The Evolution of CMS
By Yvonne L. Lee
March 15, 2004 —
Content management products have migrated from their inception as document storage and retrieval tools to repositories that can keep all sorts of data. They are now being used to fuel internal information systems and, to a lesser degree, to manage software development.
These products have become more powerful and far less expensive, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
"More generally, the idea of managing application development, by which I mean business process management, is really a part of content management in the sense of content workflow," said Gartner analyst Lou Latham. "Somebody writes something, they send it to their boss, that person reviews it and sends it back; maybe it goes to a lawyer or a marketing person as well."
A WINDING ROAD
The evolution from content management to software configuration management has been slow and meandering, said Latham, adding that, to his knowledge, Merant Inc. is the only company to offer a product suite with both capabilities.
At first, content management systems (CMS) were giant databases that could quickly look up and retrieve text-based files. FileNet Corp. and Documentum Inc., a division of EMC Corp., were among the first to build systems for searching and scanning text and microfilm documents.
When the Web arrived, manufacturers of those systems decided to capitalize with products that could archive and search other kinds of files, particularly executable code and graphics, Latham said. Vignette Corp. and Interwoven Inc. staked their claims in this area, he said.
Then, organizations began to use programmable communications software to store frequently used documents, such as human resources manuals. "When you look at things like Open Text LiveLink or even Lotus Notes, you have a contentlike framework where development can occur. Any domain where people are working, people are going to have documents," Latham said.
"The trend was for document management and Web content management to accrete together into a system that's agnostic to the file format of the data," he added. "This has come over the last two or three years to be called enterprise content management. So, you have FileNet, Documentum, IBM, Interwoven, Vignette and Stellent over on the Web content side, building systems that more or less resemble one another and cover the same space."
Because of the large number of companies and products in the space, there has been consolidation in the past three years, plus the large number of similar products has pushed prices down, said Latham. "Web content management, per se, since it's almost disappeared as a specialty, is really a commodity." Ektron Inc. and Macromedia Inc. are the only remaining specialists. Everyone else, he said, has combined this capability with other kinds of document management.
"The average price of a content management system...just for Web content management alone was $500,000 in 1999," said Latham. "In 2003, it was $150,000. It's dropped by 50 percent every two years since 1999."
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