RE: Short list starting point.

Long post with: an explanation; some personal thoughts about vendor
lists and tier-two CMS providers; and some advice.

From: Brian J. Hoffman: 
>> has the time to go through all of them? At the other end, 
>> CMSWatch (http://www.cmswatch.com) has a nice, concise list 
>> of 40 products.

From: Lennart Regebro:
> I don't know if it's still true, but a couple of years
> ago the charges you for being on that shortlist... 
> In which case it's not a list of good products, but a 
> list of products with an advertsiing budget. :-)

At the beginning of CMS Watch in 2001 when we were exploring different
business models we experimented with charging vendors to join our list,
a practice we soon ended after focusing on analytical reports and
establishing a policy of not taking any vendor funding.  The "Top 40"
list has changed substantially since then[1] and is about to be revised
again at the end of this month.  Those curious about the criteria for
entry can see them online[2].  It is necessarily an imperfect list.

>> Is there a list somewhere in between these two that we could 
>> use as a starting point with perhaps double or so the number 
>> of products that CMSWatch has?

> Yes, the Hartmann list:
> http://www.hartman-communicatie.nl/extra/tools.htm


DMOZ does a good job of categorizing vendors, e.g. by platform, software
type.  Creating a broader vendor list that is still somehow more
filtered than DMOZ presents a difficult problem.  Eric Hartman's list is
certainly useful, especially because he gives visibility to smaller
vendors in Europe (particularly Benelux, where there is a lot of good
CMS activity).  Likewise for StepTwo in Australia:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/cm/vendors/australian/index.html

IMO once you get beyond the top 40+ vendors that have an international
or at least continental footprint (e.g. North American, pan-European, or
AsiaPac), a prospective global list-builder must wade into a sea of
perhaps 3-400 second-tier vendors with a largely regional (in N.
America) or national (Europe and AsiaPac) presence.  I call these
"Regional Players."  Based on some very unscientific sampling, a healthy
number of Regional Players have strong offerings, but they tend to be
severely constrained in their ability to sell to -- let alone support --
customers outside their region.[3]  Still, Regional Players tend to fit
a profile that makes them suitable for certain buyers in their
locale.[4]

Vetting and categorizing all these vendors (plus all the open-source
consultancies) in a way that is broadly meaningful to prospective
buyers, plus keeping the list up-to-date, represents a lot of work. As
just one example, it's nearly impossible to distinguish vendors pitching
real software from those selling consultingware without doing some
serious digging. I've dug a lot, but the pit seems bottomless.  

So someone more imaginative than I will have to figure out the right
business model to support such a list.  The CMS Review comparator
(http://www.cmsreview.com/) is a good start, but the quality of the
information will depend a lot on the extent of customer annotations to
vendor submissions.  BTW, almost every other field across the ECM
landscape shares this challenge (e.g. DM, collaboration software, and
especially Search) -- there are lots of lists, largely unfiltered.

So how do you find some good Regional Players to add to your short list
of bidders?  Talk to peers in your region.  Find out who they use, or
solutions that were proposed to them that looked attractive.  

Good luck, Brian.

--------------------------------------------
Tony Byrne
Founder, Editor
CMSWatch   http://www.cmswatch.com
Silver Spring, MD  USA
V: + 301-585-7004
tbyrne-xROWbLetBU9Wk0Htik3J/[email protected]

[1] c.f.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010809230441/http://www.cmswatch.com/Conten
tManagement/Products/, from August, 2001.

[2] http://www.cmswatch.com/ContentManagement/Products/List%20Details/

[3] You may see a lot of angry replies about this because most Regional
Players have a few serendipitous clients outside their region -- e.g.
the New England vendor with a California client, or the Paris-based
vendor with a few customers in Belgium -- but these exceptions only
prove the rule.

[4] In my research, Regional Players often:
 - began life as a professional services firm and still receive a
meaningful portion of their revenues from general web development or
design work;
 - have < 10 employees working on the CMS package;
 - follow a product roadmap driven by one or two major customers;
 - offer a mixture of hosted and traditional software options;
 - charge at mid-market or lower price points;
 - have expansion plans based on securing resellers from among other
professional services firms;
 - you can talk to their CEO on the phone;
 - etc.

These are not subjective judgments, and not every Regional Player shares
all these attributes, but hopefully this gives you a sense for the
general profile.  It's impossible to generalize about the future success
of this class of providers, except to say that their modest footprint
may actually help keep them solvent, although very low barriers to entry
will put constant price pressure on them going forward. 

Beneath Regional Players come perhaps another ~400 third-tier CMS
vendors -- usually a couple of developers in a basement -- and they have
a place in the ecosystem, too.

Regional Players frequently point out that they sometimes win customers
by replacing an "established" CMS vendor who could not provide adequate
enough local support at a reasonable price point.  At the same time,
"Top 40" vendors often replace Regional-Player solutions when those
offerings couldn't scale or weren't reliable enough.  So there's a lot
of ferment out there right now...