2005 Content Management Trends and Predictions

By Bill Rogers
CEO and Founder, Ektron Inc.

The business case for effective content strategies has moved to the forefront of corporate planning. And for good reason: there’s a lot of time, money, and potential value in the abundance of information that exists. A Web-based content and information strategy can create powerful and immediate new opportunities for businesses to seize.

In 2004, I was fortunate to speak with hundreds of customers, both IT and business professionals, as well as Ektron partners, industry analysts, and many others. They shared their priorities, perspectives, and requirements around content management – and made it clear that while many organizations are doing stellar work on the Web, many others are just scratching the surface when it comes to leveraging the Web for business effectiveness and efficiency.

A content management solution today is more than just a platform for creating and publishing information. A CMS can deliver deeper value in automating many previously manual or paper-based processes. A CMS can help organize information and make it much more meaningful, useful and searchable. In considering a new CM solution, an organization may actually discover new approaches to support vertical business strategies, enable process automation, facilitate global business strategies, and meet compliance mandates.

Below I’ve outlined eight key content management trends that I expect to take center stage during 2005.

Structured Content Gets Serious:
The mainstream adoption of XML has been forecast by IT observers for several years. However, XML gets taken more seriously in 2005. Content creation tools such as Ektron eWebEditPro+XML and Microsoft InfoPath have made it easy to create structured information.

The Next Phase:
Developers will leverage .NET to manipulate and display structured content, reducing the time developers spend writing XSLTs for display purposes In 2005, XSLTs could take a back seat in favor of manipulating data for display in .NET.

Effective Search Shines:
After spending time and money to build and deploy Web sites and create content, most organizations now understand that effective search is imperative to a successful content strategy. To squeeze additional value out of Web investments, organizations will prioritize powerful search functionality in 2005. Index search will begin to show direct impact on business results, as organizations use this powerful new approach to help unlock the full potential of information and to help customers, prospects, employees, partners, or any constituent find more relevant information more quickly.

Globalization:
It’s called the World Wide Web, but why are so few Web sites speaking more than one language? In 2005, the drive to reach new markets, build new revenue streams, remain competitive, and extend information to broader audiences will drive
organizations to tackle Web globalization.

Corporate Automation:
Whether it’s applied to a car assembly line or a Web site, automation pays valuable dividends. A content management solution can automate day-today activities that fuel Web site, intranets, extranets, portals, and more. Beyond that, more companies will adopt a CMS in 2005 as a platform for building rich, Web-based applications that automate key business processes, address compliance requirements, and reduce the time and costs associated with managing information.

New approaches to consuming information:
Blogs and RSS feeds are just two of many ways individuals are consuming Web-based information. This will grow substantially in 2005, as millions of Web users aggregate blog feeds -- using them as a sort of “poor-man’s portal.” Because these newer technologies make it easier to consume information to fit specific interests, organizations will adapt to these and other new approaches, and leverage content management solutions with them to satisfy a growing slice of the Internet population.

Focus on Web as marketing channel:
Which scenario is more likely to keep you up at night: your phone system going down, or your Web site going down? Web sites have become the primary marketing and communications channel, and for many companies, a mission-critical sales channel. The drive in 2005 to deliver new online self-service, higher levels of searchability, online interaction capabilities, and complete visitor satisfaction – and to enhance these offerings -- will separate the leaders from laggards in many industries.

Explosive .NET Growth:
The rise of the Microsoft .NET Framework led to the rise of .NETbased applications in 2004, including Ektron’s CMS400.NET. The .NET platform takes on greater relevance to mid-size and enterprise-level organizations in 2005 as they get the message that .NET lowers costs, speeds development cycles, enables robust Web applications and supports powerful interoperability. Moreover, developers will seize on the power of .NET to improve the way organizations capture, share and use data, information, content, and documents. The idea that the Web site can function as a rich Web application becomes pervasive in 2005 – with .NET making this a quick, easy and cost-effective reality.

Developer efficiency:
Visual development tools such as ASP.NET sever controls will make Web developers more productive and efficient in 2005. This is good news for the millions of developers who work with Visual Basic and Visual Studio .NET development tools. Now
building a Web site is like building a VB application –it’s all visual drag-and-drop components. Organizations will see new levels of satisfaction coming from developers as they leave behind previously tedious and time-consuming “grunt” tasks and more forward in more fully exploiting their expertise and leveraging their creativity to deliver technology solutions with more power and value than ever before.

By Bill Rogers
CEO and Founder, Ektron Inc.

Bill Rogers, CEO and Founder of Ektron, Inc., a leader in content management solutions, identifies the trends and technologies that will impact organizations in 2005.

Falcon-Software is a leading Web development firm specializing in website solutions for companies across North America. Falcon-Software delivers powerful and effective website solutions, offering a complete range of strategic and creative Internet-based technology services including: e-Commerce, e-Catalogs, databases, Intranet workgroups, multimedia animation and audio/video applications.
 

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