Month: March 2009 (Page 4 of 5)

Enterprise Search and Collaboration, or is it Compliance?

March 12, 2009 / Lynda Moulton / 0 Comments

For two weeks in a row I have been struck by the appearance of full page ads on the inside cover of Information Week for Autonomy ControlPoint. For a leading search vendor, this positioning is interesting and raises a number of rhetorical questions about Autonomy’s direction and perhaps even the positioning of search in the marketplace. Top of my mind are these:

How will Autonomy be viewed by IT folks, whom I assume are the principal readers of Information Week?
Is this a shift away from an emphasis on search as “search” by Autonomy?
Is Autonomy just expanding its range to broader business interests to gain better enterprise penetration?
Will their deep technical competence in search be as rich in the areas of governance and compliance?

To try to get a handle on all of this, since the second ad had no URL, I went to the electronic version online at Information Week archives but discovered that the ads don’t appear in the PDF. No problem; I went to the advertisers’ index and clicked on the Autonomy link, thinking that the link would take me to the ControlPoint pages on their Web site. It only took me to the main page for Autonomy where there was nothing referring to ControlPoint, compliance, regulation or governance (all words prominent in the magazine print ads). I tried the drop-down for Products; nothing there either. At least Autonomy uses IDOL as its search engine on its own Web site, so I tried it. Yea! ControlPoint appeared in the results; the first entry got me to a page describing it.

But what else did I learn by following the breadcrumbs? A step back to the “products” level brought me to an Autonomy Electronics Records Management description and I began to notice the logo in the upper right said “Autonomy Meridio.” Lots of clicks later, I discovered that Meridio was acquired by Autonomy in 2007, which I probably would have known if I had paid more attention to “non-search” stuff. ControlPoint belongs in that family of products. When I clicked on this sidebar link, Autonomy ControlPoint: Information Governance for SharePoint and this one, Meridio eDRM for Microsoft Office, more questions came to mind:

Is Autonomy, the search company with its Meridio and Interwoven acquisitions, having a serious run at Microsoft by entering their traditional markets?
If an office tools software company like Microsoft slides into the search market by acquiring FAST and then leverages its great success with SharePoint by making FAST its default search offering, why shouldn’t Autonomy turn the tables?
By appealing to IT professionals will Autonomy be able to gain mind share that pits them directly against Microsoft with language like “Named Email and Compliance Vendor of the Year by Financial-i” and “Is SharePoint enough?”

Yes, we are going well Beyond Search, aren’t we?

Magnolia CMS 4.0 Released

March 11, 2009 / NewsShark

Magnolia International Ltd. announced the immediate availability of Magnolia 4.0. This forth generation of the Java-based content management system introduces production-ready content delivery templates that provide a large set of out-of-the-box functionality. Content delivery is search-engine optimized, follows accessibility guidelines and introduces support for mobile devices. The new Templating Kit allows designers and programmers to quickly and easily build best-practice Web site designs and to control the complete layouting life-cycle. Ready-made XHTML-conformant templates are available for Magnolia 4.0 to create custom Web designs that dynamically adapt content delivery to various devices, including the iPhone. The standard templates are search engine optimized (SEO) and follow W3C accessibility guidelines. Multiple Web site designs for front- and back-ends can be managed from within Magnolia’s browser-based administration interface. Magnolia 4.0 introduces support for a new templating language called Freemarker in addition to templating in JSP (Java Server Pages). Templating with Freemarker allows to view and edit templates directly in the browser window, have templates under version- and access-control and to backup templates together with the content of a website. The Standard Templating Kit is part of Magnolia’s new Supersonic Template bundle that includes a new form module with newly-added spam protection and server-side field validation. Magnolia CMS 4.0 is available immediately. Magnolia Community Edition can be downloaded for free under an Open Source license. The Standard Templating Kit (STK) is available for download upon registration. Magnolia Enterprise Edition includes the STK, more enterprise functionality as well as support and guarantees – pricing starts at 12,000 USD. http://www.magnolia-cms.com/4-0

Markzware Releases Publisher-to-InDesign Software for Adobe InDesign CS3 and CS4

March 11, 2009 / NewsShark

Markzware, a developer of data extraction and conversion software and inventor of preflighting, released an upgrade to its conversion tool PUB2ID for InDesign CS3 and CS4. PUB2ID v2 (Microsoft Publisher to Adobe InDesign) is a plug-in that enables users to convert native-application Microsoft Publisher files (MS Publisher versions 2002 through 2007) to Adobe InDesign while preserving the content, as well as the styles and formatting. http://www.markzware.com

Worldware Conference: Localized Software, Localized Tech Content

March 11, 2009 / Mary Laplante / 0 Comments

Although the focus of next week’s Worldware conference in Santa Clara, CA, is on global software strategies, the event is on Gilbane’s calendar because demand for localized product content naturally follows demand for localized software.

A number of the topics on the Worldware agenda resonate with us as relevant across both software development and content development domains within global enterprises:

Understanding localization scope and costs
Business cases for why localization should remain a strategic focus, especially in uncertain economic times
Cross-cultural user experience
Web globalization and social media trends
Modeling agile software development practices to enable faster-time-to-market for technical content

Gilbane Senior Analyst Karl Kadie will be onsite and would welcome the opportunity to meet with Gilbane readers.

Worldware is produced by Localization Institute and MultiLingual Computing, Inc., Gilbane’s partners in education for language and content management professionals. Collaborative efforts this spring include our participation in Localization World 2009 in Berlin (June 8-10) and a session on community translation at Gilbane San Francisco developed in conjunction with Localization World.

EPiServer’s New Relate+ Incorporates Social Media Features and E-Mail Marketing into Websites

March 10, 2009 / NewsShark

EPiServer announced the general availability of EPiServer Relate+ – a new package which combines the latest social media and web 2.0 features with EPiServer’s web Content Management System (CMS). Relate+ provides combines community building, email composition and maintenance, and a CMS in one package. EPiServer Relate+ contains a template package in the form of a ready-to-use community, inspired by Facebook, which can be adapted to customer-specific needs. You can now mix controlled content from EPiServer CMS with the dynamic and user-generated content which will appear in EPiServer Community. http://www.episerver.com

From Finland with love

March 10, 2009 / Kaija Poysti / 0 Comments

After a long pause, I am happy to be back as a guest blogger here! The quiet time was well spent, though: last year I co-authored a book on using, and especially about how to start using, social media in corporations (www.wikimaniaayrityksiin.blogspot.com). Available only in Finnish, I am afraid, but for a good reason: when talking about a new topic, it IS important to write in the language of the audience to introduce it.

Over the years I have heard both pros and cons about using local language. Some say that it is much better to write everything in English: wider audience and discussion, no need to invent translations for concepts. Others are as adamant about the fact that non-native English speakers are better off reading about a new topic in their own language to understand the concepts. For me, there is no right or wrong answer; both are needed.

Another very nice event was having Frank visit Finland last fall to give an excellent talk at the KITES seminar. KITES is a Finnish association for multilingual and multicultural communications; more about it in later blogs.

Welcome Barry Schaeffer

March 9, 2009 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

I am happy to announce that long time SGML/XML expert consultant Barry Schaeffer has joined us officially as a Senior Analyst, XML Strategies & Content Management. Barry joins our XML Practice, and has already posted the XML blog.

Barry sold his company, X.Systems Inc., to XyEnterprise last year, and has had extensive experience with large and complex SGML/XML projects, including a number for federal, and state governments over the years. I don’t remember exactly when I met Barry but it was in the early 80s and he was already involved with SGML projects. Mary, Bill, and Dale have also known Barry for some time. Our XML practice has some serious critical mass, and Barry’s experience with government, NGO, and enterprise consulting add considerable depth to the team. Barry’s bio has been posted.

Barry’s email is: barry@gilbane.com and his phone extension is 213.

Welcome Barry!

Government confronts the new information world

March 9, 2009 / Barry Schaeffer / 0 Comments

With the rise of Web 2.0 and 3.0, growing Internet traffic, social networking and a host of other technologically driven applications and appetities, government at all levels is confronting the burgeoning changes in its role and participation in the society around it.

An important part of this process is the separation of the paths down which technology is taking society at large from the paths government should and should not follow in performing its essential functions. Experience has shown that not every tool, functionality and resource available to and used by citizens should become part of the governance process. The quandry is deciding up front which is which. This quandry can be seen in the very definition of government being used to described the future: “connected government”, “open government”, “participatory democracy”, “transparent government” are just some of the terms being used to describe what their users think government should be.

The core challenge, it would seem, is to develop an approach that makes government at once more effective in discharging its myriad day to day duties, more open and responsive to the honestly held beliefs and concerns of its citizens, yet still fully capable of discharging its constitutional responsibilities without infringing on or abrogating the rights of its citizens. History shows that this:

Will not be an easy process
Will not lend itself to a solution based solely on availablle technnology
Is likely to be tried unsuccessfully (or disastrously) more than once before we get it right.

This would seem to dictate that, whatever the technological imperatives, government should be changed carefully, in small steps and with well-considered fallbacks from the paths that turn out to be ineffective or dangerous to our liberties. One way to do this, for instance, would be to focus on those government functions we know are broken and understand how to fix (yes, there are such things.) Then we could focus on applying new technology in areas where the target is familiar, the outcome more easily measured and the impact is less likely to spin out of control.