"Tending Your CMS Garden" In CMSWatch
02/13/2007 3:00:00 PM
I wrote an article for CMSWatch that I had originally titled, "Life After Launch." I worked with Tony Byrne on the article and we adjusted the article to include the metaphor of a garden that needs to be tended after planting. The article is now titled "Tending Your CMS Garden."
Tony always makes my articles much better (although less self-serving). This case was true to form.
I would have loved to hammer the point home that a SaaS delivers better support following launch. Tony, though, makes the correct point that IT organizations are experts at establishing support and management functions for the applications they own. We are darned good at doing what we do - but I'm sure there are internal IT organizations who are as good as we are - and they have a desk down the hall from their internal customers and much better understanding of their business than we do, which certainly can't hurt.
However, I think that most IT organizations are resource constrained. I have no actual data on this, but in my experience I've seen many content management systems become poorly or almost entirely unsupported. That is to say, the application runs well - the hardware and network and database are all managed well. However, the ongoing changes required by the business owners of the content management system just don't get done. Most IT organizations only have the resources to do a great job of managing the top few applications they support - the mission-critical applications. Because content management is often not considered mission critical, it often slips down the list and ends up going poorly supported. Not because anybody is slacking - because folks are very busy and have too many competing requirements. That's why I think we and other SaaS vendors will typically do a better job at support - because it's all we do. CMS is mission critical for us.
So, here's the article. Love to hear from anybody who has comments.
http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/159-Post-launch-support
Jim
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