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Yesterday, it was announced that another CMS poster child of the late 90’s is to be acquired as Adobe Systems Incorporated and Day Software Holding AG announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for Adobe to acquire all of the publicly held registered shares of Day Software in a transaction worth approximates US$240 million.

This follows Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture late last year and clearly demonstrates their intent in entering the web experience management (WEM) market place that we cover with interest here at Gilbane - as we anticipate they bring together the audience insight gained through the web analytics of Omniture and Day’s CRX content platform.  

This will presumably add momentum to Day’s own move into the WEM space with their recent product marketing strategy, as they have reinvented themselves to be closer to the marketer with recent attention paid to functionality such as personalization, analytics, variant testing and messaging around using their repository for marketing campaigns and asset management.   We await with interest firm integration plans. 

In addition Day are a longtime advocate of CMS repository standards (JCR and CMIS), something that is also close to our heart at Gilbane. This announcement has also sent tremors through the Open Source community, as they wonder about Adobe’s commitment to the Apache projects like Sling and Jackrabbit that Day have been so supportive of.    

Whilst Adobe and Day have been very quick to state that they will maintain Day’s commitment to these community projects, it’s hard not think that this commitment inside Day is cultural and we wonder whether this can realistically be maintained as the acquisition matures and Day is brought into the fold. 

The acquisition also raises questions about what this means for Alfresco’s two year relationship with Adobe that runs pretty deep with OEM integration to Adobe LiveCycle – and Erik Larson (Senior Director of Product Management at Adobe) has publically stated the intention to integrate Day and LifeCycle to create a ‘full suite of enterprise technologies’.  It will be important for the Adobe customers that have adopted the Alfresco based integration, to understand how this will affect them going forward. 

One other area that I am sure my colleagues here at Gilbane in the Publishing Technologies practice will be watching with interest is the impact this will have on Adobe’s digital publishing offering.  

As we’ve seen with previous acquisitions, it’s best to be cautious over what the future might hold. From a WEM product strategy perspective bringing Ominture and Day together makes a great deal of sense to us. The commitment to standards and open source projects is probably safe for now, it has been a part of the Day identity and value proposition for as long as I can remember and one of the most exciting things could be what this acquisition means for digital publishing. 

Let’s wait and see… 

Suggested further reading:

• Adobe Press Release 
• Day Software FAQ 
• CMSWire - Perspectives: What the Adobe + Day Software Deal Means
• Real Story Group - Adobe To Acquire Day - First Take ECM Perspective 
• Adobe Buys ECM Vendor (and Apache Contributor) Day Software

The call for speakers has been issued, with June 14, 2010 being the deadline to submit a proposal for presenting at Gilbane Boston this year.

Guidelines can be found here: http://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html

Feel free to ask us any issues you have that aren't covered above!

We'll be posting the speakers over the next few days, but you can now see the program schedule as well as the conference session descriptions, and the pre-conference workshops. Also, registration is open.

The 2009 version of the Gilbane Boston conference was held last week. It was the second one I have attended and my first as a track coordinator (I designed the Collaboration and Social Software track and made it happen.) The event was well attended (c. 1100 people) and the number of sponsors and exhibitors was up significantly from last year's Boston conference. Many of the sessions I attended offered valuable insights from speakers and audience members. All in all, I would label the conference a success.

The Collaboration and Social Software track sessions were designed to minimize formal presentation time and encourage open discussion between panelists and audience members instead. Each session focused on either a common collaboration challenge (collaborative content authoring, content sharing, fostering discussions, managing innovation) or on a specific technology offering (Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Google Wave.) The sessions that dealt with specific technologies produced more active discussion than those that probed general collaboration issues. I am not sure why that was the case, but the SharePoint and Wave sessions spawned the level of interactivity that I had hoped for in all the panels. The audience seemed a bit reticent to join in the others. Perhaps it took them a while to warm up (the SharePoint and Wave sessions were at the end of the track.)

Here are some other, high level observations from the entire Gilbane Boston 2009 conference:

Twitter: Last year (and at Gilbane San Francisco in June 2009) attendees were buzzing about Twitter, wondering what it was and how it could be used in a corporate setting. This year the word "Twitter" was hardly uttered at all, by presenters or attendees. Most audience members seemed to be fixated on their laptop or smartphone during the conference sessions, but the related tweet stream flow was light compared to other events I've attended this quarter. The online participation level of folks interested in content management seems to mirror their carbon form patterns. Most are content to listen and watch, while only a few ask questions or make comments. That is true across all audiences, of course, but it seemed especially pronounced at Gilbane Boston.

SharePoint 2010: This topic replaced Twitter as the ubiquitous term at Gilbane Boston. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "SharePoint" at the conference, I would be able to buy a significant stake in Microsoft! Every company I consulted with during the event was seeking to make SharePoint either their primary content management and collaboration platform, or a more important element in their technology mix. Expectations for what will be possible with SharePoint 2010 are very high. If Microsoft can deliver on their vision, they will gain tremendous share in the market; if not, SharePoint may well have seen its zenith. Everything that I have heard and seen suggests the former will occur.

Google Wave: This fledgling technology also generated substantial buzz at Gilbane Boston. The session on Wave was very well attended, especially considering that it was the next-to-last breakout of the conference. An informal poll of the session audience indicated that nearly half have established a Wave account. However, when asked if they used Wave regularly, only about 20% of the registered users responded affirmatively;. Actual participation in the Wave that I created for attendees to take notes and discuss the Collaboration track online underscored the poll results. Most session attendees said they see the potential to collaborate differently, and more effectively and efficiently, in Wave, but cited many obstacles that were preventing them from doing so at this time. Audience members agree that the Wave user experience has a long way to go; functionality is missing and the user interface and features that are there are not easy to use. Most attendees thought Wave's current shortcomings would be improved or eliminated entirely as they product matures. However, many also noted that collaboration norms within their organization would have to change before Wave is heavily adopted.

Open Source: This was the hot topic of the conference. Everyone was discussing open source content management and collaboration software. An informal poll of the audience at the opening keynote panel suggested that about 40% were using open source content management software. Many of the other attendees wanted to learn more about open source alternatives to the proprietary software they have been using. Clients that I met with asked questions about feature availability, ease of use, cost benefits, and financial viability of providers of open source content management and collaboration software. It was clear that open source is now considered a viable, and perhaps desirable, option by most organizations purchasing enterprise software.

My big take-away from Gilbane Boston 2009 is that we are experiencing an inflection point in the markets for enterprise content management and collaboration software. Monolithic, rigid, proprietary solutions are falling out of favor and interest in more lightweight, flexible, social, open source offerings is rapidly growing. I expect that this trend will continue to manifest itself at Gilbane San Francisco in June 2010, and beyond.

Today is the long-awaited day when 100,000 lucky individuals receive access to an early, but working, version of Google Wave. I hope I am in those ranks! Like many people, I have been reading about Wave, but have not been able to experience it hands-on

Wave has been a hot topic since it was first shown outside of Google last May. Yet it continues to be quite misunderstood, most likely because it is such an early stage effort and most interested people have not been able to lay hands on the technology. For that very reason, Gilbane Group is presenting a panel entitled Google Wave: Collaboration Revolution or Confusion? at the Gilbane Boston conference, on December 3rd.

The confusion surrounding Wave was highlighted for me yesterday in a Twitter exchange on the topic. It all started innocently enough, when Andy McAfee asked:

To which I replied:

That statement elicited the following comment from Jevon MacDonald of the Dachis Group:

I am not a technologist. I seek to understand technology well enough that I can explain it in layman's terms to business people, so they understand how technology can help them achieve their business goals. So I generally avoid getting into deep technical discussions. This time, however, I was pretty sure that I was on solid ground, so the conversation between me and Jevon continued:

Now, here we are, at the promised blog post. But, how can Jevon and I both be correct? Simple. Google Wave encompasses not one, but several protocols for communication between system components, as illustrated in the figure below.

Figure 1: Google Wave Protocols (Source: J. Aaron Farr, http://www.cubiclemuses.com/cm/articles/2009/08/09/waves-web-of-protocols/)

The most discussed of these is the Google Wave Federation protocol, which is an extension of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). However, Wave also requires protocols for client-server and robot server- (Web service) Wave server communication. It is also possible, but probably not desirable, for Wave to utilize a client-client protocol.

Jevon was absolutely correct about the XMPP protocol enabling server-server communication in the Google Wave Federation Protocol. The Draft Protocol Specification for the Google Wave Federation Protocol lays out the technical details, which I will not explore here. XMPP provides a reliable mechanism for server-server communication and is a logical choice for that function in Google Wave, because XMPP was originally designed to transmit instant message and presence data.

It turns out that the Google Wave team has not defined a specific protocol to be used in client-server communication. A Google whitepaper entitled Google Wave Data Model and Client-Server Protocol does not mention a specific protocol. The absence of a required or recommended protocol is also confirmed by this blog post. While the Google implementation of Wave does employ HTTP as the client-server protocol, as Jevon stated, it is possible to use XMPP as the basis for client-server communication, as I maintained. ProcessOne demonstrates this use of XMPP in this blog post and demo.

Finally, there is no technical reason that XMPP could not be used to route communications directly from one client to another. However, it would not be desirable to communicate between more than two clients via XMPP. Without a server somewhere in the implementation, Wave would be unable to coordinate message state between multiple clients. In plain English, the Wave clients most likely would not be synchronized, so each would display a different point in the conversation encapsulated in the Wave.

To summarize, Google Wave employs the following protocols:

• XMPP for server-server communication
• HTTP for client-server communication in the current Google implementation; XMPP is possible, as demonstrated by ProcessOne
• HTTP (JSON RPC) for robot server-Wave server communication in the current Google implementation
• Client-client protocol is not defined, as this mode of communication is most likely not usable in a Wave

I hope this post clarifies the protocols used in the current architecture of Google Wave for you. More importantly, I hope that it highlights just how much additional architectural definition needs to take place before Wave is ready for use by the masses. If I had a second chance to address Andy McAfee's question, I would unequivocally state that Google Wave is a "concept car" at this point in time.

Postscript: The heretofore mentioned possibilities around XMPP as a client-client protocol are truly revolutionary. The use of XMPP as the primary communication protocol for the Internet, instead of the currently used HTTP protocol, would create a next generation Internet in which centralized servers would no longer serve as intermediaries between users. Web application architectures, even business models, would be changed. See this post for a more detailed explanation of this vision, which requires each user to run a personal server on their computing device.

O'Reilly's Gov 2.0 events took place last week. We've had some time to think about what the current wave of activity means to buyers and adopters of content technologies.

Both the Expo and Summit programs delivered a deluge of examples of exciting new approaches to connecting consumers of government services with the agencies and organizations that provide them. 

• At the Expo on Sept 8,  25 speakers from organizations like NASA, TSA, US EPA, City of Santa Cruz,  Utah Department of Public Safety, and the US Coast Guard provided five-minute overviews of their 2.0 applications in a sometimes dizzying fast-paced format.
• Sunlight Labs sponsored an Apps for America challenge that featured finalists who combined federal content available on Data.gov and open source software in some intriguing applications, including DataMasher, which enables you to mash up sources such as stats on numbers of high school graduates and guns per household.
• The Summit on Sept 9 and 10 featured more applications plus star-status speakers including Aneesh Chopra, the US's first CTO operating under the Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy; Vinton Cerf, currently VP and evangelist at Google; and Mitch Kapor.

A primary program theme was "government as platform," with speakers suggesting and debating just what that means. There was much thoughtful discussion, if not consensus. Rather than report, interested readers can search Twitter hash tags #gov20e and #gov20s for comments.

From the first speaker on, we were immediately struck by the rapid pace of change in government action and attitude about content and data sharing. Our baseline for comparison is Gilbane's last conference on content applications within government and non-profit agencies in June 2007. In presentations and casual conversations with attendees, it was clear that most organizations were operating as silos. There was little sharing or collaboration within and among organizations. Many attendees expressed frustration that this was so. When we asked what could be done to fix the problem, we distinctly remember one person saying that connecting with other content managers just within her own agency would be a huge improvement.

Fast forward a little over two years to last week's Gov2.0 events. Progress towards internal collaboration, inter-agency data sharing, and two-way interaction between government and citizens is truly remarkable. At least three factors have created a pefect storm of conditions: the current administration's vision and mandate for open government, broad acceptance of social interaction tools at the personal and organizational level, and technology readiness in the form of open source software that makes it possible to experiment at low cost and risk.

Viewing the events through Gilbane's content-centric lens, we offer three takeaways:

• Chopra indicated that the formal Open Government directives to agencies, to be released in several weeks, will include the development of "structured schedules" for making agency data available in machine-readable format. As Tim O'Reilly said while interviewing Chopra, posting "a bunch of PDFs" will not be sufficient for alignment with the directives. As a result, agencies will be accelerating the adoption of XML and the transformation of publishing practices to manage structured content. As a large buyer of content technologies and services, government agencies are market influencers. We will be watching carefully for the impact of Open Government initiatives on the broader landscape for content technologies.
• There was little mention of the role of content management as a business practice or technology infrastructure. This is not surprising, given that Gov2.0 wasn't about content management. And while the programs comprised lots of show-and-tell examples, most were very heavy on show and very light on tell. But it does raise a question about how these applications will be managed, governed, and made sustainable and scalable. Add in the point above -- that structured content will now be poised for wider adoption, creating demand for XML-aware content management solutions. Look for more discussion as agencies begin to acknowledge their content management challenges.
• We didn't hear a single mention of language issues in the sessions we attended. Leaving us to wonder if non-native English speakers who are eligible for government services will be disenfranchised in the move to Open Government.

All in all, thought-provoking, well-executed events. For details, videos of the sessions are available on the Gov2.0 site.

Well, actually the report was published by the author, Seth Gottlieb, a few months ago, but it is now available at the Gilbane store. Seth has worked with open source content management systems for years and for this report personally installed all the products he evaluated. Seth has written a really excellent report that is a must-read for anyone considering investing in and open source web content management system, or for anyone inclined to dismiss them out of hand.

Report Description
Open Source Web Content Management in Java provides an in depth analysis of seven of the leading open source Java web content management platforms. Written for technical decision makers, the report breaks down the open source marketplace and describes various categories of open source software and where they are most effectively used. The report also provides a framework for understanding the cost and risk implications of selecting an open source platform over commercial software.

Each 15+ page product evaluation explains the technical architecture and functional capabilities of the platform and provides insight into how the project is organized and the community behind it. There is enough technical detail to provide a foundation for ruling out incompatible technologies and prototyping the likely candidates. There is also useful information for content contributors and site managers to help them understand how the tool would support their responsibilities of today and their vision for tomorrow.

Products Evaluated:

• Alfresco Enterprise
• Apache Lenya
• Daisy CMS
• Hippo CMS
• Jahia Enterprise
• Magnolia Enterprise
• OpenCms

Buy Open Source Web Content Management in Java, by Seth Gottlieb.
NOTE: This is a downloadable PDF file. Acrobat version 6 or higher required.

The largest prize in public interest computing is named after Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing who died in 1994. The $10,000 award named after him is given annually by the Tides Foundation to a software developer "who has made an outstanding contribution to the nonprofit community and ongoing efforts for social change."

From the announcement on Philanthropy News Digest:

Each candidate must submit a completed application. Each candidate must also be nominated by a peer within the public interest computing world or a leader in the nonprofit community who can speak to the personal qualities that contribute to that individual’s leadership, as well as to the product the nominee developed.

The application deadline for 2007 is August 1.

See the Tides Foundation announcement for more information.

If you haven't heard of Web 2.0, where have you been? If you actually know what Web 2.0 is, then congratulations. I believe the best definition of Web 2.0 is given by Tim O'Reilly who arguably created the term. Web 2.0 has generally referred to the new breed of start-up who provides a new level of user service, but it also applies to a new wave in technology supporting that user service.

Web 2.0 is radically changing the experience in which end users interact with enterprises and types of user experiences that we now expect from on-line systems. Going hand in hand with Web 2.0 are the raised expectations users have of the interactivity of content, how content is managed and how personal that content is. Providing a self-service experience and to automatically deliver necessary content to new and interactive contexts has put a burden on the existing infrastructure of current generation content management systems. A new generation of enterprise content management is needed to meet the challenges of Web 2.0.

Content Management 2.0 is my term for this new generation of content management. Given everyone is starting to talk about Security 2.0, Virtualization 2.0, etc., I thought I would stake out the term after a brief search on Google seemed to indicate no one has talked about it before. (If you are aware of someone using it, please let me know. I'll give them credit.) IBM has talked about next generation content management, but the term Content Management 2.0 seems to go along with the phenomenon that is finally injecting innovation back into the content management market. These new technologies provide greater interactivity through AJAX, new collaborative styles of classification and tagging, and user driven configuration are being led more by open source than the traditional engines of enterprise content management expansion.

I recently gave a presentation at the University of Oxford where I discussed the concept to the people concerned with the various web sites and content services in the university. The concept originated after an internal discussion about where content management is going. It became clear to us that many new things were happening to content management with blogs, wikis, syndication and new styles of user interface affecting how people build web sites, content, and new web frameworks.

The presentation explained the challenges that existing enterprise content management has in addressing Web 2.0, what needs are not currently being met for end users, what technology changes are required, and how do these technologies "mash-up" to be able to glue systems together through web services and other web-oriented protocols. It also discussed the role that open source will play in this next generation of enterprise content management.

It will be interesting to see how the ECM vendors and specialist WCM vendors react to Web 2.0 and whether they aim for a new Content Management 2.0.

Writing for InfoWorld, Neil McAllister has an interesting take on Digital Rights Management and open source.