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The age of legacy CMS solutions has come and gone. In this post, we’ll highlight just why it no longer works well for enterprise-level clients, and how WordPress can become a better enterprise CMS platform.
Enterprise CMS, in its traditional sense, is dead.
That statement might sound shocking, but it’s not actually new. In fact, research firm Gartner declared as much all the way back in 2017.
The reason? Legacy enterprise systems designed for comprehensive websites across multi-entity corporations had become too inflexible to work in the modern, agile digital space.
Yet, countless businesses still rely on enterprise CMS solutions like Sitecore, Sitefinity, Kentico and Umbraco. Their systems are complex and it’s not easy to move away from them.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In this post, we’ll cover the rise and fall of enterprise CMS solutions. Including the reasons behind their popularity, and those that led to their downfall.
We’ll end with an examination of the future and better solutions that are available for large enterprises today.
Put simply, an enterprise content management system is the content-focused backend of a website designed to handle more than a simple business.
It’s designed to fill the business needs of large organisations. Especially those with multiple organisational chart lines all needing to be able to edit content, or those with multiple business units.
Those specifications have led to the development of complex solutions. Designed to solve a multitude of needs for large business clients.
Multi-language websites along with those showcasing multiple brands or entities, have needed the complexities of enterprise CMS to make their online presence work.
It’s not easy to custom-build these types of solutions, a fact that led to the development of CMS solutions like Ektron and Sitefinity. Their promise of a turnkey solution for even the most complex organisations attracted enterprise-level users for more than a decade.
A closer look at the CMS market reveals, however, that not all is well for legacy solutions as defined above. Former market leaders like Ektron have entered an end-of-life cycle, no longer seeing the demand they once did. These sunsets are happening elsewhere as well, and it’s largely down to 4 reasons:
We’ll start with the obvious. Legacy CMS systems are expensive. Factors like annual fees and licensing requirements quickly add up to a price tag that can reach five digits quickly.
That pricing grows with any changes that need to be made. Often requiring specialised developers who need to be hired to build customisations or fix simple bugs.
Speaking of external developers, generally, CMS systems have been relatively exclusive. You have a user-facing end for the corporation, but the coding is likely locked down to approved vendor-site development partners.
That means having to outsource any work on your CMS to a very limited number of partners, sacrificing control on the enterprise end in the process.
In today’s digital world, being able to move quickly matters more than ever.
As Jeanne Ross put it in the MIT Sloan Executive Education blog, “For true digital transformation, businesses must embrace agility.”
But that agility is difficult to achieve with legacy CMS solutions, where even the smallest changes need to be handled externally. This lack of flexibility can be a killer, regardless of industry.
The Ektron example above shows what’s true of all legacy CMS systems. Support can go away quickly. Even if your CMS is fully supported now, it might not be a few months into the future.
With the ongoing need for updates, especially in security-related matters, planning for the future is difficult. Particularly when that future might not include your vendor or CMS platform.
The above struggles of legacy systems have opened the door to new, more modern alternatives.
Chief among them is WordPress. The leader in the space with an estimated CMS market share surpassing 65%, and a staggering 43% share of all websites.
The open-source nature of the platform and its proliferation across industries, have made it a future-facing alternative to legacy enterprise systems for 6 reasons in particular:
The basic system is open-source and free, with no annual licence costs. The only costs incurred by the enterprise are related to a partnership with a developer who can build the site on the WordPress system for you and hosting.
The only limits of the system are placed upon it by the developer and your host. Websites like The New Yorker Magazine, Sony Music, and Vogue all run on WordPress, showing its immense potential as the underlying system for high-traffic websites at scale.
Especially compared to enterprise systems, WordPress allows its users to get to that scale quickly. Changes can be made at every level of the system, allowing businesses to customise their internal and audience-facing experiences exactly as needed.
The above-mentioned flexibility, of course, would mean little if it wasn’t achievable. Fortunately, WordPress tends to be especially easy to manage, consistently ranking as the most user-friendly CMS on the market.
Don’t let that ease of use fool you. The advanced features of this CMS don’t have to hide behind any competitor. Features like WordPress Multisite are specifically designed with the enterprise user in mind.
Its open-source nature also cancels out the final weakness of enterprise CMS discussed above. The support never ends. Thousands of users around the world continue to build security updates, new features, and other opportunities to support WordPress now and in the future.
WordPress has been going strong for 20 years, and with its continued development and support, it is unlikely to go anywhere for years to come.
Enterprise CMS solution had their time. Especially for large businesses, their complexity helped build complex websites for a multitude of audiences.
However, their weaknesses, especially in the flexible times we find ourselves in today, have gradually led to their downfall.
Fortunately, new and more modern solutions have emerged in their place. The most significant is WordPress, which has gradually elevated itself to become an enterprise-level CMS platform, without losing the features that made it so approachable for smaller businesses.
Of course, that can only be true if you have a WordPress website built the right way. By an expert agency experienced in the platform and its nuances.
If you are looking to move away from your legacy CMS, and want to know whether WordPress would be the right fit for your needs and enterprise-level business goals, give us a call or send us a message today.
WordPress Core version 6.3 is released today. So let's take a quick look at some of the main changes it brings with it.
If you're looking for the right contact form solution for your WordPress or WooCommerce website, there are certainly no shortage of options on the market.
WordPress Core version 6.3 is released today. So let's take a quick look at some of the main changes it brings with it.
