Cost Effective Content Management

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Cost Effective Content Management

• Steve DruckerCEOFig Leaf Software

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Topics

• Who we are, what we do, why we built this seminar
• Fig Leafs perspective on CMS
• Legacy Content Management
• Web Content Management System Features
• Product Roundup
• Evaluation Criteria
• Product Demonstrations
• Conclusions
• Summary

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Who we are

• Small company based in Washington DC with a hub
  office in Atlanta GA
• Macromedias 1 Premier Partner
• Adobe Partner, Xerox Partner
• Recognized industry leaders
• Authors of many books, journal articles, training
  courses
• Offer diverse range of services/products
• Advisory Services
• Full life-cycle development
• Design Services
• Training Services
• Fig Leaf Products WYSIDRAW
• Our unique perspective on CMS

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Legacy Content Management
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Legacy Content Management

• Issues facing most Legacy Content Management
  systems
• Multiple points of failure
• Too many people are key parts of the process
• One slip up along the way and content goes
  unchanged
• File management issues
• End up with thousands of files, some of which are
  out of date
• IT nightmare to maintain the system
• Formatting content is generally problematic
• Hard to enforce a standard across the website
• Hard to make global changes to look and feel of
  website
• Document searching issues
• Hard to do full document searching without full
  installation of third party software
• Almost impossible without special document
  tagging to do category or keyword searches

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Legacy Content Management

• Issues facing most Legacy Content Management
  systems
• Workflow is virtual
• The process for creating quality content has no
  checks and balances
• Manager is relying on the content creator to pass
  back the changed content for review
• Change notification is not automatic
• Time consuming
• Control is in the hands of the people with the
  least experience in dealing with the content
• Content management is not the business of IT
• Content management is not the business of one
  single person in an organization of many
• Personalization and Security are difficult to
  achieve
• Even if you have a custom database managed site
  you run into to upgrade and lifecycle issues

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The Better Way
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Content Management - The why and how
No Content Management
Costs
Domestic Single Server
Domestic Multi-server
Intl Multi-server
Domestic Syndicated
Complexity
Source The Gartner Group
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Content Management - The why and how
BuildFrom Scratch
Followthe Leaders
Integrate Applications
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A plethora of products
Blue Martini
High
BroadVision
Vignette
Mediasurface
Documentum
Fatwire
ATG
Openpages
Interwoven
Intranet Solutions
Versifi
Eprise
Percussion
Ncompasslabs (MS)
Site Executive
PaperThin
Macromedia
Platform
Pure Play
Cost
Source The Gartner Group
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Content Management - The why and how

• Ask the right questions - know what the business
  process is.
• Understand product lifecycles and what they mean
  to your business.
• How easy is the upgrade path from version to
  version?
• What are the costs associated with upgrading?
• Understand that hardware is part of the cost.
• Focus on TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO)

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Typical Web CMS features

• Remote WYSIWYG Authoring (and browser
  compatibility)
• Usable interface
• Section 508 enforcement
• Library Services (versioning, check-in check-out)
• Metadata management
• Full-Text Searching
• Caching, Replication, Clustering
• Workflow
• Content Approval / Version History

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Typical Web CMS Features (Cont)

• Template-based approach, Ease of template
  creation
• Delivery via multiple formats platforms
• Reporting
• Multi-lingual Support / Localization
• Roles-based Security
• Flexible Authentication
• Personalization
• Object-based approach to content
• HTML generation / auto output to multiple devices
• Content subscription syndication
• Microsoft Office Support
• Extensible / Easily Customized
• Integration points with products from other
  vendors (commerce, etc)

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Understand the Hidden Costs

• Acquisition Costs
• Implementation Costs
• Training
• Content Migration
• Deployment Costs
• Maintenance

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Acquisition Costs

• Direct software investment
• Operating system hardware requirements
• Application server costs (ASP vs. CF vs. Java vs.
  PHP)
• Database server hardware requirements
• Client software requirements
• Different Licensing Models
• CPU
• URL
• Content Contributor
• Scalability Implications
• Commerical hosting available?

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Implementation Costs

• Out of the box vs. development framework
• Time out for project stakeholders
• Integration with other databases, other vertical
  apps
• TIMEMONEY

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Training Costs

• Content contributor
• Webmaster (administrator)
• Developer

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Content Migration

• Converting from one CMS to another
• Importing HTML
• Removing and/or updating stale information

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Deployment

• Application Service Provider available?
• Managed hosting
• Clustering
• 100 uptime?

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Maintenance

• Product maintenance fees (20)
• Consulting support agreements
• UPGRADE COSTS
• CMS Software
• Process
• Re-QAing the site

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Ask CMS vendors the tough questions

• Number of actual DEPLOYMENTS
• Number of current customers?
• Number of failed or obsolesced initiatives
  (shelfware)
• 3rd party channel resources
• Release (development) cycle
• Company financials (debt load)
• Source code available? Placed in escrow?
• Avg. Development Times / Time to Market
• Learning curve for internal resources
• Flexible to accommodate your evolving design
• Content Migration Strategy
• Understand the Content Contributor Experience
• Easily extensible? How?
• Relative Strengths and Weaknesses?
• Contact other customers!
• GOAL 90 of the functionality, 50 of the budget

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Fig Leafs short-list of CMS vendors

• Microsoft CMS 2002
• Paperthin CommonSpot
• Ektron CMS 100/200/300
• Macromedia Contribute
• Coming Soon
• Xerox Documentuum
• Percussion Rythmyx
• Interwoven Teamsite
• Zope

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Evaluation Criteria

• Using the various CMS products, we attempt to
  replicate the functionality for a fictional
  company Halcyon Neurotech
• This site exercises all typical web cms
  features
• Its all about the experience
• Installation difficulties
• Learning curve
• Features not available out of the box
• BUGS
• Behind the scenes investigation
• Database structure
• Source code
• Relative performance

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Product Comparison

• Macromedia Contribute
• Ektron CMS 200/300
• Paperthins CommonSpot
• Microsoft Content Management Server 2002

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Macromedia Contribute

• Not a CMS per se, but a well-designed simple
  content authoring system for (very) small sites.
• No server-side components, 100 file based
• Product features
• Anywhere authoring
• Simple user interface
• Spell Check
• Style application
• Table editing
• Insert Image
• Limited library features
• Check in/out
• Document Versioning
• Communicates via FTP only
• Helpful to create templates using Macromedia
  Dreamweaver
• Acquisition 99/seat

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Product Demonstration and Discussion

• Macromedia Contribute

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Ektron CMS 100/200/300

• Lightweight, simple to deploy CMS
• CF, ASP, ASP.NET, PHP
• Restricted to Windows OS (COM based)
• Uses award-winning Ektron eWebEditPro web-based
  editor
• Small developer API
• CMS 300 supports XML
• URL variables define display of different content
• Pricing Starts at 495 (cms100) 2995 (CMS 300)
• 600 customers(for entire product line)

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Demo Discussion

• Ektron CMS 100/200/300

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Paperthin CommonSpot

• Requires ColdFusion/MX
• Win/Solaris, Access/SQL/ORACLE
• Very rich out of the box functionality
• 50 elements
• Content editing is IE/PC specific
• Good support for MS Office
• Limited developer API
• No XML support
• Highly scalable
• Starting price 20K
• 200 customers
• Licensing cost driven by of content
  contributors

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Demo Discussion

• Paperthin CommonSpot

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Microsoft Content Management Server

• Development Framework
• Template development requires Visual Studio .NET
• Content authoring takes advantage of Office XP
• Windows/SQL only
• Multiple integration points for MS server suite
  (Sharepoint, Commerce Server, etc)
• Requires use of MS directory (Windows domain,
  Active Directory) for user management
• Provides great flexibility and deep API
• Integrated spellchecking!

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Demo Discussion

• Microsoft CMS 2002

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Summary
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• Questions and Answers

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Contact Information

• Steve Druckersdrucker_at_figleaf.comp.
  202-797-5477
• Macromediahttp//www.macromedia.com/contribute/
• Ektron CMS 100/200/300http//www.ektron.com
• Paperthin CommonSpothttp//www.paperthin.com
• Microsoft Content Management Serverhttp//www.mic
  rosoft.com/cms/