Byrne Tony Byrne

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Big changes coming at CMS Watch

11-Feb-2010

Tags: , Component Content Management, Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM), E-mail Archiving and Management, Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Enterprise Search, Evaluating SharePoint, Portals and Content Integration, Web Analytics, Web Content Management

Early next week, we will be re-launching this website, adding some new sites, and at a more fundamental level, revamping the way we serve our customers.

What's Changing, and Why?

First, we're changing our name. We've adapted our long-time tag-line "Get the Real Story."  CMS Watch as a company will become The Real Story Group.  This new name better reflects what we actually do: offer the real story on a wide variety of content technologies, debunking marketing hype and delivering detailed, objective analysis. 

More importantly, we're evolving our research offerings and delivery models in response to customer needs.  Specifically, we are:

  • Rolling out more specialized services for those who want to focus on specific technologies
  • Improving our delivery model to get the latest research more quickly to customers
  • Providing new types of research to support customers across the full lifecycle of their projects
  • Offering new ways for you to interact with and get advice from us

More Speciaized Services

We are converting CMS Watch into three distinct services to address the needs of different audiences:

  1. Enterprise Information Watch, to support enterprise information specialists concerned with DAM, E-mail, DM/RM, Portals, CCM, Search, and related disciplines
  2. SharePoint Watch, to support enterprises who are considering making or expanding an investment in SharePoint
  3. CMS Watch, to support contemporary website and intranet leaders who need the latest on Web Analytics, Collaboration & Community Software, and Web CMS technology

We recognize that for some customers, your interests span across these Services.  Never fear: all of our content will be available at realstorygroup.com.  Your customer logins to any research stream will work on any of our websites. 

Better Delivery Model

You've told us you want more regular updates to our evaluations than twice-yearly "big bang" reports.  So we're taking a more agile approach.  As we update vendor evaluations, we'll post them individually online. As a customer, you can now get a log-in to see the latest reviews.  (You can also download full PDFs of all the evaluations in a research stream, including comparison charts.)  You can set your notification preferences to be updated by RSS or e-mail when new evaluations come available.

New Services to Support You

You've also told us that you're looking for advice and support across the full spectrum of your projects, not just vendor selection. We're responding by delivering short, actionable "Advisory Papers" on key topics, like "Pros and Cons of SharePoint 2010" and "Optimizing Roles and Groups."  We will be supplementing these with regular Webinars, archived for subsequent play-back by our subscribers.  Our first webinar will cover "Building an Honest Business Case for ECM."

New Ways to Interact

With your new log in, you can interact with us and your peers -- all in a vendor-free zone.  You'll be able to comment on and ask questions about our Advisory Papers and Webinars.  You'll be able to ask questions of us and your peers via threaded discussions.  And as an annual subscriber, you can schedule time with a Real Story Group analyst to address your specific challenges. 

The More Things Change...

Many things will stay the same.  We'll have the same dedicated analyst team and support staff covering the wide array of vendors and issues as we did before.  Above all, we're keeping our unique, dedicated focus on you the technology customer. 

We'll be contacting our existing subscribers shortly to walk you through the new system and how you can get more value from it.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

    Excerpt from the Web Content Manager Evaluation

    Web Content Management Report looks at... Image Management in IBM Web Content Management

    "Image management is rather primitive in that bitmap images, PDFs, and binary files in general are managed through the same tools, and there are no handy lightbox or onboard image-editing features as you would find in an increasing number of other WCM offerings..."
    (p. 197)

    CMS Vendor Evaluations

    Learn the real strengths and weaknesses of major CMS vendors from around the world, in our Web Content Management research stream.