Impackt 08 — Interview with Tony Byrne

Tony Byrne is Founder of CMS Watch (www.cmswatch.com), a vendor-neutral technology analyst firm. A former reporter, publisher, international educator, and 18-year technology veteran, Byrne previously headed the Engineering and Production groups at an IT consulting firm. He is lead analyst on The Web CMS Report 2008, and publisher of other CMS Watch reports evaluating Enterprise Search, Enterprise Portals, ECM Suites, and Web Analytics tools.

Packt: How does CMS Watch work with vendors to select the appropriate Content Management Systems, and how is your choice impacted depending on the needs of clients?

Tony Byrne: CMS Watch doesn’t ever work with vendors; we only work with technology buyers.  We identify vendors (and open source packages) for evaluation based on what the marketplace tells us are the most popular tools. Then we talk to buyers and integrators to find out how the tools really work.

Packt: We recently awarded MODx with the Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. While newer CMS's have the advantage of learning from their predecessors and mimicking existing CMS's features, it is quite difficult to penetrate the market already dominated by some very popular systems. What do you think newer Web Content Management Systems like these can do to compete with the established ones?

TB: The first question I would ask is: why compete? Do we really need another PHP- or Java-based WCM tool? What’s so different about yours? If yours is truly different, and that difference is meaningful for customers, then the world will surely find you.

Packt: Drupal 6.0 has included jQuery in its core. How do you think it benefits users? Are you aware of any other systems following suit?

TB: I know other people are at least looking at it.

Packt: Why do you think that is the case? Is it simply about competition with Drupal, or are there any specific reasons why it could be important to do so? Furthermore, there are a few other popular JS libraries; are you aware of any projects looking at those for integration into their CMS's?

TB: Almost every WCM and Portal product we look at has integrated a JS toolkit or is looking at integrating one, or has more or less built their own.  I don’t think Drupal’s adoption of one or the other is particularly meaningful.  JQuery is lightweight, in both the good and bad sense of the term – sometimes that’s an advantage, sometimes not.  I know Dojo and Yahoo’s toolkits are popular as well.  Like any other technology, there are trade-offs in size, licensing terms, usability, developer-friendliness, and so on.  We won’t be looking at this as a horserace, but rather, a situation where developers have a small handful of distinct alternatives.  From a customer’s perspective, it’s one more thing to evaluate when selecting a product.

Packt: Content Processing and Content Publishing are two distinct parts of Content Management. Are there any systems that can address both these aspects in one package?

TB: By content processing, if you mean traditional, document-oriented content management, then I would say “no.”  Processing insurance claims forms is a very different task than publishing a customer newsletter.  Sure, both require security, authoring, workflow, repository search, and other core content management services, but from a business perspective they are really two different systems for two different business needs.

Packt: What impact has CM Pros had on the professionalism of the Content Management industry? Do you think it has helped to bring more recognition to the field?

TB: I think CMPros has really helped provide a venue for people managing web pages, technical documents, and other, text-oriented content, who previously really didn’t have a proper home.  I hope it will remain free from vendor influence.  I think the summits in particular have been very effective and I would hope it continues to bring more recognition to our many CMS-related professions in the years ahead.  Kudos to the various board members and other leaders over the years who have volunteered their time.

Packt: Thanks Tony.

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