Espirit News & Articles

The German-based maker of the FirstSpirit CMS is making a big push into the North American market, recently opening a Boston office and now kicking-off a multi-city partner roadshow with the goal of -- yep, you guessed it -- convincing talented U.S. consultants that the e-Spirit take on Web Content Management is strategically interesting.

This is what we like about the content management world -- it's never a dull place.

The e-Spirit Partner Roadshow

e-Spirit is holding the following roadshow events:

• Chicago: October 21, 2011
• Boston: October 24, 2011
• New York: October 26, 2011

Head over to the e-Spirit website for registration and local event information.

When fishing, one generally needs a bit of bait. The e-Spirit team is convinced that their FirstSpirit CMS technology is seductive on its own,  but is additionally running what they call the FirstSpirit Challenge. 

Consultants must submit a project proposal and the winners will be awarded a free FirstSpirit CMS license, as well as all the free project support required to make the project a success. In other words, if you convince e-Spirit of your project's merits, you might find yourself in the position of running a very high margin first implementation.

If you're an integrator in search of new alliances, check out the e-Spirit Roadshow details. Inquire directly about the FirstSpirit Challenge details.

The FirstSpirit CMS

Currently in version 4.2, FirstSpirit is a Java-based Web CMS created by Germany-based e-Spirit. FirstSpirit uses XML for storage and is both OS- and database-independent.

FirstSpirit aims to calm CIOs' fears of instability with long-term partnerships and strategies to handle all types of content. The product can also integrate with a company's existing services, including the likes of NetWeaver, WebSphere, SharePoint and FirstSpirit's own AppCenter.

The German-based maker of the FirstSpirit CMS heads west with a new U.S. office in Boston and a series of roadshow events to introduce itself.

If you were still not quite convinced that global content management is a pretty big deal nowadays, take a look at the latest research saying that 35% of companies surveyed have more than 10 websites with almost 50% of those published in over 5 languages.

This research comes from a Web CMS vendor e-Spirit (news, site). With all disclosures in place, let’s take a closer look at the numbers revealed during this exercise.

According to the vendor, global proliferation of a multitude of information channels and the general content boom are causing the worldwide web content crisis.

The survey of more than 100 businesses suggests this information explosion contributed to the following findings:

• 78% of content management systems (CMS) content authors are marketers
• 66% of those surveyed are frustratrated with the amount of time it takes to manage their global websites
• 20% of respondents complain about language barriers and content translation challenges
• 30% of marketers have up to 100 intranet sites and 50 external websites to maintain.

Sounds like an outcry for an efficient global approach to content management, doesn’t it?

Organizations struggle with the amount of content they have to manage 9 to 5, we get that. No pressure, but your website visitors are not likely to commiserate with your organizational woes and technological difficulties.

Your visitors are hungry for information, they’re impatient and demanding, and if they cannot find that (preferably, relevant and accurate) info quickly (and we mean really quickly), there’s a chance they may never come back to your lovely and freshly redesigned website with all those sweetly integrated recommendation and text mining engines.

Web content management technology on its own is of undeniable importance, we know. Nevertheless -- dare we say it? -- it is less about which CMS you use, but more about your business strategy, implementation and methods of using it. Most importantly, it is about people and processes around it. Hardly any Web CMS can do that job for you.

MO Group International (MOGI) and Clay Tablet Technologies announced their intention to combine forces for mutual benefit. The two companies expect the partnership to impact translation and localization services, as well as multilingual SEO strategies and online integration techniques.

Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer.