What Next for Web CMS Vendors?

By Kasman Thomas at 2008-10-09 00:01:00 |

In research for the Web CMS Report 2009, just released today, I've undertaken vendor briefings, customer de-briefings, product demos, and miscellaneous discussions with key personnel (including some senior VPs) from more than a dozen Web CMS vendors, ranging in size from tiny 20-person boutiques to billion-dollar behemoths. It's interesting to compare where the various companies are now to where they were six months or a year ago. Not just the companies themselves, but their products, customers, partners -- the whole CMS ecosphere.

A few vendors have managed to break free from the pack, establishing footholds in new markets based on some combination of product features and marketing strategy that happens to hit a sweet spot. But for many, the sweet spot remains elusive. The rush to add social micro-applications and AJAX-driven interfaces has, for many, has siphoned off R&D cycles without yielding the kind of differentiation that can take a plain-vanilla offering to the next level. For other vendors, there have been no product releases or upgrades at all this year -- which in this market is like taking a step backwards. And yet, nearly all the tools keep selling.

Re-establishing an Identity

It's no secret that many CMS vendors spent 2006-2007 in identity-crisis mode, trying to figure out how to achieve differentiation in a market crowded with me-too competitors. Some of those vendors (e.g., FatWire, Percussion,, Interwoven, and others) have emerged with a strategy that emphasizes persuasive content over pervasive content. This means more focus on personalization, user-driven content, and analytics, with an aim of achieving enhanced stickiness and a better "web experience" for site visitors, albeit potentially at the expense of supporting Intranet scenarios. The quest for more and "stickier" traffic also crosscuts SEO and site search. So things like friendly URLs and faceted site navigation are becoming de rigueur -- even if they're not universally well supported (c.f., Interwoven TeamSite, the vendor evaluated in our free sample).

For a short while, there was a rush to cram community-oriented or "social software" functionality (wikis, blogs, calendars, ratings, tagging, feeds, geomaps, and so on) into Web CMS portfolios. But the race to check those checkboxes is pretty much over.

Likewise, I suspect that all the players who were going to provide SaaS-based delivery models have (by now) offered it. The next year will tell us is which vendors can really deliver on the promise(s) of SaaS, and which ones cannot.

Learning to Love SharePoint

The current must-have checkbox du jour is SharePoint integration. The problem is, "SharePoint integration" can mean vastly different things to different people. For now, suffice it to say: Be sure to carefully match your intended use-case(s) against any particular product's supposed capabilities, via in-house testing or POCs. Today's release shares some details here.

And of course, consult our SharePoint Report for a broader evaluation of that platform as a whole. This is one area where BBR (brochure-based research) could serve you poorly indeed.

What's Changing

The "search" piece of CMS has become a rapidly evolving service. Giving site visitors a highly personalized web experience means giving them a better search experience: faceted search, category-based drill-downs, the ability to sort results by various attributes. CMS system users (editors, writers, approvers, admins) also need a better search experience, to keep productivity high. Most vendors just are not there yet. Many are examining (or re-examining) their search options.

Ironically, the very newest vendor differentiators are the differentiators of old: verticalization and solutions-selling. As baseline features like in-context editing and role-based approval become almost universal, vendors look for new ways to build specialized functionality atop the "checkbox stack."

This becomes easier to do if you have a solid market presence in a particular domain. For example, if 40 percent of a vendor's customers come in education, they can add additional highly ed-specific functionalities to the product. And perhaps most importantly, they can learn how to sell into those environments. The companies who stand to gain most from this tactic are those with an established presence in existing verticals (such as Ingeniux and PaperThin with education and "institutional" customers).

Sluggish at the Top

Meanwhile, the vendors whose CMS marketshare seems most at risk right now are the large ECM-focused players who take a one-repository-fits-all view of the world. Some of these players (e.g., EMC) are putting renewed effort into selling domain-specific solutions packages, but many are simply selling WCM modules into an existing customer base (and trying to ride the "SharePoint connector" wave as best they can). Oracle UCM tends to sell well to Oracle customers, but isn't anyone's idea of a "starter system" for non-Oracle customers. Likewise, Lotus Web Content Management is a natural up-sell for WebSphere Portal customers, but has little reason to live otherwise.

Where to Next?

Life isn't necessarily all rosy for smaller industry players either. I see many vendors running out of ideas as to how to differentiate and reposition themselves in a crowded market. A familiar theme, yes, but this time accompanied by a noticeable R&D slowdown across the board (with a few exceptions here and there).

So instead of dramatic new features or business models, Web CMS vendors are quietly honing, tweaking, and bug-fixing the incredible raft of AJAXifications and social apps and other "checkbox features" that they quickly crammed into place this year. They want it to look polished next year. But otherwise there seems to be a lot of nervousness about what to do next. Numerous vendors asked me what direction they should pursue. (Of course, even if I knew, I couldn't say: we never advise vendors.)

To be sure, not all vendors fit all these trends. For the ultimate comparative brain-dump on any single vendor, consult the 800-page-plus Web CMS Report 2009, hot off the digital presses.