Content management vendor Interwoven used its annual GearUp customer conference in London this week to make a raft of new product and strategy announcements, including major enhancements to its Composite Application Provisioning (CAP) solution and a new acquisition.

CAP is designed to automate the deployment of custom web applications in a standardised manner, pulling together source information and transactionally deploying it onto application servers like J2EE, according to the firm’s chief technology officer Rafiq Mohammadi.

“Version three takes cost of ownership, ease of use, repeatability and packages them together so that the solution establishes a new threshold for productivity,” he added. “Web pages today are sophisticated applications built from different components – CAP enables you to define the different pieces and deploy them.”

New features include support for both J2EE and .NET, greater support for source code management systems, and an enhanced user interface providing a central point of administration.

“We wanted to drive down the learning curve as much as possible and the new user interface is a reflection of that,” explained Mohammadi. “IT doesn’t have an unlimited budget now, so productivity is extremely important.”

Interwoven has also completely automated the change and release process, and added new graphical reporting functionality, in its bid to improve customer accuracy, efficiency and productivity, said Mohammadi.

Research by the firm released this week also pointed to the challenges many IT departments in large organisations face in coping with the rising volumes of change requests to custom web applications and the increasing pressures to speed time-to-web.

The survey found 77 per cent of development efforts are focused on custom web applications, but nearly three-quarters are doing this manually and over half of respondents said it takes two days or more to finish one release. Sixty per cent said they feel pressure to issue releases more quickly.

As part of the CAP 3.0 launch, Interwoven announced new partnerships with NEC, e-business solutions vendor Enterpulse and e-commerce consultancy Realise. The firm said these new partners will help in promoting best practices and helping customers to implement CAP solutions.

Also at GearUp, Interwoven announced a new deal to acquire on-demand web site optimisation firm Optimost. The New York-based firm will give Interwoven capabilities to improve customers’ conversion rates and online sales with its content optimisation and real-time multivariable testing technology.

Multivariable testing capabilities are essential if marketers are to be able to fine-tune and optimise their site’s content and improve conversion rates, using the data to feed back into the CMS process, according to new Interwoven European vice president, James Murray.

“We initially gave marketers basic AB testing so they could see which way traffic goes with [two variables],” he explained. “But the reality is that there are more products and ways of displaying and promoting them so it’s not that simple anymore.”

The deal will see Interwoven pay $52m in cash for all outstanding Optimost shares, according to the firm.