Irina Guseva: Random Thoughts on CMS, WCM, ECM and Other Acronyms

Imagine a combination of SaaS CMS, Web analytics, A/B and MVT testing, and optimization of landing pages — sounds like a novel idea? Hardly.

Although every vendor wants to make us believe they are the first ever to step on the surface of the hosted Web CMS/analytics Moon, we know that others have approached this endearing to marketers subject before. The SaaS Web CMS provider CrownPeak released a similar offering — CrownPeak Landing Page Manager — back in April.

Nevertheless, here’s Autonomy’s announcement about a new product designed to enamor marketers and allow them to build and test website landing pages in a hosted environment. Expanding on its existing cloud initiatives, Autonomy Interwoven takes another bite at the pie that integrates online testing and web content management (leveraging Interwoven’s TeamSite and LiveSite).

The Autonomy Optimized Landing Page product allows users to get the best of both worlds in one interface: web content management and multivariate testing (MVT). This combination of technology is usually used to optimize campaigns (pages) after they’re created. The goal here is simple, yet often hard to reach – lead conversion.

More on CMSWire: Autonomy Interwoven Takes a Bite at SaaS CMS, Landing Page Optimization

Let’s take another trip to the cloud, shall we? Yes, the adage may be old: to cloud or not to cloud? The open source Enterprise CMS vendor Nuxeo solved this poetic dilemma and took its document management product to the cloud.

Nuxeo DM Cloud Edition, now available as SaaS, promises security and reliability, among other things.

While many organizations still seem to shy away from SaaS for many obvious reasons, Nuxeo is sure that it can address “the needs of organizations that want to benefit from a proven ready-to-go ECM solution without the related IT constraints and costs.”

More on CMSWire: Nuxeo Takes Enterprise Doc Management to the Cloud

This should really be post-dated to early May. I wrote this one up while one my 10-hour flight to Moscow and then had barely any access to the Internet.

I wasn’t very impressed with Cartella. Even though, Ingeniux is trying to catch the soco, so. media/networking train (which is a nice development in itself).

What does Cartella do? The very basics of social networking, social content and web content management put in the same wagon.

I talked to Ingeniux’s David Hillis, director of marketing and business development, and Nathan Eggen, director of technology – and this is what I’ve found out. Really worth a read, if you’re in the SaaS CMS space or looking to be in it.

Full story on CMSWire: Ingeniux CMS Catches the Social Networking Train

CrownPeak, a provider of SaaS web content management solutions, has its eye on the online marketing folk.

The latest release of CrownPeak CMS sports multiple new features designed to make CRM and web content management easier. If campaigns, lead conversions, tracking and revenue generation are part of your lexicon, CrownPeak has news for you.

Finally, CrownPeak has introduced a WYSIWYG authoring environment in a partnership with Ephox. There are also other new features and enhancements targeted to developers and marketers. Social media and web 2.0 integration is done in somewhat a childish way, but overall CrownPeak seemed to have found its niche.

Finding a niche could be one of the answers to remaining competitive in these market conditions, as long as the provided CMS functionality meets customer needs.

Full article on CMSwire: CrownPeak Targets Marketers with New CMS Features

AIIM has released its annual State of the ECM Industry research report. And although the term Enterprise Content Management was coined about eight years ago, the research findings are still not very optimistic in some areas.

Not surprisingly, the bottom line is that electronic content in many of its shapes and forms in the organizational landscape is still (mainly) a mess.

AIIM has found that managing electronic documents is still a challenge for a whopping 47% of organizations. On top of that, business communication channels like IMs, text messages, blogs and wikis are uncontrolled and off the corporate radar for 75% of businesses.

Looks like ECM is still an industry in the process of growth with all the growing pains that come along with it.

Full article on CMSWire: State of the ECM Industry 2009: Content Still a Challenge

Continuing on the sad times for Vignette theme before it’s time to pop that Moet & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot (or whatever it is you’re popping) and welcome 2009

Interestingly (or quite predictably so) enough, Alfresco has been head-hunting for former and soon-to-be-former VIGN employees since April. Alfresco’s Matt Asay has been unashamedly recruiting current and former Vignette-rs to join his “open-source-grass-is greener” own employer, as well as Magnolia and Acquia.

All those talented and fab sales engineers and consultants have to go somewhere, right? Time to update your CV and send it over to what is now competition? Not that I agree with Asay that open source is the answer. Many truly commercial and proprietary Web CMS vendors are still staying afloat, too.  SaaS CMS is getting quite a lot of attention lately as well.

Unless, of course, Open Text continues its acquisition mania and grabs VIGN (but why, they already have the WCM-centric RedDot)…  Or any other ECM vendor… Anyone else needs a WCM addition to the product portfolio?

Not that I don’t feel bad for the Big V folks in fear of losing their jobs… What concerns me is that, as of late, I have been seeing more of moving-away-from-Vignette CMS implementations and sales vs. buying and migrating to Vignette ones. Even in tough economic times like these, it would be kinda sad to see VIGN disappear from the WCM landscape.