Also, is the CMS (in the existing form) really what we're after?
To my mind the current CMS is almost a developer front-end to the content repository. In fact I can't think of many customers who;d really want that kind of system.
My experience has been that in terms of CMS, customers tend to want somthing more like a page/template editor than a full blown CMS...
Perhaps we should actually survey the community and try and find out what peoples 'perception' of what they need is? Might be a good start point