One on One with Tony Byrne of CMS Watch

Tony Byrne founded CMS Watch in 2001 because after working for several years in the content management industry, he wanted to start a firm that would "tell the real story" and be completely impartial. His company evaluates content technologies head-to-head for enterprise buyers thinking of investing in a solution such as WCM, ECM, Social Software, Portals, Web Analytics and SharePoint. They take no money from vendors (an amazing feat).

We asked Byrne to hep define the content management industry and to discuss trends in the marketplace.

FCM: How do you define enterprise content management at your company? Do you consider WCM separate even when some companies such as Open Text have a WCM component?

TB: ECM and WCM are related, since both are about managing content, but they are also quite distinct and I suspect separating more with each passing month. ECM is really about heavy-duty imaging, document and records management, along with related domains or archiving, potentially business process management and others. Web content management is really about supporting a *publishing* process, for content that is going to be consumed by (hopefully) a wide audience, either internally via an Intranet or externally via a website or extranet. Sometimes ECM and WCM will intersect.

A website could get fed by documents (and vice-versa). But for most enterprises, most of the time, they are two different systems that require two very different types of technologies. For example, most WCM tools concern themselves with website management (things like templating, navigation and other services), as well as visitor engagement (things like personalization or commenting services). Those are the types of things you don't typically find on an ECM platform.

I also happen to think that ECM is a more industry-specific practice, although some people disagree with me on that. Certainly in our ECM evaluations we see a lot of vertically-oriented application modules, while on the WCM side, the vendors distinguish themselves in one industry or another mostly by relevant sales acumen rather than vertically-specific technology. The fact that Open Text--and all of its ECM Suite vendor competitors--sells a WCM tool does not mean there has been some sort of grand convergence here. In most cases, including Open Text, ECM vendors have acquired a separate WCM vendor and not really known just what to do with that product going forward. WCM presents a very different marketplace and sales model.

FCM: What's your view of CMIS and do you see it getting approved by OASIS before year's end? When do you think we will start seeing it in products?

TB: I'm guardedly optimistic about CMIS. I think there are some technical challenges in ECM/WCM integration that it doesn't solve as nicely as I would like; for example, its emphasis on SQL and relational databases rather than XML-based representation and parsing. I think we'll start seeing the API in products very soon. Actual implementations will take some time after that.

Note that the CMIS standard is only about repository integration. The bigger problem to solve is around process integration. So as an industry, we still have a long way to go before customers can do what I think they really want to do: Leave behind these behemoth, monolithic, vertically-integrated technology ECM stacks.

FCM: Do you consider Sharepoint to be a content management system in the pure sense. If not, how does it fit?

TB: I avoid all discussions of purity because I don't think they're useful for our constituents, who are technology buyers. But to answer your question...sure, SharePoint is a content management system in at least two respects: It offers lightweight document and records management, and, when you turn on site publishing, it offers web content management as well. That makes it a content management platform.

It's just not a very deep or deeply-capable platform, and customers who want to use it for more than simple file-sharing can easily get themselves into trouble. To be sure, simple file-sharing is highly useful and important; hence SharePoint's success. I should also note that customers can get themselves into deep trouble with Java-based portals as well. It's just that SharePoint gets marketed as "simple," which is simply not the case for all the scenarios where Redmond says the product fits.

FCM: What is the impact of social media tools on content management? Do you think CM vendors are in a good position to deliver these tools?

TB: The desire for social software functionality is roiling the Web CMS marketplace. Every vendor now claims to offer something here, but the question you the customer has to ask is: do I want these services from my Web CMS vendor, whom I otherwise mostly rely on for publishing "official" enterprise-vetted content? I think the answer for many Intranet scenarios is "yes." That is, it makes sense to explore a combination solution behind your firewall. In our social software technology evaluations, however, we found that many enterprises were leery about using their Web CMS tool as their social platform for public-facing scenarios. There are very many reasons for this, mostly revolving around performance, security and contemporary functionality, where best-of-breed tools still trump Web CMS vendors' capabilities here.

FCM: We've seen the impact of marketing, regulatory requirements, social media. Is there a next big thing in CM or have we reached a feature saturation point?

TB: I don't think we've reached feature saturation point, but at the same time, most customers don't make full use of the functionality available to them, largely because they need to perform a lot of expensive and risky customization to do so. So, I'd say many customers do feel "saturated" right now. Nevertheless, I'd guess that the next big thing, especially for public sites, is integrated marketing services. That is, integrating SEM/PPC, email campaigns, web content, personalization and holistic analytics in a single actionable environment. As an industry, vendors say they can do this now, but believe me: They are very, very far away from the kind of integration that your typical CMO would want. But it's coming...it will just take some years.