Is This Cushy Enough For Your Content Managers?Is This Cushy Enough For Your Content Managers?

I'm seeing more free CMS services pop up these days, even though we know that in true Web 2.0 style, eventually we'll have to pony up for something. The latest online incarnation is CushyCMS, and it comes from Stateless Systems, an Australian Web company that claims it has more than six million visitors a month visiting its Web properties.It's easy to dismiss these types of services for the usual reasons, such as security and scalability for starters. But as Google, Amazon, and others continue to pour dollars into cloud-based computing power, I think we'll see these fears slowly taper off. And let's face it, a huge part of the content management industry is driven by pain. If vendors can take even a small piece of that pain off the plate, I'll bet there's plenty of marketers and agencies willing to adopt. What's so different about outsourcing certain parts of your Web site project from outsourcing your call center activity or collections?

Services like CushyCMS will most likely be relegated to the SMB market, which isn't anything to be ashamed of, considering how underserved it is across industries. And it probably flies under the radar of big companies until some of the larger content providers fold it into their product offerings as a Web service.