As expected, there are also many challenges that will affect the markets in the near future.
Web CMS to Hit US$ 2 billion by 2014

WinterGreen Research announced in its new study that web content management is poised for significant growth. Web content management markets were at US$ 372 million in 2007. The prediction is that they will reach US$ 2 billion by 2014.

Market growth is a direct result of companies leveraging the Internet as a channel and responding to the implementation of broadband networks for video and image transmission.

Web content management systems are basic infrastructure for unstructured information published to the web. Unstructured information is becoming more structured, as it is tagged with XML tags and managed in smaller components that can be re-used and repurposed.

As more companies move to purchase marketing and web 2.0 based applications based on XML and integration technologies, the web CMS market will grow accordingly.

Potential Web CMS Challenges

As we all know, web content management is a central aspect of growing the business and staying competitive. Therefore, web CMS should be of importance to corporate IT and legal departments.

Be it acquiring the very first web CMS or switching from one to another – organizations need a web CMS to do business effectively. Various national and international compliances dictate that web content needs to conform to mounting regulatory requirements and legislative pressure.

The entry of SaaS and open source CMS players changes the market by giving web 2.0 market participants strategic advantage. Managing rich media assets is an essential component of an enterprise content platform. Increasing volumes of rich media assets also means that companies are struggling to find, manipulate and repurpose rich media content across the enterprise.

DAM to Surpass US$ 1 Billion in 2013

Sparked by the continuing explosion of digital media in all its forms, such as audio, video and photos, the global market for digital asset management solutions is expected to pass the US$ 1 billion mark in 2013.

According to ABI Research analyst Zippy Aima, there are several forces driving this market to great heights, but DAM also has some significant challenges to overcome.

“Large quantities of digital media content require collaboration across all personnel and departments, from creation to delivery,” says Aima. “DAM systems’ ability to enable integration is driving demand.”

Until recently, it was nearly impossible to integrate rich media management with legacy and third-party applications and systems, such as ERP and enterprise content management (ECM) applications. Many today’s DAM solutions can do that.

Another factor motivating organizations to implement DAM is the bottom line and DAM’s ability to demonstrate a clear ROI.

Potential DAM Challenges

There are still issues to be resolved. Firstly, it’s a lingering confusion about the very definition of digital asset management and its true capabilities. It is not a subset of ECM, but a separate system, which can and should be integrated with ECM.

Other obstacles to DAM adoption include high price. According to ABI Research, the average cost of a DAM system is in the US$ 100,000 — US$ 150,000 range. User adoption and executives’ buy-in is a challenge for both web CMS and DAM.

For more research findings, check out ABI Research’s recent study ”Digital Asset Management”
Web 2.0 Future Trends

According to Forrester research, we should expect US$ 4.6 billion in web 2.0 spending by 2013, as large companies continue to embrace it.

Enterprise spending on web 2.0 technologies is expected to grow strongly over the next five years with better enterprise adoption of social networking, mashups and RSS. The market for enterprise web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditization and eroding prices.

Potential Web 2.0 Challenges

Web 2.0 adoption may take longer than it should. Despite the major impacts the technology will have on how businesses market their products and optimize their workforces, web 2.0 will eventually be weaved into the fabric of the enterprise.

The ROI may not be very clear for many organizations, as they keep wondering whether it is possible to make money with web 2.0. This, in turn, will keep software firms guessing whether they can make money selling enterprise web 2.0 tools.

The specification, called Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), establishes how content management systems (CMSs) can use a set of Web services interfaces, as well as the REST and Atom protocols to link with other repositories. The vendors announced that it plans to submit the specs to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the standards body that oversees many Web services standards today.

“Historically content management systems were purchased for specific application uses and this led to islands of incompatible systems,” the specification states in the introduction. “The objective of the CMIS standard is to define a common content management Web services interface that can be implemented by content repositories and enable interoperability across repositories.”

It is expected that existing vendors of content management systems will implement the specification, so that when their customers need to move a set of data from one repository to another, they will have an easy set of commands to carry out the work. Not every feature in every content management system will be replicated, and some systems will have to be retrofitted to talk with the new features, the document warns.

SMIS is built on an object model. In the parlance of CMIS Version 1, a content repository has four basic entities, called objects: Documents, folders, relationships and policies. All the objects are extensible, meaning they can be extended with new attributes. CMIS offer specifications for creating, reading updating and deleting objects. Services are also defined for filing documents, navigating the repository and querying documents within the repository

Issuing commands and transferring information across repositories will be conducted by using the Simple Object Access Protocol. A subscription service, where users can be notified when a document changes, will be carried out using the Representational State Transfer protocol.

Microsoft is making several announcements at the show, including new customer adoption for the Microsoft Interactive Media Manager (IMM) solution with Abertis Telecom; adoption of Microsoft Silverlight by European broadcasters and the upcoming inclusion of additional codecs such as H.264 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) in the Silverlight plug-in; and developments for the Microsoft Mediaroom Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and multimedia software platform including the Microsoft Mediaroom Advertising Platform (MAP), Mediaroom Migration Program and an interactive TV application developed by emuse technologies using British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) content, which will be demonstrated for the first time at the show.

“The industry is in a race to see who can deliver the most exciting experience and monetize multiple digital distribution channels, while still managing their content and business as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director for the Media and Entertainment Business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “As well as facing the unique challenges created by the ever-expanding worlds of digital media and the Internet, media and entertainment companies need to ensure that the basic but critical operations are efficiently supporting and providing useful insights into their core business, rather than draining time and resources away from it. That’s why companies in this industry are focusing on content and business management just as much as on content creation and delivery.”

Digital media delivery requires media and entertainment companies to manage a variety of complex customer and partner engagements. Microsoft provides the tools to help them manage their assets across the many different facets of their business, including broadcast resources, licenses, program schedules and libraries; traditional and digital advertising; supply chain management; and customer relationship tracking.

Digital Content Creation and Management

Microsoft solutions enable media companies to create rich media content and, in doing so, to better manage production workflows across multiple systems and departments. Abertis Telecom S.A. and Microsoft are working together on the development of a new service for management and distribution of TV content over the Internet on Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation. This platform, created as an Abertis Telecom initiative, is specially created for management of distribution of digital terrestrial television channels and content over the Internet, with an innovative presentation environment. The Abertis Telecom service is utilizing Microsoft IMM as the backend workflow solution to acquire and manage digital content.

Digital Content Delivery and Monetization

Microsoft announced that Microsoft Silverlight, a cross-browser multiplatform plug-in for delivering media experiences and rich interactive applications on the Web, continues to gain momentum. Silverlight adoption by major media, broadcasting and content companies has continued to grow, including innovative new VOD offerings from TF1, RTL, France Television, iTV and MSN UK, and live and on-demand sports channels from L’EquipeTV and Setanta. Microsoft also will preview H.264 and AAC playback support in Silverlight, together with Microsoft Expression Encoder H.264 authoring and Windows Server 2008 for delivery.
“Using Silverlight, we are very excited to be able to offer the same advanced features and high-quality video to customers both on Windows and Mac browsers,” said Pierre Brossard, CEO of TF1. “Through visual and tactile navigation of content and playback in a Silverlight rich media environment, the TF1 Vision service will provide a true online interactive VOD experience available to the vast majority of broadband users. In addition, through Microsoft’s announced support for mp4 standard formats in Silverlight, we’ll be able to easily repurpose existing libraries of H.264 and AAC content and extend the future reach of our service to an ever-growing market of mp4-capable devices.”
Microsoft is also announcing developments for its Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV and multimedia platform including the following:

• Mediaroom Advertising Platform. This new adjunct offering lets service providers deploying Microsoft Mediaroom offer targeted, measurable and interactive advertising spots all from one comprehensive platform.
• Microsoft Mediaroom Migration Program. This new program helps IPTV operators migrate to Mediaroom from first-generation platforms.
• An interactive application developed by emuse technologies uses content from the BBC. IBC2008 is the platform for first public viewing of a new application that shows how the BBC’s original journalistic content, including news, sports and weather could look using the Mediaroom platform.

FAST, a Microsoft subsidiary, is demonstrating the flexible and scalable FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), which allows organizations to create unique user experiences and change the way people interact with information by uncovering new revenue streams, improving business decisions and increasing productivity. FAST is working with the U.K. national news organization Times Online to index, search and ultimately monetize 200 years’ worth of The Times content online, from 1785 to 1985, including 20 million articles, photographs, advertisements and letters to the editor from such figures as Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. The system has a high-quality response time, aiming for two seconds per search, as well as the ability to completely re-index the archive within 24 hours to accommodate new content or topic structures.

Finally, following the release of the Windows Media Center TV Pack this summer, Microsoft is now announcing the delivery of a new worldwide platform for broadcast TV on the PC, Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA), which enables the PC-TV hardware ecosystem to integrate virtually any free or premium TV service into Windows Media Center while satisfying the TV industry’s requirements for strong content protection for pay TV. Leading companies rallying behind PBDA at the show include AVerMedia Inc., Buffalo, Hauppauge Computer Works Inc., I-O Data Device Inc., NEC Electronics Corp., NXP Semiconductors and ViXS Systems Inc. Continuing to underscore Microsoft’s commitment to broadcast TV on the PC, Windows Media Center and Hauppauge also will demonstrate the U.K.’s first Freeview-certified PC tuner solution, which utilizes the new PBDA platform.

Microsoft at IBC2008

The Microsoft exhibit at IBC2008 will feature a full range of solutions from Microsoft and its partners, spanning content creation and management, media business management and monetization, and digital content delivery. Siemens IT Solutions and Services will demonstrate an industry-specific approach based on the Microsoft business intelligence (BI) platform, to provide a full view of the core creative and business control activities within a broadcast organization. S4M (Solutions for Media) will showcase its all-in-one broadcast management system based on Microsoft’s latest business management software, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. In addition to those products and solutions, there will be demonstrations of Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft Atlas Publisher Suite, as well as offerings from partners including Avanade, focusing on a media supply chain management solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Performance Point, and Conchango, (an EMC Corp. company) demonstrating an end-to-end video publishing platform combining different Microsoft technologies such as Silverlight and Internet Information Services (IIS). On the TXT Polymedia media stand, TXT will also demonstrate its Media in a Box solution, a new online video publishing solution based on the Microsoft technology platform.