Mention the term “Content Management” to someone and very often you’ll find that people immediately think of the management of web site data and assets, or Web Content Management (WCM). Content Management covers a lot more ground than just WCM, but today let’s look a bit at what WCM is and who the current vendors are in this space.
Gartner released the latest version of their magic quadrant for WCM early last month. Gartner classifies vendor products with the following characteristics as belonging to the category of WCM (the report can be downloaded here for free courtesy of WCM vendor Ektron):
- Uses a central repository that holds both electronic file content and metadata
- Has Library services, or the capability to check-in and check-out items with version control and security
- Automated content deployment can intelligently move web content from the repository to the web server
- Provides the ability to interoperate with tools like CRM, DAM (Digital Asset Management) and Web analytics
- Ability to integrate with content delivery engines
- Ability to integrate with e-commerce, social media and portal software
Mark Gilbert, a Gartner content management analyst and co-author of the Gartner report, told TechTarget’ SearchContentManagement that ”what we’re seeing is really an evolution of trends that have been around for a few years. Web content management used to be about publishing content out to the website. Now it’s much more about having real-time feedback about who’s on your site.”
Leaders in the upper right Gartner quadrant include Adobe, SDL, OpenText, Oracle, HP, Sitecore, and Ektron. The report analyzes provides a good summary of each of these vendor products as well as about another dozen more.
