New owners and a new CEO. Such was the major announcement earlier this week from Swedish CMS vendor EPiServer. European venture capitalists bought out the founder and existing CEO, Mikael Runhem, who will continue as CTO and minority shareholder. According to Runhem, "it is now time for the company to realise its international ambitions."

For a vendor that hired its first employee outside Sweden only last year (in Denmark), this sounds like major changes ahead. To be fair, EPiServer already had more or less dedicated partners throughout Scandinavia, and a few outside the Nordics, but building an international organization is a complex undertaking. On the Scandinavian market its major competitors remain Dynamicweb (formerly Synkron) and Sitecore, while Stockholm-based Polopoly has been fading a bit. Of these Sitecore presently boasts the widest international footprint by far. EPiServer has build a reputation as a financially stable company, and has invested comparatively heavily in engineering and product development. Hard to be sure at this early date, but I suspect this will change under VC control. We'll continue to watch them closely.