Disclosure: In June, I attended the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, MA, on a free press pass, which covered the preconference workshops as well as the full  three-day conference, held at the Hynes Convention Center.

In my travels on Twitter, I often encounter vendors, tweeting links related to their various businesses. Even with a background in technology, I’m often unsure how to classify these products.

For that reason alone, I’m glad I attended the “Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Architectures and Selecting Vendors,” at the recent “Enterprise 2.0 Conference” in Boston.

There, analyst Tony Byrne from the Real Story Group explained how to evaluate technologies and vendors, combining business and functional approaches.

Through the free 2011 Content Technology Vendor Map, the Real Story Group (an independent evaluation firm) visually organizes various content technology vendors, in these categories:

• Document and Records Management
• Web Content Management
• Portals & Content Integration
• Search & Information Access
• Collaboration & Social Software
• Digital Asset Management
• SharePoint Ecosystem

The Real Story Group’s site does a nice job explaining what each of these categories mean. At the site, you’ll also find a downloadable .jpg of the Content Technology Vendor Map, as  well as a high resolution PDF.

If you’re interested in content technology options, here’s a good place to start taking stock.

What resources do you recommend for evaluating options, in this space?

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