A few weeks back CMS Watch’s Kas Thomas posted his “reality checklist” for CMS vendors. Each vendor should ask themselves 15 tough questions about their product. Now Day has put down the challenge to all other CMS vendors, the CMS Vendor meme, to answer the questions from the check list.
Now, next to Day the CMS vendors have been posting their scores. Currently the leaderboard looks like:
- 44/45 – e-Spirit ***
- 43/45 – Jahia
- 43/45 – Hippo CMS
- 42/45 - Magnolia
- 42/45 – EPiServer
- 42/45 – GX *
- 42/45 – Midgard
- 42/45 – Nuxeo **
- 41/45 – infopark
- 41/45 – KnowledgeTree
- 40.5/45 – Enano
- 40/45 - Day
- 40/45 – Alfresco
- 40/45 – GX
- 40/45 – CoreMedia
- 40/45 – Sitecore
- 40/45 – Alterian
- 40/45 – OpenText
- 40/45 – Ez Systems
- 38/45 – dotCMS
- 37/45 – Vignette
- 37/45 – Autonomy Interwoven
- 36/45 – Escenic
- 33/45 – Sense/Net
- bold scores are where the vendor did not score themselves but it was subsequentally worked out by Jon Marks
- * Score adjusted to reflect original scoring system
- ** Vendor does not seem to be able to add up
- *** Was 45, now 44
Many of the answers to the checklist are very tongue in cheek but many of the questions do not really go deep. Mostly the questions surround how available software is either to download, easy it is to install or how clear the pricing is. These are indeed important things but I do feel the list missing something more concrete. Only two of the questions (3 & 7), for instance, address something to do with content editing. Surely this is one of the most important areas to cover and thus deserves more attention?
Of course this list is not a complete check list, but it seems more tuned towards vendors such as Alfresco as most of these types of vendors will probably score highly. However, it is nice to see the vendors interacting together and at least, it seems, giving honest scores.
Update 19/03/2009: Adding the meme ID 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf suggested by Bertrand Delacrétaz. Find more related pages on Google.
Update 19/03/2009: Added infopark
Update 19/03/2009: Added dotCMS and Midgard (no scores yet though)
Update 19/03/2009: Added Vignette (no score either)
Update 20/03/2009: Added Nuxe (finally a score!)
Update 20/03/2009: Updated Escenic’s score
Update 21/03/2009: Added Sitecore’s, EPiServer’s & OpenText’s scores
Update 22/03/2009: Added Autonomy Interwoven (no score)
Update 23/03/2009: Added Alterian & Hippo CMS
Update 25/03/2009: Updated scores according to Jon Marks blog
Update 27/03/2009: Added KnowledgeTree
Update 02/04/2009: Added Enano
Update 03/04/2009: Added Ez Systems
Update 09/04/2009: added e-Spirit & Sense/Net
Update 15/04/2009: Updated e-Spirit score
I agree that content editing would be useful to include, as that is what most users of the system will do. Still, going into details might result in a full-blown RFI-type answers, and a “reality checklist” should be just that.
Escenic does have some more information about content editing in Escenic Content Studio, including screenshots, on this page: http://www.escenic.com/products/ecs/
I think these questions are great, but they aren’t meant to be product specific issues. They’re about the vendor. All of the questions could equally apply to vendors that sell search, portals, analytics, community packages and more. In fact, I’m really hoping that the meme spreads. It’s great fun watching it.
In the comments section of Day’s take (see link above) the original author of the list Kas Thomas has given some insight why he chose these particular questions:
Quote:
The list I came up with was arbitrary, of course, and very-high-level. But the intent was to address the most common customer pain points around the procurement and rollout of enterprise software. These pain points coincidentally happen to have a lot to do with how “open” the vendor is. [...]
So, where are Tridion’s answers?
As Jon Marks says, the checklist was never meant as a scoring table. But it’s fun watching it go around. SDL Tridion was tagged, coincidentally, as early as Day’s original post.
@ Michael, I agree with the “open” remark, all the vendors that have responded so far are the open ones. I eagerly await some answers from so not so open ones.
@ Adriaan, definitely fun. The see how everyone marks themselves, especially in the seriousness – or lack of seriousness – of their answers is great. On the SDL Tridion answers, I will remain mute.
[...] Nearly all the scores seem to sit about there. Still no-one who is perfect. Tridion staying quiet. Julian Wraith is keeping a real-time scoreboard. Irina Guseva blogging about it too. Google this GUID to find [...]
Maybe you can create a scatter-plot of vendor response time as a function of vendor size?
Seriously, though, thanks for keeping track of this.
CMS Vendor Meme – Nuxeo’s turn…
We’ve been challengeded by Day Software for a CMS meme, inspired by Kas Thomas’s A reality checklist for vendors. Since it’s kind of fun and we’re not shy, let’s take the challenge, even if we really don’t focus on WCM!……
[...] http://www.julianwraith.com/?p=60 [...]
I just published Sitecore’s response if you’d like to add that to the running list. You can find it here: http://dguarnaccia.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/cms-vendor-meme-the-sitecore-response/
[...] I can see. Not that the score really matters. Still no-one who is perfect. Tridion staying quiet. Julian Wraith is keeping a real-time scoreboard. Irina Guseva blogging about it too. Google this GUID to find [...]
[...] documented by Jon Marks on his blog “Jon on Tech”, Irina Guseva’s blog and Julian Wraith’s blog . Day also do a nice job of describing what the meme is all [...]
Julian Wraith, could you update your CMS vendor list:
http://blogs.hippo.nl/tjeerd/
Thanks
Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer
[...] searches have indicated that Vignette is writing a new CMS Vendor Meme for Enterprise CMS Vendors. The tweet from @kirstenpetra [...]
check out ez.no response. They rated themselves at 40
I’m glad we (Enano CMS) scored so high compared to the others, but then again, being a small project does have some advantages. Nevertheless, I’m impressed with how honest these vendors were in the meme.
[...] best documented by Jon Marks on his blog “Jon on Tech”, Irina Guseva’s blog and Julian Wraith’s blog . Day also do a nice job of describing what the meme is all [...]