I find this interesting because TPM's solutions reminds me of the classic UNIX "pipes and filters" strategy - a series of small components with well-defined inputs and outputs that can be strung together to produce a sophisticated result. (Of course, "small", "well-defined", and "sophisticated" could be relative terms.) The pipes and filters "API" was plain text transmitted through stdout.
It also strikes me as an example of software development becoming more deeply embedded in media companies. It's not an accident or a coincidence that most content management systems work on the framework-with-plugins model. Dedicated software developers build the framework, and it's expected that organizations who use it only have the technical chops to deal with plugins. TPM's architectural change is also a change in the amount of development work they plan to do - they're saying that they can afford to rewrite/develop/debug/etc. 10% or 20% (percentages are arbitrary) of a CMS-size framework and string those components together, rather than work with the 2% of a plugin and sprinkle it on top of the main 98%. They've moved up the food chain in the size of their internal development.
I think the natural next step of "UNIX pipes and filters" is Flow-Based Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-based_programming). Processes can have multiple named input and output ports, and data flowing between them can be objects and other data formats.
In currently building an Open Source FBP tool called "NoFlo" on top of Node.js, and at least the initial results of building websites with it are promising.
It also strikes me as an example of software development becoming more deeply embedded in media companies. It's not an accident or a coincidence that most content management systems work on the framework-with-plugins model. Dedicated software developers build the framework, and it's expected that organizations who use it only have the technical chops to deal with plugins. TPM's architectural change is also a change in the amount of development work they plan to do - they're saying that they can afford to rewrite/develop/debug/etc. 10% or 20% (percentages are arbitrary) of a CMS-size framework and string those components together, rather than work with the 2% of a plugin and sprinkle it on top of the main 98%. They've moved up the food chain in the size of their internal development.