 Publishing  Development opportunities in content management  Content management systems are currently very costly and complex to implement. As the publishing industry evolves towards content creation and management which handles form and content separately, there will be an increasing need for solutions for small to mid-size publishing companies that cannot currently afford the high cost of most content management systems. This will result in a new generation of easy-to-implement "Desktop Client Server" solutions. This trend will provide a window of opportunity for systems which package high-end system know-how in an easily configurable form. |
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 Introduction Publishing (or should we say 'content creation and management,' for that's what publishing is increasingly becoming) is currently undergoing very profound changes. In brief, what's happening is a very fundamental step towards the separation of form from content, towards structuring data in a way that it can be reused in a variety of ways. The rapidly maturing market of on-line content has spearheaded this evolution, but that’s not where it stops. Increasingly, magazine and newspaper publishers are getting involved in this movement and, with the emergence of e-books, book publishers are beginning to be concerned by it, too. The surprising thing in this movement is that, unlike most digital trends in recent years, it is driven by the high end of the market: while page layout, image processing and HTML-based Web publishing are handled by shrink-wrapped tools, content management is very clearly in the realm of high-end systems. Costing anywhere between hundreds of thousand to millions of dollars, we are talking here about tightly integrated custom-made client server applications that require heavy-duty databases and lots of specific programming. We are definitely not in the realm of end-user tools. (Despite a few attempts at bringing such technology to the lower end of the market.) There is not much doubt, however, that this is where the next big market opportunity lies. In a funny way, we are back to where publishing was before DTP came around: content creation and management is once again the playground of larger players, and requires heavy investment, just as publishing technology did before XPress arrived. The Next Wave Let's call it DTCS: Desktop Client Server. This is the next wave in authoring technology. The desktop market needs the know-how currently deployed by the big systems bundled in easily configured, end-user ready software. You think this isn't possible? Of course it is. The problem with current implementations of content management systems is that they have had to adapt to an unstable, constantly changing market. The world of on-line content management is too young, too volatile, but the dust is beginning to settle. It will still take a bit of time, but over the next year or two expect the first examples of such systems to arrive. And, of course, the market has to get ready. Right now there is still a lot of confusion, about the Web, e-commerce, the role of content in the on-line space, but little by little things will become clearer. The underlying trend is stable enough: now the market at large needs to wake up to it. Market Opportunities Where is this software revolution going to come from? Certainly not from the big players in the content management market. Historically, big vendors never managed to adequately conquer a low-end market, which has distinctly different needs in terms of product features and marketing. Adobe and Macromedia are of course in top spots here (Adobe's relatively hermetic announcement a few weeks ago of 'Network Publishing' also hinted in the same direction.) But this is also one of these golden windows of opportunity for smaller developers to come out with the killer application which jump-starts the market, simply by packing the right features at the right time. Watch out for it. It will happen. It's just a question of time. Note: Pfeiffer Consulting is currently conducting research for an in-depth report on publishing platforms for the future. Please let us know if you would like to be contacted when the research becomes available. 28Nov2000 ©2000 Pfeiffer Consulting |
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