CMS Hardtalk

Years back some of the CMS Vendors (and their partners) aggressively explored the market of CMS as Application Service Provider (ASP). In Europe it was not that big a success. The larger companies  and organizations demanded a dedicated solution on their own hardware. Smaller companies and organizations rather preferred to buy a less pricey product and skip the worries of the monthly service bills.

Off course some of the decisions of the the companies that resisted the hosted software solutions wasn’t based on rational thinking.  Myths busted:

• You’re more independent on a dedicated solution than as a service
• The integration is impossible in the hosted solution
• The security is not as high as in a hosted solution.

Google has definitely changed a lot of the prejudices in the Software as Service Market. Probably because none of the big companies has yet felt the lock-in that exists in this software setup as well.  My guess is that when the first case of lock-in arrives the Software as Service concept will be on trial - how unfair it may be!

The different between how Google handle Software-as-service and the traditional Software (CMS) vendors is that Google in fact has developed the infrastructure to support Software-as-service - CMS Vendors for the most has not! My Guess is that we will start to see these new infrastructures of CMS vendors as well. Perhaps within the new upcoming CMS’s

As I see the market the following factors will determine the faith of Software-as-service CMS in the next years:

• Google still being able to prove the concept of Software-as-Service provider
• The Wordpress company to deliver further proof of the Software-as-service concept
• Smaller customers embracing the new web 2.0 technologies to discover that they actually will do with simpler tools to create and maintain content
• More visible cases to proof that "Content is King". CMS will eventually focus on content instead of using resources on graphics and design
• Better use of design Best Practices in the future in opposition to  customized graphics and design that often is worse than bad and often do not meet the main objectives off the web site.

For now it is still difficult for the vendors to sell CMS as Software-as-Service, but I predict a steep rise of the the market within the next 2-3 years ….call me then if I was wrong

Leave your opinions or views on how you see the future of CMS-as-Service in the CMS market.

Just stumbled upon the Finalists of the 2007 Open Source CMS Award. It is the users that vote on the candidates. Last years winners were:

1. Joomla
2. Drupal
3. Plone

And apparently Plone is not up for the overall winner this year!! I saw a demonstration of Plone 3.0 earlier this year and it was impressing how easy was to create a new and rather complex site in short time. 

Well folks - get in there and place your vote ….    

So cool to find out that Chris  Collison is arriving at the yearly innovation/KM spot www.videndanmark.dk, 25. october  2007 - check out the program (in Danish ) . If you don’t know about Chris, don’t take my word for it, but read the excitement in the review of his book from one of the all time greatest:

About "Learning to Fly"…
"There are very few books written by actual practitioners, and this is one of them. A fine place to start one’s KM education"
Larry Prusak.

If you want to take a day on your back and just get inspired (and if you understand Danish) I advice you to take a day out of the calendar for inspiration if your are into the innovation and learning in large organisations

Today I sent an e-mail to Alfresco in order to get some information about prices of their different products. Received a reply in 1 minute and had a nice talk with David Vogel after 5 minutes.

Usually the Information Service at the Open Source vendors is quite a challenge, but this time I was positively surprised.

+ + Great Customer support Alfresco!

whilst updating one of our sites in Typo3 one of our emploees complained that Typo3 sometimes threw away corrections. I had never observed this instability. I told him to keep working as I observed what was going wrong. He made a lot of of corrections and then I saw …. He used the bottom in top of the page, which undid all the corrections (in this case more than ten!).

Even though I love working in the back end, please get it fixed, Typo team!