• eZ Publish, TYPO3 and Drupal: All three are developing strong partner relationships in North America

And while they think this is a good thing, CMS Watch is advising caution and due diligence. “Crossing the Atlantic in either direction is very hard for a Web CMS vendor,” adds Byrne.  “Building effective support structures is a process that takes years, so North American customers should carefully weigh any newcomer’s current abilities as well as long-term staying power.”

You can get the full report here.

More often than not web content management vendors are trying to offer ways to manage social media, user-generated content and web 2.0 technologies in the context of their CMS's.

EPiServer's (news, site) Relate+ is built on top of their CMS 5 web content management system and provides a common framework for incorporating social media features, community building and e-mail marketing into websites.

The product was released just in time before the upcoming grand opening of the U.S. office.

The makers of EPiServer CMS 5 have announced EPiServer Day 2009 -- a conference that gathers together Sweden’s Web experts, international analysts, EPiServer customers and all those interested in Web Content Management and EPiServer CMS.

The highlight of this event is a deep dive into what the vendor calls “the Engaged Web” and experiences surrounding content management and social media.

Swedish CMS provider EPiServer decided to grab a Web agency called Dropit. While some other Web Content Management vendors are shedding extra weight (i.e. agencies), EPiServer does the exact opposite. Why?

Editor's Note: After the news went out, we've heard from EPiServer with clarification on the acquisition. The product section and the actual products from Dropit were acquired, but not any consulting resources and not the entire Dropit organization, which will remain intact and maintain their focus of developing Web sites for their customers.

The Swedish WCM vendor EPiServer is finally making it to our side of the pond. Exclusively, our contacts at EPiServer told us the company is actively pursuing an ASAP office opening in the U.S. Watch out, competition!

It is all going to be done the “EPi way.” Which means starting up in new markets in a “lean way,” until there is enough business to go full throttle.

Function-wise, the .NET-focused EPi is planning to start in the U.S. with, of course, sales. So, if you think you can sell Web CMS, the vendor is looking for a Sales Manager. The current EPi CEO used to be a CEO for Pointsec in the U.S., before moving to Sweden. So, he may explore some sales prospects of his own. Hurry up!

Geographically, EPiServer is looking either at the appl-y New York City or the windy Chicago. I, personally, prefer Manhattan views (looking out of the window). Chicago, however, may be a good central EPicenter point in the middle of the country. In addition to the Sales Manager, there’s also an opening for a Technical Sales Engineer with Product Support team to follow. The direction it grows (or not) from here is hard to predict at this point.

Hopefully, with a new partner recently signed on in South Dakota, things for EPiServer will take off in a jiffy.

We recently gave you an overview of the latest version of EPiServer’s Web CMS software, when they released the second installment of CMS 5.0 R2. And, of course, we plan to give you even more insight into EPi very soon.

Sitecore, a famed .NET Web CMS vendor, announced that its 2008 revenues have grown by over 100% over the prior fiscal. Reportedly, 95% of revenues are coming from new license sales, 4% — from training and less than 1% — from Professional Services.

While this kind of revenue percentage distribution may seem kind of funky to some, knowing Sitecore’s focus on software development and exclusive outsourcing of PS and related implementation activities to its third-party integrators and partners — we are not surprised.

It’s that time of the year again. It’s time to shop for those shiny and new 2009 Lamborghini models, as well as for the new 2009 Web CMS report from CMS Watch.

The Lamborghini of Web CMS researchers, CMS Watch works diligently every year interviewing customers, vendors, partners and all sorts of other people on the CMS street to get the skinny on the Web CMS ecosphere and to give selected vendors an A or a D, depending on how well they did during 2008.

Brace yourselves and read on…

EPiServer, a Swedish Web CMS vendor, announced the introduction of multiple new features for its content management system EPiServer CMS 5, including the mobile industry solutions (think the iPhone here), new environment support and improved usability for editors.

EPiServer CMS 5 R2 is yet another step in the evolution of this Web CMS that promises to speed up the development of web sites and make it easier to manage and update them.

Not everyone is a web designer — Episerver, a Web content management provider, realizes this, and that is why the company has released Episerver Create+. Non-technical web editors and designers will be able to quickly make drastic changes to the content, layouts and functions of a Web page.

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.