Online CMS Systems – an alternative for building and managing interactive web content

With a rapidly changing world , an abundance of information, it is a common knowledge now that all Web sites require constant updates as static content simply isn’t useful to visitors and customers.
Around-the-clock revisions of Web sites, a constant battle between technology and content management requirements and the speed at which information needs to be distributed can become easily a big challenge for large organization, and is a real burden for small and medium sized organizations and is like a real show stopper for any kind of non-profit organization.
This is why an online CMS system or a content management system that is presented to you as a service, and not as a product could be the solution of tackling the problem of an ever lasting need to manage your website content daily and the need to do this with a simple, easy to use and affordable software tool.
In contrast to more traditional Content management Systems that are known to be difficult to implement, difficult to maintain and expensive in procurement and expensive in training, the new online CMS systems are known to be easy to implement, because they do not require any installation at your premises. They also require little or no training to be used and very importantly you are paying for these systems as you use them: the more functionality you require, the more expensive the service will be and overall these software services will come at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems, not only in the procurement phase but more importantly throughout the entire life-cycle of the service.
While Web content management systems may be effective in creating, editing, managing and publishing content, they are usually costly to acquire and even more costly to own. They are therefore not well suited for medium sized organizations, small organizations, let alone non-profit organizations who have little or no access to professional IT help at a reasonable cost. Also the fact that these products run on own servers, or servers installed in a data center makes the job even more difficult, as you need to source that competence of running a website on own or hosted servers. The sole fact of running a software product and having a hardware platform to manage on top it, always comes at a serious cost.
Whereas service levels are always guaranteed with online CMS systems, they are often non-existing with traditional CMS systems, and this is very often a cause of serious debates between the IT department or IT vendors and the business owners.
But the main reason why a lot of organizations, small or big are keen to look into online CMS system or CMS systems sold as a service is the fact that the ownership of all web content and web communication, and to a certain extend all web functionality sits with the business owners or the marketing department. If you are making a brochure for your business or organization or if you are publishing a newsletter, you are not going to ask the printer to make this for you. The same applies for a web site: not the IT department will drive your web content or web communication, but the business or the core of the organization will drive this.
Therefore the basic requirements of any tool to drive your web communication should be: is the technology scalable, is it easy to manage all the content elements of my website, is it easy to manage user generated content, can I easily change the design of my website in other words can I focus all my attention on design and content, rather then on software development and hardware configuration.
Online CMS systems or CMS systems sold as a service are the perfect answer to the desires and the needs of any organization, small or big that wants to own and manage the entire design and content of its website. The service is delivered over the Internet without anything to install, no hardware to manage, and no infrastructure to maintain. Unlike traditional software that requires consumers
to pay a substantial amount to buy the product, ensure its functionality, and maintain it through third party vendors, software sold as a service provides a transparent way of maintaining your Web site without any hidden cost or surprises and without the need to be a computer wizard other then being able to access the Internet through a browser.
As a customer, you just pay a fixed subscription fees on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis and leave the task of managing, maintaining and upgrading the software to the vendor. Vendors guarantee a running application completely configured to the environment that you have configured. Typically you will have the benefit of a Service Level agreement and typically your website will be backed up by the vendor and you will have the possibility to restore your website in case you deleted certain elements of your website inappropriately.
With no hardware to buy or software to install, a CMS delivered as a service can be up and running quickly. It can deliver significantly higher productivity gains by allowing a business user or any user to contribute and update content on a Web site from any location by using an Internet connection only. And it can all be managed by multiple people with different user rights and different administration rights. And it is all geared up to take advantage of the latest developments on the Internet, which is that you will need to integrate user generated content in to you website on an ever growing basis, but that you will need a software tool to manage and display that user generated content.