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| Growing like a weed |
September 3, 2001 |
By Grace Casselman
LET’S FACE IT-CORPORATE WEB SITES ARE GETTING BIGGER EVERY DAY. AND AS THEY GROW, SO TOO DO ASSOCIATED management and access headaches.
The size of sites is doubling annually and that’s a conservative estimate,” said Mark Gilbert, research director for Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn.
Take the Certified General Accountants Association of Ontario (CGA Ontario) as an example. Its Web site services about 13,000 members and 12,000 students, and currently boasts 65,000 monthly hits on 750 pages. But by next year, the site is scheduled to grow to 15,000 Web pages “for online training, self-service and support,” said Boyd Dyer, manager of Web technologies and frontline services. For his company, the biggest struggle has been directing visitors through the site.
Over at Brickworks Communications, a marketing and communications firm in Hamilton, Ont., a battle has been waged on existing content management practices.
"We’ve struggled to do content management for our clients,” said Jonathan Vinden, vice-president of interactive services. “Setting up servers and undertaking heavy-duty programming to manage content just isn’t worth it. Not everybody is a Java programmer. We’re a communications company and we don’t necessarily want to nurture and maintain a bunch of high-end programmers.
“I don’t know that a lot of companies fully realize the problem or the challenges yet,” Vinden continued. “A lot of people are just at the point of saying, ‘Oh my goodness, our Web site is out of control. Funnelling all our changes through one Webmaster isn’t working. Our Web site is a mess.’
“This is one of the biggest opportunities, because it’s one of the biggest challenges.”
Opportunity knocking
Microsoft has recognized the growing market for content management products, and in May, the software giant finalized a $55 million acquisition of NCompass Labs, a Vancouver-based Web content management company. Founded in 1996 by former employees of a multimedia R&D lab at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., Ncompass’ Resolution software is now being rolled into Microsoft’s Content Management Server. About 130 of the 160 employees that worked for NCompass will reportedly take jobs south of the border in Redmond,Wash.
Paul Flessner, senior vice-president of the .NET enterprise server division at Microsoft, commented on the merger: “Microsoft understands that effectively managing Web content is critical to the success of any e-business initiative and, ultimately, to the profitability of the overall business.”
Content management is a substantial market, accounting for US$1 billion in software worldwide, with another US$2.5 billion in services, according to Gartner. The might of Microsoft behind the NCompass technology will be significant competition for key players in the arena, such as Vignette, Interwoven and BroadVision, said Gartner’s Gilbert, predicting further mergers and acquisitions and the emergence of niche players in the next year, as well as an emerging focus on “midmarket” companies.
“Microsoft saw a huge customer demand for content management,” said Elizabeth Gilchrist, a Microsoft product manager and former PR manager of NCompass. “Microsoft needed content management to provide its customers with end-to-end service.”
In May, the Royal Canadian Mint adopted Resolution software to manage its site, which includes approximately 4,000 pages-half in English, half in French. “Prior to the use of Web content management software, every page was hard-coded in HTML,” said Michael Toope,Web site co-ordinator. “Even fixing a typo required the help of a programmer.”
Moreover, Mint staff previously had to pick up orders manually online (for collectors’ coins, for instance), but now they’re fed directly into an order-entry system. “We’re saving ourselves a lot of time, but we’re also saving time for the customer, as the order is entered immediately.”
Managing costs
The Microsoft/NCompass solution starts at US$39,000 per processor, but Gilchrist said the average sale is in the US$100,000 to US$200,000 range.
David Carter wants to bring Web content management to smaller organizations through the launch of a company called WebPartz, based in Mississauga, Ont. WebPartz operates through an application service provider model, and offers a starting price of $24,000 per year, plus set-up fees. Users post content via a Web browser to a WebPartz “staging site” and that content is replicated to the customer’s site.
Prior to founding WebPartz, Carter spent 10 years at Microsoft Canada, most recently as Internet strategy manager. So he knows first-hand about the challenges of managing a large Web site. “Microsoft probably still has information about the Windows 95 launch on its site,” he commented.
(Of note, a search on http://www.microsoft.ca did produce a November 1996 document advertising a special offer for Windows 95 users.)
Separating the creation of content from the logistics of building and maintaining a Web site is vital, Carter said. “Technical staff should be managing features, not content.” That way, it’s much easier to repurpose content for different devices, such as WAPenabled cellphones. Conversely, “if content and programming are all locked together, you’ll have to build your WAP site on sweat.”
Brickworks is already implementing the WebPartz technology at some of its clients’ sites, including PlateSpin, a Toronto software infrastructure company.
Vinden said Brickworks was attracted by a solution that’s “good, quick and responsive for 90 per cent of our content management needs,” adding its use of forms and wizards makes sense. “I’m thrilled,” he said. “Writers, editors and designers are able to easily contribute content, which is important because ownership of content should go to people who are the experts.”
Finding your way
According to Hummingbird, another content management vendor, knowledge management is also about being able to locate data on a Web site easily. “There’s so much information,” said Larry Roy, senior product manager in Ottawa, noting corporations struggle “just trying to keep track of it all.”
He points to Hummingbird’s Fulcrum KnowledgeServer technology, which inventories the content of a site, allowing for a search “from a single point of access.”
CGA Ontario has installed Fulcrum KnowledgeServer to improve searching on its Web site.Visitors use the site for enrolment, online purchasing of books or school materials, and to purchase or renew memberships. “We’re letting them be as self-serving as possible,” said Dyer, adding that prior to the installation of the software, content management was definitely an issue. “There are so many PDF and Word documents-it was hard to locate something.” Since the new technology went live in January, Dyer said they don’t get as many phone calls. “We don’t have to guide users step by step to the information.This saves time and money.”
Pundits say businesses must face up to content management issues because Web sites will only get bigger and more complex.
“If your Web site is shrinking in pages or hits, you’ve got a problem,” Gilbert said.
But for companies who have yet to address Web content management, the reverse is also true-if your Web site is growing beyond your control, you’ve also got a problem.
W E B C O N T E N T
Brickworks http://www.brickworkscomm.com
CGA Ontario http://www.cga-ontario.org
Hummingbird http://www.hummingbird.com
Microsoft Content Management http://www.microsoft.com/cmserver
PlateSpin http://www.platespin.com
Royal Canadian Mint http://www.mint.ca
WebPartz http://www.webpartz.com
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