Is there a market for simpler proprietary CMS’s?...

Looking at information about the new CMS Watch report, it has the potential to become a watershed in the Industry. The re-classification of products into 5 new tiers  makes some significant statements about how the industry has been evolving.

My instant reaction to the re-classification was that it reflected my thoughts and experiences in recent years on a number of areas such as how Open Source and SaaS should no longer be segregated and how the middle tier categories in particular deserved more clarity and emphasis.

I’m sure there are vendors and practitioners the world over taking issue with certain aspects of the re-categorisation. Naturally, when you spend a lot of time developing and using these tools it is understandable that you create different ‘thought worlds’ based on your own field of reference and it’s sometimes difficult to step back from this and take different perspectives.

I thought I’d throw a few observations into the mix based on my own field of reference. That reference is as a one-time product manager for Immediacy (Now Alterian CMC 6.2), an Immediacy customer and implementor, an ecommerce orientated Joomla implementation I have done on a personal project and being a customer and implementor of EPiServer over the last two years.

After careful consideration, the one aspect of the re-classification that I would take issue with is the positioning of Alterian CMC 6.2 alongside Joomla in the Simpler Products category.

Based on experiences of using Joomla quite deeply over the last year and a full understanding of Alterian CMC 6.2 (from background knowledge and studying the latest documentation and release notes on the Immediacy support site) I believe that the Alterian product sits more comfortably and relevantly in the Mid-Range Products category.

In my opinion, the investment and innovation made in 4 key areas of development separate the Alterian product from the Simpler range of products

1. Web Asset Management ( a lighter-weight Document Management capability)
2. Taxonomy and Categorisation
3. SharePoint Connectivity
4. Administration and Deployment Capability

I believe that these capabilities are of a sufficient maturity to provide a clear distinction between the capability of Joomla for example and the Alterian Corporate product and general awareness of the other products listed in the Simpler Products category also underlies my view on this.

The maturity of the former Immediacy Editor application, a broad range of plug-in solutions and the additional capabilities I’ve listed above make it a comparable, and in several areas, more capable solution to a number of products listed in the Mid-Range product categories. I would be very interested to hear, for example,  a justification for why GOSS in particular is categorised as having broader capability than Alterian CMC 6.2?

No doubt the Alterian acquisition has impacted the roadmap of the corporate product more so than other areas but I think that sufficient investment had been made prior to both the Mediasurface and Alterian acquisitions to justify CMC 6.2 being categorised as a Mid-Range product.

If indeed, the consensus is that Alterian CMC 6.2 is categorised correctly then I raise the question from this post’s title – Is there a market for simpler proprietary CMS’s? Will organisations be prepared to pay $10 - $20,000 for a proprietary licence when they can get an Open Source option for free or does the product maturity (documentation, install base, partner experience) and support that solution provides justify that level of investment?