Evaluating Course Management Systems (CMS) Vendors - Assignment Example

CMS aids organizations in managing content deployed through the internet. Organizations use web CMS in integrating the presence of their web with their other operations (Deo, 2010). This ensures that the content is current, relevant and refreshed. CMS also allows business to gain greater return and extract value from web channel, web communication and web marketing endeavors (Deo, 2010). This paper seeks to identify three CMS vendors, and compare and contrast their purchase and maintenance cost.

This paper will identify three Course Management Systems Vendors; compare and contrast the functions and explain how they meet the needs and expectation of users. The first CMS vendor is the Database Vendors. This vendor include dynamic websites in which content is stored and separated from other particulars like format, style, supporting data and access rights. For example the Oracle which has had their own CMS offerings developed. This type of CMS vendor is expensive compared to the others if both maintenance and purchase.

Database Vendors have understated and significant misalignment consumer group who has restricted their success in the product class (Deo, 2010). The customer model also has direct access to competent trained IT professionals who directly communicate within the organization to content producers. The second CMS vendor is the Internet Service Provider; this includes website hosting and registration of commodity business with competent and intense price which also allows switching costs. Businesses using this vendor are mainly interested in means of adding value to customers and help in what may avoid switching between vendors.

This CMS vendor delivers products of content management and site building and delivery of site hosting, domain registration and site development. The products of this vendor are however conceived poorly because they are not the major game of the operation. Purchase and maintenance costs are however relatively low compared to Database Vendors (Deo, 2010). The third CMS vendor is the Enterprise CMS Majors. This includes vendors like Vignette and EMC Documentation which produces document management among other manipulation tools and content aggregation.

This vendor is used in managing non-web content. The vendor suits organizations moving documents for collaborative authoring within the organization for carefully publishing and version control (Deo, 2010). The vendor then allows content to be expanded and published in the internet. However, the application’s development path makes them completely proprietary and complicated. Installation of Enterprise CMS Major requires change management, extended timeline, financial expense, detailed training, and a committed organization in order to ensure success.

This makes the cost of purchase and maintenance relatively high compared to the other types of vendors (Deo, 2010). Generally, all the three discussed CMSs are effective and meet the needs of users in various ways. The users benefit from these three CMSs due to their features such as: production of web pages (Chaudhari, 2009). They produce, edit and deploy web pages; systemization of web pages; turns production and web management into a system of activities delivering efficiency; simplification of website production activities.

They internalize technical, communication and design complexity in the production of websites; user management as they manage users at different levels. It regulates who sees what on the site and who can edit and