Are CMSs afraid of blogs and wikis?
Do CMS solution providers fear that blogs and wikis will "take over" the intranet? Personally I think that blogs, wikis and CMSs each meet specific needs in an intranet. Stellent appears to be offering a "we"ll manage everything" solution.
As I'm not a technology expert, I'd like very much to know what my technology readers think about the Stellent offering. And even more, if there is an organisation reading this blog who uses Stellent who would like to comment - even anonymously? Pls share your thoughts.
Any comments, Tony?
When I spoke to Stellent for an article on their blog and wiki tools for Intranet Journal, they seemed to view blog and wikis much like they viewed intranets when they got started in the business -- ie, they were helpful, but sorely needed some order because they were getting out of control.
It's another content problem that needed solving, so they built in workflow and version control, and all of the functions that bring order to other types of content.
It makes sense. As for the other large vendors, I'm not sure what's holding them up.
Posted by: Mike | March 08, 2006 at 09:39 PM
Thanks for this input, Mike.
Do you agree that what we traditionally call "intranet" and what we now call "blogs" and "wikis" should all fit together into a user-friendly solution - a communication and collaboration platform for employees in an organisation?
I see it as different functionalities. No big deal. Yet a big plus for users. We need them all.
How do you see it?
Posted by: Jane McConnell | March 08, 2006 at 10:22 PM
I think Stellent sees and opportunity and recognized that at a technical level, wikis are really just a subset of content management technologies that have been around for more than a decade. The key challenge about wikis in the enterprise to date is their ethos of informality, which runs counter to those trying to expand an "ECM" framework.
Posted by: Tony Byrne | March 08, 2006 at 10:54 PM
Certainly blogs and wikis have different functionality than what we traditionally call an intranet.
From Stellent's point of view, however, it's all content that has to be managed. And rather than putting that content in separate silos where it can't be found, their solution keeps that content as part of your ECM ecosystem.
One of their selling points is that companies subject to compliance regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley need the workflow and version control, regardless of whether it's an intranet, blog, or wiki.
I think the different functionalities can fit together in one system, and that it's preferable to the days when content was created by different departments and not centrally managed. I think you preserve the different functionalities even if the back-ends are tied into one system.
Posted by: Mike | March 08, 2006 at 11:03 PM
Purely from the point of view of technlogy, I would think that blogs, wikis and CMSs can share the same infrastructure - a content repository, user/role management, some sort of workflows, a templating engine and so on. So I guess it would be a simple task to extend a CMS product, provide a different frontend for displaying blogs and you are done. I think Stellent has seen the opportunity and is attempting something.
Posted by: apoorv | March 09, 2006 at 10:19 AM
What about the 2 elements missing in the discussion:
- RSS Feeds
- Ajax
Blogs alone are not as powerful as blogs used for their interactive fonction attached to the RSS feeds because then it becomes a true discussion that you can follow easily.
At the same time blogs & RSS feed can be split and for that purpose you can look at the Fortune 500 blog index: you can see if Amex card has or not a public blog and/or a pro blog; but it does not provide the same value to identify that Amex card provides also RSS feeds that I can select to feed a dedicated area in my intranet...
So far Ajax is concerned, what a great tool as some applications can already enhance. Just have a look at www.netvibes.com and you will see how simple it is to customise your "home page dashboard" of your own RSS feeds.
The idea of Jane saying that there is a NET more than just an INTRAnet or INTERnet or EXTRAnet is the step further !
Cheers,
Gil
ps: even if just some posts are in english please feel free to visit our poll at http://cceblog.viabloga.com/news/92.shtml
Posted by: Reveillon | March 10, 2006 at 09:23 AM
You're right Gilbert about RSS and AJAX.
I'll post a link yo our intranet managers blog right now.
Posted by: Jane McConnell | March 10, 2006 at 09:39 AM