June 2001

THEORY AND PRACTICE

'Free' Content Management

by Lowell Rapaport

The cost of building a Web content management system is split between software licensing and integration. In the long run, the integration costs can exceed the initial software purchase. Nonetheless, the initial software licensing fees for products from companies like Interwoven and Vignette can be prohibitively expensive for many small and midsized companies.

Is there an alternative to the large initial investment that is required to license a well-known Web content management system? There are a number of low-cost or even free Web content management systems that can be downloaded off the Internet. Are they viable substitutes for commercial systems?

According to Phil Suh, content engineering architect with San Francisco-based Organic (www.organic.com), a Web site integrator, the answer is yes. "It's always expensive to develop and integrate a complete Web content management system," Suh says, "But free content management systems eliminate the up-front licensing costs and they offer nearly as much functionality as commercially developed systems."

Open source systems are most frequently used by budget-constrained organizations. Providers of open source and low-cost Web content management systems like Zope (www.zope.org) and Frontier (www.userland.com) list mostly small businesses and nonprofits among their customers. Frontier is being used to publish an alumni site for Wheaton College (www.wheatoncollege.edu/Quarterly), Norton, MA, and a recruitment site for the New Zealand Airforce (http://airforce.mil.nz).

Erik Josowitz, vice president of corporate strategy for Vignette (www.vignette.com), Austin, TX, grants that free or low-cost software might be fine for departmental use and simple sites. However, he warns, "they have no support model, no upgrade model and no long-term roadmap. When a CIO looks for a content management system, they look for long-term technical support and scalability across an enterprise."

Suh counters that open-source systems ensure long-term usability by adhering to open standards such as Java, XML and standard scripting languages. On the other hand, free and open source content management systems may not be well suited to all applications. Generally, they are designed for unstructured content. If you deal with structured content, like product catalogs and customer information, open-source products probably aren't up to the task. They are also less capable than commercial software when it comes to integrating with portal, e-business and ERP software.

Open source Web content management systems are in their early development, similar to where Linux was two to three years ago. It's worth keeping an eye on these systems to see if they gain acceptance.

Content Management ROI

Calculating the return on investment for a Web content management system is as much art as science. Here are some tips on how to do it.

1. Calculate the cost of content management by adding up the initial installation cost plus the maintenance costs for the period you expect to keep the system in service. Compare this to the costs of the system you already have in place.

2. Figure out how much more content the new system will let your employees post compared to the current system.

3. Determine the savings a particular system could generate by letting users contribute content on their own without the help of a Webmaster.

4. Compare the time it takes to deliver content using your current system versus the time it will take using a new system.

5. Calculate the cost of scaling up by adding the incremental cost of each additional server plus associated software licenses. Systems that scale up in smaller, less-expensive increments can save money in the long term as the price of processing power diminishes.