CMS – Generation Next

CMS as a concept is going through a massive transformation. With the growing demand of Web 2.0 features on each and every website / intranet, products are coming up with added features. When a company is evaluating its CMS needs they are not just considering the traditional traits, but also the flexibility to embed many more characteristics popular on web.

The battle of CMS tools is getting hotter and hotter by time.  The Wikipedia shows a list of more than 100 CMS tools and each one of them claims to have something unique and innovative. The point is clear. There is a huge market for these tools. It looks logical too. These tools make the web presence effective, flexible and dynamic and to add to this list, we have some innovative solutions added, like, DAM, Blogs, Communities, Wiki, etc.

From last few months I was looking into Magnolia. It comes in two editions, community and enterprise.  Both have their own set of facets but the interesting thing is the way they are moving. Recently I saw two new modules added to community edition, “forum” and “wiki”. The message is straight forward. They want to add Web 2.0 features with their traditional CMS tool, and also this comes as under Open Source umbrella. Organizations have now option to go for more features with no initial cost.  They also have JCR supported repository which makes it more flexible. Very recently they also started looking into CMIS, another move towards greater interoperability.

Apart from different tools with different feature sets there are different concepts, frameworks also popping up. JCR is one of such concepts and has a great potential. It’s getting attention from many big players in this arena. JCRDev.com is an initiative to gather such similar people. It’s still in its initial phase but it shows how the people around world are excited about changes.