Articles - Page 75

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

Do you have an irresistible passion for photography? Do you want to show the whole world your incredible pictures and promote yourself as a professional? If so, you definitely need your personal website to achieve this goal!
Today we will talk about a website you can create even if you know nothing about coding or web development. Or more specifically, about the website template that is believed to save you lots of time and money. This website template is called <a href="http://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-3-template/59595.html" target="_blank">Defrozo</a> from <a href="https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/" target="_blank">MotoCMS</a>. Its developers claim that Defrozo is a unique all-in-one solution for a photographer of any kind. Out task will be to analyze what benefits, if any, this photography portfolio theme has in store for us. 
DEFROZO is Easy to Use
This template contains Drag and Drop Block Editor with the help of which you may compile your online portfolio yourself. No special skills whatsoever. You do not need any coding experience. Neither the assistance of well-paid web designers or programmers is required. This Creator gives you an opportunity to design your portfolio just playing with the ready-to-use blocks. What I like most about Defrozo is that there are content blocks for every single layout element you can think of. Just move these blocks around till you find the layout you need.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1.jpg" />
One more irresistible feature of this wonderful photography portfolio theme is 100% responsive design. It does not matter what device your online visitors use. They may have access to your portfolio from any device and it does not influence the quality of your storytelling. The layout and design remain as attractive as they really are.
There is one more characteristic that makes your work of compiling the portfolio much more enjoyable. You can create an original photography website design with 4 made-up templates for every single page. They can help you make your portfolio more vivid and enlarge your clientele.
Being secured is not less important feature for any person. This is especially true for the professionals, like photographers, who promote their services by offering different content to their customers. That is why Defrozo can be proud of its Under Construction Mode (it allows to notify your visitors that you are editing your website) and its activation of Password Protected Pages (it is responsible for keeping your artworks safe using the system of password control). You can enable both options in the very approachable Settings – General tab. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2.jpg" />
DEFROZO is Fun to Design
Let's start with Color Picker in the Design tab. This is the tool that can help you choose the appropriate color palette for your portfolio design. It literally takes seconds to pick five dominant colors and see how they fit to your portfolio concept. Color Picker gets even more important if you want to redesign your portfolio. You change one color in the color palette and the whole portfolio looks fresh and inviting again. So, there is no need to click through pages and change every single one of them.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3.jpg" />
What Defrozo also offers is three fabulous galleries for your photos. All of them you can find in Design – Widgets tab (which, by the way, contains quite a number of useful tools to make your website even more attractive). Exquisite Slider, Grid and Carousel are all at your disposal to showcase your talent and professionalism. Choose the one that you like and your visitors are sure to appreciate it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4.jpg" />
Besides all the mentioned characteristics, there are some more features that are worth presenting. You will definitely appreciate Google Fonts which belongs to the most fascinating developments in web typography so far. Providing you with the rich collection of text styles, this plug-in enables you to add high quality fonts to your website, to make it more appealing.
DEFROZO is Multifunctional
To begin with, Defrozo contains integrated Aviary Photo Editor. You may crop, frame, and add different effects to make your photos more amazing – and you do not need to pay monthly fees for upgrades. What is more, there is no need to install this editor on your computer. Aviary Photo Editor is always at hand, right there in your online portfolio.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/5.jpg" />
It is also important that Defrozo offers you an excellent opportunity to start your personal professional blog. Your online guests would be glad not just to admire the amazing photos from your portfolio but also to read your informative articles on photography. You can use this blog as a means of promotion, publishing different content for your audience. And again you can do everything yourself, without anyone's help just using the tools that are offered to you.
With Defrozo, you may add interactivity to your portfolio thanks to the smart use of different widgets. For example, it is as easy as it can be to manage media files using Video Widget and Audio Player.
Defrozo can also function as your personalized SEO tool. Do you want to make your photography portfolio noticeable for search engines? Defrozo photography portfolio theme is characterized by SEO integration. Do not miss the chance to use this feature! Add keywords that describe basic information on a web page, the meta description for your website pages, ALT tags and titles for images. You can be sure that search engines will spot your portfolio on the web in no time.
Moreover, it is possible to let your visitors write comments if you are interested in their feedback. And do not forget that they may help you become more well-known just by sharing the articles via different social media. What is more, you can use such option as subscription form to get new subscribers and build your own online audience.
DEFROZO is Attractive Both for Web Developers and Beginners
Defrozo has an appealing offer for cooperation for web developers. Called White Label, it is all about providing developers with an opportunity to create best portfolio websites for photographers with Defrozo under their own brand. 
The last but in any case not the least significant feature of Defrozo is its 24/7 Tech Support that is provided by an experienced team of professionals. The newcomers to the web world will definitely appreciate this feature. If you have any problems you need to tackle, you are never left alone with your issues. You can send a message via contact form and your manager will help you fix everything you need.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/6.jpg" />
So Defrozo has proved to be a reliable and user-friendly website template from MotoCMS. No doubts, it can help the whole world know that you are the master of the photography craft. If you became interested with Defrozo, use an exclusive promo code cmscritic30 to get <a href="https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-3-template/59595.html" target="_blank">Defrozo online portfolio by MotoCMS with 30% OFF</a>.

Defrozo Photography Website Solution from MotoCMS

mike-johnston

Whether you’ve already been running your virtual store for some time, or are just getting started, your business efficiency is likely to be a constant top priority for you. There are many details in operational and sales management that can make it or break it. In this article, we cover some free and out of the box features of <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link1&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a>, an open source ecommerce platform, that support both of the functional areas, and help increase your store efficiency with no investment required.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-1.png" />
<h2>Inventory management functionality</h2>
Inventory management is one of the most important store efficiency factors. Too much stock locks your capital. Too little might cause missed opportunities for sales. Either way affects the customer experience.
nopCommerce inventory management tools helps in different ways: first, you can define whether or not to display stock availability and stock quantity on a product page, as well as to not show products at all if they are out of stock; this prevents customers from disappointment of buying items that are not available.
Second, you can set up notifications that will be sent to your customers when a product is back to stock; this ensures you don’t lose your potential shoppers.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-2.png" />
Next, <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link2&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a> allows merchants to track inventory in real time, which also prevents from oversells of sold out goods.
Some business owners prefer to use drop shipping, they don’t keep inventory on hand, instead, their suppliers hold and manage the inventory, pack and ship items. The nopCommerce platform supports such business model and provides opportunities for vendor management, including separate vendor admin panel where your partners can view and manage their orders, sales reports and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce3.png" />Besides the above mentioned features, the platform allows to track different product variants and stocks distributed across several locations.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-4.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-5.png" />
Inventory management helps to track and forecast sales, which means you avoid to keep too much or too little and can significantly enhance your store efficiency.
Various payment options
According to PAY.ON, the right mix of different payment methods can boost merchants’ sales by up to 40%, due to maximized conversions and reduced drop-outs. This is especially important for those who sell internationally, as payment options vary greatly country to country, and customers from all over the world have their own preferred payment systems.
nopCommerce supports several payment methods out of the box, such as, PayPal Standard and Direct, or Purchase Orders, as well as partners with the industry leading payment providers and supports leading payment gateways that can be found in nopCommerce <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/marketplace.aspx?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=marketplace-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">marketplace</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-6.png" />
Note that for better customer experience, it is also recommended to display icons of the payment systems that you use on your page (for example, at the footer).
Shopping carts tracking and management
Current Shopping Carts list enables store owners to view all existing shopping carts of all customers and from all stores on one page. The list contains all products that were placed in carts, but not purchased. Information about these abandoned carts and their management can give additionally as much as 20% of a monthly revenue. There are can be different strategies to stimulate the customers that didn’t complete their purchases, such as gentle disincentivizing email reminders, or more pushy messages with time-limited special offers. nopCommerce platform allows to set up different message templates as well as discounts.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-7.png" />
Marketing and sales tools
Online merchants have a broad toolkit at their disposal to increase shop efficiency by increasing sales and order values.
One of the effective practices is publishing special deals, bestsellers and new arrivals on your home page. Many online surfers don’t know what exactly they want or are not aware of new product models. Your goal as an online seller is to reach out to that segment and show the customers what they are missing out on.
Another good tactic for growing sales is cross-selling: suggest your customers something that compliments the product they are already interested in. This practice is not only beneficial for store owners, but may also significantly increase shopping experience. When a primary product requires complementary items, such as batteries, getting them in one go makes a customer free from hassle of looking for them once the product lacking them is delivered.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-8.png" />Store owners can also boost customers loyalty and guarantee their repeated purchases by setting up a reward points program. A Reward points program allows customers to earn points for certain actions they take on a site. In nopCommerce, reward points can be used as one of the payment methods. This option is displayed in the Payment Method area of the checkout. Exchangeable reward points can be used together with other payment methods such as credit cards, gift cards and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-9.png" />Most of the shoppers prefer to read product reviews before they make a decision whether to put their money into it. Reviews can make your potential customers more confident, so the more reviews you have, the more convinced a shopper will be in taking the final step. Reviews built trust in your store and your products, as well as increase a store’s online presence. Product reviews functionality in nopCommerce allows customers to leave ratings and comments, while store administrators may approve and delete the entries.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-10945x0-is.png" />Conversion rates, hence a store efficiency, might also be improved by using different checkout page strategies. One of them is adding a gift wrap/message options. This might seem a “little thing”, however, it does not only add a personal touch and helps the shopper save time, but also adds to the order value. nopCommerce checkout attributes support a variety of checkout opportunities to complete purchase process in the best way.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-11912x0-is.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-12.png" />Don’t forget about SEO to drive more traffic to your site. Check that your URLs have actual product and/or category names that are easily understood by your target audience, try to avoid including item numbers or category IDs in the URLs. Optimize your product description properly, it is not recommended to optimize your products for secondary details such as SKUs, colors or sizes, rather include brand names and model numbers in your title tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags and header tags.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-13.png" />
Last, but definitely not the least important way to increase the efficiency is optimization of your marketing efforts by segmentation of your customers. Segmentation helps to aim your marketing at each particular group, which means saving you time and money, moreover you can focus your efforts on the most profitable customers. You can segment your audience based on location, personal profiles (e.g. age, gender, income, occupation, etc.), lifestyles, buying behaviour. Create different customer segments using customer roles functionality and set up tailored messages and campaigns for your groups.
—
<a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link3&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a> platform has many features to support a store operational and marketing efforts. When used properly, it can bring significant revenue hike and slashed operating costs. So if you’re looking to increase your online business efficiency, start by exploring all the possible ways to leverage the ecommerce platform’s in-built functionality.

Online store increased efficiency: nopCommerce features for smarter operations and marketing

This week we covered a <a href="/exploring-the-solodev-web-experience-platform/" target="_blank">high level overview of Solodev</a> as well as the <a href="/the-genesis-of-the-personalized-web-experience/" target="_blank">Solodev Web Experience Platform</a>, Solodev's state of the art <a href="/deploy-scalable-cost-effective-websites-in-minutes-using-solodev/" target="_blank">cloud infrastructure in Amazon Web Services</a> as well as <a href="/ensuring-customer-success-every-step-of-the-way/" target="_blank">Solodev's new enterprise support offerings</a>. Today we will showcase a few websites built using Solodev.
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/oneblood-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">OneBlood</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/oneblood-mockup-bg2.jpg" />
The Solodev Platform empowered OneBlood to drive the customer journey from homepage visit to appointment scheduling and all the way to an actual blood donation. When OneBlood’s technological infrastructure was put to the test with a 2700% increase in traffic overnight, Solodev leveraged the power of Amazon Web Services to auto-scale resources accordingly until the traffic leveled out and resources were auto-scaled down to normally required levels.
<a href="https://www.oneblood.org/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/cnl-financial-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">CNL Financial</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cnl-mockup-bg.jpg" />
CNL Financial harnessed the power of Solodev and Amazon Web Services to better inform financial advisors and promote investments on a scalable and secure platform. Built in Solodev on the AWS Infrastructure, CNL’s websites, including its Solodev-powered Mobile App, feature robust and scalable document sharing platforms for portfolio offerings with granular permissions, features and functionality that allow for quick updates to time sensitive information, as well as the publication of new content after FINRA approval. CNL’s multiple websites and mobile app also enjoys the benefits of unparalleled security and structural integrity provided by Solodev’s partnership with Amazon Web Services.
<a href="http://www.cnlsecurities.com/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/springstone-inc.-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Springstone Hospitals</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sycamore-website.jpg" />
With the power of Solodev and Amazon Web Services, Springstone, Inc. was able to rapidly deploy location-specific content to their user-facing hospital websites – all on a scalable, secure platform. Springstone’s multiple websites feature comprehensive functionality that allow each hospital to utilize the Solodev platform to rapidly deploy location-specific content to their user-facing websites. With granular permissions, features and functionality that allow for quick updates to their user-facing websites, Springstone also enjoys the benefits of unparalleled security and structural integrity provided by Solodev’s partnership with Amazon Web Services.
<a href="http://www.sycamorespringshealth.com/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/decide-dekalb-economic-development-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Decide DeKalb</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dd-image-lg.jpg" />Decide DeKalb was empowered to attract companies and entrepreneurs to DeKalb County through its user-facing website using the power of the Solodev Web Experience Platform. The Solodev Platform provides the team at Decide DeKalb with the ability to quickly add new site content, making it possible for Decide DeKalb to quickly customize content that targets businesses and industries in the recruitment process. The Website is securely hosted within Amazon Web Services, which offers full disaster recovery, and easy scalability to 100,000 concurrent users by leveraging the Amazon Content Delivery Network (CDN).
<a href="http://www.decidedekalb.com/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/seminole-county-public-schools-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Seminole County Public Schools</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/scps-mockup-1.jpg" />
Seminole County Public Schools (SCPS) is the 12th largest school district in Florida and is 60th nationally with more than 67,000 students and 10,000 employees. Beautifully designed and easy to manage, the SCPS Website is fully responsive and scalable on-demand. Empowered by Solodev’s comprehensive software training and 24×7 support, the SCPS staff can now leverage the power of the Solodev Web Experience Platform to manage their website and deliver engaging web experiences.
<a href="https://www.scps.k12.fl.us/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/florida-dairy-farmers-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Florida Dairy Farmers Association</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/fdf-header.jpg" />
Solodev empowered FDF to more effectively deliver its message and meets its online objectives. The ability of site administrators to easily keep it fresh with interactive content has resulted in big improvements in three key areas of engagement targeted by FDF leadership in the redesign. Site traffic compared to the identical period year over year shows the bounce rate down by almost 40 percent. At the same time, the pages per session more than doubled to 3.93 and the average time spent on the site doubled as well to 3:13. The highly customizable Solodev Web Experience Platform allows even the most non-technical of users to keep the site updated with new content. With a hosting infrastructure supported by Amazon Web Services, the site is secure, faster, and significantly less prone to experience downtime.
<a href="http://www.floridamilk.com/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/dr.-phillips-performing-arts-center-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/drphillips-website-1.jpg" />
The power of the Solodev platform made it possible for the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center (DPAC) to drive the customer experience from homepage visit to seat selection and all the way to opening night. DPAC benefits from their website being built in Solodev’s cloud infrastructure. This includes automation to scale the performing arts center’s applications based on time or load as well as dynamic configuration to orchestrate changes as traffic surges occur. This allows DPAC to schedule the allocation of their applications by adding servers prior to the sale of tickets for upcoming show releases.
<a href="https://www.drphillipscenter.org/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/florida-department-of-education-website-case-study.stml" target="_blank">Florida Department of Education</a></h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/fldoe-header.jpg" />
Solodev empowered the staff at FLDOE to manage the user experience after building their award-winning website in the Solodev Platform. After the site was initially developed, FLDOE staff quickly learned how to use Solodev and took full ownership by adding new sections, pages and content in preparation for launch. Solodev configured and provides ongoing management of the site’s robust hosting environment. Currently averaging nearly 30,000 users per day, the site was developed to scale in response to peak demand periods and has more than enough capacity to accommodate 100,000 concurrent users when necessary.
<a href="http://www.fldoe.org/" target="_blank">Visit Website</a>
<hr />
*Solodev is currently offering a 14 Day Free Trial of the Solodev Web Experience Platform. This includes an instance of Solodev on an Amazon EC2 server as well as 50GB of storage, 2GB of memory, as well as email and chat support. You can also purchase <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b" target="_blank">Solodev on the AWS Marketplace</a> with plans starting at $99/month.

The Platform for Award-Winning Websites

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/deploy-scalable-cost-effective-websites-in-minutes-using-solodev/" target="_blank">Yesterday we discussed Solodev's new cloud infrastructure built layer by layer to give customers the full power of Amazon Web Services</a>. The final pillar of Solodev is Support and in 2016, Solodev decided to take their support offering to an entirely new level. Here’s a list of some of the new additions to Solodev’s support offerings:
<ul>
<li>24x7x365 HelpDesk</li>
<li>Enterprise Support Plans</li>
<li>Staff Augmentation Services</li>
<li>Onboarding Teams</li>
<li>Video Tutorials</li>
<li>Technical Documentation</li>
<li>Solodev Web Development Blog</li>
<li>Customer Success Engineers</li>
<li>Phone Support</li>
</ul>
Solodev now offers standard support to all customers while also offering enterprise support plans at an additional cost. Standard support plans include HelpDesk access to submit support tickets, phone support, and access to Solodev’s technical documentation, instructional videos, and web development blog that posts daily code tutorials.
<h3>Solodev Launch: Deliverables Tailored to your Needs</h3>
Solodev’s new enterprise support offering, Solodev Launch, is a collaborative team-based approach individually tailored to customers’ business goals and site objectives. Although Solodev Launch is extremely enhanced support, it also serves as an extension of your marketing, development, design, and IT departments and can fill any roles missing on your team. Solodev Launch has a single purpose – to help Solodev’s customers get up and running as quickly and effectively as possible.
<h3>Enterprise Support: When Downtime is Not an Option</h3>
Solodev’s enterprise support plans give you access to in-house developers at Solodev who can assist you with diagnosis, repairs of site functionality, module implementations, system integrations, and platform customizations. Customer Success Engineers enhance your technical team, help champion best practices and help ensure consistency and accuracy with your Solodev deployment.
Sometimes waiting even for a couple of hours is just not an option which is why Solodev’s enterprise support ensures you don't have to wait your turn to get help. With their 1 hour, 24×7 response time you can sleep better at night knowing support is just a phone call or email away.
Solodev has an array of web related roles that can fill in the missing roles on your team. Whether you need a quick help with your design, integration or enterprise training, you can source professionals to ensure your projects turn into a success.
<h3>What's Ahead for 2017?</h3>
As you can see Solodev didn’t just move to the cloud or roll out a new release of their product this past year. Solodev made massive upgrades and added onto their product offering as they plowed through their product roadmap. Solodev turned their offering into a well-oiled machine and, quite possibly, the only turnkey enterprise CMS solution on the market of its kind. With an enterprise grade web experience platform backed by a carefully crafted cloud infrastructure sitting on Amazon Web Services and robust enterprise support offerings to ensure customer success, Solodev is definitely the CMS to look out for in 2017.
Solodev is currently offering a 14 Day Free Trial of the Solodev Web Experience Platform. This includes an instance of Solodev on an Amazon EC2 server as well as 50GB of storage, 2GB of memory, as well as email and chat support. You can also purchase <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b" target="_blank">Solodev on the AWS Marketplace</a> with plans starting at $99/month.

Ensuring customer success every step of the way

Solodev’s cloud infrastructure put them on the map at Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2016 beginning with the release of the new Solodev Web Experience Platform, when they were announced as one of twenty AWS partners to join AWS SaaS Subscriptions program shortly after becoming the world’s 1st Enterprise CMS available On-Demand. In addition to winning our People’s Choice Award for “<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/solodev-cms-winners-of-the-best-cloud-cms-award-now-available-in-the-aws-cloud/" target="_blank">Best Cloud CMS</a>” of 2016, Solodev launched their first iteration for Windows on the AWS Marketplace. The combination of these major strategic moves has positioned Solodev as both an innovator and thought leader in enterprise cloud computing in the CMS space.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i3w-GC_KXjc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Before taking a deeper dive into Solodev’s Cloud Infrastructure, let’s look at a few of the core benefits of hosting your website in the cloud with Solodev and AWS:
<ul>
<li>Deploy content to customers anywhere in the world quickly, with no need to build a data center or find a co-location provider</li>
<li>Automatically scale capacity up and down as your business requires</li>
<li>Improve resource utilization and pay only for what you use</li>
</ul>
Now let’s take a deeper look at Solodev’s state of the art cloud architecture.
<h3>Scalability</h3>
Solodev utilizes several tools to help your website scale along with your business. Solodev employs <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/" target="_blank">Auto Scaling</a> to maintain application availability and allows you to scale your server capacity up or down automatically per conditions you define. Auto Scaling can also automatically increase the number of server instances during demand spikes to maintain performance and decrease capacity during lulls to reduce costs.
Solodev utilizes <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/efs/" target="_blank">Amazon Elastic File System</a> (Amazon EFS) that provides simple, scalable file storage in the AWS Cloud. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.
On top of scaling your website and file system, Solodev users benefit from <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/" target="_blank">Elastic Load Balancing</a> that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon servers. This enables Solodev users to achieve fault tolerance in their applications, seamlessly providing the required amount of load balancing capacity needed to route application traffic.
<h3>Global CDN</h3>
Solodev utilizes <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/" target="_blank">Amazon CloudFront</a>, a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of websites, APIs, video content or other web assets. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give developers and businesses an easy way to accelerate content to end users with no minimum usage commitments.
<h3>Availability</h3>
A major benefit of being in the AWS Cloud is their multiple availability zones around the globe, as well as server redundancy for each layer of the technology stack, customers can attain extremely high levels of availability. For example, a high capacity event that could potentially degrade site access can trigger extra web servers operating round-robin, including reserve capacity in the second availability zone; a fully redundant file system in the second availability zone that is constantly syncing; master-master replication for database pairs; and a secondary load balancer in a redundant environment.
<h3>Security</h3>
Security is integral to the Solodev Platform and is embedded into every architectural layer. Firewall systems and IP-based restrictions protect their perimeter network and prevent unauthorized access to customer systems. Solodev utilizes security-monitoring applications that monitor for unusual activity and constantly screen for possible or actual security breaches. In an actual security event, Solodev Security and Engineering team members are alerted to promptly isolate any issues.
Additionally, to ensure the highest quality software environment, Solodev performs ongoing vulnerability scans and penetration testing. Solodev stands by the infrastructure supporting the their platform – any vulnerabilities are reviewed and patches are applied according to documented timelines and the severity of the vulnerability. To prevent unauthorized users from accessing a customer’s instance, Solodev also offers granular permission settings.
Solodev is currently offering a 14 Day Free Trial of the Solodev Web Experience Platform. This includes an instance of Solodev on an Amazon EC2 server as well as 50GB of storage, 2GB of memory, as well as email and chat support.

Deploy scalable, cost-effective websites in minutes using Solodev

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/exploring-the-solodev-web-experience-platform/" target="_blank">Yesterday we kicked off Solodev's featured week with a high level overview of the new Solodev Web Experience Platform.</a>
Today, we're going to do a deep dive into the platform. Solodev made major strides in their product roadmap this year from being just another player in the enterprise content management space to disrupting the space by becoming the world’s first enterprise content management system available on-demand in the Amazon Web Services Cloud.
On top of their move to the cloud and all that entails such as unparalleled levels of security, scalability, and reliability, Solodev also shifted its focus towards empowering marketing teams to use Solodev to target customer segments with tailor made content.
Solodev also rolled out a new short code language to make web development in Solodev easier for the non-technical user. Other features rolled out include its own website analytics application as well as Solodev Experiments which allow you to A/B test pieces of content against one another. Last and certainly not least, 2016 marked the first year Solodev released a Windows flavor of their flagship product. The combination of these major strides makes Solodev a serious contender in the enterprise content management space in 2017.
Now let’s take a look under the hood…
<h3>Enterprise Features</h3>
Solodev includes enterprise features such as multisite management, granular permissions, content scheduling, staging, and publishing, approval workflows, versioning, digital asset management, and just about every other standard enterprise CMS feature on the market. Like all aspects of Solodev, however, they have made major strides in their enterprise product feature set as well, improving existing features and adding new features such as:
* Native Analytics
* CodeMirror to enhance “in CMS” coding
* Templating Language (Short Codes)
* Theme Importer
* Drag and Drop Form Builder
* Improved SEO-friendly URLs
* Solodev Experiments for A/B Testing Content
* Table Schema Editor
* New Meta Tags for Social Media
* Redesigned Dashboard
What sets Solodev’s enterprise features apart from their competition isn’t the mere existence of their feature set; it’s the way they implemented their features both old and new to improve their ease of use and maximize the desired effect of the function of every feature. Moving on…
<h3>Custom Applications</h3>
One of the coolest things about Solodev is its application development framework, which utilizes “modules” to enable you to build literally any custom web application you can think of.
The role of an application or “module” in Solodev is to manage how data entered into the module is displayed on your website. Modules are extremely powerful and creating your own is fairly easy due to Solodev’s extensive documentation and optional short code language. Solodev allows you to customize which entries are included, how the entries' information is displayed and what information you want to be displayed on your website.
Solodev also provides short codes that you can use to print this data on your web pages. Again, this is all thoroughly documented and Solodev is kind enough to provide the sample code that powers their most popular enterprise modules, which you can customize to fit your needs.
<h3>Develop Websites Faster with Solodev</h3>
The staple of the Solodev <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">Web Experience Platform</a> is a templating system that speeds up development time by preventing the need to duplicate HTML code during web development. When you build your website in Solodev, you build what are called “page templates” such as your home template, sectional, and content templates, etc. When adding web pages to your website, you can simply use these page templates and insert new content into drop zones within those templates. In essence, you can build a 50,000 page website and only actual code three templates in a matter of a few hours. Solodev is definitely at the frontier of streamlined web development within a CMS platform.
As a standalone CMS for the Enterprise, Solodev has everything you need and perhaps a bit more. What makes Solodev particularly unique from a web design perspective is its “blank canvas” philosophy where it doesn’t restrict you or force you to compromise on design. If you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can begin coding your website within minutes of purchasing Solodev directly in the platform. And as if that wasn’t cool enough, Solodev is one of the only web development platforms that actually allows you to see what you are building as you are building it.
Solodev is currently offering a 14 Day Free Trial of the Solodev Web Experience Platform. This includes an instance of Solodev on an Amazon EC2 server as well as 50GB of storage, 2GB of memory, as well as email and chat support.

The Genesis of the Personalized Web Experience

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It’s time to kick off another featured week, this time with Solodev, winner of our People’s Choice Award for “Best Cloud CMS of 2016”. Solodev is a cloud-based enterprise-grade <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">web experience platform</a> designed to empower organizations and developers to build beautiful websites and deliver amazing digital experiences.
Launched in 2006, Solodev is well established in the content management space, serving clients across the globe in a wide range of verticals.
As new trends and practices have emerged in the CMS space, the Solodev team has carefully constructed its latest software release with two major points of focus: the digital experience and their new cloud infrastructure.
Solodev’s latest release comes with a marketing toolbox to help marketers and content authors tailor the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/inside-the-machine-of-the-digital-experience/">digital experience</a> to the end user. Additionally, Solodev is now fully optimized for the entire Amazon Web Services product suite, giving users the ability to rapidly deploy websites with unparalleled levels of security and scalability. As they pivot towards the cloud and digital experiences, Solodev continues to add to its existing functionality and pave the way within the enterprise WCMS industry. Solodev also released their first flavor of their platform for Windows adding to an already lengthy list of achievements in 2016.
Over the next five days we will be reviewing the three pillars of Solodev:
<ul>
<li>The Solodev Web Experience Platform</li>
<li>Solodev’s New Cloud Environment</li>
<li>Solodev’s New U.S. Based Enterprise Support Offering</li>
</ul>
The Solodev Web Experience Platform
Solodev is a platform that boasts interactive page building, built-in analytics, landing page creation and management, a framework to easily build custom applications, and the ability to deliver the right experience to the right audience at the right time through content targeting to different customer segments. But perhaps most importantly for big brands, Solodev has the security and scalability that comes with being housed in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.
Enterprise Content Management in the Cloud
Solodev’s move to the cloud allows brands to leverage Solodev as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. That means once you’re signed up your brand will have everything it needs to kick off its large-scale web project, instantaneously. Solodev delivers robust support for elastic load balancing, auto scaling, global CDNs, and disaster recovery – keeping customer data safe and secure across Amazon Web Services global network of state-of-the-art data centers.
AWS provides a cloud-based experience with world-renowned infrastructure and rapid content delivery. Solodev hasn’t tried to re-invent the wheel here; they’ve used the best technology to support their platform. It’s that simple.
Thanks to that intelligent decision, Solodev users benefit from:
<ul>
<li>Scalability
<ul>
<li>Elastic Load Balancing</li>
<li>Auto Scaling</li>
<li>Elastic File Storage</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Global CDN
<ul>
<li>AWS CloudFront</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Availability Zones</li>
<li>Security
<ul>
<li>24/7/365 Monitoring</li>
<li>Server Redundancy</li>
<li>Network Firewalls</li>
<li>IP-based restrictions</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/" target="_blank">*Click here for a map of Amazon Web Services availability zones</a>
The benefits of Solodev’s AWS Cloud Infrastructure don’t stop there, though. The sheer amount of server availability zones across the globe puts your website close to your audience, no matter where they are in the world.
Furthermore, Solodev is capable of scaling up resources at any time (like, during peak hours or peak season), before scaling them back down again during quieter periods. And what’s more is, you only pay for the resources that your sites uses. Now that’s intelligent.
Superb Support Options
Solodev offers an unparalleled online knowledge base packaged with hundreds of pages of documentation and how-to-guides and videos to guide you through using the Solodev Platform. Solodev also rolled out an online support ticketing system that is available to all Solodev users. This is further backed by an industry leading web development blog that equips readers with the knowledge they need in order to build better websites, particularly on the Solodev Platform.
And if all of that isn’t enough, Solodev released a new offering called “Solodev Launch” that can provide dedicated launch teams to augment your internal IT department “a la carte” with your online project development needs.
Getting Started with Solodev
Solodev offers three subscription plans for brands to get started with their platform. Plans start from $99/month as shown below.
<ul>
<li>Small – Single Server Instance ($99/month)</li>
<li>Medium – Single Server Instance ($399/month)</li>
<li>Cluster – Multi Server Cluster ($1,830/month)</li>
<li>Enterprise – Multi Server Cluster (Call 1-800-859-7656 for details)</li>
<li>Enterprise – On-Premise (Call 1-800-859-7656 for details)</li>
</ul>
*For more information on Solodev Pricing, visit their pricing page.
To learn more about Solodev, check out their website at <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">www.solodev.com</a> and their <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/products/solodev-cms/" target="_blank">Solodev CMSCritic Listing</a>. And of course, be sure to stay tuned for more featured coverage during this Solodev featured week.

Exploring the Solodev Web Experience Platform

Ghost, the popular WordPress alternative, has some interesting news this week. They've announced a new $45,000 developer program to help build and develop new exciting publications. As part of this new initiative, here's what they are offering:
<blockquote>
We’re looking for 3 passionate teams to work with for the next year, and help them create the web’s next important destinations for great journalism. As well as significant financial support, we’re offering up our full engineering team to help build and release the technology which they need.
</blockquote>
Here's how it works and why I think it's going to be a very smart move for Ghost. Rather than attempt to fill their CMS with features based on what they think publishers need, they are going to build and fund 3 great publications of the future, and build their technology around their needs.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/journalism914x0-is.jpg" />This, in my opinion, is one of the most intelligent intitiatives I've seen in quite some time from a CMS development group. Just like with a customer, this will enable them to find those small, niggling things that can end up making their product invaluable for future consumers. It's a brilliant way to target your product towards a specific niche; in this case journalistic endeavours; and really focus in on excelling in one niche area.
I've always found Ghost an interesting alternative platform to traditional blogging software and now I think they are on the right track to become one of the best for publishing. I'll be paying close attention to their successes.
To learn more about this new endeavour, check out <a href="https://blog.ghost.org/journalism/" target="_blank">https://blog.ghost.org/journalism/</a>

Ghost Announces Ghost for Journalism

Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of <a href="http://www.epicor.com/industries/default.aspx">industry-specific enterprise software</a> to promote business growth, today announced that it has acquired privately-held docSTAR, an award-winning developer of document management software based in Schenectady, New York. The transaction closed on Jan. 3, financial terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition brings docSTAR collaborative cloud-based enterprise content management (ECM) and automated accounts payable (AP) solutions to the Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions portfolio. Founded in 1996, docSTAR has over 20 years of experience delivering solutions that enable organizations to increase productivity, reduce cost and transaction cycle times through business process automation.
Today, nearly 2,000 organizations in North America rely on docSTAR solutions—available as a cloud hosted service or on premises. docSTAR enables customers to streamline business processes with smart enterprise content management, document management, automated accounts payable and electronic forms technology that integrates with third party ERP solutions. docSTAR solutions are suitable for a number of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, legal, non-profit, education and the public sector. docSTAR customers include <a href="http://www.docstar.com/customer-success/allison-marine">Allison Marine Contractors, Inc.</a>, Crescent Crown Distribution, the <a href="http://www.docstar.com/customer-success/cleveland-indians">Cleveland Indians</a>, <a href="http://www.docstar.com/customer-success/mohawk-fine-papers-inc">Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc.</a>, and the <a href="http://www.docstar.com/customer-success/united-way-greater-knoxville">United Way of Greater Knoxville</a>, to name a few.
“The acquisition of docSTAR supports our strategy to strengthen and expand our cloud offerings to continually enhance customer experience and the value we deliver to our customers,” said Kathy Crusco, chief operating and financial officer, Epicor. “docSTAR brings valuable knowledge and experience in the development and implementation of cloud-based document management software, with a successful track record integrating its solutions with leading ERP offerings. A near term focus following the acquisition will be on extending docSTAR integration to Epicor ERP.”
With the close of the acquisition, former President and CEO of docSTAR, Tom Franceski, will lead the document management business at Epicor as general manager reporting directly to Crusco.
“We are excited to join forces with Epicor, a recognized leader in the global ERP market, as we share a commitment to enhance the customer experience through cloud offerings that automate business processes and promote growth,” said Franceski. “The increased scale gained as part of a global organization will enable us to further technology innovation to deliver greater value to customers.”

Epicor Acquires Leading Document Management Software Provider docSTAR and Expands Cloud-Based Solutions Portfolio

The Danish social Intranet company Colibo Inc. has just raised its first major venture funding from a series of prominent investors alongside the Danish Growth Fund. Colibo is injected with an investment in the DKK double-digit million range – funds that are to be used for establishing the company in the US and UK and the further development of the company’s Social Intranet solution, Colibo. Colibo has been on an amazing growth path. The first Intranet solution was installed in 2014, and Colibo has gained significant market shares in Denmark in just a short period of time. Now, the Colibo-solution is to be released internationally, and the company is to be established in the US and UK.
+70,000 users in more than 14 countries
Colibo is a user-friendly and dynamic Intranet alternative for companies and organizations that otherwise would have used Microsoft Sharepoint as their digital workspace solution. The Colibo solution has more than 70,000 users across 14 countries, and customers include The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Central Denmark Region, Kosan Crisplant, Clipper Group and several Danish municipalities.
Social Intranet tools raise productivity with up to 25 %
According to McKinsey Global Institute analysis1, companies can raise productivity of their administrative staff with up to 25 % by using social Intranet tools, making the knowledge of the organization searchable and by basing the company on a communication platform that supports social workgroups.
Colibo is a spin-off of Mediaworkers – a digital agency, recently awarded the fast-growth company prize for the second consecutive year, and who has brought Colibo all the way to Series A venture through independent financing.
“We are very excited about raising capital as well as gathering a team of investors with solid international software experience. Likewise, we are now able to execute our product roadmap for Colibo, catapulting our software to rank among the very best in the world”, says Mogens Sejer Iversen, CEO and Founding Partner of Colibo.
Mogens Sejer Iversen is now handing over the CEO position in Mediaworkers to Henrik Sejer Gelineck Berg, currently the the company’s CFO. However, Mogens Sejer Iversen continues as head of Mediaworkers Group – the underlying holding company that (among others) is the sole owner of the successful games studio Funday Factory.
Prominent investors ensure the next growth phase Stig Hølledig who is known from the software unicorn Sitecore, is among the Colibo investors says about the potential with Colibo: “Globally, we are facing a growing number of companies who are going to replace their old Intranets with more dynamic digital workspaces over the next couple of years. We are closing this market demand perfectly with Colibo. At the same time, we – the investor – are very impressed with the significant value the solution provides including very satisfied customers representing some of the most demanding organizations in the country,” Stig Hølledig says.
To learn more, visit http://colibo.com/

Innovative Danish software-startup raises millions in venture funding

It looks as though the popular project / task management software, Trello, has caught the interest of a buyer! Atlassian, makers of JIRA and Confluence (amongst other things), have announced their purchase of the popular service.
Trello is something I've personally used for quite some time on CMS Critic and I'm excited to see what improvements we can expect from this purchase. It's my hope that rather than absorb the service and discontinue it, that Atlassian expands on the great offering that's already there and builds it into something even more amazing.
According to a <a href="http://blog.trello.com/trello-atlassian" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recent blog post</a> from Trello CEO, Michael Pryor:
<blockquote>
“..you can expect Trello to become even more awesome and more fun than it is today. We’re as committed to our original vision and brand as we were on launch day but we now have more firepower to fulfill that mission. We will continue operating as a standalone service, and we will continue to integrate deeply with all of the tools available out there that help people collaborate (and you can look forward to some great integrations with HipChat, Confluence and JIRA).”
</blockquote>
Thankfully, according to Atlassian Co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, it looks as though for now they do intend to maintain Trello as a stand alone service:
<blockquote>
If you currently use Trello as either a free or paid user, you can rest assured that we will continue to offer Trello as a standalone service. We’ll be working with their product team to help them accelerate development efforts. If you are an Atlassian user, I encourage you to set up an account on Trello and check out how it might work for your team.
</blockquote>
To learn more about the acquisition and both companies plans to proceed, read the following posts:
<a href="https://blogs.atlassian.com/2017/01/atlassian-plus-trello/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://blogs.atlassian.com/2017/01/atlassian-plus-trello/ </a>
<a href="http://blog.trello.com/trello-atlassian" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://blog.trello.com/trello-atlassian</a>

Trello Is Being Acquired By Atlassian

Many business owners and executives have only recently began hearing terms like ‘Web Experience Platform’, or ‘Enterprise Web Content Management’. These platforms allow businesses to build and manage their websites and mobile apps in a central location and make content edits/updates. They also provide robust digital marketing, lead capture, automated email marketing, site analytics, e-Commerce, amongst other features and functionality.
Maybe you have no idea what a “CMS” is. Maybe “Digital Experience” means nothing to you. It’s probably because your web development or ad agency – or whoever manages your online presence – doesn’t want you to know. Why not? Because they want you to continue believing that only they can do what they do.
It’s difficult to explain web content management to people who are so used to having little to no control over their online presence. It’s like explaining the concept of the telephone to a 19th century Western Union messenger. It's commonplace that if an employee wants to edit content their website they would have to call corporate and the IT department’s turnaround time can range from that day of to several months. With a CMS or it's more evolved counterpart, the Web Experience Platform, you can login yourself, make content edits, build applications, web pages, and mobile apps, all on a permission-based system. This is such a relatively new concept in the mind of businesses that despite this offering, they still hold onto the legacy vendors they’ve used for so long, even though a CMS or <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">Web Experience Platform</a> negates the needs for all of those vendors.
That’s because it sounds too good to be true but in this rare case — it’s not. The irony is this, whatever you’re going to pay those other vendors for can be built or integrated with a single CMS platform. Once you have a robust CMS platform, you don’t need any more vendors or agencies.
So let’s break it down to its most elementary level:
TRADITIONAL MODEL
<ul>
<li>Hand coded websites which need to be manually updated by developers and graphic designers</li>
<li>Use of multiple agencies (website agency, design agency, SEO agency, ad agency, print agency, email marketing vendor, video agency, etc.) to maintain your online presence</li>
<li>Multiple websites to update one at a time</li>
<li>Poor mobile experiences on phones or tablets</li>
<li>Huge expenses to multiple vendors to maintain online presence</li>
</ul>
NEW MODEL
<ul>
<li>Mobile responsive beautifully designed websites</li>
<li>Multi-site management through a single login and interface</li>
<li>Direct content edits and updates without the need for the IT department</li>
<li>Singular expense for CMS that handles websites, digital marketing, and ecommerce and all that encompasses</li>
<li>Ability to serve up different content to different customer segments (web experience platform only)</li>
</ul>
In the traditional model, there was much more money to be had in our industry as software vendors could charge based on list items, services, huge annual license costs, private label offerings with inflated margins, misquoted hours, all of which piled up when there are dozens of vendors you barely know who don’t communicate with one another. Just to maintain your online presence you’d pay a dozen vendors a fortune every year without any way to track your return on investment. Agencies told you what you “needed” and then charged you for it month in and month out, year in and year out. When you wanted to swap out a logo you'd have to call someone and wait weeks for it to happen, let alone getting the logo made in the first place and paying the price for a color change. So many vendors carrying so many different responsibilities made it nearly impossible to accurately track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The traditional model made it very difficult to maintain a strong online presence with a unified and powerful digital brand behind it using the traditional model as many companies do, some out of complacency, some because of lack of understanding and most for fear of change. The new model is a dream for executives, middle management, marketers, content authors, and the foot soldiers of Corporate America. With a Content Management System, your company can now have control over their entire online digital experience from A to Z without dozens of vendors. Imagine the possibilities.
<h3>About the Author</h3>
Shawn Moore is the founder &amp; CTO of Solodev and the driving force behind the Solodev Web Experience Platform. A visionary leader, Shawn has strategically grown Solodev from inception to a successful company that services clients across the nation and has been named to the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies for the past two years in a row.
Winner of several industry awards for Best CTO and CIO, Shawn Moore is changing the content management landscape with Solodev. With over a decade of executive experience serving as CEO of Solodev and COO for software company Helium Flash, Shawn has the industry knowledge and product passion that continues to drive the development of the Solodev Platform. He is a graduate of Stetson University and often speaks on IT related trends and topics at conferences and universities across the state.

Inside the Machine of the Digital Experience

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Created by <a href="https://go.forrester.com/">Forrester</a>, an independent technology and market research company, the Forrester Wave on ECM, much like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, analyzes particular vendors’ offerings within the document management and content management space.
Forrester is transparent about their methodologies for their Wave on business content services, relaying in-depth information on the processes of their research to prospective buyers.
Additionally, Forrester’s research for its Waves is predicated upon holistic processes, utilizing analysts, research associates, vendor response teams, and customer references to arrive at their findings.
The Wave is parsed into seven milestones: Getting Started; Creating Evaluation Criteria; Selecting Vendors, Inclusion Criteria, and Kickoff; Gathering and Evaluating Data; Scoring; Fact Checking; and Publishing. 
Although document management and business content management services are slightly different facets of information management, they are highly interconnected, and one can be understood through an analysis of another.
<h3> Document Management Points from the Wave</h3>
Forrester focuses more intently on ECM features within vendor solutions than Gartner, noting that core ECM features such as file check-in/checkout, role-based user permissions, file cycle management, and search taxonomy will remain integral to business content and document management services.
In accounting for future ECM trends, the Wave also notes that integration will become increasingly two-sided, or “bidirectional,” meaning that software innovation for programs like Microsoft Office and Salesforce will be increasingly designed to integrate with ECM solutions, whereas prior to this phenomenon it was only document management vendors engineering their software to integrate with third-party software like Salesforce and Microsoft Office.
This will prove beneficial for prospective document management vendors reluctant to buy ECM that does not integrate with software on which the organization already depends.
Forrester aptly refers to this phenomenon as “bidirectional integration.” This bidirectional integration will be an important component of an even broader phenomenon as Forrester sees it: the software landscape adjusting to ECM as ECM has previously adjusted for it.
For organizations interested in using document management and content for sharing, collaboration, and usability, the Wave provides valuable insight on several ECM vendors excelling in these areas.
To solidify the importance of sharing, collaboration, and usability, Forrester notes that stake holders such as regulators and customers are stimulating demand for IT professionals to work on documents and projects outside the geographic location of the walls of the office, making high powered collaboration and file sharing features more essential than ever. 
Additionally, Forrester identifies cloud-based ECM solutions as game-changers for early adopters in many industries—noting that although many organizations start with On-Premise ECM solutions to <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/content-management-systems-vs-document-management-systems/">be familiar with ECM technology</a>, it will be useful for prospective buyers to only consider cloud solutions across all industries moving forward. Forrester asserts that the cloud will be increasingly vital with time, and is here to stay, in large part, because of transactional content management.
Forrester also notes that this transactional content phenomenon entails business processes originating outside the organization and are fueled by third parties and customers, while
<h3> Limitations of the Wave</h3>
The Wave weights certain categories based on the research firm’s understanding of prospective buyers’ needs—raising questions about whether research firms understand prospective ECM buyers’ needs well enough to assess them.
On the other hand, some may argue that since Forrester’s customer is, in essence, the person reading their reports, they will take this person’s interest in technologies seriously, striving to provide the most accurate information possible. Furthermore, one may wonder whether Forrester solicited consumer opinion to determine the true needs of prospective buyers.
These trends only further illustrate the trend toward the <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/the-consumerization-of-content-navigate-the-change-through-ecm/">consumerization of document management</a> and content management services.

Understanding Document Management in the Forrester Wave Context

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What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

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