Sitecore is Rated Positive in the MarketScope for Web Content Management Report by Leading Analyst Firm

The leading provider of .NET Web Content Management System (CMS) software, today announced at the 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference that top analyst firm Gartner, Inc. has rated Sitecore a “Positive” in the “MarketScope for Web Content Management” report by Mick MacComascaigh, Mark R. Gilbert, Toby Bell, Karen M. Shegda, and Whit Andrews published on June 26, 2008. This report covered the state of the market and evaluated 17 Web content management (WCM) vendors. Gartner notes, “The Web content management market is mature and expanding. Buyers are placing their increasingly demanding requirements in a more appropriate business context and vendors are rising to the challenge of meeting those requirements.”

Sitecore is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and has won the Microsoft ISV of the year award previously. Sitecore CMS is based upon .NET technology and operates either standalone or smoothly integrates with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).

The Gartner report is available, compliments of Sitecore, here: http://www.sitecore.net/Products/Resources/whitepapers/Gartner- Marketscope.aspx (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

“We are proud to be recognized in Gartner’s report as, in my opinion, it demonstrates our success in the WCM market worldwide,” said Michael Seifert, CEO of Sitecore. “We believe this rating by one of the industry’s top analyst firms reflects our core strengths including usability and being able to rapidly meet the needs of our customers. I believe this further validates our continuing growth and ability of our team to offer our customers and partners a pioneering solution to advance businesses worldwide.”

About Sitecore

Sitecore’s Web Content Management System (CMS) and focused software solutions enable companies to deliver compelling web experiences. Sitecore’s award-winning CMS software makes it easy for businesses to create and keep up-to-date dynamic, full featured Web sites of all types. Sitecore’s industry leading flexibility and scalability allows companies to better leverage their content to improve customer experience and drive business growth.

Thousands of public and private organizations, including national governments and Fortune 500 companies, utilize Sitecore solutions for their Web sites. These organizations have created and now manage over 5000 dynamic Web sites with Sitecore including Microsoft, Sara Lee, Siemens, Toshiba, Omni Hotels, Computer Associates, WebTrends and Thomas Cook.

About the MarketScope

The MarketScope is copyrighted June 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

source:- businesswire.com/

Effective Web Content Has Personality

CMSWIRE: We’re all dressed up or down and off to go interneting. And by interneting, we mean we’re going content consuming.

You’re dressed up. I’m dressed up. So what we want to ask is: What’s your content wearing?

No, this isn’t your CMS trying to seduce you. It’s a valid question. As we’ve discussed many times here, there’s much more to content than management. You are what you wear or what you eat…or some such thing. And the same goes for your content. So let’s talk about its personality.

It’s all about letting your content express itself and show its true colors. Before a word is even written, ask yourself “who is my content?”, “what’s it look like?”, “what’s it’s attitude?”. Personifying your content is a good way to conceive of its voice. To develop a persona, determine the characteristics of your content.

Is it:

* Pretty?
* Traditional?
* Formal, casual, snarky?
* Chit-chatty or straight to the point?

Figuring out content characteristics in advance will help to set the tone for the site and for the customers.
Tailor Your Content’s Clothes

Users like to feel special, spoken to. Tailoring your content to fit their needs is essential if you want to sustaining a readership and achieve a rapport. The content of a parenting site should be different from the content of a science site. By making your content conversational and less formal it can convey a message of warmth and understanding, while more formal and sophisticated content reveals a focus on business and the bottom-line…or worse, perhaps a dated style of communication.

If your content is wearing jeans and talking to men in suits, the message will likely have less impact. Learn how to speak your reader’s language, literally and figuratively. Many sites provide dynamic content in both English and Spanish, among other relevant languages.
A Catalog of Style

Incorporating a style guide is also helpful. Not only will it help to establish branding details like fonts, colors and logos; it can be used to establish a consistent voice for your communications.

Often the scope of style guides goes beyond the web, offering templates for letters and emails. Update guides accordingly and in a timely manner. Seasons change and content can go out of style just as easily as tapered slacks.
Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile

Of course using the wardrobe metaphor can get a little old, but don’t let it stop you from learning more about how your existing content was developed and how to create new content.

Best of all, let your content express your company’s passion for what you do. Writing content that embraces your customers’ qualities and values will bring them back time and again to a place where they feel as comfortable as their favorite pair of jeans.

Source: cmswire.com

Open Source CMS’s Make the List

With the competition so high for this award, it came as a big surprise to see that the only two self-hosted open source CMS applications to make the list were WordPress and Drupal.

Drupal, is an open source CMS that has become widely used by the music industry. It is similar in operation to others such as Joomla and Mambo. It is designed for more in depth and larger sites with potentially large amounts of users accessing and updating it.

WordPress is of course the premier open source blogging CMS. It is by far the most used blogging platform out there with more plugins developed daily than any other CMS out there.

Over 1.9 million votes were cast for the 300 finalists this year. These finalists were selected (by Webware editors) from a pool of over 5000 qualifying nominees. But the 100 winners were selected by popular vote. These winning 100 products represent the best of the Web, according the people who use it.

Based on these numbers, we here at CMSWire are proud to congratulate both these two on overcoming massive competition in one of the most highly competitive web app fields out there. When competing against other well established platforms such as Joomla, phpNuke, Pligg and Moveable Type, it is a high honor to be the only two to make the list.

Source: cmswire.com