Web Content Management Round-Up, March 2015

The Web Content Management Systems market is crowded, competitive, and fast-moving. With so many vendors and solutions, it can be hard to keep on top of all the latest developments, particularly if your job responsibilities are based around only one CMS platform (or a selected few). This review brings together recent highlights from across the industry, informing you on what’s new in Web Content Management today.

EPiServer + Ektron = EPiServer

EPiServer and Ektron have been making headlines since December 2014 when the two vendors were acquired by a private equity firm Accel-KKR. EPiServer and Ektron subsequently merged to form a single company, which is using the EPiServer name. This raised questions from existing customers and implementation partners about the future direction of both the companies and the products.

ektron-episerver

Hippo Partners with MRM//McCann

Hippo CMS has partnered with one of the largest digital and marketing agencies, MRM//McCann (formerly MRM Worldwide). Significant agency partnerships are important for CMS vendors and their customers, for two major reasons. First, agencies provide crucial implementation services and bring technology to life in the real world. They tend to have pragmatic, down-to-earth attitudes, and have first-hand knowledge about what is realistically achievable. This in itself is valuable input for the CMS vendor, as it encourages and stimulates continuous development of the CMS product. Second, a partnership between a vendor and an agency acts as an external validation of the CMS product. The agency essentially expresses confidence that the CMS vendor and product is worth its time and resources. At Digital Clarity Group, we consider extensive and established partnerships with service providers as a sign of maturity of the CMS vendor.

Hippo CMS, MRM McCann

Jahia Secures $20m of Funding

Open Source Web Content Management System Jahia secures $20m from a private equity firm Invus. This investment will allow Jahia to improve its marketing operations, accelerate its distribution strategy and partnerships, extend geographical reach, and grow the team to at least double its current size. Jahia’s success reflects the growing significance and maturity of open source WCM platforms.

Jahia

SharePoint Online Public Website Feature to be Discontinued

You would be forgiven for not paying attention to this announcement from Microsoft. Under the title of Information about changes to the SharePoint Online Public Website feature, it’s easy to disregard this article as insignificant. However, in plain English, this announcement means that SharePoint drops its ambition to serve external websites. Existing customers using SharePoint Online for their external websites will be forced to migrate to a different platform in the next two years. Not exactly a surprising move, but still a nuisance for those customers who are facing a website migration.

moving

Web Content Management for Media Industry

The Washington Post is looking to sell its home-grown Content Management System to other newspapers. Just like Chorus, a homegrown CMS behind Vox Media, and iSite 2, a homegrown CMS behind the BBC, the Washington Post content management system meets the needs of the media industry in a meticulous, in-the-know kind of way. In the aggressively competitive CMS marketplace, where most of the features are commoditized, intimate understanding of a vertical is one of the few differentiators that truly wins the business. It will be interesting to see whether the niche market for a CMS tailored to media industry will get traction.

washington-post

Transition from Content Management to Customer Experience in Retail

Recognizing the shift from basic content management to customer experience management (CEM), SDL and Econsultancy conducted a study on Customer Experience Spending. Findings of this study confirmed that the vast majority of retailers recognize the importance of Customer Experience and will be increasing their Customer Experience budgets. The study also highlights integration challenges across systems and technologies used for effective Customer Experience Management, and the unrealized potential of delivering great customer experiences on smartphones and mobiles.

sdl-econsultancy

Awards and Recognition

The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management, Q1 2015 names Adobe and Sitecore as leaders. IBM, HP, SDL, OpenText, Acquia, and Oracle are named as strong performers, and Ektron and EPiServer as contenders.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WCM, Q4 2014 names Adobe, Sitecore, HP, Oracle, IBM, and Acquia as leaders, with Acquia making the biggest leap in comparison to previous years, when it was included in the Magic Quadrant as visionary.
The 2014-2015 EContent Top 100 Companies includes the following WCM vendors: Acquia, Adobe, Automattic, Brightcove, CoreMedia, Crafter Software, DNN Corp, Ektron, EPiServer, e-Spirit, Hippo, HubSpot, Ingeniux, Kaltura, Magnolia, Joomla, Oracle, RSuite, SDL, Siteworx, Sitecore, and Skyword.

mountains

Changing the World

There’s more to life than work. There’s more to be done than making a profit. If we want to make this world a better place, then merely doing business and making money is just not good enough. Between the product releases, acquisitions and awards, it’s good to see news about laughter, compassion and love. Last year Zengenti (the company behind Contensis) offered disadvantaged, disabled or vulnerable children an opportunity to enjoy the excitement of the circus for a day, through sponsoring Circus Starr’s charity, and Percussion Software donated its Web Content Management System licenses to Flutie Foundation for Autism.

The way we think about charity is wrong. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Together we can change it.

circus


This blogpost was first published on Digital Clarity Group website in 2015.