DIY or off the shelf?
Another option to buying an off-the-shelf CMS like the ones we've reviewed here is to hire developers to write a custom system for your needs.
There are pros and cons to both approaches.
CMSes are not an expense to be taken lightly--and can run into hundreds of thousands of US dollars (prices are almost always in US dollars, even from Australian-based vendors). Having one custom-written could save a considerable amount of money, and you can be confident it will suit your needs exactly--or close enough, depending on the competence of the developer.
However, while a custom CMS will suit your current needs, can you guarantee they will stay the same in the foreseeable future?
If your requirements change, this may involve another round of costly development time; and if your site grows too fast, it may outgrow your custom system entirely.
By contrast, many off-the-shelf CMSes can be scaled up to meet increased volume demands, and can also be expanded to deal with specific problems and new areas of business.
Where did they come from?
Content management systems--once perceived as expensive, complicated pieces of heavy machinery--have reached a certain maturity, and are becoming accepted as powerful engines for Internet business.
The major forces in the market--big content management system vendors such as BroadVision, Documentum, Interwoven, and Vignette--believe it's a golden time to be in the business.
"Over the last three years, we've seen a whole industry pop up around content management," says Naomi Miller, director of product marketing of Documentum, an 11-year-old company with roots in document management. "There are nearly 100 different vendors offering content management services today."
Content management systems, which help automate and provide a framework for producing and delivering content, have advanced considerably in the last few years. They now cost less, allow more people in the content chain to use them and are opening up to integrate with other enterprise applications such as customer relationship management software.
"We're just responding to market demands," says Leif Pedersen, Vignette's vice president of product marketing. "We've been hammered left and right from industry analysts about these products needing to come together and be integrated and sold as one."
A few years ago, when businesses first discovered that they had more Web content than was feasible to maintain manually, they looked to companies such as Documentum and Vignette to provide systems that automated the process of producing online content. But with initial price tags of AU$500,000 to AU$1 million for software alone, some businesses decided to build the systems themselves.
Mark Gilbert, a Gartner research director who focuses on content management, says that's often the trend today. "A lot of people were building it years ago, but now the trend is to buy it," he says. It also helps that prices have come down: Even the top-tier players have cut their software fees to about US$250,000 to US$300,000, Gilbert says.
