Month: February 2007 (Page 4 of 5)

Adobe Acquires Antepo and Amicima

February 7, 2007 / NewsShark

Adobe has acquired Antepo, Inc. Antepo developed the Antepo Open Presence Network (OPN) System, a platform for Enterprise Instant Messaging and Presence capabilities, for real-time communication and collaboration while meeting critical business requirements for control, security, integration, and compliance. The Antepo technology provides both XMPP and SIP support. Additionally, Antepo’s technology supports federation with certain other IM systems, including connectivity to Google Talk, IBM Lotus Sametime, and Microsoft Live Communications Server, as well as the ability to expose presence to applications beyond chat. The current plan is to incorporate the technology into a future release of Connect and Acrobat. Integrations with other Adobe products are being evaluated. Adobe also acquired certain assets of Amicima, Inc., a privately held corporation dedicated to developing improved Internet protocols for client-server and peer-to-peer networking. Amicima’s protocol suite provides secure client-server and peer-to-peer networking that supports both one-to-one and scalable group communication, quality-of-service prioritization and latency control for multimedia communication. Antepo’s presence capabilities and Amicima’s peer-to-peer technology is expected to enhance future versions of the Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Connect software and services product lines. http://www.adobe.com/special/antepo/, http://www.adobe.com/special/amicima/

Boston Area DITA User Group

February 7, 2007 / Bill Trippe / 0 Comments

Bob Doyle alerts us to the next meeting of the Boston Area DITA Users Group. On Tuesday February 13 at 6:30 pm, Judy Kessler will present, “How Sybase Made the Business Case for DITA.”

The meeting starts with light snacks and networking at 6:30 and the presentation starts at 7:00. The meeting will be at the Information Mapping headquarters in Waltham. For directions, click here. Bob asks that if you are planning to attend, please RSVP to Judy Kessler.

For more information on this and future Boston meetings, check the User Group homepage.

MOSS and Friends: Route 66 through the ECM/BPM Intersection?

February 7, 2007 / Leonor Ciarlone / 0 Comments

There’s no doubt that Microsoft understands the value and opportunity in the ECM/BPM intersection. It is also clear that the roads MOSS will use to get there are not confined to small neighborhoods, hence the reference to the U.S.’ most famous highway.

Microsoft’s significant investments in workflow and business intelligence have been widely reported. I’ll leave the work of dissecting components such as Windows Workflow Foundation, Excel Services, and MOSS BI web parts to resources such as Ziff Davis’ Microsoft Watch and Russ Stalters’ BetterECM blogs as well as Microsoft resources from the SharePoint Product Group and Customer Experience Team (although this one does not show much action since the summer’s LOBi (line-of-business interoperability) announcement.

Blogging over at BPMEnterprise.com, Stalters also has an excellent 3-part series called BPM and Steak: A Great Combo, the latest of which pinpoints MOSS capabilities designed for BPM practitioners. Microsoft’s strategy for full-scale ECM/BPM however, requires somewhat of a “detour” from MOSS and Office 2007 suburbs. The roadmap is evident via multiple, alliance-driven crossroads. Avenues include “Gold Certified” partners such as Bluespring Software, Global 360, Lombardi Software, and Ultimus as well as “Certified” or “Registered” partners such as Savvion and Appian.

Implementing integrations with some of these products does not appear to be fraught with “Exit here” or “In Construction” signposts. (And given all in the “Gold Certified” group are private, one can’t help wondering if there’s an acquisition strategy in the works. I digress…) Rather many are direct and well-embedded crossroads between MOSS and Office 2007, targeted directly at business users.

Case in point: Bluespring’s BPM Suite 4.5, the result of a decidedly Microsoft-centric BPM play that began in 2003. Most interesting to me is the 4.5 focus on “document manipulation,” highlighted multiple times during my briefing with the company. Capabilities include rules-driven analysis, extraction, and dynamic assembly of content from Word, Excel and InfoPath — with PDF thrown in for good measure. Although many ECM players have been doing “ETL for content” for years, this is not common expertise in the BPM market. In a content-centric BPM application such as compliance, this certainly provides some interesting opportunities for aggregated, context-specific reporting.

As I noted in my last ECM-BPM checkpoint, there are multiple road signs (quickly becoming billboards…) that signal technology convergence and deeper integrations between two blurring market segments. Microsoft’s Route 66 strategy is surely one of them.

Welcome to the Collaboration Blog

February 5, 2007 / Geoffrey Bock / 1 Comment

Another blog? On collaboration? No this is not a mistake. Welcome to the Collaboration Blog at the Gilbane Group. I’ll be focusing on business collaboration – the techniques, tools, and technologies that you and I use in our work-a-day worlds to share information online.

Along the way I’m probably going to spend some time talking about “social computing” – the new buzz word for sharing information online which IBM is adding to its latest marketing campaign. And inevitably I’ll touching on MOSS and VISTA—the Microsoft juggernaut that includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), the rewrite of Windows for the 21st century (VISTA), and the other Office 2007 applications. And then there are the neat new tools and applications coming down the pike, from innovative start-ups and established vendors alike.

More is at stake than this year’s marketing hype. Let’s put the discussion in context.

Collaboration is one of those old ideas about the future of technology, going back more than thirty years to the dawn of networked computers. (Yes once upon a time, not so many years ago, even email was new and revolutionary.) Many of us in the industry, developing products in those pre-Internet days, talked a lot about the “three C’s” – communication, coordination, and collaboration. We had this crazy idea that once we could connect electronically with one another, we could easily communicate and share information. Then eventually we would ascend to the nirvana of collaboration, and be able to work together with our colleagues to achieve common goals.

Yes, the easy communication and the information sharing certainly has happened. Yet there’s still a lot of overhead when we try to work closely with one another, at a distance. Along the way we’re finding that our colleagues are no longer our co-workers and employees in the same company–and that our actions and activities routinely span time zones and organizational boundaries. In fact, many of us now work as independent agents within a distributed (and networked) extended enterprise, in ways that would astound – and perhaps delight — our fathers and mothers.

I don’t think anybody will dispute the fact that the Internet changes how we work – and how we play. Yet making good use of our endless capabilities to communicate and share information is another matter. We still need to figure out how we can best collaborate with one another to achieve meaningful outcomes—particularly when we have the benefits (and the challenges) of working in a distributed fashion over the Web. Going forward, I hope to have more to say about the business impacts of collaboration, and why some collaborative computing environments are going to be more successful than others.

Day Delivers Standardized Connectivity for FileNet P8 Content Manager

February 5, 2007 / NewsShark

Day Software (SWX:DAYN) (OTC:DYIHY) announced that the company is delivering a Java Technology API standard (JSR 170) connector for FileNet P8 Content Manager. Other connectors that are in development include interfaces for Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Domino.doc, and Software AG Tamino, among others. The FileNet P8 Content Manager connector is part of Day’s Content Integration family of products that enable enterprises to access and manage all organizational content through a standardized API. This technology allows the implementation of content access, synchronization and consolidation, leveraging future-proof standardization, even if the content resides in data stores that do not provide a JCR compliant API. http://www.day.com

Vignette Launches Digital Services Hub

February 5, 2007 / NewsShark

Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN) announced the immediate availability of the Vignette Digital Services Hub, which enables organizations to manage and deliver rich multimedia content to any Web-enabled device through a single unified framework. Vignette Digital Services Hub also provides tracking and analysis to ensure content reaches the intended audience with the desired effect. The initial offering targets telecommunications, media and entertainment companies that depend on differentiated and interactive content such as ring tones, video downloads and mobile TV to attract and service customers. However, the technology has broad application across all markets, such as financial services, healthcare, distribution and retail, which require anytime, anyplace connections with their customers. Vignette Digital Services Hub combines Vignette’s Web solution with technologies from partners to provide a single, flexible application for collecting, managing, approving and delivering electronic assets and rich media to customers based on preferences, demographics and demonstrated interests. Vignette Digital Services Hub go-to-market partners include: SafeNet-Digital rights management for content protection and rights enforcement; Sun- Identity management and integration hardware; Valista-Merchandizing, payments and settlement solutions; and, Volantis-Optimized and personalized mobile content push, device detection and recognition and asset resolution software. To bring the solution to market, Vignette is working with global and local systems integrators including DPCI, Future Technologies, Inc., Hyperlink, iFactory, Informatica El Corte Ingles, ioko, Morse Group, Sapient, Stefanini, Tata Consultancy Services, Tallence and Virtusa. http://www.vignette.com/

3rd Annual Gilbane San Francisco 2007 Conference Announces Tracks and Sessions

February 5, 2007 / Clea Durrell

For Immediate Release:

Tracks Include:

Content Management, Web Content Management, Enterprise Search, Collaboration & Enterprise Blogs & Wikis, Publishing and Content Globalization

Contacts:
Welz & Weisel Communications
Evan Weisel, 703-218-3555
Cell: 703-628-5754
evan@w2comm.com
Jeffrey V. Arcuri
Lighthouse Seminars
508-759-8180
jeff@lighthouseseminars.com

Boston MA, February 5, 2007. The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars today announced conference tracks for the Gilbane Conference San Francisco, taking place April 10-12, 2007, at the Palace Hotel. The 2007 event returns to San Francisco with a greatly expanded collection of educational programs, including tracks focused on web and other enterprise content management applications, enterprise search and information access technologies, publishing technology, wikis, blogs and collaboration tools, and information on globalization and translation technology.

Tracks and sample conference sessions at the Gilbane Conference San Francisco include:

Content Management Track
This track is focused on strategies and technologies for managing multiple types of content, either with different types of repository systems, or with supporting technologies. IT and business strategists and all types of content managers will benefit from sessions in this track.

The Analysts Debate Content Technologies and Trends
Defining the BPM/ECM Intersection
Introduction to Enterprise DRM

Web Content Management Track
WCM as a discipline is still in its infancy. If you are responsible for a website, or the content management system or strategy behind your organization’s web presence, this entire track will be relevant to you.

Different Approaches to Purchasing a CMS: Open Source vs. SaaS/ASP vs. Licensed
Don’t Forget Your Site is for Your Customers

Enterprise Search Track
Sessions will place focus on the types of search problems enterprises have and need to solve by examining both cases and the technologies being turned to in medium and large organizations. How organizations make choices about what types of products to select and implement will also be explored in this track.

The Arena: Differentiating Search Products
Search and the IT Role for Enterprise-wide Initiatives

Collaboration & Enterprise Blogs & Wikis Track
The Gilbane Group has been covering the use of blog and wiki technologies for enterprise applications since 2005. This track will bring attendees up-to-speed on the technologies, why companies are using them, and what kinds of enterprise applications such “social software” is appropriate for.

Enterprise Wiki CEO/CTO Panel
Collaboration & Web 2.0 Technologies

Publishing Technology and Best Practices
There is a constant stream of new technology options that could have a profound impact on publishing processes. Customers are demanding that intellectual property be delivered in the media that they prefer and they may require multiple media forms of the same content. The trend towards online communities and the increased deployment of collaboration technologies enables new methodologies for authoring and reviewing. These sessions will help publishing professionals to consider these future trends and developments.

The Future of Publishing: Key Influences and Macro Trends
Cross-Media Strategy: Tools & Technologies, Processes, Skills, & Organizational Challenges

LISA Forum & Workshops
Since 1990, the LISA Forums and Global Strategies Summits have been dedicated to delivering best practices and standards for facilitating international business. Conference sessions include:

Authoring for Global Audiences: Closing the Gap Between Authoring and Localization
Managing Content Globally: What Works, What Doesn’t

The conference program schedule, tutorial, track and session descriptions are all available on the conference site. For more information visit:

Complete conference schedule: http://gilbanesf.com/conference_grid.html

Pre-conference tutorials: http://gilbanesf.com/gilbane_preconference-tutorials.html

Conference session descriptions: http://gilbanesf.com/gilbane_session_descriptions.html

The complete LISA program description: http://gilbanesf.com/LISA_forum.html

About Gilbane Group, Inc.
Gilbane Group Inc. is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of information technologies since 1987. We have helped organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. We work with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other consultant and analyst firms. We have produced over 50 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Information about our widely-read newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies and analyst blogs is available at https://gilbane.com.

About Lighthouse Seminars
Lighthouse Seminars’ events cover information technologies and “content technologies” in particular. These include content management of all types, digital asset management, document management, web content management, enterprise portals, enterprise search, web and multi-channel publishing, electronic forms, authoring, content and information integration, information architecture, and e-catalogs. http://lighthouseseminars.com

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Document Sciences Announces Acquisition of CambridgeDocs

February 2, 2007 / NewsShark

Document Sciences Corporation (NASDAQ: DOCX) announced it has completed the acquisition of CambridgeDocs a provider of document transformation and repurposing technology. The acquired technology will allow xPression, to import and repurpose content from popular formats, including Word, HTML, PDF, Excel, RTF, and Adobe FrameMaker, enabling customers to leverage the tens of thousands of documents existing throughout an enterprise without having to manually recreate the content. Once transformed, the content can be made available for delivery through Document Sciences xPression product suite, as well as independently through XML-based Web Services. The transformed content can also be classified and indexed within enterprise information portals, and aggregated, assembled and (re)published in multiple formats, including HTML, PDF, Postscript, IBM AFP, PCL and RTF. In addition to tighter integration with CambridgeDocs technology, Document Sciences will continue to develop CambridgeDoc’s xDoc product suite. The xDoc products sold through OEM software agreements with vendors in the XML content management and publishing area. The entire CambridgeDocs team, located in Cambridge, MA, and Lahore, Pakistan, will be joining the Document Sciences. http://www.docscience.com, http://www.cambridgedocs.com