Managing Web Content: Sitecore’s Rolf Kraus on Sharepoint, Open Source, and “Third Generation” WCMS

In this exclusive TheContentWrangler.com interview, Sitecore’s Rolf Kraus, discusses content management tools, approaches, and challenges and details how his firm helps organizations leverage Microsoft .NET to solve complex content issues. Learn why a code content management system is not a good choice for managing content components and discover why Rolf says Microsoft Sharepoint might not be the right choice either.

TCW: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, Rolf. Our audience may not be familiar with you and your firm. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your role at Sitecore?

ROLF: Scott, thanks for inviting me here today. I am responsible for new business development and channel partner relationships at Sitecore for the Western region. I came to Sitecore after managing a web development company and providing content management consulting services.

TCW: What types of products does Sitecore offer and what types of challenges are your typical customers trying to solve?

ROLF: Sitecore develops and markets web content management software that is used by mid-to-large size organizations. Since our customers typically have made a strategic commitment to .NET, they are looking for a content management solution that leverages .NET while providing enterprise-class flexibility, scalability and features.

TCW: Many of our readers come from the technical documentation and training space. One of the common questions that are asked by members of this audience is “Why can’t I just use software I already own and configure it to manage and deliver content?” These folks wonder why they can’t use a source code management system to manage web and print content. After all, they point out, content is content is content (it’s all a bunch of 0s and 1s) so why does the type of content management tool matter. Our question for you today is why can’t you just use a code management tool to manage content? What are the problems with such an approach?

ROLF: There is no question that people have traditionally used source code management facilities like CVS or VSS to manage vast libraries of files successfully. There are several issues with this approach as we look forward, one—you might want to see information in a format other than its original format, two—you may want to mix-and-match and reuse information components to create new documents, and three—you may want editorial environments, workflow, versioning, roll-back and security functionality that are well-integrated and easily used by both technical and non-technical users.

Looking at the first issue—we all recognize document (or page-based) management systems can manage XML documents, thereby allowing us to later transform them as needed. The issue comes in the delivery side of the equation—if someone wants the PDF, printer-friendly or PDA version of the content, you are left holding the bag to deliver it. Contemporary CMS solutions, like Sitecore, not only provide management, but also content delivery mechanisms that automate the transformation and formatting of requested documents.

As for the second issue—most ‘final’ documents, whether a homepage, product brochure, or news paper page, are composites of many individual content components of various types. Again, manually assembling content for the ‘final’ document is a tedious chore that can be automated with a CMS solution like Sitecore.

To enable greater flexibility, content must be managed at a much finer granularity than just at a document level. A contemporary CMS solution will provide that fine-grain management of content, while providing the ability to aggregate content and build documents on-demand for a variety of output formats.

To the third point—most code or file management systems were not designed for the non-technical user in mind. Contemporary CMS solutions provide a wide-variety of functionality—like editorial environments, versioning, multi-language support, workflow and so on—in user-friendly web-based environments that cater to both the technical and non-technical users.

TCW: That’s some good information. So, what you’re saying is that in order to get the maximum benefit, you have to select the right tool for the job. Which begs the next question: Why can’t we just use Microsoft SharePoint? Many of us already own it and now that Microsoft supports XML, shouldn’t we be able to just use the tools already on our PCs to manage and deliver content? If not, why not?

ROLF: SharePoint is a great tool—I have been using it for years and find that when used for its original intent, as an ad-hoc document management and collaboration portal, it never disappoints.

Sharepoint has traditionally provided a way for people to collaborate on documents, projects and structured information. Sharepoint is a step ahead of the “code management” approach we discussed earlier, as it provides an integrated environment to manage, workflow, and secure documents within a well-integrated web-based interface.

Yes, it can manage your XML documents, but provides no native method of delivery—there is the issue of transforming those documents into a target format—XHTML, PDF, RSS, etc.—that people are requesting.

With the release of Sharepoint 2007, Microsoft has positioned the product for web content management. This has yet to be fully realized by the product, as web developers are finding a significant chasm between the product’s actual capabilities and its CMS intent. We find customers that integrate Sharepoint with a CMS, like Sitecore, have the greatest success getting their web projects off the ground.

TCW: There’s some confusion in the technical publications space about the various types of content management systems. A common question relates to the “appropriateness” of one type of content management system over another. But, before we start down this path, it might be important to define what a content management system is (and is not) and what is it designed to do at its most basic level?

ROLF: Content management categories are well defined by analysts and pundits—ECM, DAM, WCMS and so on. Most people first encounter “content management” as web content management—a way to organize, manage and deliver content for their website.

Web content management has evolved over the last ten years. First generation players were good at managing HTML documents and providing a way to edit, organize and workflow these files.

Second generation players provided some separation between content, through the use of page definition templates, but still manage content as HTML. Behaviors, like workflow, versioning and security also occur at the document level.

Third generation players truly separate content from presentation—providing the ability to reuse content anywhere in any format. These systems apply workflow, versioning and security on the content item, regardless of where it will be rendered. In addition, these systems provide robust deliver mechanisms to personalize and format the content on-demand.

TCW: Okay, so what type of content management solutions does Sitecore provide? Can you give us some examples of the types of problems you are helping your clients to solve? Feel free to drop names. ☺

ROLF: Sitecore is a third-generation web content management system. Focused on a strict separation of content and presentation, Sitecore enables reuse of content, while providing complete flexibility in its output format.

Sitecore’s clients often have flexibility and scalability requirements cannot be met by incumbent or competitive solutions. An example is Dollar Thrifty Auto Group, who you know as Dollar Rent-a-car and Thrifty Car Rental at every airport. They needed greater flexibility in delivering personalized content, while reducing the development effort involved delivering it. Their incumbent CMS required them to manage over eight separate home page templates—they were able to cut that down to a single template that was dynamically-assembled with Sitecore.

Many of our clients integrate Sitecore with other systems to retrieve and publish information, or authenticate extranet users on their sites. WebTrends and Netgear for instance, authenticate extranet visitors against their Salesforce.com accounts—these are quick integrations for developers.

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