Category — WCM

Browsing some of the WCM vendor’s sites here in the Netherlands, I found they all have a Web 2.0 whitepaper. I figured they (Tridion, GX and Smartsite) were caught in a me too strategy, so I decided to download and compare them. Turns out there is a big difference in the whitepapers of these three vendors.

The Smartsite whitepaper is really stuck on a feature level story: we have Web 2.0 features such as tag clouds, blogs, collaboration and mash-ups. No story whatsoever on how Smartsite will help you tap into the potential value of Web 2.0 (let alone what this value might be).

The GX whitepaper starts of nicely but quickly moves to why GX is the best bet for a Web 2.0 strategy:  their component based approach allows you to add functionality and applications to the site. Hm, two immediate questions come to mind: 1) how do functionality and applications relate to content management? and 2) doesn’t this put GX in head-on competition with portal and application server vendors (such as websphere and sharepoint to name two).

The Tridion whitepaper gives a decent spin on what Web 2.0 is, and what the value for organizations might be, and, how they can try and tap into this value. There is one thing missing though: how is the Tridion product going to help in this?

I am still missing a good story on how WCM vendors reposition themselves for the Web 2.0. They have all been focussed on creating an efficient broadcasting process. Now that Web 2.0 forces organizations to join the online conversation the question is how these WCM tools will help them in that. Will they? How will they support them in listening, and creating the right response for the conversations that are taking place? I think it will not suffice to just add Web 2.0 features such as blogs and tag clouds, and it looks like this is what they are doing. I am missing something here? If you think so let me know, I am going to digg deeper into this in the meanwhile.