Hippo

Looking Back At The 2011 WCMS Race – The Rally Continues

Last year I wrote a post as one of our Tales From The Demo Chair Series called “web content management – the most dangerous race in the world”. In doing the research for that post – we found that the WCM race is actually more dangerous than the Dakar Rally. Basically, of the CMS systems between 2002 and 2011 there’s a 60% change that the product was acquired or decommissioned. As we get ready for a great 2012, it’s time to take a quick look back at 2011 and see how we finished this leg of the race. Here at Hippo we had an amazing year – and there’s no slowing us down now. But 2011, contrary to the predictions made by some, was not a year when acquisitions of commercial vendors slowed down. It was a year filled with spills and thrills of acquisitions.
We started the year quietly alright – but then Spring sprung and came with an acquisitions bang. In May, Limelight Networks acquired SaaS CMS player Clickability. In June, Oracle surprisingly swallowed Fatwire.
Then, in August, Hewlett Packard decided that Autonomy would be a good acquisition. In a weird turn of events this means that Interwoven, which had previously been acquired by Autonomy is now an HP produced piece of software. And, then finally – in December - Alterian got its Christmas wish answered when SDL/Tridion purchased the company.

The Race Continues
As I said in the previous post – it’s interesting that the highest percentage of those still in the race are Open Source solutions. Of course one of the key strengths of the Open Source model – and especially one like Hippo – is that you’re getting a solution that will grow and evolve with you. Because of our Open Development model (using the community) and our support for Open Standards in all aspects of our software – the customer has MUCH greater flexibility. And even when there's an open source acquisition (or bankruptcy) the customers stays in charge. And because of the openness & standards being used it's 'easier' to move to another solution if you need to.
Beyond acquisitions, 2011 was certainly an interesting year for WCMS solutions. There was a big move for vendors to stop differentiating on how they “manage web content” – and more towards how they handle “Web Engagement Management” and “Customer Experience Management”. Perhaps the 2012 leg of the WCMS rally will be marked with how many solutions will be acquired because they promise these capabilities. You have to think there are more than a few commercial WCMS vendors out there right now hoping and wishing this is true.
As for us in 2012 – our fuel tank is full – we have amazing new product releases – we are working with incredibly exciting new customers – and we are still focused on delivering the best content management and delivery experiences for our customers and their audiences.
Rally on!

What Whiskas and Hippo CMS have in common

There’s a classic ad campaign from the cat food company Whiskas. The point of the advertising slogan is that if your cat was able to choose – they would actually choose Whiskas.

As delivering better customer experiences across multiple channels becomes an increasingly important part of the marketers mandate – we can learn a lot from the Whiskas campaign. CMS vendors have spent the better part of the last decade focusing on the “parents of the cat” - focusing on how we make it “easier for non-technical people to edit, manage and publish web content”, the developer “to make it easy to build a website” or on the marketeer to "engage with the customer".

Now, of course these are important goals – and CMS vendors (including Hippo) have succeeded in varying degrees to make these processes easier. But with all of the features of Web experience management that are being tossed around by CMS vendors – we are running the risk of once again focusing on the “parent” and not the cat.

These days - truly – it’s the end consumer of content that these editors and content managers should be focusing on. These are our audiences – and they are the ones making the ultimate decision of whether to engage with the content or not.

At Hippo we try to empower your audience.

To empower the audience we focus on two steps:

• How does your audience finds your content (SEO is not just about writing better content)
• How can we empower your audience to get the best experience.

But the focus is always on the customer. And yes there's also love for the editor, developer, marketeer. But this is not the end goal. At least, not for us.

For example, I can see why A/B testing can be useful, but I believe this is not the last step in the process. Your audience should be empowered to interact with your company on their turf.
Companies like to be in control, A/B testing can give them this feeling, but often, the general goal is forgotten. Engage within the context of the user. Personalize.
To get a better brand experience, improve revenue, share knowledge, interact or get social.

Context Aware Content Management

In the end, we need to be striving to deliver a contextual experience to our audiences – so that THEY are empowered to consume your content through whatever interface that is most popular, or is suitable for their needs. This means that as publishers of Web content, we need to be focused on publishing a platform of content that can be accessed in as many ways as possible, and contextualizes itself based on the channel, the time, the personal preferences and as many other environmental contexts as possible.

It’s like what Hippo CTO Arje Cahn said – “MultiChannel Is Not Enough”. What we’re doing with the Dutch Libraries, for example, is a first step in this direction. Using Hippo, we are making their content available as a content service – so that it might ultimately be consumed by any service at any time.

That’s giving the organization the ability to empower the audience. And, it’s where we’re going as Hippo. Ultimately our goal is that if your audience could choose your CMS for you, they would choose Hippo.