GDS for Local Government

The Government Digital Service (GDS) have been transforming Central Government over the last few years and by all accounts achieving great success. People are now talking about them turning their focus to Local Government but to do that they will have to overcome some obstacles.The possibility of GDS tackling Local Government is described in a…

Drupal 8 and AWS in London – Two big announcements

We’ve had two big announcements recently which have the potential to move the UK IT industry to the next level. The first is that Amazon Web Services (AWS) are planning to open a datacenter in London and the second is that Drupal 8 has been released. The combination of in-country data storage and world leading…

Selecting a new CMS for a Local Authority

I’ve recently written a report for a Local Authority to help them select a replacement for their Content Management (CMS) platform. Choosing a CMS isn’t trivial task. You’re likely to be looking for a system that will be in place for several years, will be supporting key business functions and needs to be able to…

Will Enterprise File Sharing overrun ECM?

So, Box is planning to take over the world. At least that’s what Jeetu Patel said in an interview for CMSWire recently. In it he explained that Box isn’t after the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market it’s actually after all content. Everything. There was another interesting article not long ago by Chris Walker (@chris_p_walker) about…

What are the ECM disrupters?

If there was any industry due for disruption surely it would be Enterprise Content Management (ECM). ECM came out of the first technology wave but largely as a digitisation of existing paper bases processes. Since then it’s continued to add features and functionality but hasn’t really changed much. If you looked at the big trends…

Too much code

One of the things I often have to do in my role is to review existing Content Management Systems (CMS) which have been heavily customised or contain applications built from scratch. I always reckon I can tell whether a system is worth keeping just from the number of lines of code it contains. The more…

AWS Summit London 2015

One thing that was very clear from the AWS Summit in London this month was that they had outgrown the Excel venue. The queues to get onto the escalators and up to the breakout rooms after lunch were so large that most sessions started late. Later in the afternoon they switched all the escalators to…

The Age of the Page is over

For a long time web designers and content authors have been able to change the content of a page depending on who’s viewing it but this is normally restricted to adverts and sidebars. Soon we could see that actual page contents adapting to suit the reader as well.When you visit a webpage does it look…

2013 – The year when Content Management finally comes

Normally around this time of the year the blog sphere is crammed with articles proclaiming how this is the year when Content Management, Web Content Management, Enterprise Content Management or whatever you want to call it finally comes of age. I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve heard it and how many times it hasn’t come…

Mobile and Cloud

An ex-colleague recently alerted me to an article about mobile and cloud computing. Of course from a content management perspective there are lots of great reasons why mobile and cloud go well together. Being able to access the latest up to date content on your Smartphone or Tablet and share information with dispersed colleagues is…