By Rawlson O’Neil King, theWHIR.com
This article appears in the June 2005 issue of Web Host Industry Review magazine. Click here to sign up online.
June 13, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Given the possibilities the Web offers business for commerce and communications, it is less likely these days that customers come to Web hosts looking for the simple sort of Web site that might have sufficed in the past. When it comes to attracting traffic to a Web site, content has become one of the important commodities on the Web.
Content management systems are one of the technologies driving the next generation of Web hosting services. Content management technology is used to collect, manage and publish content. These systems provide the processes and workflows involved in organizing, categorizing, and structuring information resources so that they can be stored, published, and reused in a variety of ways.
The technology is designed to store content as configurable components or whole documents, while maintaining the links between components. The goal of most content management systems is to offer integrated management for content, document and records in order to control the full lifecycle of a Web site.
The most basic implementations of content management software enable the employees of a site to schedule content refreshes, manage workflow, track revisions and index online content through an Internet browser. Such software can also reduce site deployment time and lower overall maintenance costs.
Traditionally, most Web hosts only provided users with access to environments that allowed them to upload content. They rarely offered a means of exercising total control over the management and structure of data. The tools traditionally provided by hosts don’t usually allow corporate users to comprehensively monitor who made changes to a Web site and what has been altered. CMS provides business users tools that offer extended control over the management of their Web content.
Hosting customers with considerable content needs have by now already found third-party CMS offerings, or developed them in house. But with content playing a critical role in any serious Web operation, hosts may find a new audience for content management among new Web hosting customers.
To tap this market, Web hosts should consider creating offerings that take advantage of content management capabilities. Certainly, specialty providers have already entered to fill the vacuum.
Marqui’s CMS (marqui.com) “software as a service solution” acts to simplify and automate Web activities, allowing users to easily and cost effectively manage a wide range of communication initiatives, including Web sites, newsletters, email campaigns and syndicated news feeds.
Phibian Technology’s (phibian.com) Content Layout Engine works to seamlessly tie together content, allowing content creators to deploy content they already have to the Web in the format they prefer. Using Phibian’s hosted service, users can upload a wide array of documents, such as Word, Excel and Acrobat files, and have them automatically reformat into Web pages.
Both the Marqui and Phibian CMS platforms work to separate content and layout for easier maintenance, and customize content based on each visitor or class of visitors. As a result, both platforms are often used to build and maintain portals and corporate sites.
Hosting firms can offer similar technologies by implementing and offering new emerging CMS software packages to their clients.
OpenCms (opencms.org) is a free, professional level open source Web site content management system that enables small and medium-sized businesses to create and manage Web sites with highly customized layouts and interactive functionality based on Java, JSP, XML and other technology.
Microsoft (microsoft.com) offers a commercial CMS software package directed at larger enterprises. Its system is characterized not only by transparent content management, but also by comprehensive content integration, aggregation, data transformation and syndication capabilities that tie together information and business processes.
Many organizations do not want information technology platforms that simply convey information. They want their systems to have the ability to contextually transform data flows so they can make meaningful information available to customers. The most advanced CMS packages, such as that offered by Microsoft, can achieve this by accessing virtually any data store across the enterprise and making it available, based on customer need, through Web technologies. Because of this, the Microsoft CMS package is an excellent choice for customer extranets.
Microsoft’s package is also defined by its observation management, analytics, and segmentation capacity. Its CMS software actively allows enterprises to manage the creation and flow of documents in particular structured documents through the assistance of databases and workflow engines that encapsulate content description and business rules. The Microsoft package also incorporates version control, which assists CMS users with the co-ordination, production and tracking of older versions of content or code.
With the use of such a content management package, enterprises can improve their Web site management and e-business potential. Hosting companies would be wise to implement these platforms to win new business and to increase the relevance of their service offerings.
