Content Management: Small Is Beautiful
Walking around the Content Management Show In London
29 October 2001
The Content Management Show held in London last week was among the first of its kind in the UK. It had only been in the pipeline for a couple of months.
“We came up with the idea of a Content Management exhibition at the last Internet World event” explains Phil Nelson, organiser with Penton Media “We tested the concept with a few vendors and it did not take long to catch .
The exhibition was a real chance for companies to find out all what CM is about, talk in first person to vendors and look at current implementations and case studies.We are planning to double the size next year”
The Content Management sector, as Content-wire.com analysts predicted, is one of the central areas of development that will allow the new economy, albeit the content economy, to take off.
Content is central to all processes on the internet, other than the strictly automated ones, which still need to ensure data exchange.
Estimated to grow over 15 billion dollars worldwide over the next couple of years, the CM market has seen some very puzzling trends emerging over the past six months, first of all the emergence of an array of new, smaller players.
And that’s where the confusions starts: not all players that are coming into the space are necessarily
‘pure CM’ players.
Some are coming to the sector from different walks of the software lifecycles, and make claims to some kind of CM functionality.
Others, albeit small newcomers, have killer tools to offer at the fraction of the cost of the ‘incumbents’. The battle for the market share is going to be fierce.
Among the companies with a presence in the programme a handful of leading names, including Vignette, who at the last minute, like Obtree, opted out their booths, leaving them empty for the duration of the show.
Richard George, is the MD of Goss Interactive, a company little known in the CM sector ‘We had a lot of interesting companies and high profile players. Most of the visitors were focused and attended the show trying to untangle some of the mysteries surrounding CM technology. I am expecting a catastrophic collapse of some of the so called ‘leading’ players, whose offering is overpriced and not flexible enough to fit the current unstable economic climate. Smaller emerging players stand a far better chance of capturing the ‘new economy’ markets, as long as they can offer enterprise type applications and licensing models’
Some companies appeared to be new to the space, or just attempting to put a ‘foot in the marketplace’. For many the show was mainly brand building exercise. Some of them were offering content management ‘add on components’ rather than fully fledged systems. Like Modcomp, whose product ViewMax Publisher is a gizmo to store print content in QuarkExpress that can then be integrated into other IT systems.
Txt-e solutions is an Italian content management company based in Milan, they supply content management systems to Mediaset, the large media conglomerate part of the Berlusconi family of businesses. Giorgio Tornielli, Txt-e Project Manager confessed a certain frustration “We are a leading company in Italy and despite a good working relationship with international analysts and clear international targets, we are still not on the international
CM map.”
The rather cozy atmosphere was good for talking and meeting people, according to attendants
Neil Hutchinson, from Firenandpassion.com, a Mediabin product soon to be launched talked to us about their experience at the show “We found a steady stream of people, not big volume, variable quality, but some good leads with potential business.
This was the first public showing of our audio-visual web content solution and there was considerable interest when people understood it worked without downloads or special plug-ins over 56K connection on Mac and PC. Both exhibitors and visitors were interested. The web is due for a leap forward, not just in broadband connection, but in available content”
Difficult to know what lies ahead for the industry, but what is becoming clear is that small can be beautiful in the IT industry too.
contentmanagement2001.com
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