A new wave of web content management (WCM) vendors from Europe and the UK is making a big splash in the US, according to the latest research from CMS Watch.

The analyst firm's Web CMS Report 2009 features interviews with WCM customers worldwide and evaluates 42 solutions in the market.

On the .Net side, the report found that vendors such as Bulgaria's Telerik and Sweden's EpiServer are challenging Ektron and Sitecore at the low to mid-range of the market, as vendors compete to fill the gap left by the poor adoption of SharePoint as a WCM platform.

And in the open source WCM market, CMS Watch noted that Norway's eZ Publish, Germany's TYPO3 and Belgium's Drupal have all expanded beyond their original geographies.

But the analyst firm urged WCM customers to consider due diligence before investing in any new vendor.

"Crossing the Atlantic in either direction is very hard for a web CMS vendor, " said CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. "Building effective support structures takes years, so customers should carefully weigh any newcomer's current abilities as well as long-term staying power."