As the traffic of web users has surged in the last few years, there has been a corresponding rise in the quantity of content ?text documents, web pages, images and so on. Therefore it?s time to manage the content in the right manner, lest it becomes complex and difficult to manage.

Enter content management system (CMS)?a web application?which is widely used for the search engine websites and almost all the companies who provide data on the internet.

Prajakta Mahajan, chief technology manager, Encodex Technologies India says, ?Content is being produced in a multitude of formats such as images, text documents, web pages, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, drawings, e-mail, video and multimedia. This explosion of structured and unstructured content can be complex and difficult to manage. Therefore, it has given rise for the need of content management.?

At a basic level, all informations like website content, data, audio and video files, photos, podcasts about industries, sector, subject, pertaining to companies are stored in the database of the CMS.

Diwakar Nigam, managing director, Newgen Software Technologies says, ?CMS is a system where all kinds of content are stored and organised in such a manner that it is easily accessible . The content management system has all the capabilities to search and store contents.?

Providing exact information to the internet user in a short time is not a small task. So is its storage and authoring. However, various CMS products available in the market make the task quite easy.

?There are 1,000-plus products for content management system available in the market, either as open source or licensed software,? says Minesh Doshi, director, Silver Touch Technologies. ?Generally, open source content management systems are preferred as they reduce the cost drastically,? he adds.

Some of the proprietary CMS products in the market include Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (.Net, SQL Server 2005); Vignette Content Management (Java, Oracle Database, MS SQL Server, IBM DB2); Stellent (Java, IDocScript, XML, Oracle, SQL server); IBM Workplace Web Content Management (J2EE or Lotus Domino Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, IBM DB2, Lotus Domino). And some of the open source CMS products are Rainbow (.Net, SQL server 2005); DNN (.Net, SQL Server 2005); PHP-Nuke (PHP MySQL) and Manbo (PHP MySQL).

?CMS platforms and technologies that cater to different segments, industries and various sizes of organisations are built on .Net, PHP, Java, XML, SQL Server 2005, Oracle, MySQL,? says Mahajan. Microsoft Sharepoint in .Net, DotNetNuke in ASP.NET and Publish, Drupal, PHPCMS, CMSimple in PHP, Fedora in Java, depending on the programming language the database changes, are some of the available CMS built on different tools.

?Since the digital age has facilitated the communication, there has been tremendous growth in the volume of information. There is increased legislation in all the countries requiring organisations to provide auditable records at different levels. This has led organisations to plan for records management, document management, web content management and forms management,? says Mahajan. She adds, ?Some organisations are planning to differentiate through the creation and protection of intellectual capital and look at content management as a strategic imperative in their organisation.?

Through the content management system, all types of content and data can be streamlined in an organised manner and handling of the website content management becomes easier.

?Content management system market is growing worldwide by 10% and its turnover is $6-7 billion a year. In India, it is growing much faster,? says Nigam.

By the use of content management system, updating of the website becomes easy and non-technical users can also edit or add information on the website. ?Even naive users without sound programming knowledge can create their own websites with a content management system in a very short time. New technology CMS come with template-based output, which also reduces the use of designing websites, as the templates are designed well for generalised use,? says Doshi.

?This field has a huge potential of growth. Currently, it caters to emerging smaller and medium companies who are looking for an online presence for marketing themselves. Opting for a CMS means reducing costs of operation and management of their websites,? Doshi adds.