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Compass Guide to WCM, Q3 2010Evaluation of Sitecore

AUGUST 30, 2010

By: Tony White


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All content copyrighted by Ars Logica. You are permitted to use this report solely for your own personal use or yourorganizations internal use. You agree to honor the Ars Logica copyright by not distributing this report without ArsLogicas express written permission. All statements and analysis are based on Ars Logicas experience and opinion.Readers assume all responsibility and liability for their usage of this report, and further agree that Ars Logica shallnot be liable under any circumstances for any result of their, or anyone elses, usage of this report. All information isprovided on an As Is basis, and Ars Logica makes no warranties, express or implied, relating thereto.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ars Logica Position 3

Notes & Resources 3

Vendor Overview 4

Vendor History & Key Recent Developments 5

Prole of the Ideal Customer 6

Key Product Strengths 7

Key Product Limitations 8

Vendor / Product Report Cards 9

Report Card Evaluation Criteria - Business Users 11

Report Card Evaluation Criteria - Technologists 12


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ARS LOGICA POSITION

NOTES & RESOURCES

Sitecore is without question the marketing-leading .NET-centric, enterprise-

scale CMS platform. The product boasts some of the most robust onlinemarketing capabilities on the market today, and the user interface generates

the markets highest ease-of-use ratings from non-technical business users.

Relative to its most direct competition, Sitecores pricing is a bargain, with an

excellent functionality-to-price ratio. The companys dramatic growth rate over

the past three years demonstrates the markets recognition of the products

strengths and its appreciation of Sitecores pricing.

Compass Guide Vendor Questionnaire Some company and product informationcontained in this report was collected viaArs Logicas 172-item Vendor Questionnaire.Vendor responses were alwaysindependently veried through customerinterviews, implementation monitoring, Ars

Logicas comprehensive knowledge base,and hands-on product testing.

Hands-On Product TestingArs Logica conducted hands-on producttesting in April 2009 at Sitecores U.S.headquarters in Mill Valley, California.Subsequent product updates supplementthese results.

Customer InterviewsArs Logica interviewed users of everyproduct covered in the Compass Guide,including Sitecore.

Implementation Monitoring Since the 1990s, Ars Logica founder Tony

White has kept close tabs on ongoing WCMimplementations. Some of this knowledge isrepresented in the Compass Guide reports.

No Vendor InuenceArs Logica retains complete editorial controlover the Compass Guides and receives nofunding in their production.

Sitecore CMS 6.2Product Evaluation

By: Tony White

Date: August 30, 2010


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4 Copyright 2010 Ars Logica. All Rights Reserved.

Compass Guide to Web Content ManagementSitecore CMS 6.2 Product Evaluation

Sitecore Vendor Overview

Company Prole

Sitecore is a midsize, market-leading, Copenhagen and Bay Area, California, based CMS vendor. Thecompany was founded in Denmark in 1999 and it released Sitecore 1.0 in 2001 after two years of growth

as a CMS professional services rm. The vendor currently markets its CMS platform to midsize to large

enterprises with .NET technical infrastructures and requirements that include online marketing campaign

management, demonstrated ease-of-use for non-technical users, and a strategic focus on engaging web-

site visitors. Sitecores recent growth rate has been among the highest in the market, and the vendor

has done a surprisingly good job of maintaining strong partner relations and high customer satisfaction

ratings (which usually suffer with such rapid growth).

Year Founded: 1999

Headquarters: Copenhagen; North American

headquarters in Mill Valley, California

Employees (or FTE equivalents): 200

Geographies: Global

Revenue: $35 million (est.)

Product Types Offered: WCM

Commercial or Open Source: Commercial

Strategic Implementation Partners: Accenture, iCrossing, Razorsh, Molecular, Ogilvy

Top Competitors: Interwoven (Autonomy),

SDL Tridion, Day Software

Key Vertical Industries: Education, Government

Retail, Publishing

Product ProleProduct Name: Sitecore CMS

Version: 6.2

Next version release date: July 2010

Market segment: Enterprise

Average Sales Price (License Only): $105,000

Technology Platform: .NET

Key Strengths: Ease of Use, Flexible Architec-

ture, Online Marketing Capabilities

Key Limitations: Strictly for .NET environments, Lacks the last bit of high scalability

Highest-Value Use Case: Departmental or Enter-

prise deployment at midsize to large

organization with a .NET infrastructure,

signicant number of non-technical

business users (marketers, e.g.), and

robust online marketing requirements.


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5Copyright 2010 Ars Logica. All Rights Reserved.


Vendor History & Product Evolution

Founded in Denmark in 1999 as a professional services company, Sitecore productized in 2001 muchof what it had developed for its clients in the form of CMS 1.0, its rst commercially-available offering.

After opening ofces and doing quite well in Sweden and Germany, the company repeated the success

by opening other ofces throughout Europe. In 2004, Sitecore launched in the U.S., with similar results.

The vendors growth stems from a number of factors, but chief among them are the its focus on a pure

.NET product architecture and reliance on a network of development partners. Whereas some CMS

vendors with beginnings as systems integrators continued to rely on revenue from their professional

services business after launching their rst software product, Sitecore immediately off-loaded as much

implementation work as possible to partners, allowing the vendor itself to focus almost exclusively on

product development. This phenomenon has resulted in an unheard-of 93% of the vendors current rev-

enue coming from product licenses, a major factor behind Sitecores ability to keep its prices low relative

to other similarly functional offerings in the marketplace.

As with other .NET-centric technologies with a heavy reliance on Microsoft-dened standards, there is

some risk that Microsoft itself may launch a product competitive with Sitecore CMS. Ars Logica believes

that this risk is so near zero as to be completely negligible. Microsoft has never demonstrated serious

interest in WCM, despite initiatives over the past 10 years ranging from the acquisition of NCompass

Labs (2001) to the latest release of SharePoint (2010). Aside from such competitive considerations, but

relevant to .NET infrastructure, no other vendor has so tightly tied itself to Microsoft technologies as

Sitecore, and this includes other Microsoft-centric CMS vendors such as Ektron, Ingeniux, EPiServer, andAlterian.

Key Recent Developments

Since 2008, Sitecore has focused the bulk of its attention on the development of the marketing cam-

paign management functionality contained in its Online Marketing Suite, Foundry, SEO, and Web Forms

for Marketers modules. Early initiative in this area has positioned the vendor as a market leader in the

emerging area of Web Engagement Management. For the remainder of 2010 and into 2011, Ars Logica

believes that Sitecore will center its development efforts around improving scalability to support ultra-

large websites and providing the technical foundation for large-scale cloud-based deployments.


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Proling the Ideal Buyer

The ideal buyer of Sitecore CMS is normally a midsize to large company with a Web presence that under-lies mission-critical marketing initiatives. The vendors traditional strengths in the retail and government

sectors result primarily from the high value of the product (bang for the buck), but its recent gains

in retail reect the quality of the products online marketing capabilities. As we have said before -- but

dont feel we can say too often -- this product is only for companies with engrained Microsoft application

development standards. Java, open source, and PHP shops should move along. For companies with

heterogeneous technical infrastructure (and therefore no real loyalties to any one development standard),

Sitecores .NET foundation benets from a plentiful, and therefore relatively inexpensive, pool of develop-

ers in the marketplace. This may result in considerable savings over time when compared to the develop-

ment and maintenance of CMS platforms based on proprietary tools and technologies. As evidence of

this, 93 percent of Sitecores revenue comes from software licenses, far more than any other vendor that

we know of. This would be impossible if customers were using many Sitecores professional services.

Midsize to Large Company with .NET Development Environment

Although nothing prevents other companies from using Sitecore, the customer who can extract the

most value from the product is typically a midsize to large enterprise with a preference for .NET ap-

plication development.

Signicant Online Marketing Requirements

As a core strength, the online sales and marketing capabilities of Sitecore CMS distinguish it frommany competitors. Ars Logica recently ranked Sitecore the #2 vendor in this category.

Web Engagement Initiatives Managed by Non-Technical Resources

Sitecore leads the industry in product usability, which makes it a favorite among non-technical users.

Sitecore Will Not Be a Good Fit, If...

Customers dedicated to Java, PHP, or any other non-.NET development environment will want to look

elsewhere. Much of the products value proposition rests on the widespread availability of .NET develo-

eprs and their facility with conguring and customizing the Sitecore platform. It is also important forSitecore buyers to realize that, under the hood, the product is a complex one. You will need an signicant

pool of .NET developers to implement and maintain the product properly. The products $105,000 aver-

age sales price leads some to underestimate its complexity. And although improvements in scalability

are on the vendors short-term product roadmap, to date the platform has not demonstrated the last bit

of enteprise scalability that would be required to run the largest of websites.


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Key Product Strengths

Sitecore consistently gets the highest ratings from its customers for ease-of-use. Ars Logicas producttesting conrms these ratings, and we believe that Sitecores intuitive user interface provides a best-of-

breed content creation, publishing, and editing experience for non-technical users. Our socre of 9.0 on

the Product Report Card is the highest score for any of the vendors covered in the Compass Guides. This

achievement on the part of Sitecore should not be underestimated, as it is easier for entry-level products

to achieve excellent usability, whereas enterprise products must always balance usability against com-

plexity. We know of no better success in this arena than Sitecore.

Sitecore CMS, along with four optional modules (Sales and marketing capabilities (Online Marketing

Suite, Foundry, SEO, and Web Forms for Marketers) provide strong online sales and marketing capabili-

ties. In conjunction with the products superior usability, these modules make the product a leading can-

didate for non-technical marketing resources. Within a .NET environment, if product usability, high user

adoption rates, and online marketing campaigns are among the potential buyers top evaluation criteria,

Ars Logica recommends shortlisting Sitecore (barring any unusual requirements).

Technical exibility of Sitecore CMS is very good, due in part to the products clean architecture and its

consistent compliance with .NET development best practices. This standards-based approach improves

long-term product viability and reduces the risks of vendor lock-in.

Source of Information: Product testing (January 2010), customer inter views, Vendor Questionnaire

Below are several key product strengths and limitations that potential buyers should keep in mind

when assembling vendor shortlists.

KEY STRENGTHS KEY LIMITATIONS

Industry-leading ease of use .NET environment will not appeal to Java-centric customers

Online marketing & sales capabilities

High functionality-to-price ratio may causesome to underestimate the products com-

plexity (not strictly a product limitation, butrather a potential buyers misperception).

Technical exibility of the platform Lacks the last bit of large-enterprise scalability

.NET environment ideal for Microsoft-centriccustomers

Excellent functionality-to-price ratio

FIGURE 1 Sitecore 6.2, Key Product Strengths and Limitations


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Key Product Limitations

Ars Logica believes that Sitecore CMS lacks the last bit of large-enterprise scalability, as evidenced byanecdotal market feedback and the vendors own comments on enhancements to the next version of

the product. That said, this will not be a problem for all but the largest of global websites. Sitecore is

addressing this issue in part by laying the technical foundation with hosting partners such as Fujitsu and

Rackspace to offer dynamic, unlimited cloud-based scalability. Aside from this partner approach, we

believe that any remaining scalability issues for on-premise implementations will be resolved in the 7.0

release, if not sooner (while the nal version of this report was being edited, Sitecore announced the

availability of 6.3. Ars Logica will publish vendor update later this quarter.).

One of Sitecores key product strengths is also one of its key limitations. For all the benets the product

offers Microsoft-centric companies, it estranges Java shops, PHP enthusiasts, and open source propo-

nents. To be fair, this is not a shortcoming of Sitecore the vendor, but rather a wisely chosen strategy

that has enabled Sitecore to distinguish itself both from other CMS vendors and Microsoft itself. Given

the recent evolution of SharePoint, some worry that Microsoft may become a competitor of Sitecore. Ars

Logica does not believe this will be the case, as Microsoft has never been very serious (in our opinion)

about WCM. And even in the unlikely case that Microsoft does become a direct competitor, Sitecore cus-

tomers will bear little risk of vendor lock-in since Sitecore CMS is built on a very clean .NET architecture.

Ars Logica has long been annoyed by market misperceptions of Sitecore based solely on the products

price. Not only do potential customers themselves tend to underestimate the products sophisticationas a result of the high functionality-to-price ratio, they also commonly rely on analyst reports that group

WCM products into price-based tiers. Given the amount of inaccurate vendor and product information

available to prospective WCM buyers, we certainly understand why customers sometimes group prod-

ucts together on this basis. But we are left to conclude that among analyst rms that do not perform

product testing, their WCM reports become outdated as a result of reliance on information from custom-

ers with three-to-ve year-old implementations. In this market, it is important to keep in mind that techni-

cally similar products sometimes vary in price by factors of two or three (and sometimes more).

The ip side of this high functionality-to-price ratio is a caveat not to underestimate the complexity of

implementing Sitecore CMS. We have seen customers conclude that since Sitecore offers more feature-

functionality than some other CMS applications at a similar price, it must be a better choice. This is not

always true. Customers must take into account how long product implementation will take, what IT ex-

pertise will be required on an ongoing basis, whether added product complexity will reduce user adoption

rates, and whether lower license costs will be negated by higher stafng levels over time.


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Vendor/Product Report Cards

The features, functions, and technical underpinnings of WCM products vary wildly, as do the customerrequirements they are intended to satisfy. For this reason, the only reliable way to assure the best prod-

uct t for a particular client is to spend anywhere from several weeks to several months assessing the

clients specic needs and analyzing product capabilities line by line. Still, Ars Logica is frequently asked

to rate products in categories such as those in Figures 2 and 3. In using these ratings, please take care

not to compare products in different market segments (see the Product Prole section of Page 4). For

example, a Scalability score of 9 for an Enterprise product does not equate to the same score for an

Entry Level product.

Figure 2 shows Ars Logicas rating of Sitecore 6.2 in four categories of critical importance to busi-

ness users. Refer to Page 11 for an explanation of the evaluation criteria.


FIGURE 2 Sitecore CMS Report Card for the Business User

0

2

4

6

8

10

Market Presence,Product Viability

Multi-site,Multi-channel,Multi-lingual

Marketing &Sales ToolsUsability

9.08.1 7.9 8.3


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Figure 3 shows Ars Logicas rating of Sitecore 6.2 in four categories of critical importance to tech-

nologists. Refer to Page 12 for an explanation of the evaluation criteria.


FIGURE 3 Sitecore CMS Report Card for Technologists

0

2

4

6

8

10

Ease of Administration

DevelopmentToolsFlexibilityScalability

7.38.0 8.0 7.7


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Report Card Evaluation CriteriaIn the process of analyzing WCM solutions, Ars Logica has established a set of evaluation criteria, which

at the highest level can be separated into four categories for non-technical business users and four cat-

egories for technologists. Scores in these categories represent averages of a large number of detailed

criteria, and are meant to be used as a means of quickly comparing products within the same market

segment -- not as a substitute for painstaking requirements and product matching.

Criteria for Business Users

Usability

Usability refers to the relative ease of learning and using a WCM application. For non-technical busi-ness users, factors contributing to high scores in this category include intuitive and consistent user

interfaces, streamlined task completion (i.e. minimal number of steps to complete a task), integration

with the desktop, contextual editing capabilities, and documented high user adoption rates among a

vendors customers.

Marketing & Sales Tools

Increasingly, enterprises are relying on marketing and sales tools within WCM applications to improve

sales conversion rates, increase average transaction amounts, draw customers back to their Web

sites, analyze online behavioral patterns, and so on. This category rates the presence and quality of

such tools.

Multi-Site, Multi-Channel, Multi-Lingual Capabilities

This category assesses a products ability to support multiple sites; deliver content to multiple chan-

nels on multiple devices; and create, store, present, disseminate, and/or translate content into mul-

tiple languages. Scores in this category represent an average of a products capabilities in all three of

these broad functional areas.

Market Presence, Product Viability

The Market Presence, Product Viability category rates both a vendors overall market presence rela-tive to competitors and its dedication to the continued development of its WCM products. If these

two factors are not aligned with each other, an explanation of why will be included.


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Criteria for Technologists

Scalability

Scalability refers to the ability of a product to function well as system demands increase. Factors

contributing to scalability are database size, query efciency, bandwidth consumption, ease of sys-

tem management, caching efciency, load balancing, and mass content deployment capabilities.

Flexibility

Flexibility denotes a products ability to integrate easily with existing enterprise infrastructure, includ-

ing operating systems, Web servers, databases, directories, development tools, and other enterprise

applications such as ERP, CRM, document management systems, search, portals, and so forth.

Development Tools

This category describes the quality of a products integrated development environment (IDE), the

technologies that the IDE incorporates, and overall ease of customized application development.

Although this category refers primarily to development frameworks (Eclipse, e.g.), other ad hoc tools

are also included, such as page templates, HTML/XML editors, WYSIWYG editors, PDF generators,

and any other software that enables or eases the production, formatting and dissemination of con-

tent.

Ease of AdministrationSome WCM products require signicantly more work to administer (sometimes 5-10 times more)

than others. This category rates the relative resource intensity required to keep the system running

smoothly, where higher scores reect less work. Roughly speaking, higher scores also indicate bet-

ter coordination of application components due to more methodical system design.


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