User:DominicCronin/SDL Tridion

SDL Tridion is Web Content Management (WCM) system offered by the Web Content Management (WCM) Solutions division of SDL plc, a provider of information management solutions.

SDL Tridion is used by large organizations that need globalized web sites, brand management, targeted audience marketing and multi-channel marketing as part of their communications, sales and support strategy. SDL Tridion helps companies to deliver an interactive and targeted customer experience, in multiple languages, across multiple websites and channels. It is designed for non-technical enterprise marketers to create, manage and publish content to the Internet and engage with customers in real-time, via multiple communication channels and devices including the Web, smart phones, e-books and kiosks. Customers include: ABN-Amro, Alcatel, BBVA Bank, Bertelsmann, Canon, Deutsche Telekom, Emirates Airline, Hewlett-Packard, Honda Europe, ING Real Estate, KLM, Lexus, Orient Express, Rabobank, Ricoh, Suzuki, Toyota, Unilever, VisitBritain and Yamaha.

SDL supports an Alliance Partner Network for software integrators and digital agencies such as SapientNitro to help them better leverage the SDL Tridion platform. It also offers the SDL Tridion Certification Program to provide ongoing education and informational support to technical, business and infrastructure professionals and architects working with the platform. Achieving SDL Tridion Certification grants access to the SDL Tridion World member site, launched in 2008 to provide free downloads, technical articles and online support. There is also an SDL Tridion Professionals group on LinkedIn with hundreds of members.

SDL is positioned as a "Leader" in the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management published by industry research firm Gartner, Inc. Forrester Research has positioned SDL Tridion as a leader in Web Content Management (WCM) for external sites for four consecutive years. CMSWire also ranked SDL as the top provider in Web Engagement Management in 2010. The SDL Tridion platform was designated a "trend-setting product" for 2010 by KMWorld Magazine. A report from Ars Logica provides additional details on SDL Tridion.

History
The history of the Tridion product can be traced back to 1995 when WIS produced version 1.0 of their Internet Publishing System (IPS). This was written in Perl, and already showed some of the features that would later characterise the Tridion product, viz. separation of content from layout, a publishing mechanism, and dynamic linking. Their first customer was a major Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant.

In 1997 WIS merged with Topics (links, details???) to form Twinspark, and release version 2.0 of IPS, with KLM as the customer. KLM's need to manage web sites for many countries simultaneously drove the development of the BluePrinting feature, which remains a core ability of the product.

In 1999 most of Twinspark was bought by Agency, with the remaining part, that responsible for the IPS product, forming a new company: Tridion. The product was re-written using Microsoft and Java technology and released to the market as Tridion Dialog Server 4.0. This re-write also saw the introduction of some of the XML technologies which would later be a defining feature.

In 2002, the product was re-written again, this time also on the Microsoft and Java platforms, but with a new architecture which brought significant performance and functional improvements to meet the demands of the emerging market for enterprise-level WCM products. This was released as Tridion R5.0.

TODO Something here about the rest of the R5 range.

Tridion had been almost unknown in the US, but in 2006 they got their first major non-European customer and opened their New York office. Rapid growth followed.

In May 2007, Tridion was acquired by SDL plc.

Jan Jaap Kolleman has been the CEO of SDL’s Web Content Management Solutions division since October 2008.