As 2009 comes to a close, let's take a quick look back at the Web CMS ("WCM") marketplace. (We'll offer some separate predictions for 2010 early next week.)

I think the most important development was actually a non-event: for the thirteenth year in row, the quite fragmented WCM marketplace did not "consolidate" in any meaningful way. And this, I believe, is a good thing for you the customer.

To be sure, there were some acquisitions: Open Text acquired Vignette and Autonomy bought Interwoven, but neither V7 VCM nor TeamSite went away. In some ways, those tools may have found better homes. HotBanana seems to have fallen off the map since its acquisition by Lyris, and we no longer cover them. Serena Collage continues its sad desiccation. But they represent the exception.

The larger story is growth and adaptation among current vendors and open source projects. I'm not suggesting that all or even most of their customers are happy, but if you entered 2009 with concerns that your WCM vendor might not survive the recession, in almost every case your fears were not realized.

In fact, I continue to be amazed, and partly overwhelmed, by the entrance of new players into this marketplace. Or more precisely: older players that have grown to assume a multi-national footprint. It's particularly interesting to see newer open source WCM projects attract critical velocity. With at least ten very successful open source platforms already in the global marketplace, you might have thought developers and customers would gravitate to an established community, but that's not always the case. Some of the newer platforms sport more modern (sometimes too modern?) architectures. I suspect that as long as web application frameworks remain dynamic we will continue to see very different takes on the old problem of managing web content.

At CMS Watch we are gearing up to evaluate some additional WCM vendors and open source platforms on a staggered basis throughout 2010. Kentico and WordPress (which we already cover in our Collaboration & Community research) are on the agenda for Q1. If you purchase or subscribe to our Web CMS research now, you'll receive those two new evaluations automatically.