Content Management in Ireland
Terminalfour is one of Ireland's emerging CM players. Alis Marsden talks to Piero Tintori, Managing Director, about his company and the Irish market.
10 October 2001
It is always worth to learn more about the content management space in smaller European countries.
We catch up with Piero Tintori, Managing Director of Terminalfour, one of Ireland's up and coming CM vendors, who founded the company, formally known as Creative On-line Communications, in 1996
One of the originating Internet software companies in Ireland, they brought their CMS, Site Manager, to the market in Spring 2000.
Based in Dublin, they currently operate with a team of twelve people, and are planning to expand into the UK.
Which industry sectors do you see as the main market for CM vendors in Ireland?
Government organisations are a major market. They have a strong need for content management solutions and considerable budgets to work with.
Publishers, or any organisations that need to manage a reasonably large volume of digital content, are another clear market.
Are you finding there is more demand for either Internet or Intranet CM solutions?
Yes, we are finding Intranet content management a much bigger market currently.
Have you felt any slowdown in the market over the last twelve months?
No, not at the middle-tier solution level we are at. We have always been a profitable company and that hasn't changed. Commercial clients are perhaps taking a little longer to make decisions but we are continuing to achieve constant growth.
Do you think Irish organisations are more aware of the benefits of CM than they were twelve months ago?
Yes, there is still some confusion about what Content Management is, and what it isn't, but there has been a noticeable increase in understanding over the last twelve months.
Who do you view as the main CM players in Ireland?
In the middle-tier space, where our product is positioned, competitors with a local presence are companies like Kadius and Tridion.
What are some of the main strengths of your product?
Site Manager is written in Java and based completely on open standards such as XML, JDBC, SQL & HTTP. It is platform independent, web server independent and supports a multitude of databases.
This allows Site Manager to work within an overall technical structure rather then being a stand-alone application.
The user interface is completely browser based which means there is no need for any additional client software on individual users' machines.
It can also be deployed very quickly. Obviously some customers will require customisation, but our out-of-the-box solution is feature rich and can be set up in as little as a week.
What are some of the key features of the product?
It can be used to manage multiple websites and publish content for multiple devices. It can also do that in multiple languages.
Other notable features include flexible and user-friendly workflow and site administration options, the ability to have websites generated either statically or dynamically, aggregation and syndication of content and high performance and security standards.
A recent study (www.basis.ie), commissioned by the Irish Government and conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers, selected Site Manager as a leading enterprise content management solution for the public sector.
Who are your existing customers and what is the pricing structure for your product?
It is being used by over sixty organisations. We have a significant government customer base and corporate users like News Connected, mcconnells Advertising and the National Centre for Technology in Education.
A middle-tier solution, Site Manager has an innovative pricing structure in place, which is based on the amount of content an organisation has.
Where do you see your business going now?
We plan to steadily expand into other regions, starting with the UK. We are also interested in forming business partnerships to enable us to expand into other areas.
We have already formed technical partnerships with leading companies like Cisco Systems, IBM and Oracle. Further technical alliances might be on the cards, but we will continue developing the functionality of Site Manager, and would like to keep all its critical elements part of our core product.
Recently there has been a lot of talk of consolidation within the CM industry pushing smaller vendors out. Is this a concern?
No, in fact I'd be more concerned about the larger vendors being pushed out due to their high price tags and their high overheads. Due to their size they are less flexible in a more volatile economy.
Larger vendors will always have the advantage of a stronger brand but their large implementation costs and the need for extensive customisation is prohibitive to most organisations.
As a small company offering first-rate service, good value and a high quality product based on open standards, we are very confident about our future.
Www.Terminalfour.com
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