March 25, 2009

CMS adoption in Universities

Posted by Arjun Thomas

I came across this rather interesting survey conducted by UCDavis. The focus of this survey was to analyze how Universities across the country used Content Management Systems.

With a total of 129 respondents the results were pretty interesting.

Listed below is a list of the scope and goals of this particular survey:

Project Goals

Facilitate the creation and management of standards-compliant Web sites
Support organizational consistency in messaging, branding and identity
Meet legal requirements for Web content accessibility
Implement technical and graphic design continuity throughout the University’s Web sites
Decrease the need for specialized technical skills, staff, and resources for Web publishing needs
Provide a centralized, dynamic, flexible and high quality campus Web infrastructure

Project Scope

Define the university’s specific business and functional requirements for a CMS
Evaluate available CMS solutions and their ability to meet the University’s needs
Develop a plan for the efficient implementation of a selected solution, making the new CMS available to all UC Davis constituents
Execute the CMS implementation plan, ensuring that all necessary infrastructure and functionality are integrated
Deploy UC Davis Web content under a unified, centralized CMS
Provide adequate training and support to campus web masters who will be using the new CMS

What was very apparent in the results was the fact that an overwhelming number of institutes seemed to prefer the low cost of an open source application. A very select number of institutes ( less that 10%) seemed to go in for a more costly enterprise level CMS.

Go through this survey and let me know what your thoughts are…

Share this post: