Bo Jackson, an unparalleled multi-sport athlete who also was a pioneer in brand marketing had the tag line: Bo Knows. Protiviti knows SharePoint and like a multi-sport athlete, we know multiple platforms and how to weave them together. In the start of a series of blog posts, I will be talking to you about the close integration of SharePoint and Kentico CMS and, more importantly, how this is done.

What is Kentico CMS?

Kentico is an industry leading enterprise Web Content Management System (CMS) that is built upon ASP.net and SQL Server. Does this sound vaguely familiar (sans Kentico)?

It should, because I could be describing SharePoint. While there are differences in the platforms, it’s the synergy that bring them together as collaborators. It is no secret that SharePoint specifically has guidance that dissuades organizations from creating public sites on SharePoint including phasing out Office365 public sites. SharePoint’s path is clearly seen in what is being done with 365. It is a strong myriad of services that glue an organization together.

Kentico takes the focused path of a CMS that is built for public sites. Understanding the changes and adapting to the strength of the web, Kentico is a fully branded Digital Marketing and Electronic Commerce powerhouse. Out of the box.

Kentico places its focus on your site visitors experience and the ability to convert them into a customer. Items like Forms, A/B testing, Events & Registration are all part of the package. Kentico has been around since 2003 and have thousands of sites running worldwide. Here are a few other compelling features Kentico brings:

Branding: Kentico is fully compatible with HTML 5 and CSS modern techniques. No internal tags tied to the version of Kentico. Upgrades much simpler.

Social media: Connectors and web parts for all the common objects (Facebook, Twitter, ect)

Workflow: Built in visual workflow solution.

What makes Kentico very special to SharePoint Folk? You can use them together. The very definition of collaboration.

SharePoint and Kentico

With SharePoint’s laser focus on 365, Kentico is a fantastic complement (Sitecore is another) in terms of public site software that can surface SharePoint’s information in a secure dynamic fashion. Here is a key: It is bi-directional. You can write into SharePoint and read from it!

If you company is already using SharePoint and you are considering a public site CMS system like Drupal, WordPress and the like, consider these important factors (blog post unto its own):

* Kentico has a very reasonable and transparent licensing structure

* 24X7 Kentico support

* Kentico is focused on usability and flexibility

* Over 500 web parts and widgets

How to integrate Kentico and SharePoint

Kentico offers a SharePoint connector. This establishes a connection bi-directionally to SharePoint in the versions shown below:

Once the connection is established and tested successfully, Kentico has a SharePoint Connections application to manage the connections as seen here:

Once this is done then you have the ability to apply this connection in a page. That is a post for another day. Other questions come to mind, can you use certain metadata properties, what type of lists can you use (Image, List, Document Library, etc.)?

Before I finish this post it is important to understand that another way to integrate the two platforms is through both systems robust API. Again, this is a post for another day.

Protiviti knows and Protiviti shares to make your organizations stronger. In the coming weeks I will share through different use cases how to make SharePoint and Kentico collaborate. Do you have a use case in mind, if so, contact me and let me know what it is, I would be happy to determine if I can include it. You can contact me directly at peter.serzo@protiviti.com or tweet me at @pserzo.