Newly-established South African company Azapi has launched a content management system (CMS) aimed at allowing small and medium companies to manage their own Web sites.
Azapi co-owner Gerrit Giliomee says the product, which has been in development for about two years, is international standards-based and covers two areas - content management and bespoke client modules.
Content management is the organising, categorising and structuring of information resources for storage, publishing and editing online.
"The product is geared to small and medium businesses that want an affordable, high-quality online presence, the ability to update their own content and the ability to monitor whether they`re reaching their target market," Giliomee explains.
While the Azapi CMS was designed with small and medium businesses in mind, he says the product is also suitable for other sectors, including government, financial services, marketing services, manufacturing, education and non-profit organisations.
The system can automatically generate meta tags for pages and resize or compress images. It allows users to manage multiple Web sites with one CMS, which makes it suitable for franchises or larger operations. The system also offers support for server-side scripting languages and reduces development timelines of Web projects by removing the need to outsource.
As Azapi is customised on a per client basis, Giliomee claims, the company does not box itself into catering for one specific market or industry, but in SA, in particular, online participation in all industries has been hampered by the monopolised telecommunications industry.
"Now that this is a thing of the past, you`ll start seeing faster, more affordable Internet connections in homes, thus a bigger audience to anyone who wants to make initial contact with their clients online," he says.
Azapi`s biggest customers are South African-based travel site Getaway Africa and UK-based GCap Media - the largest commercial radio group in the UK.
"Because of their size, both companies were happy to go with our bespoke solutions, however, we`re currently creating a low-cost solution for the property market. This is done by looking at the way property agents work and creating a set of tools that will make their lives easier," Giliomee adds.
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