Content as a Service (CaaS)

Content as a Service (CaaS) is a relatively new take on content management systems (CMS). While traditional web content management systems like Drupal and WordPress offer one-stop-shop solutions for both creating websites and managing content, CaaS service providers narrow their focus to pure content management, disregarding the output channels such as web, print or mobile application, any of which may be selected for use by the customer.

Increasing Cloud Traffic

With projections of high increases in global cloud traffic, including Cisco Global’s forecast that cloud traffic in the Middle East and Africa will quadruple by the end of 2019, Vernon Thaver, CTO of Cisco South Africa, states that, “Cloud is moving well beyond a regional trend to becoming a mainstream solution, with cloud traffic expected to grow more than 30% in every worldwide region over the next five years.” Thaver further remarks that consumers expect “on-demand, anytime access to their content and services nearly everywhere”, and believes this creates a prime opportunity for every sphere of cloud operators. wordpress-as-a-Service is a formidable CMS with a high percentage of websites developed and managed using the open source WordPress platform, but CaaS vendors believe that solutions offering only content management, free of presentation control, will provide a simplified and superior solution that allows greater freedom.

CaaS vs. Traditional Web CMS

A few key details set CaaS and traditional web CMS apart:

• Organized Content: CaaS encourages structured content operating in chunks instead of page blobs, shifting from page-centric web to content-centric web.
• Detachment Tactics: CaaS separates content presentation from storage and delivery, simplifying the CMS construction so that each piece is responsible for one task.
• Splitting Content & Presentation: CaaS is entirely separated from design, managing and delivering only the content. The channel and design choices are entirely unrestricted.
• Cloud: A sub-group of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach, CaaS moves content from a user’s servers to the vendor’s cloud, and so CaaS users aren’t required to set up, maintain, or scale their own infrastructure.

When to Use CaaS

We’re unlikely to ever master the one-fits-all concept. CaaS performs well in some contexts, but not in others, and though not necessarily ideal for personal blogs or instances in which only a website will be required, the more complex and costlier CaaS CMS outstrips some of the earlier CMS solutions in a variety of situations.

• Rich Web Apps: React, AngularJS, Ember, and other modern MVC front-end frameworks function well with structured content via APIs.
• Scheduled Content Creation: With content arriving from multiple sources, uploading into a single unified repository is supported by creating content via API.
• Content Backend for Mobile Apps: Dynamic in-app content delivery is best performed through CaaS CMS, making it unnecessary to resubmit an app to the marketplace. Moreover, repurposing an existing solution as a backend is often better than building your own.
• Integration: CaaS CMS’ all provide an API and thus are extremely integration-friendly, thereby simplifying workflows.
• Multi-Channel: Reusing content across different platforms is easy with CaaS CMS, allowing users to push matching content to mobile apps or a website.

The CaaS market is still fairly young, but a few vendors such as Cloud CMS, Contentful, Osmek, and Prismic are already making waves while open source CMS solutions including Drupal and WordPress have begun to move in the CaaS direction.

By Jennifer Klostermann