Hi Kevin:
You're right to be skeptical. The information you've been getting on ARCHIBUS/FM Web Central is not really accurate. I'm an AI dude, so I can give you a few pieces for your matrix.
o You do *not* need a team of Webmasters to use ARCHIBUS/FM Web Central. In fact, once you run the Setup routine, you have the Web product up-and-running. I've even heard people who sell competitive products admire the ease of setup of ARCHIBUS Web Central. Everything you need is right on the CD.
o Web forms to do DWF display for space management, wayfinding, room reservations, finding active work requests, even interactive forms for managers to claim and release space -- all come standard. File/Run/Setup. No coding. No scripting. No fuss.
o In fact, even if you want to get your own specialized data to the Web, ARCHIBUS/FM contains drawing publishing rules you set up with a form. Again, no coding or scripting.
o DWF display for restrictions (show all vacant offices, etc.) on the Web is dynamic. Has been since the 1990's before DWF was cool.
o You can access _any_ piece of data in ARCHIBUS/FM for reporting and editing. If you don't like the forms that come standard (and there are hundreds), the New View feature will create reports or edit forms for you on the fly without any coding. In fact, you can use the Add Field command to add a new field to the ARCHIBUS Data Dictionary and have it available in both Windows and Web, in both forms and reports, all without any coding.
o In fact, speaking of data access, you can access types of data that other packages just don't support. For instance, you can store documents of any type -- Word, DWF, DWG, Excel, Microsoft Project -- right in the ARCHIBUS/FM database associated with properties, buildings, leases, projects, work requests, change orders, etc. You can access them from anywhere right over the Web because documents are another first-class element in the ARCHIBUS data dictionary, and ARCHIBUS Web forms know how to handle documents natively.
o You can change the Web Central role-based menus and dashboards just by changing rows in a spreadsheet style grid -- again no coding.
o You can add charts, summaries, cross tabs, even multi-dimensional OLAP queries to your Web reports ... also all without coding. You can click on these charts and drill down to supporting data. You can place these charts on your own dashboards without coding.
Sure, you can do all kinds of high-end things with ARCHIBUS, and should you want to later do enterprise scale stuff -- like integrate with SAP or PeopleSoft Web service interfaces --you'll want to use some of the API's under the hood.
But ARCHIBUS has spent more effort than anyone getting more sites than anyone up-and-running. It runs the largest user's conference in the industry. If there's any usability or maintenance request, ARCHIBUS has likely done it already.
And these improvements are things that they need in actual use, not in a demo -- a fact most folks appreciate once they get scores of Web users, hundreds of drawings, thousands of records in the system. Or even 10 times that amount.
Sorry to go on about it, but it seems like people are spending a a lot of effort trying to tell you some things that ain't so.
Not to take anything away from these other solutions, but it kinda makes you wonder what they're afraid of ...
Hang loose,
Steve