Month: November 2009 (Page 4 of 4)

eBook Strategy Offering Now Available

November 6, 2009 / Bill Trippe / 0 Comments

As we have mentioned before, we have been very interested in leveraging the knowledge base we developed from our successful digital publishing study, Digital Platforms and Technologies for Publishers: Implementations Beyond "eBook."

With that in mind, we have moved forward and developed a strategic consulting offering, "Implementing Digital Publishing."

Consultation Description

Publishers face a wide range of strategic and tactical decisions when looking to start or build their digital publishing programs, and while publishers have taken many paths to success with digital product development, marketing, sales, and distribution, the organizational underpinnings of the most successful efforts have the common characteristics of technology spending consistent with business needs and opportunities.

The Gilbane Group’s Content Strategies service is offering a three phase consultation that is aimed at both management and operations personnel in educational, professional, trade, association, STM, and specialty publishing. The goal of the consulting is to assess the publisher’s current systems involved in digital publishing—planning, editorial and production, rights and royalties, manufacturing, promotion and marketing, sales and licensing, and distribution and fulfillment—and to provide decision-making support and guidance. The consulting targets and sets the course for achieving effective and efficient digital publishing business models.

Stakeholders

Depending on the size and scope of the publishing company, as well as the particular consultation phases sought, the stakeholders addressed in these consultations may include Publisher, VP and Editorial Director, VP of Production Services, VP of Digital Publishing, VP of Marketing, VP of Royalties, VP of Manufacturing, VP of Rights, VP of Business Development., VP of Digital Licensing, VP of Sales, VP of IT and CIO or CTO.

The Educational and Directional phase of the consultation (Phase One), which may be purchased as a standalone service or in conjunction with Phase Two and Phase Three, provides the publisher with a high-level assessment of the publisher’s current state of digital publishing capability across the multiple publishing systems. This phase concludes with a report and briefing that defines the publisher’s current state of digital publishing and provides recommendations for improving digital publishing capabilities.

The Analysis, Planning, and Recommendations phase of the consultation (Phase Two) moves the publisher from a general assessment of the conditions and challenges it faces in moving toward a more effective digital publishing business by providing an in-depth plan that a publisher can use to undertake its transformation into a more effective and efficient publisher for digital success. This phase concludes with 18-month action plans and on-site presentations and discussions of findings and recommendations with appropriate stakeholders.

The Implementation Support phase of the consultation (Phase Three) is designed to provide structured support as the publisher follows through on recommendations from Phase Two. Services within the Phase Three purview can include implementation progress reports, regular client visits, retainer and query programs, RFP assistance, prospective vendor research, and bid and implementation document review.

For a full data sheet describing the offering or for other information, you can email me or contact Ralph Marto via email or phone, 617.497.9443 ext 117.

SharePoint 2010 – The Big Story

November 5, 2009 / Frank Gilbane / 1 Comment

I spent a couple of days at the SharePoint conference two weeks ago with about 8000 others. Many attendees were customers, but the majority seemed to be Microsoft partners. It would be difficult to overstate the enthusiasm of the attendees. The partners especially, since they make their living off SharePoint. There has been a lot of useful reporting and commentary on the conference and what was announced as part of SharePoint 2010, which you can find on the web, #spc09 is also still active on Twitter, and videos of the keynotes are still available at: http://www.mssharepointconference.com.

As the conference program and commentary illustrate, SharePoint 2010 is a major release in terms of functionality. But the messaging surrounding the release provides some important insights into Microsoft’s strategy. Those of you who were at Gilbane San Francisco last June got an early taste of Microsoft’s plans to push beyond the firewall with SharePoint – and that is the big story. It is big because it is a way for Microsoft to accelerate an already rapidly growing SharePoint business. It is big for a large number of enterprises (as well as the SharePoint developer/partner ecosystem) because it is a way for them to leverage some of their existing investment in SharePoint for building competitively critical internet applications – leverage in expertise, financial investment, and data.

The numbers are telling. According to an IDC report Microsoft Office and SharePoint Traction: An Updated Look at Customer Adoption and Future Plans, IDC # 220237, October 2009, of “262 American corporate IT users, just 8% of respondents said they were using SharePoint for their Web sites, compared to 36% using it for internal portals and 51% using it for collaborative team sites.” (the report isn’t free, but ComputerWorld published some of the numbers).

Can Microsoft increase the use of SharePoint for Web sites from 8% to 36% or 51% or more? Whether they can or not, it is too big an opportunity for them to ignore, and you can expect the market for web applications like content management to look a little different as a result. Of course SharePoint won’t be the right solution for every web application, but Microsoft needs scale, not feature or market niche dominance.

There are more pieces to this, especially integration with Office 2010, which will have a major impact on the scale of penetration. We’ll look at that issue in another post.

You can see why SharePoint is a major topic at Gilbane Boston this year. Join us next month to continue the discussion and learn more.

SharePoint 2010 – Get the Full Story

November 5, 2009 / Frank Gilbane

With the upcoming release of SharePoint 2010 “The business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Web”, Microsoft is hoping to accelerate the already dramatic growth of SharePoint. The SharePoint partner ecosystem is clearly excited, and even sceptics agree it is a major release. But how do you decide whether SharePoint is right for you, or which parts of SharePoint could meet your needs, either on their own or in conjunction with other enterprise applications? Should you use it for collaboration? for search? and what about web content management – a major focus of SharePoint 2010?

With SharePoint 2010 just entering public beta and scheduled for release in the first half of the year, it is time to make sure you know what its capabilities are so you can make informed near term or strategic decisions. And, you need to get the full story, and the way to do this is to see it for yourself, and talk to sceptics, evangelists, and people already using it for applications similar to yours.

Whether you are attending the full conference or just visiting the technology demonstrations at Gilbane Boston, you will be able to learn what you need to know. Get the full story on SharePoint 2010 for content management at Gilbane Boston:

Visit the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Experience on-site at Gilbane Boston 2009 for the opportunity to walk through, learn, and understand the new content management capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
Talk to Microsoft product managers, and get an up-close look at new capabilities, and find out what is coming.
Talk to multiple independent analysts and consultants who are both sceptics and fans of SharePoint for a balanced view.
Hear from experienced SharePoint consultants with hands-on experience and get their opinion on what is coming SharePoint 2010.
Visit SharePoint partners in the exhibit area who have been helping companies deploy SharePoint to meet a wide variety of business requirements for many years.
Hear case studies and talk to companies that are using SharePoint.
Attend conference sessions focused on SharePoint, including:

Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 Available

November 3, 2009 / NewsShark

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the availability of Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 (ES2), a major software release enabling businesses and governments to build applications to improve interactions with customers and constituents across devices and channels. LiveCycle ES2 provides a rich Internet application (RIA) framework for building customizable RIA workspaces, mobile and desktop access to critical applications, and deployment in the cloud. Adobe LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile offers access to LiveCycle ES2 from iPhone, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices. Adobe LiveCycle Launchpad ES2, an Adobe AIR application, provides easy access on the desktop to kick-start LiveCycle ES services such as Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator ES2. Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 is a composite RIA framework for rapidly assembling and engaging activity-centric enterprise applications. LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 provides knowledge workers with real-time, contextual information from multiple sources in a single, personalized view. Developers can extend existing applications by exposing their business logic and user interfaces into application “tiles” that can be assembled to create unified views. Adobe enterprise customers will have the option to deploy LiveCycle ES2 in the cloud, hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment. LiveCycle ES2 Solution Accelerators now include‚Äî human capital management, eSubmissions, correspondence management, new account enrollment and services and benefits delivery. LiveCycle Forms ES2 streamlines format-driven business processes and improves data accuracy and LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES2 activates functionality within Adobe Reader, extending document and form-based operations outside an organization. New features allow users to generate RIA interfaces that leverage shared data models. Document and Information Security‚ LiveCycle can now apply rights management on the server to Microsoft Office documents for automated secure document workflows. Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES2 enables business users to manage ad-hoc content reviews without involving IT. Users can publish content, create a list of reviewers and define approval stages, deadlines and escalation guidelines. The content can then be automatically converted into PDF, enabled for inline commenting, rights protection and distribution. Users can monitor and modify the process at any time. Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is currently available worldwide. The Adobe LiveCycle ES2 cloud deployment option is expected to become available in early 2010. http://www.adobe.com/livecycle

Month: November 2009 (Page 4 of 4)

eBook Strategy Offering Now Available

SharePoint 2010 – The Big Story

SharePoint 2010 – Get the Full Story

Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 Available

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