Introduction to Content as a Service: A small CaaS lexicon

Various technical terms make the world of content management technologies appear complicated. Here you get an overview of the technical terms worth knowing.

CaaS - Content as a Service

An extension of the Content Management System (CMS)in which content is created, stored, formatted and made available in various media. The content authoring and publishing processes are separate. This means that the author of the content often does not know the publication location in advance. CaaS controls access rights, conditions for using the content, etc. beyond the pure content and its destination.

Traditional CMS

A traditional CMS stores the content and also includes a presentation layer that handles the assembly and delivery of the content. This means that it limits the possibilities for presenting the content to standards defined in advance.
 

Decoupled CMS

A "decoupled" CMS separates the creation from the storage and provision of the content. In the broader sense of the word, "decoupled" stands for the separation of the various functions and components of the actual CMS software from the point of view of the software architect. Compared to traditional CMS, the Decoupled CMS not only delivers the content in the desired presentation (e.g. as a website in HTML), but also offers the possibility of a CaaS.
 

Headless CMS

With headless CMS, however, presentation and provision of content are controlled separately. This means that you have several options when publishing content. For this reason, classic design tools are not used when creating content. It requires well-structured, pure content that can be published in different ways.
 

Content repository

The storage space for content in the CMS. Ideally, it is capable of storing, writing and reading all different types of content, making it easy to find and providing flexible workflows for editing, translating and sharing. It can create differentiated semantic connections and categorizations to facilitate navigation.
 

API - Application Programming Interface

An interface between two different software programs. In the CMS, it processes the content from the repository and makes it available as formatted output.

API-first

The "first" or "first" expresses that the API is developed first in the infrastructure. In the context of CMS, this means that the interface between content and delivery is developed first, and only then the different variants for delivery. The peculiarity is that it is first made available to the developers, since they are supposed to provide many different applications.
 

Content-first

Similar to the API-first, content-first means that the layout is subordinate to the content. In fact, it is best to know the content before choosing the correct display method for it. CaaS supports this approach by separating content from delivery. Content-first is an important approach for CaaS.
 

JSON

The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a simple data exchange format. The API ensures that the pure content is transformed into a format that can be processed further. This is often provided in JSON as a raw data format and then published further.
 

CaaS - Other meanings

There are many other meanings for the term CaaS. In our view, the term Commerce-as-a-service is still relevant. This is also about providing headless commerce services so that they can be integrated into touchpoints. This can then also be the case, for example, in a car or as an additional service on a website. Solutions for this are available, for example, from Intershop or SAP hybris.


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