Our former federal government (under Harper’s Conservatives) decided to migrate some 1500 government Web sites to a single content management (WCM) system. They chose Adobe’s AEM product and it looks like the project collapsed in failure. As a Canadian citizen, I’m glad the project has not worked out. I can see how such a project could have merit but the software choice was a bad decision in principle and apparently the project planning and management were not undertaken properly. Too bad it didn’t fail sooner to prevent wasting so much money. CBC’s article about the project is here and I’ll point out a few thoughts about why I think the choice of WCM system was bad in principle and raise some questions on project management. Continue reading “Canadian Government WCM Migration Project Failed—It’s for the Best”
Demand Trends of ECM and WCM Buyers
After aggregating the high-level needs of thousands of people telling Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) their requirements for enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM) systems, I’ve put together two reports showing the trends. You can read more about these high-level requirements in TEC’s latest, free ECM market survey report and WCM market survey report.
We found that security is one of the most frequently sought requirements, across the board. Unsurprisingly, many characteristics necessary for managing business processes are high-priorities as were search and indexing in the WCM space.
We also found that while it’s a growing portion of the market, organizations seeking an ECM system that is not on-premise, remain a minority (about 30% of the demand). In the WCM space personalization features were deemed rather important by buyers. I’m guessing that both of these requirements will be even higher in the coming year since both cloud offerings (and hype) have increased and the ideas for experience management are also getting more recognition.
Note that each of these reports are based on a complete year of data from 2011. In 2013, I’ll publish an update using the complete 2012 year data.
Profile of MODX WCM
If you’re looking into selecting a WCM system or are otherwise interested in MODX‘s open source WCM framework, I hope the link to this report is helpful. After pouring over MODX’s Web site, community forums, taking its WCM product for a brief spin, and talking with some of its team, I wrote up this profile on the company and its Revolution product.
It’s available for free download from Technology Evaluation Centers. You can also do a little bit of research on how MODX Revolution’s web content management system would satisfy your requirements, using the TEC Advisor analysis and comparison tool (this link allows you to use it for two hours free).