CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, released research today at the 2008 AIIM Expo finding that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) web content management vendors are on the rise in North America.

This conclusion stems from the most recent release of The Web CMS Report 2008, in which CMS Watch interviews web content management customers around the globe to evaluate 40 solutions in the marketplace.

“One of the by-products of ‘Web 2.0′ is new attention to public-facing websites — a scenario where hosted Web CMS services tend to excel — as opposed to the more enterprisey Intranet implementations where SaaS suppliers can’t compete as
successfully,” said CMS Watch Research Analyst, Jarrod Gingras.

The two dominant North American SaaS-based Web CMS suppliers, CrownPeak and Clickability, have both obtained venture funding in the past year and recently rolled out new offerings. Meanwhile, significant new SaaS vendors have emerged, such as Marqui and OmniUpdate, targeting higher education and local government customers.

CMS Watch also found:

• At least one supplier is bucking the broader trend: an inaugural SaaS CMS service, Atomz Publish, has largely disappeared in the marketplace after several acquisitions, most recently by Analytics vendor Omniture.
• SaaS-based Web CMS solutions remain less prevalent in Europe. “National boundaries seem to matter more when providing hosted services as opposed to software products,” argues CMS Watch Denmark-based Contributing Analyst, Janus Boye. “The regional and international expansion that we’ve seen among traditional installed CMS vendors in Europe hasn’t been replicated in the SaaS space,” added Boye. Customers increasingly report troubles with contracts to run traditional installed software as a hosted service. “To avoid misunderstandings and conflict, buyers and vendors alike need to recognize that there is more to providing a dedicated service than installing some software remotely,” counseled CMS Watch Founder, Tony Byrne.