Well, it’s Tuesday morning and I’ve had the weekend to let all of the great information and ideas from Dreamcore 2010, held in Boston, soak in. Marco Tana (President and CEO), Benjamin Vidal (VP, Technology), Shane Freeman (Manager of Client/Partner Engagements) and I (VP, Operations/Marketing) saw some great new products and features that are now available or will soon be.
One thing that really struck me was not only the maturity of the product, but the expansion of the product. The terms CMS (content management system) or WCM (web content management) or even that of the OMS (online marketing suite), just don’t do Sitecore justice in trying to explain to potential customers what it is exactly.
From Sitecore CMS to Sitecore Intranet Portal to Sitecore Foundry and from version to version, Sitecore always was a true CMS and then some. With the extensibility and open-nature of Sitecore, the product could be best described as a “framework” for your website or websites in the case of organizations with multiple websites. Sitecore serves as a hub on which other web apps could be built upon and other apps integrated with. But now, after seeing the latest products and features on the horizon, I think the scope of what Sitecore provides is even closer to encompassing all web operations.
The Online Marketing Suite, released last year, was a leap into the marketing space. Now, that is being followed by the all-new Email Marketing Manager and an enhanced Web Forms for Marketers module. So, while I don’t have an acronym for it like WCM, CMS, OMS… its quite clear that Sitecore is solidifying its place as an e-business solution that encompasses content management, applications framework, marketing analytics, campaign management, email marketing management, lead generation, system integration and so on.
And with the release of these new marketing-centric tools, it will be exciting to see how this functionality is integrated with Sitecore Intranet Portal for use internally within organizations… or with Foundry for use across individual affiliate websites and rolled up across such an enterprise. There is some amazing potential there!
In the meantime, we plan to wrap our minds around these new tools as quickly as possible by implementing for our own “e-business” needs, assist clients with similar implementations, and host training sessions in our headquarters offices for any of you out there that want to get the most out of Sitecore as well.
I’d love to hear your thoughts too on how OMS and its related marketing-centric products are shaping Sitecore’s position in the industry.
*EDIT October 28, 2010. We have moved our blog to http://blog.roundedcube.com and you can now comment on this specific post at http://www.roundedcube.com/WhatsNew/Blog/wcm-cms-oms-how-do-you-categorize-sitecore-now
