One of the biggest challenges for organisations with complex web architectures, particularly those trying to implement SOA, is deciding just what is appropriate for a content management system and what goes into AN Other application. Oscar Berg has had a stab, but I thought I’d try to give a few guidelines.

An indication that a project may be a good fit is if it meets any of these criteria:

• Written (as opposed to numerical) content to be published within or outside the organisation and administered through a web browser.
• Documents to be published internally or externally.
• Digital assets used in conjunction with web or document publishing.
• Information aggregated from other sources that subsequently needs to be edited by staff before it is published to an internal or external website.

An indication of a poor fit would be a project with the following requirements:

• Structured numerical databases: this is more appropriate to a bespoke database application.
• Draft, unpublished information that belongs to an individual, rather than to the organisation: this can be achieved with a file server.
• Loose, collaboratively-created content, such as blogs, discussion forums and wikis, that don’t require peer review. This content is usually best managed through dedicated collaboration technologies.
• Aggregated content that can be presented “live” on websites without editorial intervention. This can be achieved through a portal or an application server.
• Integration of back-end applications to be presented through a common, browser-based interface. This can be achieved through a portal.
• Archiving records to less expensive data allocations based on frequency of access or age of assets. This is a feature of a more advanced records management system.
• eCommerce sites requiring automated cross-sell functionality.

There are some grey areas which might combine a CMS with another technology:

• “Advanced” personalisation, where a website has to remember who you are while you’re on the website and deliver different content to you based on your profile. This is pretty straightforward in a CMS when applied to the homepage using cookies, but anything beyond this requirement is going to be complex to implement, particularly if your CMS is stateless.
• Streaming media will require an additional dedicated server.
• Single sign-on functionality would benefit from an identity management tool.
• Web-based applications such as polls that need to be included on a website but are unlikely to be managed through the CMS.