When business people want to condemn a new technology to a geeky grave, they often say that the new thing is “a technology in search of a problem.” This suggests–quite correctly–that the best technology solves a pressing business problem.
Web services, specifically, and service-oriented architectures in general, solve a number of pressing business problems. In particular, web services allow organizations to continue operating legacy systems that work well and that, for various reasons, defy replacement or upgrade. If you can at least reach a point where the legacy system can be integrated with other applications via web services, you likely have a moderate-cost, stable, and workable means to integrate the legacy system with web-facing applications going forward.
Day: April 4, 2005
Writing for XML.com, Ronald Bourret has a nice roundup of how XML databases are gaining traction in large-scale applications. Ronald has been looking at XML repositories for a long-time, and maintains a very useful online resource on XML databases.
This is a drum we have been beating for some time now, of course. There is an important role for XML repositories, and we have written about this most recently in two white papers, one on component content management and one on the related W3C Standards.
Interwoven, Inc. announced the introduction of the Interwoven Content Provisioning solution. As an ECM solution designed specifically for IT Operations, the Interwoven Content Provisioning solution enables IT Operations departments to standardize the aggregation, synchronization and deployment of browser-based application assets from any development system to any application environment. The Interwoven Content Provisioning solution is designed to provide IT Operations with full control over the provisioning of browser-based application assets. Delivering reporting, configurable workflows, version control and rollback capabilities to streamline the release process, the Interwoven solution allows IT Operations to aggregate content from any ECM or Source Code Management (SCM) system and deploy it to any application environment. The Interwoven Content Provisioning solution is comprised of new versions of Interwoven ControlHub Server Software, Interwoven OpenDeploy Distribution Server Software, and new Education and Consulting Services, The Interwoven Content Provisioning solution is generally available in early April 2005.
The Gilbane Report and Lighthouse Seminars today announced that the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies, taking place April 11-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, will offer a free technology showcase that will play host to many of the industry’s most innovative developers of content management solutions. In addition to the free technology showcase, the event offers a conference program backed by one of the largest gatherings of industry analysts to provide attendees with independent insight and analysis into content management trends. All keynote sessions are free, as are additional conference sessions on Enterprise use of Blogs and Wikis, and a special session on compliance. Technology companies that will demonstrate their latest solutions at the event, include: Interwoven, Open Text Corporation, Macromedia, Blast Radius, Quark, Hummingbird, Oracle, Astoria Software, Atomz, AuthorIT, ClearStory Systems, CrownPeak Technology, Datalogics, Day Software, Ektron, Em Software, Endeca, Ephox, Etilize, Exegenix, FatWire Software, GMC Software Technology, Hot Banana, Idiom, Innodata Isogen, Kofax, Mark Logic, Mondosoft, Percussion, Quasar Technologies, RedDot Solutions, Refresh Software, SchemaLogic, Serena, SiberLogic, Translations.com, Vamosa, Weborganic Systems, Xerox, Xyleme, and Xythos. There is no charge to visit the Exhibit Hall; however, a registration badge is required for admittance. On-site registration is available for exhibit-only visitors. See the full release for information on product announcements at the event at . Full event details can be found at: https://gilbane.com/conferences/San_Francisco_05.html
RedDot Solutions announced the launch of its new Web Compliance Manager. Developed with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, RedDot’s Web Compliance Manager is an add-on module to the CMS and XCMS enterprise content management offerings to ensure Web sites, portals and intranets are 508 and WCAG compliant. The new software solution helps organizations comply with legal requirements, international standards and corporate guidelines. RedDot’s Web Compliance Manager will ensure compliance with Section 508 and WCAG A, AA and AAA standards, while also checking for spelling mistakes, broken links and missing graphics. Web Compliance Manager automatically reads Web sites and style sheets and prevents any non-compliant content from being published. RedDot’s Web Compliance Manager can also be customized to check for privacy policy violations, verify safe harbor statements and enforce corporate branding standards, including consistent use of color, logo usage and product terminology. RedDot’s Web Compliance Manager module will be available in the second quarter of 2005. www.reddot.com
Context Media, Inc. announced the general availability of a new application developer kit (ADK) designed specifically to help IT organizations and service partners to rapidly build and deploy content applications in J2EE, .Net, and Portal environments, while using Context Media’s content integration software, Interchange Suite. The new ADK provides the tools and building blocks for developers to develop and deploy industry and company specific applications in many environments, enabling organizations to leverage Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) to quickly assemble cross-system, content-centric business applications. The ADK works with Context Media’s Interchange Suite, a software solution that enables organizations to access content stored in multiple and disparate content repositories, providing a single unified view of content no matter where it resides. The ADK is an extension of Context Media’s current Web service offerings and can enable developers to reduce application prototyping and integration time. Context Media’s ADK for J2EE, .NET, PHP and JSR 168 Portal Servers is now available.
The amount of published material (including blog entries) on compliance continues to grow exponentially, which is not surprising given the pervasiveness of the issues. By pervasiveness I mean not only the applicability of at least some compliance requirements on virtually every size and sort of organization, but also that compliance cuts across the breadth of disciplines that we place under the umbrella of Content Management (CM). These disciplines include Digial Asset Management (DAM), Records Management (RM), Digital/Enterprise Rights Management (DRM/ERM), Knowledge Management (KM), et al.
Making sense of this alphabet soup of activities touching and touched by compliance is one of the primary tasks facing legal and content management professionals. It occurs to me that while compliance needs and solutions are reflected in virtually all CM activities, there are certain core concepts that can frame our thinking. Being in an alliterative mood, I offer the Five R’s of compliance. They are perhaps not as fundamental as the Three R’s of learning, but they address many of the challenges surrounding compliance.
- Requirements: regulatory, litigation, and internal policie.
- Roles & Responsibilities: identification of all the various participants, i.e. managers and users, in the organization’s content management process and delineation of the responsibilities of these participants.
- Risk Management: Compliance requirements, perhaps especially in the area of litigation/discovery, but also in the seemingly structured world of SOX, HIPAA and other regulations, are not black-and-white. There is room for the application of a reasonableness test (which could probably be an “R” unto itself) to many compliance policies and activities.
- Rights/Rules Management: Balancing requirements, roles and risks, organizations must build a compliance policy infrastructure. This policy infrastructure manifests itself in the form of rules which control ACCESS TO and USAGE OF various types of content in various settings. In essence, this is the function of Digital Rights Management or Enterprise Rights Management.
- Records Management: In addition to rules governing ACCESS TO and USAGE OF content, the compliance policy infrastructure must also include rules for recordation and retention of various types of records.
By “recordation” I mean the capture and designation of pieces of content as business records. This task is probably playing out most intensely, at least at the moment, in the area of email management policies.
In the end, compliance, in all its forms, requires a relatively sophisticated policy infrastructure enabled and enforced by equally sophisticated technology tools. To effectively apply various policy frameworks, such as the COSO recommendations for internal financial controls or the Sedona Guidelines for legal/litigation compliance, I think we must address the Five R’s.
Is this view too simplistic? Too complicated? Incomplete? Sort of on target but just a little bit off? Totally out in left field? I look forward to your comments.
In an earlier post on Longhorn adoption, I talked about the need for an operating system that provided support that went beyond simple file management to include services that content applications could leverage. Will Longhorn’s WinFS do this? Will other operating systems?
One of the questions we’ll be asking our panel on the Future of Content Management at our conference next week, will be “Where in the software stack is the best place to provide basic content management functionality, e.g., content elements with attributes and metadata?” With senior strategists from Oracle, Interwoven, FatWire and Mark Logic on the panel we ought to get some interesting discussion going. If you have a question you would like to see us address, comment on this post or send me an email.
In my next post I’ll look at how this question relates to one of the fundamental issues underlying the keynote debate on XML Strategy and Open Information.
