From a vendor's perspective, I see hundreds of happy satisfied customers. And Yes, I see a share of customers that had either a flawed set of expectations or a failed implementation, but from what I've seen, I can't say that WCM is "broken". I think a lot of legacy solutions in the market have failed to meet expectations, but those stories are being overturned by many of the progressive vendors in the marketplace. I believe that the poll at the Jboye conference tells a story....but I don't think it's the only metric that should be looked at. There are several vendors and customers that are seeing a great deal of success, but the reality is that we all (vendors, analysts, implementation experts, etc.) have to get better and continue to respond to customer requirements. I'd almost be more alarmed if every customer were 100% fulfilled - that would create quite a stagnant environment, would it not? :)

Lots of good input here. I tend to believe that a good CMS tool (disclaimer: I work for Ektron), puts the right tools into the right hands of the right people at the right time. For some knowledge workers this might mean navigating to the page that they have rights to and make simple chnages within the page. For other workers, it might mean access the properties of that page to align things like Metadata and Taxonomy Categorization...and yet for others it's giving them access to the page layout to create their compaign pages, etc. None of these options, in my opinion, will go away because different users will always need them to do their own jobs appropriately.

-Dave Scalera, Ektron

Tony, I agree with this approach. CMS vendors should (and are) increae the breadth of tools that they provide which connect analystics to content within the CMS (most viewed content, recently discussed content, etc.) but for a CMS vendor to say they have all that a marketing team would need from an internal analytics package may be at some times, if not many times, misleading. We (full transparency - Ektron) include the approach of integration with other analytics tools to compliment what we've built into the product.

Tony - Interesting Post. We're obviously interested in this discussion from a biased point of view, but also from what this means going forward in the industry. My personal opinion is that if "content is king" and it continues to be so (which I think it will), the CMS vendors in the marketplace have an advantage of providing an all-in-one solution (if they do it right). As we move into the future, I feel that ALL CONTENT has the potential to be "socialized" and using two different software applications to manage that is just going to be inefficient and cost-prohibitive.

Tony, I think you (and Jarrod) are both correct that there are two distinct marketplaces here. There are a handful of Web CMS vendors out there today that are providing a holistic approach to user-generated content (please note that I'm not over-marketing my solution)! :) I would argue that the Web CMS vendors are more suited to provide a single platform than the Social Software platform providers.

The soap box that I often stand on in front of potential customers states that choosing the best social software tools (whether they be part of a Web CMS, Social Software platform, or home grown) is a small piece of the puzzle when trying to achieve a successful social strategy with one's community. We use the analogy of the Junior High dance floor. You can have the best DJ and the best Music, but if you don't have a way to get people on that dance floor, your dance is going to be boring and unsuccessful....and nobody will want to come to the next dance. So yes...as a software salesperson I'm actually saying that the software tool has to be good...and cover all of your needs, but you better have a social strategy in place if you want to have a vibrant community.

We also don't want to ignore the stated competition we have with Sitecore. We respect Sitecore as a company who continues, with Ektron, to do well in challenging times. This competition is only going to provide a better product and solution for our customers. Competition is a good thing and we look forward to competing in 2009.

- Dave Scalera
Ektron Sales

Tony,

This is a very interesting post and definitely an important topic. At Ektron, we have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy constructing the appropriate go to market strategy with the channel as well as discussing where our services methodology plays a role in ensuring success for our customers. To say that it's a challenging decision making process is a severe understatement. Let it be clear: Ektron unapologetically has a services component of our business. In doing so, do we have to address our partner's fears of 'cannibalization'? Of course! Our goal is to make the appropriate business decisions, at both a macro and micro level, which best ensure the success of our customers. Let it also be clear that Ektron values our Partner network more today than it ever has. In 2009, we will do more than ever to ensure the success of our partners and our mutual customers.

Continued....