This week we released our annual briefing on the state of the Web Content and Experience Management (WCM) marketplace. Subscribers can download the full analysis here.

The 8-page briefing provides an overview of marketplace trends and where vendors lie on RSG's "Reality Check" risk-reward spectrum. (For individual vendor evaluations by category, consult our WCM Report).

There are many ways to slice and dice the WCM market: by region, by technology, by license model, by cost, and so on. We continue to posit that system complexity remains the single most important calculus, and to that extent, the WCM market is really two sub-marketplaces: products versus platforms.

Platforms are more extensible but more complicated to maintain and enhance. Products are more immediately deployable and less developer-intensive, but bring less functional richness. Neither is better than the other, just different.

Likewise, there is no magic to any single square below. What matters most is that you identify the best-fit solution for your unique needs.

Fig 1. Reality Check for WCM Products (click to enlarge)

The WCM product landscape has remained relatively stable (generally a good thing for customers), with the exception of some institutional uncertainty in the .NET mid-market.

Now let's take a look at WCM platforms.

Fig 2. Reality Check for WCM Platforms (click to enlarge)

The WCM platform landscape is (as you might expect) a bit more active, particularly due to M&A activity as vendors try to broaden their digital marketing "suites." The major "legacy" vendors (HP, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText, and Oracle) continue to underinvest in the Web CMS segment.

The comparative stability of the WCM marketplace overall conceals some important technical changes and innovations happening under the covers, along with some evolution of business models, particularly with respect to key channel relationships.

We detail these trends and more in the full report.