Photo by BasicGov; Creative Commons share-alike license

The differences are far simpler, and way more important, than you probably think.

Sometimes the best laid marketing plans end up biting back, and in some truly surprising ways. While most cases of this sort of slip up – either positive or negative – can be chalked up to a failure to get the right message across, not many can be attributed to getting a message across a little too well.

Such is the case for the apparent confusion about the differences between “Cloud Computing” and “Software as a Service” (SaaS). As the digital marketing world is clamoring to get you to “move everything to the cloud” before the next guy, it’s become critical to offer clarification to help you make sure you know what you’re signing up for. Put simply, and in strictly logical terms, while all SaaS environments are by default denizens of the cloud, not all cloud environments are necessarily SaaS.

Cloud environments deliver the use of common applications that are served from the internet and are designed to deliver computing and interaction as a utility – Facebook, Salesforce.com and Google Docs are popular examples. SaaS, by comparison, uses specific software and customized architecture to provide services – primarily to enterprise customers (but certainly not exclusively) – based on specific needs. Bridgeline’s iAPPS Product Suite, for instance, is designed specifically to run as optimally in SaaS as it does in a dedicated server environment using a perpetual license. (more…)

Separating the bot from the customer will refine your site's analytics - sometimes more than you'd think.

Two words you hear constantly in content discussions are relevance and traffic – testament that these concepts, maybe more than any others, drive the life of your site. Usually, but not always, the two form a symbiotic relationship: relevance definitely drives traffic – in many different ways – and usually our focus is on how to harness that power for good.

For this post, though, I want to focus on another, less obvious – and much less intuitive – relationship between content and traffic: the concept behind the relevance of traffic.

It’s not something web professionals have examined readily – or very heavily – as search has grown, but the concept is gaining steam around analytics and SEO discussions lately. (more…)

Since 2010 is off and running, I thought I would post some thoughts on what the Content Management industry would have in store in terms of WCM improvements and features in 2010.

1. Social support: social marketing continues to be a hot topic and proven to be a successful medium. You will see more support and integration features from WCM vendors.
2. Integration with CRM: effective web sites should drive qualified traffic. If this is so integration with a company’s CRM is key to keeping sales cycles moving along swiftly. WCM systems will be integrating with Salesforce.com out of the box to offer this closed loop process.
3. Multilingual: the world is getting smaller and businesses the size of Fortune 500 and SMBs are expanding globally. Multi-lingual websites are a must to developing business on a global scale and your WCM solution should make this process smoother.
4. Mobile: mobile websites are becoming more prevalent. WCM’s will have to ensure support for publishing content to a mobile version and integrations with mobile marketing companies are a must to ensure marketing content is pushed out.
5. Record management: more clients are looking for WCM’s to handle retention and record management for important documents. Better records management is key to handle this expectation.

These are my thoughts, let’s see what happens!

Written by Tony Pietrocola

As more and more M&A activity continues to hit the content management and analytics industries it is obvious industry consolidation is amongst us and gaining steam.

CMS M&A

Over the past year we have seen content management providers like Red Dot, Vignette, XY and Interwoven find new owners. And now we see Adobe make a big leap in the analytics space with its acquisition of Omniture. Just like the Carpenters sang, something tells me we’ve only just begun…or have we?

Content Management and Analytics are two very vibrant technologies. Together they are growing and have a profound impact on the future of online marketing, communications and commerce.

There are a ton of CMS and Analytics packages on the market. Will there be more M&A activity in the next 12 months as serious long-term providers seek to gain market share?

(more…)

iAPPS v2.7 Forms Editor

iAPPS v2.7 with Forms Editor functionality is ready to go. The new Forms Editor capabilities make it simple and easy to collect structured data on your website.  Have you ever wanted to quickly put up a form on your site but were told by your IT staff: “Sure, we can have it done in a couple of weeks.”?  Not any more.

With release 2.7, the built-in Forms Editor continues the iAPPS tradition of making powerful CMS features easy to use – in addition to seamlessly integrating new functionality into the existing product suite.   Now adding a form can be as simple as a 4-step process.

Forms Designer

1. Create the form. Use the drag-n-drop forms designer to select all the elements you want in your form.  All the usual types are supported, text, dropdown, radio, etc. including validation (e.g., email address format).
2. Insert the form. In step 1 you created a re-usable piece of content, now all you have to do is drop it into a container on a new or existing iAPPS Content Manager page.
3. Publish the form. In step 2 you modified a CMS page.  Now, just hand it off to a workflow or publish it.
4. Collect form data. After it’s published, sit back and let iAPPS collect the form data.  At any point you can run the Results Report for the form to see the data that’s been submitted by your website visitors or export to Excel to generate reports like a list of conference attendees.

Of course, iAPPS gives you much more flexibility than just this four step process.  The Forms Editor has some advanced element controls like a date picker, file upload button and hidden fields to pass parameters like the IP address of the user or the page the form was used on.  You have access to all element properties for further customization – or just accept the standard ones.  By default, the form is going to be presented as a simple list.  But as with any iAPPS Content Manager page you can tailor the form page to display anyway you want by applying your own styling.

Published Page with Form

Probably the most import time-saver with the Forms Editor is the way it seamlessly integrates with the back-end database.  When you create a form, iAPPS automatically creates the database schema and the Results Report.

Since all iAPPS database functions use MS SQL Server it’s easy to extend the forms system.  If you’re an iAPPS developer you’ll be able to gain full access to the forms data via an additional set of APIs that have been added to the iAPPS Framework.  Regardless of whether you want to extend the core functionality of the system, or build new interfaces to the stored form data, it’s all there for you to use.

The totally integrated iAPPS philosophy keeps on going with the forms editor.  Because the form is treated as a CMS page you can publish it using workflow, set SEO properties, and view previous versions.  And finally, if you’ve got iAPPS Analytics installed you can measure any website “conversions” that would be possible after a successful form submission (e.g., getting to that ubiquitous Thank You page) in addition to evaluating all the usual web analytic metrics like page views, page abandonment rate, etc.

Open Source Content Management – The Hidden Costs

Just like an iceberg - there is much below the surface when considering open source software

When compared to a SaaS Content Management System (CMS) solution, deploying and maintaining an open source CMS package, either by yourself or via an outside agency, can be surprisingly expensive. An open source integration can frequently incur substantial costs, despite the conventional wisdom. The following is a partial list of costs associated with any open source software implementation:

Software License Costs
This is probably the only good news. License costs are always zero - but keep on reading, there are many hidden costs…

Dedicated IT Staff
Developing and running a quality website takes considerable time and effort. The usual rule of thumb is one FTE – for example, 2 dedicated IT staff each spending half their time on the project and ongoing support.

Hardware
Depending on the amount of redundancy required, you could need anywhere from one to four servers. With SaaS, the hardware cost is built into the monthly fee.

Setup Fee
Agency costs often include basic software installation and hosting setup. This can vary from $1,000 to $5,000 or more, so it’s worth paying attention to.

Hosting
Outside agencies can apply a significant markup here. With a SaaS product – it’s built into the monthly license cost.  Find out from the agency where your site sill be hosted. If it’s godaddy.com (or similar) - then that $100 per month you are being charged for hosting alone might be a substantial premium over the actual cost.

Training
While open source software is free, most open source CMS are notoriously complex. Be sure to account for training costs to get you and your team beyond just the initial implementation.

Site Development
If you are going to develop the site yourself, be sure to include any outside design costs you might occur. When working with an agency – be sure to break these costs out separately.

Software Maintenance
Now that YOU are in charge of the software, it’s critical to budget for necessary security upgrades. Be sure to take into consideration all of the third party add-ons that may be integrated as part of your website development. Quite often a necessary third party add-on (like an image gallery) might not be compatible with the latest security patch releases.

Network Maintenance
There are many tasks associated with network infrastructure that need constant care and attention. If you are hosting your site within your own network, you may need to worry about load balancing, firewall management, setup and installation of web and database servers, and license management – to name just a few.

Support
Most custom developed software has bugs (this definitely includes websites) – do you have the bandwidth to track down bugs? Is there a support phone number to call? Are you going to have to wade through multiple forums and blogs to get your answers?

Conclusion
For some customers that have excess IT expertise and limited CMS demands, open source might be just the solution. However, if your organization has limited IT expertise but considerable business needs for a CMS implementation, an open source solution can bring considerable risk and cost. Regardless of how inexpensive it may appear when downloading “free” open source software, any substitute for an enterprise SaaS CMS must factor in ALL the actual costs when using open source.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series of postings on open source vs. proprietary CMS.