What/why is the CMS failure rate? (WAS: RE: ask for he lp)

> CMS that encompasses all of these elements - they complain that the
> tool set is overly complex, needs significant customization, and
> usually does not deliver as expected - leading to the high rate of
> CMS failure - forcing the customer to homegrow CMS components on top
> of the existing 'end-to-end' system.

Graham triggered some question I'd like to pose:

  1) How high is the actual CMS failure rate?

  2) If it is high, why?

  3) Why are there still so many bad (or incorrectly marketed) 
     CMS products out there?

I got my hands dirty with CMSes these past two years. I'm certainly not an
expert, but I haven't been too overly impressed with the CMSes I've had to
use over the past two years or so...

- Worked with a client using Autonomy. It was sold to the client as a
CMS/portal when it very clearly wasn't. We did find it a fine search engine
(though a bit clumsy) and instead had to outsource a hosted CMS product to
handle the actual CMS

- The hosted product was far from intuitive, but semi-usable after some
training.

- At my current gig, I (as part of a team) spent several months
researching/analyzing products and finally chose Web500. While a good
product, it was sold to us as something it wasn't. In a matter of weeks we
scrapped it. It was a failed CMS product for us.

- Feeling defeated, suckered, and stupid for buying something that, in
hindsight, just plain didn't work, I attended a local internet conference a
few weeks later. On the schedule was a CMS session hosted by two CMS experts
from a highly reputable State University Business School. I thought I might
learn something. Turns out that they had a mirror story to mine. They spent
months researching products, finally hiring a vendor to custom build a
product only to find that two weeks after launch that the product was awful
and was in no way going to meet their needs. This brought up comments from
the audience and there were, again, similiar stories.

While I obviously have a very small amount of exposure to the CMS products
out there, my exposure has been pretty consistently bad. And it sounds like
this isn't uncommon based on some recent comments in here.

So, I just thought I'd toss out the open ended 'why?' question to see what
comes up. Are CMS vendors simply selling their products to the wrong
clients? Are they not trully 'getting' what clients really need? Are clients
not trully understanding what they need? Are CMS consultants all scam
artists? Are the wrong people buying the products? Does everyone get to
leave early from work on NYE except for me?

-Darrel

--
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