Printing & Imaging Blog

Using a clever subway map motif, analyst firm CMS Watch created a "Content Technologies Vendor Map," which is free to download at http://www.cmswatch.com/vendormap. Depicting 60 vendors as subway stations, the map illustrates their relationships to each other by placing the stations along eight different technology transit "lines."

For example, the center of this fictitious content-management city is bounded by Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, EMC, and Open Text. Other vendors radiate around these larger players in suburban towns with whimsical names like Open Source Commons, Documount, Digitalia, and Wikiville. Nichy lies in an outlying, ex-urban area. Color-coded transit lines show map viewers where each company falls in the market for enterprise content management, Web content management, search, and other solutions.

"While the likes of IBM and Microsoft can represent central transfer stations, clearly the broader landscape is marked by a plethora of smaller, focused vendors selling best-of-breed products," says Theresa Regli, a CMS analyst. "No single line is dominated by the major infrastructure vendors."

While a handy guide for sorting out some important players, the map isn’t a comprehensive listing of everyone in the industry. A key best-of-breed company like Informa Software, for example, hasn’t yet found its way on the map.

Bit if solution providers keep in mind that the map is an abridged snapshot, they’ll find a clear, clever, and easy to understand visual reference to an important category of applications.