Web Content Management Review – Does Open Source Web CMS Fail To Perform?
As almost all IT Professionals know you must take your best shot on choosing your Web CMS on the first try. Once you commit your funds, time, and energy into implementing a system you are often stuck with it for years or a lifetime. In this web content management review we will consider whether a free CMS system is really the best bargain or a recipe for disaster.
How talented is your IT Support department? Are they up to date with XML, Java, PHP, and programming, or are they basically desktop and server support? These questions are going to make a big difference in the cost of using an open source web content management system.
As an example, OpenCMS is a very robust offering, but requires a high level of knowledge to implement. Your staff will need to understand how to implement the system on a MySQL, Tomcat, MySQL, and Linux environment, or implement on a more expensive system such as Microsoft Windows Server.
Part of your web content management review and decision process should be evaluating your long term costs. What is the cost of ongoing support and training going to be? While systems like OpenCMS, Drupal, or Alfresco can be very low cost to start with, you must evaluate the cost of support. All of these systems have professional support options which can become expensive very rapidly. OpenCMS offers 10 support incidents through Alkakon for approximately $2000. If you need support often your costs could escalate rapidly.
The best CMS needs to be evaluated on the basis of features, initial cost, and ongoing support to ensure you have the right product. While it is always tempting to go with open source content management you may find the feature set of professional systems from companies like FatWire, Interwoven, Vignette, Oracle, or Microsoft may offer you features you cannot get from open source, and may require less support due to easier installation processes, and better documentation.
The key to any thorough web content management review process is to list all your needed features while thinking about the future possibilities for your company. Evaluate your feature list against the different offerings from both the open source world and proprietary systems, then evaluate your IT Departments capabilities at implementing the systems. You may discover the higher cost proprietary CMS software is your best bargain in the end.