A “third wave” of European-based Web Content Management (CMS) vendors is hitting North American shores, offering buyers a greater variety of longstanding solutions, particularly in the areas of .NET support and open source platforms, according to research released today by independent evaluation firm, CMS Watch.

These conclusions stem from the most recent release of The Web CMS Report 2009, in which CMS Watch interviewed web content management customers around the globe to evaluate forty-two solutions in the marketplace. The research can be purchased online from CMS Watch (http://www.cmswatch.com/).

“European and UK web content management vendors have tried to crack the North American marketplace for the past decade, with mixed success,” notes CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. The first wave of successful entrants included Germany-based RedDot (since acquired by Open Text) and Swiss vendor Day Software. Several years ago, a second wave of vendors – notably Denmark’s Sitecore and Netherlands-based Tridion – successfully expanded into North America, partly on the strength of their multi-site management capabilities.

Now a “third wave” of European solutions is also making headway in North America. CMS Watch notes in particular:

- CMS vendors Telerik (Bulgaria) and EpiServer (Sweden) are beginning to challenge Ektron and Sitecore at the low- to mid-range of the market that emphasizes .NET architectures. “New entrants continue to fill the enormous vacuum left by lukewarm adoption of SharePoint as a Web CMS platform in the Microsoft world,” argues CMS Watch analyst, Adriaan Bloem.

- Open source platforms eZ publish (Norway), TYPO3 (Germany), and Drupal (Belgium) have both expanded beyond their regional roots and acquired a loyal base of implementation partners in North America. “North American customers have always had a solid selection of open source alternatives, such as Plone, DotNetNuke, and Joomla,” notes CMS Watch analyst Kas Thomas, “but recently we’ve seen a substantial expansion of supported offerings, particularly in the PHP camp.”

In a shift away from recommending 3rd-party website search solutions, Web Content Management (CMS) vendors are increasingly offering site search services, with nearly 40% of major Web CMS vendors now embedding the open source Lucene engine, according to research released today by independent analyst and evaluation firm, CMS Watch.

These conclusions stem from the most recent release of The Web CMS Report 2009, in which CMS Watch interviewed web content management customers around the globe to evaluate forty-two solutions in the marketplace. The report can be purchased online from CMS Watch (http://www.cmswatch.com/).

Successfully embedding a search engine like Lucene into a Web CMS package can bring several potential benefits:

Enterprises striving to align their business and technology efforts for improved Enterprise Content Management (ECM) can now assess their existing readiness and guide their ECM roadmap going forward, using the ECM Maturity Model (“ECM3″). The model was jointly developed by leading consulting firms Wipro Technologies, Hartman Communicatie, and Smigiel Consulting Group, along with independent analyst company CMS Watch, and released under creative commons today.

Enterprises must manage ever-increasing volumes of content and address related challenges such as: mitigating legal and compliance risk; following storage, archiving and disposition policies; reducing paper usage; and more. This requires planning and developing a comprehensive strategy for effectively deploying of ECM systems. However, CIOs typically have difficulty juggling the complex human, information, and systems aspects of ECM.

The ECM Maturity Model provides a structured framework for setting priorities to address these challenges. “Like all maturity models, it is partly descriptive and partly prescriptive,” notes CMS Watch Principal, Alan Pelz-Sharpe. “You can apply the model to audit, assess, and explain your current state, as well as inform a roadmap for maturing your enterprise capabilities.”

Shridhar Rajgopalan, Global Head of the Portals and Content Management Practice at Wipro says, “In today’s cost-sensitive environment, it is important to follow a model which helps enterprises identify, prioritize, and implement the initiatives that give them maximum value for money. This maturity model will help organizations in achieving this.”

The model suggests graded levels of capabilities ranging from rudimentary information collection and basic control, through increasingly sophisticated levels of management and integration, finally resulting in a mature state of continuous experimentation and improvement.

Key features of the model include:

The Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Media Asset Management (MAM) marketplace has split into a low end and high end, with mid-market solutions lacking, according to recent research conducted by CMS Watch, a vendor-independent analyst firm. Small team/workgroup-style DAM tools can be purchased for US$2,000-5,000, while the enterprise-class DAM & MAM tools are rarely purchasable for less than US$150,000-$200,000.

These conclusions stem from research conducted for The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2009, released today by CMS Watch.

Several vendors that have historically offered pricier, licensed-only solutions — such as North Plains and Open Text’s Artesia — added hosted offerings during 2008, either via a new offering or acquisition.

In addition to identifying 12 DAM trends for 2009, the new report evaluates 12 vendors head-to-head in the SMB edition, and 18 in the Enterprise Edition.

The report is available online at: http://www.cmswatch.com/DAM/Report/

Project managers, creative directors, enterprise architects, and consultants struggle to determine the optimal way to implement Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology, according to CMS Watch. Important information must be understood prior to implementation in order to mitigate risk, including: key administrative and system management services, roles and groups and how security is managed, scalability, capacity and bandwidth challenges, the value of specific DAM standards.

“The start up of a new project is often overwhelming and too often managers jump into projects without fully understanding the challenges and technology,” notes CMS Watch Principal DAM Analyst, Theresa Regli. “This increases the risk of project failure.”

This conclusion stems from research conducted for CMS Watch’s new online education course, “Fundamentals of Digital Asset Management”. The online course, based on over a year of research into DAM technology and with organizations that have implemented DAM, helps project leaders and creative contributors alike understand the basics of Digital & Media Asset Management technology. The course also helps DAM project teams identify requirements more clearly and differentiates among various architectures and approaches.

The online course includes sessions on:

- Introduction to DAM
- Asset Creation, Assembly & Delivery Services
- DAM Architecture & System Management Services
- DAM Implementation Scenarios
- DAM Vendor Landscape and Trends

“DAM project teams now have an objective source to instruct them on how DAM technology really works, and where implementations often go wrong,” adds CMS Watch DAM Analyst Kas Thomas. “And, because it is an online course, participants can go at their own speed, at a time most convenient for them.”

The course is available online at: http://cmswatch.com/Education/.

2009 will bring significant changes to content technology marketplaces, according to research released by independent technology evaluation company, CMS Watch (http://www.cmswatch.com/). CMS Watch reports and online education prepare technology buyers for successful implementations.

In an article today, CMS Watch detailed twelve predictions. Find the full article at http://cmswatch.com/Features/189. CMS Watch principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe discusses the predictions at http://youtube.com/watch?v=m2b3MeCfDHc.

1. Open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) players get an initial boost

2. Office14 casts long shadow on SharePoint

3. “Taxonomies are dead. Long live meta data!”

4. Regulatory-compliance concerns reignited

5. Renewed interest in pro-active e-discovery

6. SaaS vendors expand offerings

7. Oracle falls behind in battle for knowledge workers

8. New emphasis on application search

9. Social computing diffuses into the Enterprise

10. Mobile and multimedia web analytics become key requirements, disrupters

11. Long-awaited consolidation comes to the WCM space

12. Buyers remain in driver’s seat

CMS Watch principal Theresa Regli added, “The last two predictions are somewhat related — we’re counseling buyers to negotiate aggressively, and some vendors will endure eroding cash flows better than others.”