Ektron + EPiServer Merger – Implications for Customers

EPiServer and Ektron, two content management system (CMS) vendors acquired by Accel-KKR in December 2014, have merged today to form a single company. The combined company “will operate under the EPiServer name and continue to use the Ektron and EPiServer brands”.

For Ektron and EPiServer customers this spells a period of uncertainty. Until the two companies figure out the best way to combine their forces, the product development is destined to take a back seat.

We’ve seen similar mergers in the content management space in the past. In fact, CMS acquisitions are so common that more than one third … Read more >

What to do when your CMS vendor is acquired?

In the web content management space, acquisitions are a fact of business life. About a third of all leading WCM systems are results of past acquisitions. For example, Adobe acquired content management capabilities through Day Software in 2010. Oracle acquired Fatwire in 2011, as well as Stellent in 2006. OpenText acquired Vignette (2009), and also HummingBird (2006), which already owned RedDot at the time. SDL acquired Alterian (2012) and Tridion (2007). The list goes on, with the most recent example being acquisition of Telerik by a global portfolio software company Progress Software.

For the customers of the acquired vendor this … Read more >

Notes from J. Boye Conference, Aarhus 2014

J. Boye Aarhus 2014 conference brought together nearly 300 delegates from 15 countries. World-class speakers such as Bebo White, Rose Cameron, Eric Karjaluoto, James Cannings, Martin White, Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer, Jake DiMare and Tracy Green, to name just a few, made learning easy and enjoyable. Fantastic social events created natural opportunities to connect with speakers and participants alike. Two light-hearted sessions – Web Idol and Town Hall Debate – filled the conference rooms with laughter and served as a welcome break from presentations and workshops.

With 12 tracks to choose from there was a … Read more >

Adobe Creative Cloud is coming to a Web Designer near you

Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Creative Suite – including Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator – becomes a cloud-based subscription service.

As announced at Adobe MAX, the Creativity Conference, Adobe Creative Suite (CS) will now become a cloud-based service. Starting from June 2013, Adobe CS, which includes Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere, will be available as a cloud, subscription-based service. This makes CS6 the last version of the Creative Suite – it remains available as a standalone product on a perpetual license basis to existing customers, but is already pulled from the market. The future products will be re-branded as … Read more >

The simplest example of effective personalization

Personalisation is a vital part of user experience. If done well, it molds volumes of content and data into a concise, meaningful message. It cuts out the annoying irrelevance and makes customer journeys easier.

Amazon does it. Facebook does it. Google does it. And so should you! Or at least this is what your customers think.

But here’s the problem.

Even though most web professionals agree that personalisation is fundamentally important, successful implementations are still few and far between. Large organizations realize the need to personalize, but they also understand the associated costs, complexity, and overhead expenses.

Setting up personalisation … Read more >

Web CMS Quick Take Review: Concrete 5

Concrete5 is written in PHP and is often compared to WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. It is best known for its well-implemented in-context editing which makes it easy to use for non-technical web authors, and easy to sell to non-technical stakeholders. Concrete5 can therefore be considered for web projects where end user buy-in is particularly difficult.

Concrete5 was released as an open-source CMS in 2008 and has rapidly grown in popularity since. Although the core system is open-source, additional functionality is distributed through Concrete5 marketplace as add-ons. Add-ons are largely commercialized.

Concrete5 aspires to compete with enterprise level systems … Read more >