Two years ago GX was unknown in most of Europe. In fact it still is!. With a solid base of customers in Netherlands and beyond the borders, you have to watch out for this company. GX Webmanager is a basic CMS, with a huge potential to make it a great tool in the hands of the webmasters that will invest a littel in customizing it for the information worksers.

Great references in the media industry.

Its great to see that Dynamic web is still rocking with their easy to use Dynamic Web CMS. Not that much have really changed since last time they were Benchmarked. That is however not that bad. Great usability-experience. Some international customers. They still focus on delivering value for every penny spend on licenses.

One of the main developers behind the brand new Synkron Via (former Synkron Web), Henrik Møller, visited us at Esplanaden 34 G. In fact we didn't expect Synkron Via to be accepted as one of systems to watch, but we were surprised to see the strength of the new system. Nothing out of the box (yet) but what a strong simple concept to bring your CMS Ideas into action. You can see that these people have been into CMS for a lot of years - combining the strengths of a simple concept with the flexibility needed for the webmaster.

One of the eZ Publish founders, Bård Farstad, visited us here in Copenhagen to show us the the new landmarks of eZ Publish. Interesting to see how eZ publish has been under the radar for a lot the Online Media Magazines. Simple user interface build to support journalists and others editors with a simple need of publishing an article. Bård wrote to me afterwards that eZ will be supporting spellchecker in the next release. Great! Thanks to Søren Blands (eZ Systems DK) to support the presentation with news from customers and partners.

Former Mediasurface product, Morello, was presented and it was just a joy to experience the user interface Morello CMS. We can't say that we were surprised, cause nothing revolutionary have been going on in the labs. Just the good old MS'centric user interface. One of the nominees for the CMS Awards in usability.

One of the CMS in the UK market was presented today. Great to heat about the plans for the "little brother" in the Alterian Product portfolio. A really spot on product for the more simple websites.We look forward to see if the product is to be closer integrated to the other tools of Alterian.

Today Microsoft visited us to give a demo of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007.

Great to dig deep into the product to see what it can be used for. Very dedicated technical pre sales explained the possibilities of the breadth of this framework. This is indeed one of the products to watch out for regarding lightweight document management and collaboration.

Today CoreMedia visited us to show all the new features of CoreMedia CMS 2008.

These folks really know how to put together a truly scalable CMS. Coremedia like EPiServer also have some quite aggressive plans about integrating Social Communities and traditional Communicative websites. They are at the moment expanding their territory in Europe. Watch out for this system. Especially if you are in the media industry.

Three wise men from EPIServer visited us to present all the goodies from EPiServer CMS. Not only did they present a great CMS, but also the new community software (EPiServer Community) build upon the EPiServer CMS. 

We have decided to include EPiServer Community in the Social Software benchmark in the community software category.

Great presentation by EPiServer by the way.

Watch out for this visionary CMS and Portal vendor.

Anders Persson from Denmark has joined the Jury. He is a skilled analyst and have tons of (WCMS-, Document Management- and Portal-) projects on his track record. He is a strong project manager with a focus on knowledge management. He has been involved in projects with different CMS and Portal platforms. He is now a working as a freelance project manager. 

Bjørn Hascher from the leading Dutch IT magazine ITcommercie has joined the jury. He has a very good insight in the dutch market regarding solutions, CMS & portal vendors and solution providers.

ITcommercie is the Dutch leading authority on CRM, WCM and innovative marketing, sales & customer service. This independent cross media platform provides commercial decision makers of medium sized businesses to large enterprises with information, practical editorials, leading research and online tools from a business point of view. This information supports decision makers in outsmarting the competition in building and maintaining profitable customer relationships.

We have just relaesed the beta version of the CMS Map to let the CMS and portal vendors, solution partners, cms/portal sales offices and CMS customers make themselves visible.

It is free to sign up!!

Of course we will make links to more information about the CMS vendors participating in the CMS & Portal Benchmark 2008/2009^® and mark up the leaders and challengers in the 10 categories.

This year we introduce the Social Software Awards^® that honours the best vendor products within Social Software.

The Social Software Awards 2008^® consists of 6 Leader Awards in the Social Award Categories.

We are proud to annonce that the main jury of the Social Software Awards^® will  be no less than Syncron Software founder, now consulting advisor, Andreas Johansson.

He will also be the main responsible for the Social Software Benchmark^®.