RE: [cmpros] How many CMS are there?

Bob,

Interestingly enough, at the end of last year when we were going through the
selection process of our new CMS, I had to make a very rough first selection
to even get to a longlist of about 20 systems that allowed slightly less
subjective criteria to get 3 of them on our shortlist. This ofcourse I had
to defend to all the fans of CMS's which weren't even on the longlist
(across the University, we have a lot of people doing all sorts of pet
projects with their own particular fancy for some CMS), to which I always
replied that there's at least 2.000 CMS's and an in-depth survey of all of
them was impossible. Ofcourse, 2.000 was just a guesstimate, but I love to
be proven right as much as everyone else ;)

One question though; in my experience, many CMS's are either developed
in-house (we have a few of those), or for a particular client (many
commercial products started out that way), or sold as semi-custom solutions
(companies doing implementations that are more or less a new version
customised to specific needs each time). These often don't make it to any of
the listings (I could give you the names of at least 10 to 20 systems like
that which aren't in your list). In many respects they probably shouldn't be
in the list, but what that amounts to is a matter of definition (apart from
what exactly constitutes a CMS).

Should only systems be on the list that have a "generic" install, and don't
need specific customisation to run "out of the box"? That, unfortunately,
would mean a lot of commercial CMS's would be off the list as well. Or maybe
a CMS has to have a certain minimum installed base? That would also mean
striking a lot of half-developed CMS's off the list ;)

And, ofcourse, apart from the definition problem, it's pretty hard to find
out about all of these systems -- so another guesstimate I'd make is that if
you define a CMS in its broadest sense, there's at least double the figure
you gave!

Adriaan M. Bloem
__

Project Leader Implementation CMS, ICS Webcommunication,
& Internet Coordinator, Faculty of Law

Leiden University
Visiting address: Steenschuur 25, room C0.13
Postal address: P.O. Box 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 71 527 7897