Ektron, Inc. unveiled the latest version of CMS400.NET. CMS400.NET V7.0 include features such as advanced navigation and built-in taxonomy and introduces geo-encoded mapping and wiki collaboration features which provide navigational taxonomy structure to articles and interwiki links. Ektron’s CMS400.NET Wiki enables organizations to create websites specifically designed for communication, collaboration and sharing information. Explicit structure functionality and enable efficient management of wiki content using Ektron’s Directory Taxonomy, which provides detailed category tagging, search, breadcrumb and navigation for all wiki articles. CMS400.NET v7.0 offers new features to the forums control, including: paging, IP address restriction, automatic restricted word replacement, predefined signature lines, upload and attachment capabilities, RSS subscriptions, history of a member’s posts, user rankings and a terms and conditions disclaimers. Ektron’s built-in blogging technology is enhanced to support blog creation and moderation by registered site members. It also now includes a standard blog API to interface with and get updates from Microsoft Office 2007 and integrate with other desktop blogging tools. CMS400.NET’s new search language API enables the generation of dynamic summaries based on content and assets. Ability to tag and classify content: Ektron’s hierarchal taxonomy classifies and structures web pages and managed documents into logical groupings based on their content. Ektron’s taxonomy provides the option of tagging one piece of content with many different category associations. It can also be used to limit the scope of a search to reduce the amount of irrelevant content returned. Ektron’s GeoMapping functionality enables content to be tagged with longitude and latitude coordinates to leverage Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth. http://www.ektron.com
Month: March 2007 (Page 3 of 5)
Tridion announced the shift of the company’s US headquarters to new offices to accommodate growth. Tridion US employee headcount increased in 2006 to support a full service marketing, sales, professional services and customer support organization. The company expects this to grow considerably in 2007, leading to the expansion into the new office space in New York City as well as plans to open a West Coast office in San Francisco in Q2 of 2007. http://www.tridion.com
As consumer behavioral patterns across verticals (including retail, media and entertainment, and financial services) increasingly shift toward online channels, Web content must become increasingly monetizable. Factors which improve the monetizability of content relate primarily to rich user experiences, which require Web applications to combine behavioral analytics with the cross-platform, targeted delivery of digital media of all types (audio, video, streaming content, Flash, myriad image types), all available customer data, and content from Web services-based sources (maps, shipping information, weather reports, stock quotes, news). Not only must successful Web applications seamlessly wrap these components together behind the scenes, they must supply an interactive presentation layer that is aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-use. The primacy of the trend toward monetizable content will fuel other trends in the WCM space, among them, the heightened importance of:
- Design agencies as WCM solution providers. Vendors to watch: Blast Radius, Avenue A | Razorfish, Molecular.
- Analytics functionality within the WCM application to support multi-channel marketing campaigns. Vendors to watch: Interwoven, CrownPeak.
- The ability to incorporate rich media at the content creation stage. Vendors to watch: Adobe, ClearStory Systems, EMC/Documentum.
- Support for integrated search and advertising/merchandising. Vendors to watch: Endeca, FAST, Google.
- The emergence of WCM applications as primary brand managers. This is a channel strategy decision and is not vendor-oriented in nature.
I had a briefing from a vendor that is a strong contender for a piece of the enterprise search market this week. The offering is impressive, other reviews have given it high technical marks and the pricing model is reasonable. But because I am currently immersed in the deployment of another enterprise search engine with a client, the issue of vendor client relationship is foremost in my focus.
I asked the CEO of this relatively new offering, what are the fundamental assumptions his company makes about customer technology environments (e.g. the mix of software applications, hardware environment) and the competencies required to integrate his software with that environment. His answer was given strictly in terms of what the IT staff needs to know to bring the product online. My question did have several levels of complexity and was probably badly phrased but I was trying to make a point by asking it.
There are three specific elements missing from search vendors:
- Documentation or explicit models for deployment in environments where there are numerous technological variables to be considered
- Availability of training that takes into consideration the context for enterprise search in a specific customer’s organization
- Frank discussions with customers that set expectations about deployment and implementation, potential bottlenecks, and the need for experienced searchers, search analysts and subject matter experts on the team with the IT group
Downloading software and using automatic installers has become routine; with the launch of a menu and a few simple clicks on boxes on an administrative screen, vendors can claim “out-of-the-box” functionality. Never mind that what you find when you first search your targeted domain is nonsensical, the software finds “stuff.”
The IT guys are happy because it was easy to install, met their architecture requirement and, knowing little about the actual corpus of content, they are satisfied that everything works.
I am in a bit of a pickle with the current project, software from another vendor, because:
- What the documentation says will happen when I make certain choices in the set-up does not, in fact, happen when a search is executed
- My attempts through email and phone to schedule training have gone unanswered
- My messages to the support service citing problems also get no response
I’ve only spent two weeks trying to get this software working but three weeks ago, on a holiday, I got a briefing from two executives from this firm because they were “going to be in the area” and wanted face time with a search analyst. Knowing my role as an analyst and as a client you would think they’d answer my phone calls.
What is it that makes the customer experience so easily ignored? All these products look great in demos; what is under the hood is often technologically wonderful but, boy, getting them to work in my environment always seems to be one long nightmare. I wish I could find out what I really need to know. A terrific search engine might help.
Blackboard Inc. has launched a new website–Scholar.com. It is an excellent web application that helps communities of people share bookmarks on topics of common interest. It is particularly helpful for high school and college students and their teachers and professors to use when doing projects or research. This is a great example of communities adding value to long established processes.
Are you interested in the future of publishing? Stay tuned to this Blog for a major announcement within the next few weeks… This will be a major theme of the Publishing Track at this spring’s Gilbane Conference in San Francisco April 10-12.
BroadVision, Inc. (Pink Sheets:BVSN) announced a product roadmap for the next 12 months. The roadmap includes new products including an e-business framework with modular web services, agile development toolsets, a companion implementation methodology, a vertical application, an on-demand strategy, and the general availability of QuickSilver 3.0, the newest version of BroadVision’s e-publishing solution. BroadVision Kona Application Services is a library of modular web services including: e-Commerce solutions for transacting business online through B2B and B2C channels; Portal solutions; Content Management solutions to give business users control over the quality of information as they create, manage and publish content to e-business applications; and Process Management, a solution to develop and deploy user-centric self-service processes as well as task-centric workflow processes. Kukini is a new toolset incorporating XML, Web 2.0-based user experiences and packaged as an extension module to the Eclipse interactive development environment, Kukini leverages Kona’s core capabilities such as the BroadVision Process technology and yet is independent of the Kona engine. BroadVision Kukini is scheduled for general availability in the second quarter of 2007. BroadVision QuickSilver provides features for creation and publishing of lengthy, complex documents supporting multiple output formats (including HTML, PDF, and Postscript) and automatic publishing of personalized content to BroadVision Portal solutions. QuickSilver 3.0, available immediately, delivers a number of new features including Unicode support and improved support for XML authoring. http://www.broadvision.com
Hot Banana Software, Inc. announced that it has launched Version 5.5, which integrates Web site optimization and marketing automation features. The company also made significant changes to its SaaS and licensed pricing, focusing on small-to-midsized marketers. The company’s new release, Hot Banana Version 5.5, focuses on three areas: (1) Web content management, empowering marketers to build Web sites and take control of their content; (2) Web site optimization, giving marketers the tools they need to fine-tune the marketing performance of their sites; and (3) marketing automation tools for capturing Web site visitors, turning them into qualified leads and transferring the leads to CRM systems. The Web CMS integrates third-party Web analytics, email marketing and CRM solutions. It also consolidates all the capabilities from Hot Banana’s formerly optional Active Marketing Suite into one core product. The company has made its pricing structure more affordable, creating a three-tier model based on usage: one to five users, six to 25 users and unlimited users. Hot Banana SaaS, the company’s hosted offering, starts at only $329 per month, while Hot Banana Licensed Software starts at $4,999. The most expensive package is a licensed-software offering that handles an unlimited number of users and URLs for only $27,999. As part of its re-positioning strategy, Hot Banana has re-launched its own corporate Web site using Version 5.5, at http://www.hotbanana.com.
