What to Look for in Web Content Management

How do you pick the right Web content management (WCM) system? First, recognize the different demands of internal- and customer-facing sites, and when it's the latter, look for integrated content delivery so you can track content usage and segment site visitors. These are among the findings of two recent reports on WCM by Forrester Research.

Kyle McNabb, one of the authors of these reports, says "Historically, content management solutions simply published or deployed managed content to a separate, unmanaged application such as a portal server or J2EE application. That meant delivery was left to IT developers to figure out and manage. But many organizations now say this model is a bit flawed."

Forrester's core advice, then, is to choose a system based on your core need, be it internal- or external-facing. Forrester's "Wave" report for the first quarter 2005 ranked WCM vendors Tridion, FatWire and Vignette among the leaders for external Web sites, while EMC/Documentum was among the leaders for internal sites. Only two vendors, Interwoven and Stellent, were ranked as leaders in both categories.