The WCM marketplace

Those two types of models beget open source ecosystems that can have a very different feel to them. In many ways, the community-oriented projects are more vibrant, with more active mailing lists and more freelance talent available around the globe.

However, the availability of a recognizable integration partner or single "official" support company does encourage some customers to settle on a more commercial solution like Alfresco, even when a platform like Plone might provide a better fit and lower price tag. That is one of the reasons why a group of Drupal gurus (including the original creator of the system) recently raised some venture capital to form a commercial company called Acquia (acquia.com). Acquia aims to provides commercial support for a better-tested and hardened version of Drupal—thus far a fast-growing but somewhat chaotic community-oriented platform.

Conclusion

So, the WCM marketplace circa 2008 remains highly fragmented, stubbornly regional and as distinct as ever from broader ECM technologies focused on file-based document and records management. You can find viable WCM vendors of nearly any size, and nearly any business model—from traditional to software-as-a-service (SaaS) to open source, and more. Even when the rapid clip of innovation means undertested features and unexpected performance hits, at least vendors are trying to support their customers’ rapidly changing Web site management needs.

There is a downside to all this vibrancy. WCM technology remains persistently ahead of the ability of vendors to apply usable managerial interfaces. Vendors like to boast of how much the non-technical manager can accomplish in their systems without a developer, but those fantasies usually dissolve in the face of a real implementation. The era of the truly empowered Web manager remains in our future.