Brief History of the CMS marketplace.
The CMS Report says more than 200 companies are offering commercial products called Content Management Systems. This does not include most of the 80 no-cost open-source products described on cmsinfo.org. The Google and DMOZ Directories list hundreds more CMS offerings. There are many many thousands of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who have transformed themselves into ASPs (Application Service Providers) by providing online editing of web site pages - which they often describe as Content Management.
With dozens of CMS Framework tools available, thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of companies are building their own CMS. And half of them think they will sell their work to the world and make a fortune...
So how do you sift through this enormous market and understand what you should build or buy or rent (from an ASP) - or consider proposing to clients if you are a website designer?
First, you should know that the CMS marketplace is in violent turmoil, with massive shakeouts, mergers, and acquisitions going on as we write. A large fraction of CMS installations have been business disasters, contributing to the dot-com bomb. See comments on a Forrester Research Report that finds CM systems "immature." Typical quotes, "We spent $1.2 million on our CMS and only 3 people are using it." "With $3 million invested, there is no one in management who will say it's not working for us." See this January 2003 study on the problems with CMS and this February 2003 article "CM Tools Fail" from the Jupiter Expo.
Second, you need to know that products range in price from essentially free to millions of dollars. We will tell you a bit about a few representative systems (and provide you with web references for many more) so you are knowledgeable enough to explain their possibilities to your clients.
Third, we expect a lot more change in the next few years, especially in the direction of more integration of services like e-commerce, community, and collaboration as the big companies demand integrated enterprise management systems. We'll take a look in a crystal ball at the future of web publishing.
Most every CMS business in the last few years has either:
Some examples.
- Acquired or merged into another firm:
CMS industry pioneer Future Tense sold their Content Server to Open Market in Boston (an eCommerce application provider), who were in turn acquired by divine, one of the top-tier CMS companies.
divine stumbled badly, and was sold to FatWire, who continue to support their UpdateEngine alongside Content Server.
Electronic Publishing innovator Interleaf developed their Bladerunner CMS, only to sell it to Broadvision in 2001.
eGrail was acquired by FileNet in 2002.
University of Vancouver Shakespeare professor Gerry Sinclair (a well-known Hypercard stack publisher), sold her nCompass Resolution to Microsoft and it is now the Microsoft Content Management Server.
- Gone out of business:
Another CMS innovation was eBT Dynabase, developed by XML designer and Brown University professor Steven DeRosa. It was acquired in 1996 by Inso, who ran into financial problems, returning Dynabase to eBT. eBT closed their doors, selling Dynabase in July 2001 to Red Bridge Interactive, whose website has not been updated for many months.
Cambridge's Ars Digita [founded by Philip Greenspun, the database-backed-website guru and MIT professor who wrote a lovely book on Web Publishing featuring his dog Alex] raised tens of millions in venture capital, then crashed when Philip was driven out by the VC's. His ACS Content Management System was picked up by Red Hat, and an open-source version survives as OpenACS.
Astoria Software went out of business in 2002 but was revivified in 2004.
- Busy acquiring other companies or products:
CMS industry leader Vignette acquired epicentric( an application integration tool). Document management pioneer Documentum bought eRoom (a collaboration toolset). Both are repositioning themselves more as integrated Enterprise Content Management Systems. Giant storage vendor EMC built a content-addressable storage system that worked with Documentum software, and then acquired Documentum to lock in their relationship. Some acquisitions are international. Open Text of Canada acquired Gauss Interprise AG of Germany.
- Even relatively stable surviving companies have changed their system design or application server architecture, sometimes abandoning clients with earlier releases. And some solid companies have just abandoned CMS for the moment. All of this is contributing to market confusion and making purchase decisions very difficult.
RedHat (the Linux Operating System reseller) bought parts of Philip Greenspun's ACS (the Ars Digita Community System) and have reconfigured it as their Content and Collaboration Management Solution.
And when Jeremy Allaire sold his company to Macromedia (who bought it for Cold Fusion and the HomeSite HTML Editor), they dropped the Spectra CMS (although it had several happy clients), perhaps in favor of another source code management system they have repackaged as a web project management tool called Macromedia Sitespring.
