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<a href="http://www.hyland.com/" target="_blank">Hyland</a> isn't giving up any ground in the battle for content services domination. And they shouldn't – not when the competition includes <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/explore/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-content-services-platforms" target="_blank">Microsoft, Box, and OpenText</a>. 
To that end, Hyland just <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-releases-latest-content-services-and-intelligent-automation-product-enhancements/">announced</a> some new and noteworthy product functionality, service enhancements, and industry-focused solutions to support organizations along their digital transformation and technology modernization journeys.
Hyland has been recognized by Gartner as a content services industry leader for 12 consecutive years, and the winner of our own <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/introducing-the-winners-of-the-2021-cms-critics-choice-awards/" target="_blank">Critic's Choice Awards</a> for ECM in 2021. Along with its continued investment in innovation, the company has made several keen acquisitions over the past two years, giving it extra leverage to compete with the aforementioned "big guns." 
A few examples: in 2020, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-rpa-software-provider-another-monday/" target="_blank">Hyland acquired Another Monday</a>, the robotic process automation (RPA) software, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-completes-acquisition-of-streamline-healths-ecm-business/" target="_blank">Streamline Health ECM,</a> and <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-blockchain-credentialing-provider-learning-machine/" target="_blank">Learning Machine</a> – a company that develops and markets blockchain-secured digital credentialing solutions. Other acquisitions include OneContent, Perceptive (which became one of their flagship products), and <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/company/acquisitions" target="_blank">many more</a>. 
Then, like several other CMS and DXP platforms, Hyland eliminated one of its closest competitors by acquiring <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/" target="_blank">Alfresco</a>. The company then went on to <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-enters-agreement-to-acquire-nuxeo/">purchase Nuxeo</a>, a content services and digital asset management (DAM) platform, giving Hyland a powerful edge with its completeness of vision. 
But buying your way to the top can only get you so far – and Hyland seems more focused than ever on improving its products and services and enhancing customer experience. 
"Our regular product releases provide immense value to organizations, regardless of where they are in their digital transformation journeys," said John Phelan, executive vice president, and chief product officer at Hyland. "These latest releases support new business demands with simplified cloud administration and storage options, new automation capabilities, seamless and secure integrations with essential business applications, and greater scalability for installations of all sizes. Our ongoing development efforts will continue to provide our customers around the globe with the most flexible, extensible, and configurable cloud content services solutions."
Here are a few highlights of the new product features:
<h2>Upgrades to content services from Alfresco</h2>
Hyland has developed several new tools on the Alfresco platform – an investment that appears to be paying off. New improvements aim to simplify the management of cloud deployments, provide more intuitive user experiences, support more complex business processes, and deliver deeper integrations with line-of-business applications. 
Hyland also extended the Alfresco Enterprise Search capabilities with Elasticsearch, including enhanced query and proximity search support. 
<h2>Improvements to intelligent automation with Hyland RPA</h2>
Hyland has been making strides with its <a href="https://www.cio.com/article/227908/what-is-rpa-robotic-process-automation-explained.html" target="_blank">robotic process automation</a> features. Several updates were made to the <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/platform/product-suite/robotic-process-automation" target="_blank">Hyland RPA</a> to provide organizations with simplified bot deployment, more visibility over automated tasks, secure and convenient integrations, and improved user experience. 
The latest product version allows organizations to coordinate end-to-end automation with the newly developed Web Manager, providing improved security, user management, and updated reporting insights. Finally, the updated Designer allows flexible, secure integration with third-party applications/services and facilitates scaling automation enterprise-wide.
<h2>New Hyland Healthcare capabilities</h2>
<a href="http://www.hyland.com/Healthcare" target="_blank">Hyland Healthcare's</a> latest solution, the Hyland Clinician Window, unlocks physician access to more than 75% of patient information that does not typically reside in the electronic medical record (EMR). It helps physicians make informed care decisions to improve patient outcomes by delivering access to medical images, EKGs, consult notes, and other unstructured patient data within the EMR workflow. 
<h2>Updates to Hyland Experience Capture</h2>
New functionality within Hyland's cloud-native capture product, <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/platform/product-suite/HxC" target="_blank">Hyland Experience Capture</a> (HxC), delivers automatic separation by barcode for automated document splitting of 1D and 2D barcodes. This eliminates the need for manual separation, improving employee experience by rededicating workers to higher-value tasks.
<h2 id="about-hyland">About Hyland</h2>
<a href="https://www.hyland.com/" target="_blank">Hyland</a> is an enterprise content management (ECM) software platform, combining integrated document management, business process management, and records management in a single application. Hyland software allows organizations to manage, control, and share digital content with employees, business partners, customers, and other constituencies. Learn more at <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en" target="_blank">www.hyland.com</a>

Hyland Releases New Content Services and Intelligent Automation Product Enhancements

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Featured image of Hyland logo against a blended background

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It's hard to follow an act like the <a href="https://www.oscars.org/" target="_blank">Academy Awards</a>, especially after Sunday's "<a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/03/27/will-smith-chris-rock-to-work-out-slap-incident-after-oscars-2022/" target="_blank">slap heard 'round the world.</a>"
But hey, we'll give it a shot – and do it with decidedly less controversy and no long-winded speeches:
Today, we're proud to announce the winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards!
From our entire editorial staff, we'd like to start with a big THANK YOU to our amazing community of CMS vendors and their incredibly passionate users. We had some, shall we say, "colorful" conversations across social media during the nomination period, and we enjoyed every opportunity to engage with our readers.
It was incredible to see the outpouring of love from people around the globe for their products of choice. That kind of brand loyalty seems increasingly rare. It says a lot about the people using these technologies, and the investment that CMS and DXP platforms are making to really listen to users – and bring them together. 
Before we announce the winners, let's do a quick review of the rules so you know how we got here:
<ul>
<li>First, our annual People's Choice Awards celebrate the top platforms that YOU – our readers – select. As they say, we have no dog in this race.</li>
<li>In late December of 2020, we invited everyone to nominate their favorite platforms across a set of categories on our website. </li>
<li>The top three nominees were selected and featured for general voting in each category.</li>
<li>Participants were able to vote only once, and companies that offered incentives of any kind were disqualified (there were no such shenanigans, BTW). </li>
<li>While we don't offer any golden statues, we do feature the winners on our website for posterity. And of course, you always have bragging rights. </li>
</ul>
We had a fantastic response to the People's Choice Awards this year, and participation has been off the charts since we released the final nominee list. It's always great to see this level of community engagement, and because this is a democratized experience, you never know what to expect from voting – so be prepared for some surprises.
Enough rambling, right? Let's draw back the curtain and proudly present the winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards!
 
</div>
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/contentstack-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Contentstack logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Enterprise CMS: Contentstack</h2>
This year's "Best Enterprise CMS" award goes to <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, a leader in headless and agile content management. Contentstack has huge momentum, and it's great to see emphatic support from its community of users. 
 
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/adobe-experience-manager-logo-1.webp" alt="Adobe Experience Manager logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best DXP: Adobe Experience Manager</h2>
Given that <a href="https://www.adobe.com/cy_en/marketing/experience-manager.html" target="_blank">Adobe</a> has been the undisputed leader in <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms/">Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a> for the fifth year in a row, winning our "Best DXP" honors wasn't a shocker. The Adobe brand is ubiquitous and recognized as a top contender across multiple technology categories. It also has a deep ecosystem of tools and partners. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/joomla-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Joomla logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Free CMS: Joomla</h2>
Surprised that <a href="https://www.joomla.org/" target="_blank">Joomla</a> carried this category? Don't be. They've cultivated an enthusiastic fan base with a rising fervor for their favorite platform. Joomla continues to have a strong community of open source users, making it one of the top three most popular content management systems in the world - and winner of our "Best Free CMS" category. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/grav-logo-smallsvg.webp" alt="Grav logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Flat File CMS: Grav</h2>
This was a tight race with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-flat-file-cms-platforms-for-building-simple-websites-fast/" target="_blank">Kirby</a>, but in the end, <a href="https://getgrav.org/" target="_blank">Grav</a> took top honors. A consistent winner of our People's Choice Award for "Best Flat File CMS," Grav is also featured in our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-flat-file-cms-platforms-for-building-simple-websites-fast/">Top Flat File CMS Platforms</a> article.
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/joomla-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Joomla logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Open Source CMS: Joomla</h2>
Despite the far-casting shadow of WordPress, <a href="https://www.joomla.org/" target="_blank">Joomla</a> won big with its community – in no small part to its continued investment in innovation. In fact, 2021 saw a host of new features added to the "Best Open Source CMS" platform, including the <a href="https://www.joomla.org/4/" target="_blank">Joomla! 4.0</a> release with notable improvements. We would like to congratulate the Joomla development team on their win in two categories.
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/alfresco-logo.webp" alt="Alfresco logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best ECM (Enterprise Content Management): Alfresco</h2>
<a href="https://www.alfresco.com/" target="_blank">Alfresco</a> took home the gold for the "Best Enterprise Content Management" solution, proving its continued authority in the ECM space. Alfresco has enjoyed a successful run over the last few years, including <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">an acquisition by competitor Hyland in 2020</a>. Despite being under the Hyland umbrella, the company still maintains its brand identity. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/hikashop-logo-resized.png" alt="HikaShop logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best E-Commerce Solution: Hikashop</h2>
This was an interesting one, but the people have spoken: <a href="https://www.hikashop.com/" target="_blank">HikaShop</a>, the e-commerce solution for Joomla, was triumphant over two worthy competitors – <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-10-open-source-ecommerce-platforms/">WooCommerce</a> and PrestaShop. While the competition was tight, there were surprisingly more fans from the Joomla community throwing their support in the ring. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/shopify-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Shopify logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Headless Commerce: Shopify</h2>
<a href="https://www.shopify.com/" target="_blank">Shopify</a> has been giving Amazon a run for its money and earning loyal fans along the way. As the leading platform for building e-Commerce solutions – and doing it headlessly – Shopify has become one of the strongest and most trusted brands on the planet for creating online stores and digital commerce experiences.
 
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/contentstack-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Contentstack logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Headless CMS: Contentstack</h2>
We have to hand it to the Contentstack crowd: you really brought the rain! Congratulations on cleaning up in both the "Best Enterprise CMS" and "Best Headless CMS" categories! While most notably a headless platform, Contentstack is also one of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/">founding members of the MACH Alliance</a>. 
 
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<img style="max-width:200px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/yootheme-logo.webp" alt="YOOTheme logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Website Builder: YOOtheme</h2>
Always a perennial fan favorite, the "Best Website Builder" category has evolved to include some amazing tools that are getting progressively easier to use. This year, the crown goes to <a href="https://yootheme.com/" target="_blank">YOOtheme</a> - the popular page builder for WordPress and Joomla. While other popular platforms like Webflow and Gantry were in the running, YOOtheme won out with a sizable margin. Congrats to the community of fans that made YOOtheme a winner!
 
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<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/hugo-logo-wide.svg" alt="Hugo logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Static Site Generator: Hugo</h2>
The battle was hard-fought – and Gatsby has certainly been a fixture in our coverage over the last few years – but <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">Hugo</a> brought the votes... so congratulations! As a leading static site generator, Hugo has touted its incredibly fast framework for building websites. It's clear that its community of users is continuing to grow and thrive, and showing the love for their favorite JAMstack frontend generator.  
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/uniform-logo-white-bg.webp" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Composable System: Uniform</h2>
We had a battle royale brewing in the newly minted "Best Composable System" category between <a href="https://uniform.dev/" target="_blank">Uniform</a>, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/" target="_blank">Sitecore</a>, and <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">Acquia</a> – but there can be only one! Congratulations to Uniform for taking the throne and becoming our inaugural winner in this new and exciting segment. With big wind (and big investment dollars) at their back, Uniform is already making bold moves from a hiring and acquisition perspective, and we'll be looking for big things in 2022.  
 
<hr />
 
<h2>And that's a wrap for the 2021 People's Choice Awards! </h2>
<div>See that? Not a single moment of uncomfortable stage antics. That's just another benefit we have over the Oscars. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>While the pandemic threw us all for a loop, it's great to be back to a more normal and predictable cycle with our awards program. We look forward to this event every year because it gives us an opportunity to engage with our readers and learn about what platforms are scoring high in their books. At the end of the day, it's about honoring not just the winners, but our entire CMS community. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>There were some tight races going on in the year's competition, and a few surprises that gave us a moment to pause. But that's what makes the People's Choice Awards so exciting: in any given year, fans can come out of the woodwork and elevate their platform to the top echelon. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Tomorrow, we'll be posting our Editor's Choice Awards. You're bound to see some alignment in certain categories, and you might be in for a few surprises as well. Our editorial staff made their picks based on a wide range of factors, and we're excited to share them with you. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Thanks again to everyone for participating in the 2021 People’s Choice Awards. See you later this year!</div>

Oscar Who? We're Celebrating the Winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People’s Choice Awards 

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Image of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards logo with the Text "2021 Winners" to the right, all against a background image of fireworks.

<a href="https://www.hyland.com/en">Hyland</a>, an enterprise content management (ECM) and process management provider, has <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-enters-into-agreement-for-the-acquisition-of-nuxeo">signed an agreement</a> providing for exclusive negotiations to acquire <a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/">Nuxeo</a> – a content services and digital asset management (DAM) platform.
A leading ECM provider, Hyland is best known for its <a href="https://www.onbase.com/en">Onbase</a> and <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/perceptive">Perceptive</a> content management products, which securely centralize enterprise content and deliver relevant information to users across a wide variety of industries – including healthcare, finance, insurance, higher education, and manufacturing.
Nuxeo offers a cloud-native, open-source, low-code platform with content services and DAM capabilities, among others.
“We’ve innovated an entirely modern platform that provides both enterprise-class content services and digital asset management capabilities," said Eric Barroca, CEO of Nuxeo. "And we look forward to bringing these capabilities to the Hyland portfolio as well as leveraging Hyland’s considerable global resources to deliver even greater success to our customers and partners."
<h3>A Leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/03/figure_1_magic_quadrant_for_content_services_platforms.png" alt="Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms" style="max-width:570px" /></figure>
Hyland has been a consistent force in the ECM and content services landscape, commanding the second-place position in the Leader Quadrant of <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/explore/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-content-services-platforms">Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms</a>.
While Hyland has been trailing right behind <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/12/08/over-200-million-users-rely-on-sharepoint-as-microsoft-is-again-recognized-as-a-leader-in-the-2020-gartner-content-services-platforms-magic-quadrant-report/#:~:text=Leading%20in%20the%20Gartner%20Content,Platforms%20Magic%20Quadrant%20for%202020.">Microsoft’s 365 platform</a> (fueled primarily by <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/sharepoint/collaboration">Sharepoint</a>), they were also being followed closely by <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco</a>, a fast-growing open-source content services platform that was gaining ground in the market but still viewed as a somewhat niche solution by large enterprises.
Following suit with many other CMS and DXP platforms in the last year, Hyland <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">acquired Alfresco</a> in 2020, eliminating their next closest competitor and changing the game in the leadership grid.
While buying a competitor is far from novel, Alfresco’s low-code tools – combined with its ability to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services from <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/ecm-software/aws">cloud providers like AWS</a> – were likely key factors in Hyland's decision, enabling them to accelerate their modernization efforts.
<h3>Adding Nuxeo's low-code AI service and DAM capabilities</h3>
With the Nuxeo acquisition, Hyland is consuming another competitor – this time from the Visionary quadrant of Gartner's MQ for Content Services Platforms.
Nuxeo brings some unique assets to Hyland that may translate into significant advantages against Microsoft and Sharepoint. First, it gains <a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/content-services-platform/ai/">Nuxeo Insight</a> – an AI offering that enables customers to use their own data and content to train custom ML models for a variety of business applications. This includes enriching content with metadata, classifying people, products and records, automating forms processing, and more.
The critical advantage with Nuxeo Insight is that it generates ML models that are trained with a customer’s own data – rendering them far more accurate and insightful than typical AI services offered through public clouds (like AWS).
Nuxeo is also known for its strong enterprise <a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/solutions/dam-digital-asset-management/">DAM capabilities</a>, which provide out-of-the-box solutions for enterprises. Additionally, its large-scale repository – which includes NoSQL and distributed file system options – provides storage and scalability support for organizations with a large number of documents.
In fact, last year, Nuxeo proved its scalability performance with an <a href="https://benchmarks.nuxeo.com/11-billion-benchmark-story/">11-billion-object benchmark test</a> on AWS.
<h3>What does the Nuxeo acquisition mean for Hyland?</h3>
Considering some of Hyland’s core industry verticals – specifically finance – Nuxeo may be well worth the investment. Along with its cloud-native, low-code solutions, Nuxeo's open source community and AI-driven capabilities address key gaps in Hyland's modernization strategy, and will likely be a source of continued product innovation.
The transaction is expected to close in April 2021. Until that time, both companies will continue to operate as two companies. Upon transaction close, Nuxeo's business will be integrated into Hyland.
<h3>About Nuxeo</h3>
<a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3043355-1&amp;h=141805745&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nuxeo.com%2F%3Futm_source%3DPRNewswire%26utm_medium%3Dpress%2520release%26utm_campaign%3Dhitrust&amp;a=Nuxeo">Nuxeo</a>, the developer of the leading Content Services Platform, is reinventing <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3043355-1&amp;h=1356444015&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nuxeo.com%2Fproducts%2Fenterprise-content-management%2F%3Futm_source%3DPRNewswire%26utm_medium%3Dpress%2520release%26utm_campaign%3Dhitrust&amp;a=enterprise+content+management">enterprise content management</a> (ECM) and <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3043355-1&amp;h=3747046695&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nuxeo.com%2Fproducts%2Fdigital-asset-management%2F%3Futm_source%3DPRNewswire%26utm_medium%3Dpress%2520release%26utm_campaign%3Dhitrust&amp;a=digital+asset+management">digital asset management</a> (DAM). Nuxeo makes it easy to build smart content applications that enhance customer experiences, improve decision making, and accelerate products to market. Its cloud-native, low-code platform has been deployed by large enterprises worldwide. Customers like Electronic Arts, TBWA, ABN AMRO, and CVS have used Nuxeo's technology to transform the way they do business. Founded in 2000, the company is based in New York with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Learn more at <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3043355-1&amp;h=1092214406&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nuxeo.com%2F%3Futm_source%3DPRNewswire%26utm_medium%3Dpress%2520release%26utm_campaign%3Dhitrust&amp;a=www.nuxeo.com">www.nuxeo.com</a>.
<h3>About Hyland</h3>
<a href="https://www.hyland.com/">Hyland</a> is an enterprise content management (ECM) software platform, combining integrated document management, business process management, and records management in a single application. Hyland software allows organizations to manage, control, and share digital content with employees, business partners, customers, and other constituencies. Learn more at <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en">www.hyland.com</a>

Hyland Enters Agreement to Acquire Nuxeo

While COVID-19 continues to impact markets globally, the CMS world has been on a binge of buying, partnering, and releasing new features.
In case you’ve been distracted over the last few weeks by a chaotic news cycle and a U.S. presidential election, here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening in the content management and digital experience world.
<h3>Hyland Completes Acquisition of Alfresco</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 1200w" /></figure>
Recently, <a href="https://www.hyland.com/">Hyland</a> the enterprise content management (ECM) provider <a href="/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">announced</a> that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco Software</a> – an open-source content services platform.
Last week, Hyland <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-completes-acquisition-of-alfresco/">completed</a> the transaction, bringing the entire Alfresco business, including all technology and products, under the Hyland umbrella.
“At Hyland, the Alfresco platform will continue to grow and to serve customers’ evolving business needs,” said Bill Priemer, Hyland’s President and Chief Executive Office. “Alfresco customers can confidently continue to use and expand their Alfresco solutions, whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud.”
Future Alfresco versions will enable customers to seamlessly leverage other areas of the Hyland portfolio. These include the Hyland Experience Platform (HxP) — the recently launched, next-generation, cloud-based platform — and newly developed HxP components, such as <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/platform/product-suite/HxC">Hyland Experience Capture</a>.
<h3>Episerver Completes Acquisition of Optimizely</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/episerver-optimizely.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 1280w" /></figure>
In a big move to evolve their personalization strategy, <a href="https://www.episerver.com/">Episerver</a>, the customer-centric digital experience platform, recently <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">announced</a> its plans to buy <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/">Optimizely</a> – a leading A/B and multivariate testing platform. A few weeks ago, Episerver <a href="https://www.episerver.com/company/press-room/episerver-completes-acquisition-of-optimizely">completed</a> the acquisition.
“With its acquisition of Optimizely, as with its acquisitions of Idio and Insite in 2019, Episerver substantially increases the value proposition that the company offers to enterprise brands,” said Jacob Groshek, research manager, Digital Experience Management, at IDC. “The Optimizely acquisition adds AI-based experimentation and optimization to the Episerver portfolio. The purchase of Optimizely not only augments Episerver's capacity to automatically deliver personalized content as a central component of users' digital experiences, it also adds another layer of behavioral intelligence for organizations.”
Following the close, Episerver now serves approximately 9,000 customers and more than 900 partners globally in segments including retail, manufacturing &amp; distribution, financial services, insurance, healthcare, media, and technology, among others.
As part of Episerver, the Optimizely progressive delivery and experimentation platform will continue to support customers as a standalone solution, but will also be available as part of Episerver’s offerings immediately.
<h3>Acquia Announces Major Updates to Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP)</h3>
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After <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">launching</a> its new Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP) this July, <a href="https://www.acquia.com/">Acquia</a> has accelerated their innovation by leaps and bounds. In fact, they recently <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-announces-major-updates-open-digital-experience-platform">announced</a> major upgrades to their Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
So, what are these major upgrades? For starters, on the Drupal Cloud side, they <a href="https://www.acquia.com/drupal9">transitioned from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9</a>. For developers, these enhancements focus on decreasing the time to build, design, and run sites and applications.
Following the successful launch of Drupal 9 in June, the new <a href="https://www.acquia.com/drupal9/accelerate-your-migration">Acquia Migration Accelerator</a> tool significantly reduces the effort tied to a transition from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. Currently in beta, the tool reduces time to value for Drupal 9 by providing a user-friendly interface to streamline analysis and planning, DevOps, data imports, and content auditing for migrations.
Once organizations are migrated, the new <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/drupal-cloud/cloud-ide">Acquia Cloud IDE</a> makes it faster than ever to build Drupal sites and applications, with one-click access to a cloud-hosted development and testing environment. Acquia Cloud IDE integrates with existing Acquia command line and automated build tools for Drupal, making it faster and easier for developers to build and test their code – even in remote or hybrid work setups.
On the Marketing Cloud side, the major updates include new real-time 360-degree profiles, identity resolution, and unified segment capabilities within the Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP). These capabilities aggregate data from various sources, eliminate redundancy, and unify data into a single source of the truth for real-time customer segmentation.
Finally, Acquia also added a COVID-19 dashboard that helps marketers understand their customers’ shifts from offline to online channels, as well as changes in channel preferences throughout the pandemic. The dashboard also helps marketers identify changes in product preferences, as well as opportunities for growth in their marketing campaigns.
<h3>Fabric Launches Headless Commerce Platform with $9.5 Million in Seed Funding</h3>
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<a href="https://fabric.inc/">Fabric</a>, a headless commerce platform, launched its cloud-native experience and commerce product suite and <a href="https://resources.fabric.inc/blog/seed">announced</a> $9.5 million in seed funding led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Sierra Ventures and Expa. In addition, e-commerce executive Faisal Masud, who led multi-billion-dollar commerce businesses at Amazon, eBay, Groupon and Staples, has joined the company as CEO.
Brands struggle to compete with Amazon’s continued market dominance in the e-commerce and digital retail space. While big retailers can afford to invest heavily in their own proprietary systems, widening their advantage in data, speed, pricing and convenience, many D2C and B2B brands are challenged by the cost and complexity of modernizing their outdated commerce platforms. COVID-19 has further raised the stakes: during the pandemic, e-commerce sales have grown as much as 55% year-over-year.
“Unlike Amazon, which wins on selection, price and availability, emerging and growing D2C and B2B companies need to win on brand and experience,” said Faisal Masud, CEO at Fabric.
Fabric’s headless commerce platform enables marketers and merchants to deliver world-class commerce experiences without the engineering burden. Its modular API-first platform enables brands to utilize tools that address their specific needs, rather than re-platforming. Fabric gives brands sophisticated capabilities with its Experience Platform Manager (XPM), Product Information Manager (PIM), pricing and offers and Order Management (OMS).
The Fabric platform offers a suite of commerce APIs that allow brands to orchestrate their offerings across all channels, enabling them to support the entire lifecycle of each customer. In addition, Fabric runs on a completely serverless infrastructure to effectively scale during high-traffic retail peaks.
<h3>Cloudinary and Contentful Partner to Help Brands Create “Visual-First” Experiences More Efficiently</h3>
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<a href="https://cloudinary.com/">Cloudinary</a>, the media experience platform, announced a partnership with <a href="https://www.contentful.com/">Contentful</a>, a headless content management system (CMS). The new partnership offers Contentful users seamless access to Cloudinary’s award-winning media experience solutions, including its headless digital asset management (DAM) within Contentful’s CMS – allowing Contentful users to more easily upload, optimize and deliver engaging visual-first experiences at scale.
"In today's visual economy, fast and flawless rich media experiences are no longer a nice to have, they are critical components to any company’s success,” said Scott Doughman, vice president of Business Development at Cloudinary. “Equally critical is the ability to deliver the right, high-performant content as efficiently as possible to eliminate the challenges that often keep experiences from reaching their true engagement potential. The Contentful-Cloudinary integration eliminates these challenges and we’re pleased to be bringing our media management expertise to the Contentful ecosystem."
With the API-first approach of Cloudinary and Contentful, you can now build a seamlessly-integrated, future-proof stack with your preferred development frameworks and platforms.
<h3>Microsoft Announces Clarity, a Free Visitor Behavior Analytics Platform</h3>
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The elder statesman of the digital realm, <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/">Microsoft</a> continues to shock and awe the experience and development fiefdoms with bold moves – including their acquisitions of both <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://github.com/">GitHub</a>.
Now, Microsoft has announced a resource that will have an impact on digital experience in the usability, governance, and analytics categories. With <a href="https://clarity.microsoft.com/">Microsoft Clarity</a>, website and content owners will now have access to a GDPR compliant, free-to-use analytics tool to help improve their website experiences by better understanding their visitors' behaviors.
Microsoft Clarity has three main features: heatmaps, session playbacks, and an insights dashboard. Because of their unique delivery, Clarity’s tools won’t negatively impact a website's latency, and can handle variable traffic without incurring additional costs.
Clarity’s heatmaps come in two forms: clickmaps and scrollmaps. The combination will allow users to qualify behavior and trends, and make it easy to provide data-driven justifications for design decisions. The session playbacks allow site managers to record page visits and track where visitors clicked and scrolled, and the insights dashboard provides an overall understanding of the traffic to your site.
<h3>Contentsquare Acquires Dareboost And Launches Find &amp; Fix Product to Solve Revenue-Killing Errors</h3>
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<a href="https://contentsquare.com/">Contentsquare</a>, the Digital Experience Analytics (DXP Analytics) company, <a href="https://contentsquare.com/blog/contentsquare-acquires-dareboost-and-launches-find-fix-product-to-solve-revenue-killing-errors/">announced</a> its acquisition of <a href="https://www.dareboost.com/en">Dareboost</a>, an online tool to test, analyze and monitor websites. Dareboost has been a Find &amp; Fix product for Contentsquare. The integration breaks silos between marketing and IT teams, as well as the rest of a business.
The core capabilities of the new Contentsquare Find &amp; Fix product include web performance monitoring and scoring, error reporting and impact quantification, advanced retroactive search, advanced APM integrations, and comparison and benchmarking capabilities.
<h3>Mediafly Acquires Presentify to Transform Marketing and Sales Content</h3>
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<a href="https://www.mediafly.com/">Mediafly</a> – a provider of sales enablement technology, content management, and advisory services that create interactive, value-based selling experiences – <a href="https://www.mediafly.com/mediafly-acquires-presentify/">announced</a> its acquisition of <a href="https://www.presentify.co.uk/">Presentify</a>, a global visual communication solution.
By adding Presentify’s capabilities, Mediafly users can now build “selling stories” using sophisticated visual communication capabilities all through the Mediafly app – which natively supports the most advanced content formats, animations and modularized assets for elevated sales storytelling.
“More companies are recognizing the need for digital sales transformation, and the importance of using a modern sales enablement platform. But all too often they don’t want to take their antiquated, boring sales content and put it into a sophisticated sales app for fear of garbage in, garbage out,” said Carson Conant, CEO and founder of Mediafly. “With Presentify, Mediafly now tears down the barrier of entry for these companies, allowing them to quickly refresh their sales stories with interactive, animated content — and learn the ‘Presentification’ techniques to create and maintain sales collateral that is a league above their competition.”
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for another installment next month.

CMS Monthly Recap: Acquia Gets Feature Boosts, Cloudinary and Contentful Partner, Big Acquisition Updates and More

Hyland, an enterprise content management (ECM) and process management provider, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-enters-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-alfresco/">announced</a> that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alfresco Software – an open source content services platform.
Both vendors appeared on the <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/explore/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-content-services-platforms#:~:text=In%20its%202019%20Magic%20Quadrant,vision%20and%20ability%20to%20execute.&amp;text=For%2010%20years%20in%20a,(ECM)%20and%20content%20services.">Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM in 2019</a>, with Hyland ranking as a “Leader” in the overall category. With Alfresco firmly in a challenger position, the combination brings a number of market-leading advantages to Hyland’s global growth strategy – particularly as it looks to the cloud.
“With this acquisition, Alfresco brings significant geographic and industry experience to Hyland, as well as an open-source community as a new source of product innovation,” said Jay Bhatt, president and CEO of Alfresco. “Both companies share the same passion for customer success and innovation and together will offer increased value for customers and partners.”
Hyland’s news is the latest in a recent “buying spree” that’s been playing out across the digital experience landscape. In just the past few months alone, <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">Acquia received a major investment from Vista Equity Partners</a>, <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">Episerver announced</a> plans to buy Optimizely, and just last week <a href="/nordic-capital-invests-in-siteimprove-plans-international-expansion-and-development/">Nordic Capital acquired 70% of Siteimprove</a>.
A leading ECM provider, Hyland is best known for its Onbase and Perceptive content management products, which securely centralize enterprise content and deliver relevant information to users across a wide variety of industries – including healthcare, finance, insurance, higher education and manufacturing.
Headquartered in Boston, Alfresco offers a modern, cloud-native Digital Business Platform that delivers enterprise content services and solutions to connect, manage, and protect critical information for organizations. Alfresco’s cloud capabilities may be a big ingredient in Hyland’s recipe for success as they eye a more cloud-centric strategy to scale their growth.
<h3 id="a-legacy-of-strategic-acquisitions">A Legacy of Strategic Acquisitions</h3>
Alfresco is one of Hyland’s many purchases, which have included a number of smaller digital optimization tools. Just this year, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-rpa-software-provider-another-monday/">Hyland acquired</a> Another Monday, the robotic process automation (RPA) software, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-completes-acquisition-of-streamline-healths-ecm-business/">Streamline Health ECM</a>, and <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-blockchain-credentialing-provider-learning-machine/">Learning Machine</a>, a company that develops and markets blockchain-secured digital credentialing solutions. Other acquisitions include OneContent, Perceptive (which became one of their flagship products) and <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/company/acquisitions">many more</a>.
“We continue to grow our business and advance our platform organically and via acquisitions,” said Bill Priemer, president and CEO of Hyland. “This acquisition will expand our global reach, enabling us to help more organizations achieve their digital transformation goals and become more informed, empowered, and connected.”
Alfresco has also had its own share of acquisitions, <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/news/press-releases/alfresco-acquires-content-services-specialist-technology-services-group">purchasing</a> its long-time services partner, Technology Services Group (TSG), to leverage their deep expertise in the insurance, manufacturing, life sciences, and compliance verticals. They also purchased <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/news/press-releases/alfresco-acquires-integration-specialist-pernexas">Pernexas</a> to add their portfolio of SAP capabilities.
<h3 id="why-the-alfresco-acquisition-is-important">Why the Alfresco Acquisition is Important</h3>
Over the years, Alfresco has grown into a respected and innovative enterprise content management provider with an array of proven solutions. But perhaps their most prudent and prescient decision was embracing the cloud – and partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scale their service offerings. Within the ECM industry, this has proven to be a uniquely strategic asset, and one that Hyland can use to accelerate their journey to a more modern, cloud-native posture. If properly integrated, this could be a game changer for Hyland – the kind that puts them in the leadership position on the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
<h3 id="about-hyland">About Hyland</h3>
<a href="https://www.hyland.com/">Hyland</a> is an enterprise content management (ECM) software platform, combining integrated document management, business process management, and records management in a single application. Hyland software allows organizations to manage, control, and share digital content with employees, business partners, customers, and other constituencies.
<h3 id="about-alfresco">About Alfresco</h3>
<a href="https://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco Software</a> is a commercial, open-source software company. The Alfresco Digital Business Platform accelerates the design and delivery of “cloud-first” solutions for the enterprise that are process and content-intensive. It is a single, integrated platform built from the ground up to digitize processes, manage content, and securely govern information. Alfresco helps more than 1,300 industry-leading organizations, including Cisco, Pitney Bowes, Capital One, US Department of Navy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NASA, to be more responsive and competitive.

Hyland Acquires Alfresco, Focuses On Cloud and Global Expansion Of Enterprise CMS

Alfresco Software, the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced the immediate availability of Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 for download. This release includes a range of content services for developers, including integrations with IBM Lotus Social software and a preview of an upcoming Google Docs(TM) integration. With LGPL licensing and enhancements to document and web content management (WCM) functionality, Community 3.3 is also the first ECM tool to enable developers to deliver content-rich business applications leveraging CMIS 1.0 open source standards.
“From CMIS 1.0-compliance that will ‘future proof’ content application development, to LGPL licensing, Community 3.3 offers a range of new features and functionality that will continue to extend the free distribution and presence of Alfresco open source ECM,” said John Newton, CTO, Alfresco Software. “The enhanced content services in Alfresco Community 3.3 are designed to help organizations better manage web presence with tools designed to simplify the process of building content-rich web applications using CMIS.”
Significant enhancements to Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 include:
Content Services – Providing core content management capabilities, in a free-to-distribute CMIS runtime, which allows developers to easily embed content services in their applications:
<ul>
<li>CMIS 1.0 Compliance – For several years, Alfresco has taken a leading role in the development of open source standards. With the imminent approval of CMIS as an industry standard, Alfresco is the first ECM vendor to launch a fully compliant implementation of CMIS 1.0.</li>
<li>Inline Content Editing Services – In-context editing allows non-technical content authors to edit content directly from the web page. Alfresco Community 3.3 also provides a Web Editor Framework (WEF) – a JavaScript client side framework rendering a toolbar and associated controls designed to allow developers to extend any in-context functionality that may be required. The WEF also enables developers to easily create and package plug-ins and extensions for simple management and interoperability.</li>
<li>Content Repurposing – Automated content formatting functionality allows developers to build solutions to easily repurpose content for the web. Developers can use automated rules and existing FreeMarker and XSLT templates to format content for multiple delivery channels.</li>
<li>Repository Replication &amp; Web Deployment – Alfresco 3.3 builds on current rich deployment facilities with the introduction of the Transfer Service. Developers can utilize the transfer service to build solutions that transfer content between Alfresco repositories, enabling them to maintain rich content structures and relationships between Alfresco environments. This is especially useful to WCM architectures where Alfresco provides both authoring and delivery tier components.</li>
</ul>
Integrations – Designed to meet the needs of developers looking for industry standard platforms that provide content services, Community 3.3 extends Alfresco support in the following key areas:
<ul>
<li>IBM Lotus – Building on the ‘technology preview’ of the integration between Alfresco and IBM Lotus software products (Lotus QuickrTM, Lotus ConnectionsTM and Lotus NotesTM), this integration provides a more open platform and full-featured solution than Microsoft SharePoint(TM).</li>
<li>Google Docs – Alfresco’ s integration with Google Docs provides users with full online editing capabilities, removing the need to use office applications, such as Microsoft Office(TM) to modify or update content.  The integration will be previewed at AIIM Expo and available for download in Alfresco Community in May.</li>
</ul>
Collaboration – New enhancements to Alfresco’s collaborative content management platform, Alfresco Share, include:
<ul>
<li>Repository-wide content access – Alfresco Share users can now browse the document management (DM) repository as well as project or collaboration sites. New features provide users with full permission control and DM capabilities.</li>
<li>Automated Content Rules – Alfresco Share now includes a new rules and actions interface, allowing administrators to automate actions on content such as transform, move, copy, notify and many more. In addition, Alfresco 3.3 enables users to define a library of rules and link these to any space for automatic execution.</li>
<li>Collaboration Lists – Provides users with a mechanism for tracking lists of items within the context of a project. Lists can be used for multiple purposes such as tasks, issues, to-dos, and contacts and can be easily extended.</li>
<li>Google Like Search – Offers users a familiar Google-like advanced search, which allows fields to be queried alongside text searches, such as finding documents by a given author created since a given date and containing a given text.</li>
</ul>
Business Friendly Open Source License – With Alfresco Community 3.3, the Alfresco repository has been moved to the LGPL license, allowing developers to embed Alfresco into their solutions without affecting their existing business model or license.
To learn more:
<ul>
<li>Download Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 from <a href="http://bit.ly/alf33%20">http://bit.ly/alf33</a></li>
<li>Preview Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 in an on-demand webinar at <a href="http://www2.alfresco.com/l/1234/2010-04-16/GV6CZ">http://www2.alfresco.com/l/1234/2010-04-16/GV6CZ</a></li>
</ul>

Alfresco Community 3.3 Offers New Content Services Platform for Developers

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