University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

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• “It will do us no good to have a cheap product that doesn‘t work. It will do us no good to have a great product we can’t afford. We’re hoping to pick one that will hit the ‘sweet spot’ for the university.”

  Ray Dannenhoffer

  Chair, CMS Selection Committee, Web Content Initiative

• CMS Vendor Evaluations

  Demonstrations of the vendors’ content management systems will be open to the campus community and held in 120 Clemens Hall, North Campus.

  • Ektron
    www.ektron.com
    July 7
    9 a.m. to noon: Vendor demonstrations
    1-2:30 p.m.: Vendor performs scenarios
    2:30-4 p.m.: Q & A with vendor
  • SiteCore
    www.sitecore.net
    July 9
    9 a.m. to noon: Vendor demonstrations
    1-2:30 p.m.: Vendor performs scenarios
    2:30-4 p.m.: Q & A with vendor
  • Day Software
    www.day.com
    July 13
    9 a.m. to noon: Vendor demonstrations
    1-2:30 p.m.: Vendor performs scenarios
    2:30-4 p.m.: Q & A with vendor
  • Acquia Drupal
    www.acquia.com
    Date and time TBA

By ARTHUR PAGE

Published: July 1, 2009

The search is moving ahead to identify a content management system (CMS) that it’s hoped will become the accepted standard to be used for the official Web sites of schools, offices and units university-wide. The process is part of the UB 2020 Web Content Initiative (WCI) project.

Three companies providing content management systems have been invited to campus this month by the WCI’s CMS Selection Committee to demonstrate their products and to answer questions from employees who maintain Web sites and work on Web site content.

On the first day of their two-day campus visits, each vendor will present a three-hour demonstration of its product and a three-hour session during which representatives will be asked to perform scenarios testing their product and to answer questions from committee members and others in attendance.

Both three-hour sessions for each vendor will be open to the campus community, says Ray Dannenhoffer, chair of the committee. Participants will be asked to provide feedback using an online survey.

“We urge that anyone who maintains a Web site or Web content attend the sessions,” adds Dannenhoffer, associate dean for support services in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The medical school, along with the Office of the Chief Information Officer and University Communications (UC), are partners in the WCI, which, by focusing on a group of UB Web sites, aims to develop standards for official campus sites. The goal is to help the Web sites become more responsive to user needs, while helping UB achieve a more cohesive, organized online presence that’s better aligned to its brand and core messages. WCI includes eight pilot sites: two within the Chief Information Office’s presentation of IT-related themes and services; the medical school’s main page and three other sites within; and sites maintained by UC for UB 2020 and the Office of the President. Fourteen functional teams and a total of 33 staff members from across campus have been working on the WCI since last fall.

“We are purchasing a product specifically to address the needs of the initial stakeholders in the project,” Dannenhoffer adds. “It is our hope that any product we purchase or put in place will be something that others on campus will recognize as a tool they want to use, and that this will naturally become the campus standard for Web content creation.

“We hope the system we put in place will be such that people will want to come in,” he notes. Noting that representatives of several other areas of the university have voiced an interest in being the next participants in the WCI, he adds: “We are a little afraid that we won’t be able to hold them off.”

Dannenhoffer explains that the search for a preferred CMS involved members of his committee developing 241 questions to be posed to potential vendors and identifying nearly 20 vendors they considered as a potential good fit for UB. The vendors, he notes, included companies offering CMS products, as well as open source CMS products.

Based on vendor feedback, an official request for proposals was developed with Procurement Services and publicized widely. There were responses from four vendors as well as those representing two open source content management systems.

Three of the vendors—Day Software, Ektron and SiteCore—have been invited to campus for presentations during the next two weeks. A webinar also is being arranged for a presentation of the Acquia Drupul content management system. See schedule opposite.

Dannenhoffer says his committee is planning to make a recommendation on a CMS system to the WCI’s senior project team by early August.

He says some may raise the question of why the university would consider purchasing a CMS system from a commercial vendor when open source CMS software is available at no cost.

“It is a lot less expensive for the open source software because you are not buying the software. However, you may have a lot more in-house costs in terms of personnel costs,” he explains.

“We are looking for a CMS that we would consider to be the ‘best’ in terms of functionality and cost of ownership. It will do us no good to have a cheap product that doesn’t work. It will do us no good to have a great product we can’t afford. We’re hoping to pick one that will hit the ‘sweet spot’ for the university.”