by Sören Stamer September 18, 2006 at 02:10 PM

Recently, Janus Boye at CMSWatch asked an interesting question: Is German CoreMedia still a CMS company?

The true answer is: Yes, absolutely! And no, CoreMedia has never been.

Yes, CoreMedia is a superior and highly innovative CMS company. Here is why:

1. The CoreMedia CMS product offers outstanding performance for high-traffic portals, multi-channel applications, highly-innovative services and complex integration scenarios. Trials over trials against our competition from the US performed by some of our clients proved this point again and again

2. The CoreMedia CMS product is the preferred Content Management platform for most of Central Europe's high-traffic portals. CoreMedia is the clear market leader with a high level of customer satisfaction.

3. The CoreMedia CMS product is a star in our portfolio. Our revenues generated with the CoreMedia CMS product are growing. And we see a very attractive global market and plenty of use cases for our CMS product.

4. The CoreMedia CMS product has a superior architecture. With its unique object-oriented content modeling it is designed for multi-channel and multi-touchpoint applications, for billions of transactions per month or even per day, for linear scalability, for carrier-grade performance, for seamless integration of content and transactions, for 24/7 operations and for innovations.

5. The CoreMedia CMS product can be used and is already used for various services like Enterprise Content Management, Internet Portals, Intranets, Online Shops, Mobile Services, Knowledge Management Interactive TV, Mobile TV, Electronic Service Guides, Media Asset Management, Cross-Media Publishing etc.

6. The CoreMedia CMS technology provides the powerful basis for the CoreMedia DRM product as well.

7. And CoreMedia CMS and CoreMedia DRM belong together. Content Management and Digital Rights Management follow pretty much the same idea. Enterprises want to control their content. They buy a CMS to manage and control all of their content and to deliver it only to authorized users. A DRM system does pretty much the same. But the DRM system handles rights objects instead of content objects. Put simply, rights objects are used to control the use of content objects after delivery. I am convinced that any next-generation Content Management Environment has to provide solid DRM features soon. Therefore, CoreMedia is one of the world's most innovative CMS companies.

And no, CoreMedia has never been just a CMS company. Here is why:

1. Content Management means a lot of different things to different people. Our CMS competitors were happy to store and manage various types of files, especially HTML pages. CoreMedia was not. For us content has to be handled smarter than as files or documents. Therefore, CoreMedia invented an object-oriented content object modeling to define the semantics of the stored information. HTML-pages and documents are the results of some business-logic dynamically selecting and transforming various pieces of content. We tried to highlight this, when we called it CoreMedia Smart Content Technology a few years ago. This it not classical Content Management like Vignette, Documentum, Interwoven or RedDot define it. So, CoreMedia has never been only a CMS company.

2. Static content is of little value. To generate real value content and transactions have to be tightly interconnected. Content may be used to sell products, to enable business processes, to create entertainment services, to answer questions in a call center or to build interactive services. The CoreMedia CMS product is designed to enable the seamless integration of content and transactions. Nearly every CoreMedia CMS customer uses this capability to create highly innovative new services. So, CoreMedia CMS is not only a CMS, it is more. CoreMedia Content Application Platform described it very well five years ago.

3. Classical CMS is not enough anymore. What Enterprises really need is a powerful, flexible and highly-scaleable platform to create, maintain and deliver attractive digital services to their customers, employees, partners, shareholders, and to the public. Enterprises need something we might call a Service Delivery Platform, like the Telecommunication industry already does. CoreMedia has worked hard to implement this bold vision for years now. CoreMedia's Services Delivery Platform integrates CMS, Multi-Channel Content Delivery, Multi-DRM, Transaction Control, various specialized services, Web 2.0 building blocks and a powerful development environment. The Next Generation CMS will be known as SDP and CoreMedia is again one of the leading innovators.

To keep a long story short: If you want to be able to innovate, to create attractive new interactive service all the time, CoreMedia is the right partner for you. The CoreMedia Service Delivery Platform (SDP) offers superior CMS, DRM, and more. Is CoreMedia still a CMS company? Yes and no. CoreMedia is a future-of-CMS company.