What are the alternatives to content management applications?

What will be an ideal response?

Three common alternatives for content management applications are:
1. In-house custom applications: In the past, organizations developed their own in-house content management applications. A customer support department, for example, might develop in-house database applications to track customer problems and their resolution. Operations might develop an in-house system to track machine maintenance procedures. Like all custom applications, however, custom content management applications are expensive to develop and maintain.
2. Off-the-shelf applications: Because of the expense of custom applications, many organizations today use off-the-shelf software. Some organizations choose vertical market off-the-shelf applications. Off-the-shelf products have considerably more functionality than most in-house systems and they are far less expensive to maintain.
3. Public search engines: The largest collection of documents ever assembled exists on the Internet, and the world's best-known document search engine is Google. Because Google searches through all public sites of all organizations, it is usually the fastest and easiest way to find a public document. This often is true even within an organization.