I had the enjoyment to go on several job interviews recently in the Pittsburgh area. Most of the companies I targeted were large above $1 billion companies. And since my background is in content management, having been part of the founding development team that created DotNetNuke (now DNN, or is it Evoke?), I figured I'd ask what they're using.
From my questions, two names kept coming up for the Internet web content management space, and they were Sitecore, and Adobe CQ. And looking at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, you can see why. They are the two folks are talking about. Sitecore also did a recent acquisition of Commerce Server from Ascentium, which raises their presences in the eCommerce space, which is going to be integrated into their core product very soon. Adobe on the other hand has been making moves in the analytics space with the acquisition of Omniture, which makes it highly attractive to the marketing folks, top it off with some of their graphics offerings, you have visual experience benefits thrown in there too.
I personally came off a SharePoint project, and anyone who has worked on an Internet facing SharePoint project knows a few things, it's not very user friendly when it comes to managing content, nor is it something that's simple to roll out. It has to be one of the most complicated implementations, and development isn't as intuitive for someone who may be seasoned doing .NET development.
I'm sure some readers are asking, what about DNN? Why didn't it show up on the magic quadrant? I saw one recent post on LinkedIn asking this same question. Me, not being one to refrain from giving my opinion chimed in with the following:
There are a few issues why DNN isn't there, and may never be there. For one, in the Microsoft world, the folks implementing a web content management system using Sitecore, or SharePoint are doing multi-million dollar implementations. The enterprise still sees DNN as a mom and pop solution (granted there are a few exceptions, but those are few), they don't take it seriously against other Microsoft based platforms. Open source is still looked at with apprehension in enterprises that have a MS stack. And, really what Gartner is focused on is the enterprise, and not the several hundred thousand mom and pops that have DNN installed.
For enterprises that have embraced OS, they just don't look at Microsoft as being the choice for hosting their OS stack. The power player in enterprise OS is LAMP. And the two web content management systems; Drupal, and Wordpress, are on the list is simply due to the number of installations and fitting into that LAMP structure. DNN doesn't come near to the amount of installs that those two have nor does it really fit in technologically into that stack.
For DNN to make it into the quadrant, and be taken seriously by the enterprise, they need to not be "DNN" anymore. The company is moving towards that, by dumping the "DotNetNuke" branding and working towards rebranding to "Evoke", but it also distances their community base that made DNN what it is, so they need to be careful. Until they can effectively change perception, and branding, they will continue to be considered a mom and pop deployment.
So what do you think? Any comments about DNN, or other CMSs that missed the list? Or maybe a comment on those that did make it? Since I am a Microsoft kind of guy, do you think the SharePoint position is fair, or not? For me, I'm focused on Sitecore, what they're doing in the field appears to be positioning themselves for eCommerce, and enterprise clients. We'll just have to see, but the jobs are there for Sitecore folks, just do a quick search, and they're growing as well.