Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

On the subject of web applications, Google Apps is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the most popular Web applications is the Content Management System (CMS). Wikipedia defines the CMS as “a system used to manage the content of a Web site. CMSs are deployed primarily for interactive use by a potentially large number of contributors. For example, the software for the website Wikipedia is based on a wiki, which is a particular type of content management system.”

These applications are particularly useful for getting a lot of information, contributed by a large number of people, onto the Web with the least bother and worry. Many of the best CMS applications are Open Source and therefore free (as in beer). There is also a wide variety of Content management systems that you can pay for.

A CMS is a framework, specially constructed to allow the input of information for display on the web. Out of the box, they have no content of their own. Although they all do approximately the same thing, the route that they take can be quite different. You can get a good idea of the variety by looking at this site. In the weeks to come, we will be taking a closer look at some of these systems in this column.

A CMS can be an excellent business tool. Such a system can be used, for example, to consolidate corporate information in one handy, searchable repository. The experts inside the company can be tasked with doing the input to the system. Others in the company may then benefit from that information, saving both time and money. It would also be possible to let some or all of the company’s clients have access to some of all parts of the system from the outside. After all, all it takes is a browser window.

That is only one of the possible applications. You can undoubtedly think of many more. When you consider that this can be done for almost no development cost up front, and for the price of some space and cycles on an Apache server, you can see that the CMS could be a significant bargain for the possible returns.

That is not to say it is always easy. Depending on what you need, or how large you need to scale a system, you may end up with either internal developers or consultants to tweak the system. But this is not necessary in every case, and you can usually train one of your internal people to take on the management of the system on a part-time basis.