CMS Watch HannonHill Feed

Decoupled Web CMS vendors have not disappeared

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:44:00 -0400

Over the past two years, Web Content Management vendors have fallen over themselves to provide more interactive services on the front ends of websites, closely tied into traditional content production services on the authoring side. Put another way: in an attempt to appeal to the ever-alluring (but often elusive) web marketing manager, CMS vendors are increasingly binding website management to content management.

Even Percussion -- onetime stalwart defender of the decoupled approach, advocate for flexible delivery environments, and ardent supporter of the website developer working separately from content people -- now talks avidly of combining content and interaction management.

At one level this all makes sense. You want to obviate the need for pervasive IT support for interactive websites.

But I'm also noticing a certain subset of customers feeling quite left out. Those who want a Web CMS that won't dictate (or interfere with) their delivery environment are becoming chagrined by constricting choices in the marketplace. They look around and see the likes of SDL Tridion, Interwoven, and RedDot (all traditionally decoupled systems) placing increasing emphasis on marketing applications and Web 2.0-style interactive services.

So it's worth noting that some established Web CMS vendors continue to buck the trend, including Refresh Software and Hannon Hill. As Web CMS Report readers know, Refresh Software appears headed in a newish direction though, towards DITA and component content management. Hannon Hill is more interesting, because they tout their unfashionable avoidance of interactive marketing with great pride. They argue that their higher education and government customer bases prefer simpler systems that "bake" static pages. SaaS provider OmniUpdate -- also decoupled -- makes the same argument. I suspect it's true.

To be sure, it's possible to embed dynamic logic in any of those systems for an interactive experience on the front end, but then previewing pages means the hassle of pushing content to a staging environment first. And perhaps more importantly, non-coders have no control over interactivity. So, there are trade-offs to the decoupled approach, but advantages as well. The good news is, you still have choices.

Content Management heads to college

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Sat, 2 Sep 2006 14:50:00 -0400

In the spirit of "back to school," it seems timely to mention the increasing number of colleges and universities investing in content management. That may be because so many colleges are at the same time in redesign mode, transitioning their web sites from simple information centers to ones that allow students to register for classes or buy something from the book store. This requires a shift from simple brochureware sites to ones that can handle ecommerce and complex scheduling and registration, which usually signals the need for software to better manage site content. Singaporean consultancy PebbleRoad recently evaluated 25 university web sites in the UK, Australia and the US, pointing out that few are up to snuff in the realms of accessibility or consistent branding and messaging. A few WCMS vendors pitch their products as a means to correct those problems, but we caution that technology is never the answer to problems of governance and process, be they at a Fortune 500 company or an Ivy League. Hannon Hill and Serena, which frequently compete against each other for business in the SMB WCMS market, have each added higher ed clients in recent months; Hannon Hill boasted 26 in the first half of 2006 alone. Look for reviews of both vendors' tools in the latest edition of the CMS Report, out later this week.

I want my CMS TV?

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:33:00 -0500

Earlier this week CMS vendor Hannon Hill announced the launch of "CMS Tube," a site providing video and podcasts about their product, Cascade Server. The idea is to help current and prospective customers learn more about the product via demos, training and education, with commentary and discussions with other users as well. Similar resources have also sprung up around open source projects, such as Drupal and Plone. But Hannon Hill, a smallish company of just over 30 employees, hired a media producer to run CMS Tube. I'm not surprised by this, however, given a growing trend towards building user communities, but at first blush, this site is all one-way: no comments, no tags, no user-uploaded media. Also, video is scant substitute for being able to reach a real person when you need one, so don't consider VendorTube a substitute for your support contract, but it can provide a useful supplement.

We release version 10 of The CMS Report

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:01:00 -0400

Our quest to tell the real story about web content management software continues today. In this latest edition of The CMS Report, we've updated all the vendor reviews and added some new evaluation criteria, including system reporting, micro-applications, and content retention -- addressing the increasingly important role of marketers and records managers. With this version, we also make available an optional "European Edition," which adds several new vendors active primarily in that region (Escenic, e-Spirit, eZ publish, GOSS, Immediacy, and Terminalfour). In North America, we begin coverage of Hot Banana and Hannon Hill.

As always, CMS Report buyers within the past 10 weeks will receive the new version gratis. Previous CMS Watch customers are eligible for discounted updates. Look for an e-mail shortly.

GlobalSCAPE discontinues PureCMS

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 2 Aug 2005 17:27:00 -0400

GlobalSCAPE discontinued it's low-cost CMS offering, PureCMS last month. That's a little sad. The company cited "the evolving web content management market." Presumably that means that Macromedia Contribute was locking up the market for the kind of file-based content management sans workflow that PureCMS targeted. GlobalSCAPE is encouraging its PureCMS customers to upgrade to its "PublishXML" product, but that's a much more complex package for developers and authors alike. Incidentally, both products were developed by Hannon Hill (a Georgia, USA-based CMS company), and re-sold by GlobalSCAPE. Meanwhile, GlobalSCAPE's core file-transfer tools seem to be doing well.