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CMS Critic contribution: Forrester DXP Wave 2025
I saw down with Matt Garrepy of CMS Critic to continue the tradition of discussing new analyst reports as they are released. The agentic revolution we saw emerging at MACH Alliance’s Composable Conference this year is now the primary evaluation criteria. Only 9 vendors made this year’s cut—down from 15 in 2023—and agent orchestration capabilities are redefining what “DXP” even means. The composable foundation is enabling this next wave, but execution varies widely across the landscape.
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Some Thoughts on the Gartner Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) Magic Quadrant for 2025
It’s been a few months since the Gartner DXP Magic Quadrant for 2025 was released, and there has already been some very well-researched commentary and discussion from vendors. So, rather than repeating the excellent work of others, I want to highlight a few of the core concepts and where the DXP market is headed. First, each and every time a major DXP MQ (or Forrester Wave) is released, it kicks off the discussion about what a DXP actually is (and if it deserves to be a category at all). In fact, over seven years ago, Tony Byrne of Real Story Group wrote in 2017 that “There is no…
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Is Your AI Content Management Strategy Ready for the New Era?
Understanding content management as a practice will become more critical for organizations. The Gist I have always said that content management systems (CMSs) have a multiplier effect on existing organizational maturity and practices. If your AI content management strategy and operations are already running smoothly, a good CMS implementation will make that faster and more scalable. Conversely, if your existing content strategy and governance is not well-considered, adding a CMS might actually make things worse as you attempt to catalog and migrate all your content (regardless of value) and codify all your edge cases in content models and code. The…
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Thoughts on the Forrester DXP Wave 2023: Don’t Judge an Analyst Report by its Infographic
When a new analyst report comes out, it’s a bit like Oscar season among CMS/DXP vendors. Not only do employees at the “winning” vendors get a rare opportunity to crow on LinkedIn and thank everyone who made it possible – because bragging about revenue is gauche – but it also gives those of us in the pundit class something to chew on (how could “Shakespeare in Love” possibly have won Best Picture when “Saving Private Ryan” was also nominated???) Now, full disclosure: I like Joe Cicman, the analyst who produced the latest Forrester DXP Wave report. I’ve done multiple webinars, briefings, and advisories with him…
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November Updates
MACH and J. Boye social night in Toronto – November 21st. I will be in Toronto on November 21st. to attend a J. Boye CMS Experts group in person. It has been quite some time since I’ve been to one, so I’m looking forward to seeing Janus and friends. Following this event, we’ll be at the Cactus Club at First Canadian place at 5:30pm along with other MACH alliance folks in based in Toronto. If anyone is downtown on the 21st at 5:30pm and wants to learn more about either J. Boye and their events, or the MACH Alliance – feel free to reach out.…
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How to evaluate Content Management Systems
The last five years have meant some rapid advancements in how Content Management Systems are built, deployed and implemented. However, these advances also come with a great deal of added complexity and understanding needed “headless!” “multi-tenant SaaS!” etc. It’s no wonder clients are more confused than ever. Here is our four-phased approach for evaluating a CMS: Phase 1: Background analysis & planning One of the most underrated phases since successful project execution requires a clear understanding of: Phase 2: Capabilities auditing Identify existing resources and constraints. This includes: Phase 3: Initial selection Narrow down a short-list of vendors based on…
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Updated: Is the hype around personalization dead?
Update: I joined Andy Kaiser, the CEO of Ninetailed for a webinar where we discussed this blog post (and it’s role in influencing his product direction) and how things have changed in the intervening years since I originally wrote it. We covered a great deal along the way – how technologies have changed, the role of people and process, and of course, generative AI. Personalization has always been one of the major talking points in Web Content Management – with an ever escalating arms race between vendors who have put massive investment in making personalization more complex, more powerful, more…
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October market updates
Overall thoughts on the week – There is a lot of vendor focus around two core problems these days; federation and visual editing. Some examples: There are a lot of functions like this which will get absorbed into larger portfolios one way or another. As always, the real test is to understand how well they actually work together; either within a product portfolio within a vendor (are the UX, APIs and documentation aligned?) or across vendors (how open are the APIs and UX to integrate?) First, some personal announcements: I’ll be working on contract part-time with the MACH Alliance to help with…
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Adobe Franklin – What is a CMS exactly, anyway?
I finally got around to playing with Adobe Franklin – down to getting the sample configs into GitHub, content into Google Docs and starting to understand how blocks and styles work. (My version of this blog post hosted via Adobe Franklin can be found on my personal test site here: https://main–adobe-franklin–mdemeny.hlx.live/adobe-franklin) At its core, the key value proposition of Franklin is the ability to use familiar tools for content creation; namely Google Drive and Docs or Sharepoint and Word. Configuration is done via a forked Github project and styling is done via “blocks” which are either managed by Adobe, or customized in your Github code via CSS…
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AI and content management – what does it all mean?
Generative AI is in the midst of having a major moment in the content management space. One of the long-standing hurdles for any organization is creating large amounts of high-quality content – particularly as the number of audiences and channels continues to grow. Generative AI has the potential to dramatically reshape how marketing organizations create and deliver campaigns. As such, it is now a major evaluation factor in platform selection – being top of the list of criteria from the latest Forrester CMS wave and vendors are starting to use it liberally in nearly every external communication. (I will note that most…
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What do people really mean when they say “headless”, “hybrid headless” or “composable”?
Whenever I am in a room discussing all things content management with peers and talking about the definition of “headless”, “hybrid headless” and “composable” I’ve found that even among a group of five people you’ll get six opinions. What is clear is that “headless” is a pretty poor word to describe headless content management systems, if only that as a start, its core definition is related to what it isn’t rather than what it is – specifically it refers to a content management system that is intentionally lacking delivery capabilities (known as the “the head”). Therefore, by the core definition of being less a…
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Some thoughts about the Wix and WordPress kerfuffle
Last week, Wix engaged in some “guerilla marketing” by sending a number of prominent influencers some very nice Bose noise-cancelling headphones, and a link to a bizarre “secret” site with a “parody” video of a fictitious communique from “WordPress” to their users. Apparently there is another Wix vs. WP video out there – not linked on that site, but has generated some negative backlash itself. This represents something of an escalating tit-for-tat between Automattic and Wix, where Matt Mullenweg accused Wix of stealing some GPL code for their mobile app in 2016. Tom Wentworth, a CMO who spent many a…
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WCM/DXP 2021 predictions (Part 3 of my 2020 review)
Last time around in my 2020 predictions, I did reasonably well, so I’m going to be a little bolder in my 2021 set. To be clear, I think some of these may be a little too early (i.e. ad network consent as a feature, SPAC exit, etc.) but here goes. Previous entries: Part 1 (2020 prediction review) and Part 2 (what I missed in 2020). The WCM/DXP market will see its first exit via SPAC A lot of PE money has gone into WCM/DXP vendors in the last few years (Sitecore, Episerver, Acquia) and in the past, there were three…
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2020 Year in Review (Part 2 – missed trends)
This is Part 2, where I cover some of the trends that I missed in 2020. Part 1 is here and is reviewing some of my 2020 predictions. Part 3 will cover predictions for 2021. Front-end-as-a-service One of the big trends that I missed, is the emergence and growth of a relatively new category: “Front-end as a Service” (FaaS? FeaaS? FraaS??) To be fair, this existed in the past, but had something of a niche focus; enabling Progressive Web Applications (PWA) for the enterprise commerce platforms (i.e. Magento, SAP Hybris, Salesforce Commerce Cloud). A typical example vendor in this space…