Stan - thanks for the link - some great comics there! Even more specific and relevant than Dilbert - and reminds me somewhat of the "Implementing SCRUM" cartoons as well (see http://www.implementingscrum.com/section/blog/car...).

• 2 weeks ago

test

• 3 weeks ago

Carter - For WCM itself, of course the list is large.

For Web Content Deployment/Automation - it SHOULD be any and all of the currently active WCM solutions. I'm not aware of Microsoft having offerings for this themselves (I could be wrong), but with the size/scope of the ecosystem around Microsoft, they may have other options (RepliWeb is one, BTW).

RedDot (now Open Text) should be looked at as well (see the now dated article on CMS Watch at http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/104-Deployment), and of course one of the oldest WCM players, Vignette (http://www.vignette.com) should be looked at as well.

At a glance, one would think that ALL of the players in the WCM world would support web content deployment automation, but this is an area where as a buyer, you definitely need to verify whether that's the case.

As with so many capabilities these days, and the wide variety of solutions that organizations have deployed, looking at something like RepliWeb's offering as a neutral "meta layer" to plug in to various other systems to handle the final details of web deployment, should be a definite consideration.

This is similar to looking to portal solutions to unify the UI above various other repositories, or federated search (universal search, alternatively) to cut across for Findability purposes, federated records management to leave content "in place" but managed centrally, etc..

All depends on what's driving your needs, both from business and technical standpoints. From the case study in this View on, it was a balance of modernizing the infrastructure, as well as removing barriers to publishing and re-using from the business point of view of "monetizing information."

Hope that helps - anyone who should be added/subtracted from the list, I'd love to hear about.

Cheers,
Dan

• 4 weeks ago

James - we're a non-profit association, and have a mix of underwritten offerings, as well as those directly paid for by individuals.

Did we invent something new here? This is a 4-page piece, with an assessment of an issue (web content management 1.0 we could call it), the potential points of pain (front, middle, back-end on the technical sides, and the business impacts of those issues), and ways in which it might be addressed, including a case study of a live customer, and the solution that they chose, which in this case is RepliWeb. Nothing nefarious lurking in there.

It's pretty clearly not a bake-off, lab test, or exhaustive study of sub-segment of the WCM market. We're raising the flag to make people aware that things have changed, and if they haven't examined their WCM setup since putting it in place 3-10 years ago, or have not yet put WCM capabilities in place (I'm sure this web stuff is a fad, BTW), then they should be aware of some of the perils and options available.

What are you suggesting we should do to make the positioning suitably clear? Have we somehow confused the market after over 60 years of being the international association for content professionals of one sort or another?

Cheers,
Dan

• 4 weeks ago

Mark - Definitely agree, but want to continue surfacing specific examples of the good and the bad.

For instance, as an insurance customer, obviously you'd want your settlement check as quickly as possible, and if that process can be streamlined, the company's costs should be lower to do so - but with a cynical lens on, would the insurance company want to pay out quickly?

Short term, it depletes your cash/investments, long-term, better to have happy customers that STAY customers. Have seen all too often that people only pay lip-service to the "keeping customers" quotient though, which is why I'd like to surface a metric ton of examples for extremely sound business reasons for pursuing ECM.

• 4 weeks ago