Enterprise content management systems

• An enterprise content management (ECM) system is concerned with content, documents, details and records related to the organizational processes of an enterprise. The purpose is to manage the organization’s unstructured information content, with all its diversity of format and location.

Web content management systems

• A ‘web content management’ (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

Mobile CMS

Component CMS

CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content. These concepts represent integrated and interdependent layers. There are various nomenclatures known in this area: Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Digital Records Management, Electronic Content Management and so on. The bottom line for these systems is managing content and publishing, with a workflow if required.

Software as a Service:

• AspireCMS,
• Clickability,
• Knivis,
• Crownpeak,
• Hot Banana,
• Marqui and others

Enterprise:

• Sitecore,
• FatWire,
• Vignette,
• Interwoven,
• Documentum,
• MySource Matrix (Squiz),
• Alfresco,
• Oracle,
• IBM Web Content Management,
• SDL Tridion and others

Mid-market:

• Microsoft SharePoint,
• Kentico,
• Goss Interactive,
• Contrexx,
• Ektron,
• PaperThin,
• Ingeniux,
• Terapad,
• Cascade Server,
• Day Software,
• Logical CMS and others

Open source:

• Magnolia,
• Plone,
• Joomla,
• Drupal,
• Exponent CMS,
• Alfresco,
• Sensenet 6.0,
• MiaCMS,
• MMBase,
• TYPO3,
• MySource Matrix (Squiz),
• WordPress,
• DotNetNuke,
• MyWebPageStarterKit

Usually the software provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little or no knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease of use.

Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, and/or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is frequently, but not universally, stored as XML, to facilitate reuse and enable flexible presentation options.

A presentation layer displays the content to regular Web-site visitors based on a set of templates. The templates are sometimes XSLT files.

Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces, but some systems require the use of a fat client.

Unlike Web-site builders like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver, a WCMS allows non-technical users to make changes to an existing website with little or no training. A WCMS typically requires an experienced coder to set up and add features, but is primarily a Web-site maintenance tool for non-technical administrators.

History

dotCMS was initially developed as a Java alternative to the PHP CMSes on the market, as well as to provide a counterpoint to high cost, enterprise applications. It is the result of over 5 years of development by dotMarketing, Inc, which also developed and released the open source project management tool dotProject. In order to achieve compliance with JSR-168 portlet specification dotCMS was built upon the Liferay portal, though has since forked Liferay at version 3.2.2. dotCMS 1.0 was initially open sourced and made available in 2005 under the dotMarketing Public License. In 2006, dotCMS released version 1.2 which included the structured content engine. In 2007 dotCMS released version 1.5, which included a new user interface and permissions. In October, 2007 dotCMS 1.5 was the runner up for Packt Publishing’s “Best New Open Source CMS” award, followed in 2008 by a second place finish for Packt’s “Best Other Open Source CMS (best non PHP CMS)”. In February 2008, dotCMS users held the first annual “Open Minds” conference in Coconut Grove, Florida. Currently, dotMarketing continues to develop and improve features within dotCMS, such as the social calendar and WebDav integration.

Community

dotCMS has an active and engaged community. There is an annual users conference, a listserv, IRC channel, and Ning and Facebook groups. dotMarketing has also began work on an official community web site, which will be home to a new documentation system a la PHP.net, allowing users to comment and provide examples of code usage, as well as collaborate. The current user base includes deployments by thousands of companies, news organizations, universities, individuals, and more. More information regarding the dotCMS community can be found on the dotCMS website.

Open Minds Conference

The first annual Open Minds Conference was held February 7-10 in Miami, FL. This event was designed to bolster excitement in the community, and provide a venue for users to meet, collaborate, and network. Topics ranged from introductory installation sessions, to more advanced talks on setting up development environments, and was attended by more than 60 participants from 20 institutions. The second annual conference is scheduled for February 4-6, 2009, and will remain in Miami.

IRC Channel

For users familiar with IRC, you can visit the dotCMS channel on Freenode. If you do not have an IRC client, or are unfamiliar with their usage, dotMarketing has provided a web page based client. Either way will allow you to chat with other users and experts on the usage of dotCMS.

Technologies

dotCMS is a standards based CMS written in the JAVA programming language, and comes bundled with the Apache Tomcat Application Server. It is database agnostic and can run on PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL or Oracle. It is capable of integrating with user’s authentication scheme’s, such as Active Directory or LDAP, and will support operation in a clustered or load balanced environment. It leverages a number of standards based open source projects such as:

• Apache Struts Web Framework
• Apache Lucene Search Engine
• Apache Velocity Templating Language
• Liferay Portal
• EXT Javascript Framework
• Apache Tomcat Application Server
• OSCache distributed caching system
• Hibernate Object Relational Mapping

Structured Content

The driving concept behind content stored within dotCMS is that it is addressed through a system of structures. Structures are administrated through a back end portlet where fields are assigned to them. Fields are named and given a content type and then ordered. Each structure can then be permissioned and used when creating content, and allows different types of content with consistent components to be referenced for display on the front end. A “web page content” structure could be assigned a title and body, for instance, while “events” have titles, dates, times, locations, descriptions, links, etc. Structures therefore allow the CMS to tailor itself to the content demands of the institution using it, because they can create and define structures that are specific to their needs. Those structures can then be created through relationships, allowing content from one structure to be associated content items in another. There is no limit to the number of structures one can use within dotCMS.

Other information

• Developed by  dotCMS Development Group
• Latest release  1.6.5a / 04 December 2008;
• Written in  Java
• OS  Cross-platform
• Type  Content Management System
• License  GNU General Public License v2
• Website  http://www.dotcms.org/

O’Reilly Media wants to help make working with the Drupal web content management system just a bit easier. Many people realize that when working with a CMS of any kind, even an open source option, things can get pretty hairy for those not overly savvy with code and module configuration. Using Drupal’s goal is to eliminate as much frustration and as many wrong turns as possible.

Go to Source

Jadu, the Web Content Management vendor, has released a product that will help bridge the gap between PHP and .NET software development languages. The company’s Phalanger PHP compiler will allow PHP applications to be compiled into the .NET framework.

This new product from Jadu will help bridge the gap between .NET, a common application framework found in corporate environments, and PHP, the most popular web programming language found on open source web services on the Internet. As a result, companies should be able to shave off application development costs.

Go to Source

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.