Day Software (SWX:DAYN)(OTCQX:DYIHY) announced the availability of three new licensed editions of CRX, Day’s JSR-170-compliant Java Content Repository (JCR). These new editions make it simpler for companies to standardize on an enterprise-ready content infrastructure based on Day’s commercial implementation of Apache Jackrabbit and Apache Sling. This release is enhanced by a licensing model that promotes adoption by individual developers, departments and global enterprises. Day now offers three targeted editions of its content infrastructure platform: CRX One: CRX One is a new version of CRX licensed for use to power a single Web application. CRX One is Day’s entry-level CRX offering, available directly from Day’s Web site for an annual subscription license fee of US$18,500 per server instance per year, regardless of the number of CPUs; CRX Developer: CRX Developer is a limited license version of CRX available free of charge for Apache Jackrabbit and Apache Sling developers directly from Day’s Web site. Web developers can use CRX Developer at no cost under an annual renewal license for building and testing new CRX-based content applications; CRX Enterprise: CRX Enterprise is Day’s premier CRX offering for use in powering multiple Web applications. CRX Enterprise is targeted for IT departments looking to consolidate disparate enterprise content repositories under a single, shared cluster of CRX. Organizations can seamlessly update their CRX One licenses to CRX Enterprise to host multiple applications without installing or managing new software. CRX Enterprise is offered under a perpetual license model that starts at US$50,000 per server instance. Day CRX Developer is available free of charge immediately from Day’s Web site at http://www.day.com
Year: 2009 (Page 36 of 39)
Analysts having been projecting major consolidation in the enterprise search marketplace for a couple of years. What is interesting to me is how slowly this is evolving. For every merger or acquisition, whether small or large (acquisition of Mondosoft by SurfRay or FAST by Microsoft), other companies emerge or evolve with diverse and potentially competitive technologies (e.g. Attivio, Connotate, Expert System, EyeAlike, Truevert, Temis).
We have seen companies like Exalead, ISYS, and Vivisimo gain on former leaders. Microsoft is often listed as an industry leader because it acquired former leader FAST while companies with solid products for verticals, like Recommind in law and financial services, are often overlooked because they lack the total company revenues of a Microsoft that sells a lot more software than enterprise search.
This past week two industry news items caused me to reflect on the potential impact of announcements that, while not surprising, can upset the plans of buyers of search technology. The first was the announcement that Autonomy is planning to procure Interwoven. That Interwoven is being acquired is no surprise, since the company was being groomed for acquisition. However, this appears to be the first instance of a “search” company acquiring a “content management/document management” company. The norm has been that search companies get bought to fill a need by ECM or CMS vendors. For anyone planning to procure Interwoven because of its embedded Vivisimo Velocity for Universal search in its Worksite product, this does put a wrinkle in the fabric. What a shame because it is going to be a while before the actual impact is really known and could slow sales. The cost to buyers having to accept Autonomy’s IDOL instead of Velocity could be significant. The effect could be on both licensing and deployment because Velocity has been an efficient install for most enterprises. Autonomy has got a big ramp up to shift from being a search company to becoming an ECM supplier and some will take a wait and see attitude, regardless of the Idol reputation.
The second big announcement, of course, is the departure from Microsoft of John Marcus Lervik, a co-founder of FAST and recently named Executive VP in a newly created position for Enterprise Search at Microsoft. I’m sure you’ll be seeing plenty about the reasons elsewhere. However, the difficulty for those buyers who are depending on FAST’s search technology to be integrated sooner rather than later in Microsoft’s offerings has just been made more complicated as one of the original leaders of FAST is leaving the team.
Two years ago I commented to FAST executives about the need for vendors on a rapid growth path to make the buying, business and support experience for customers a priority, beyond technology enhancements; so, I take little consolation in seeing this turmoil. If you are a buyer, take a good hard look behind the technology to see what else you will be dealing with as you make plans to acquire software.
Updated April 9, 2009: View the recorded webinar.
January 27, 2009, 2:00 pm ET
When customer experience becomes increasingly important even as budgets are tightening, the SaaS value proposition–faster time to results, reduced dependency on IT resources, predictable costs–can be especially compelling. If your organization wants or needs to move ahead with web business initiatives in today’s uncertain economic climate, you’re probably investigating software-as-a-service solutions for web content management.
But SaaS WCM is fundamentally different from licensing software (open source or proprietary) and installing it on your own servers. Which means the process of evaluating solutions is different. It’s not all apples when SaaS is on the short list, but rather apples and oranges.This webinar explores the implications for technology acquisition. How do you make a business case that enables your organization to fairly evaluate all options and make the best decision for the business?
Join us in a lively discussion with Robert Carroll from Clickability. Register today. Presented by Gilbane. Sponsored by Clickability. Based on a new Gilbane Beacon entitled Communicating SaaS WCM Value.
Following on Dale’s inauguration day post, Will XML Help this President?, we have today’s invigorating news that President Obama is committed to more Internet-based openness. The CNET article highlights some of the most compelling items from the two memoes, but I am especially heartened by this statement from the memo on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):
I also direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to update guidance to the agencies to increase and improve information dissemination to the public, including through the use of new technologies, and to publish such guidance in the Federal Register.
The key phrases are "increase and improve information dissemination" and "the use of new technologies." This is keeping in spirit with the FOIA–the presumption is that information (and content) created by or on behalf of the government is public property and should be accessible to the public. This means that the average person should be able to easily find government content and be able to readily consume it–two challenges that the content technology industry grapples with every day.
The issue of public access is in fact closely related to the issue of long-term archiving of content and information. One of the reasons I have always been comfortable recommending XML and other standards-based technology for content storage is that the content and data would outlast any particular software system or application. As the government looks to make government more open, they should and likely will look at standards-based approaches to information and content access.
Such efforts will include core infrastructure, including servers and storage, but also a wide array of supporting hardware and software falling into three general categories:
- Hardware and software to support the collection of digital material. This ranges from hardware and software for digitizing and converting analog materials, software for cataloging digital materials with the inclusion of metadata, hardware and software to support data repositories, and software for indexing the digital text and metadata.
- Hardware and software to support the access to digital material. This includes access tools such as search engines, portals, catalogs, and finding aids, as well as delivery tools allowing users to download and view textual, image-based, multimedia, and cartographic data.
- Core software for functions such as authentication and authorization, name administration, and name resolution.
Standards such as PDF-A have emerged to give governments a ready format for long-term archiving of routine government documents. But a collection of PDF/A documents does not in and of itself equal a useful government portal. There are many other issues of navigation, search, metadata, and context left unaddressed. This is true even before you consider the wide range of content produced by the government–pictorial, audio, video, and cartographic data are obvious–but also the wide range of primary source material that comes out of areas such as medical research, energy development, public transportation, and natural resource planning.
President Obama’s directives should lead to interesting and exciting work for content technology professionals in the government. We look forward to hearing more.
Two years ago when I began blogging for the Gilbane Group on enterprise search, the extent of my vision was reflected in the blog categories I defined and expected to populate with content over time. They represented my personal “top terms” that were expected to each have meaningful entries to educate and illuminate what readers might want to know about search behind the firewall of enterprises.
A recent examination of those early decisions showed me where there are gaps in content, perhaps reflecting that some of those topics were:
- Not so important
- Not currently in my thinking about the industry
- OR Not well defined
I also know that on several occasions I couldn’t find a good category in my list for a blog I had just written. Being a former indexer and heavy user of controlled vocabularies, on most occasions I resisted the urge to create a new category and found instead the “best fit” for my entry. I know that when the corpus of content or domain is small, too many categories are useless for the reader. But now, as I approach 100 entries, it is time to reconsider where I want to go with blogging about enterprise search.
In the short term, I am going to try to provide entries for scantily covered topics because I still think they are all relevant. I’ll probably add a few more along the way or perhaps make some topics a little more granular.
Taxonomies are never static, and require periodic review, even when the amount of content is small. Taxonomists need to keep pace with current use of terminology and target audience interests. New jargon creeps in although I prefer to use generic and terms broadly understood in the technology and business world.
That gives you an idea of some of my own taxonomy process. To add to the entries on terminology (definitions) and taxonomies, I am posting a glossary I wrote for last year’s report on the enterprise search market and recently updated for the Gilbane Workshop on taxonomies. While the definitions were all crafted by me, they are validated through the heavy use of the Google “define” feature. If you aren’t already a user, you will find it highly useful when trying to pin down a definition. At the Google search box, simply type define: xxx xxx (where xxx represents a word or phrase for which you seek a definition). Google returns all the public definition entries it finds on the Internet. My definitions are then refined based on what I learn from a variety of sources I discover using this technique. It’s a great way to build your knowledge-base and discover new meanings.
Ephox announced the release of a new integration of its rich text editor into IBM’s Lotus Quickr. Lotus Quickr is team collaboration software that helps enterprises share content, collaborate and work faster online. It goes beyond traditional document sharing by adding web-based collaboration with wikis, blogs and team web pages. EditLive! addresses this need with a Word-like authoring experience. It also offers capabilities for image editing, track changes, table editing and accessibility checking. EditLive! integrations for the WebSphere Portal and the Lotus Domino versions of Quickr are available now. The integration for the Quickr Domino platform was co-developed by the PSC Group, a Lotus consulting firm. http://www.ephox.com
Mark Logic Corporation announced the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word. Distributed under the open-source Apache 2.0 license, the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word delivers a free, simple way for developers to combine native XML-based functionality in both MarkLogic Server and the most common content authoring environment, Microsoft Office Word 2007. Developers can build applications for finding and reusing enterprise content, enriching documents for search and analytics, and enhancing documents with custom metadata. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word includes a pre-built plug-in framework for Microsoft Office Word 2007, a sample application, and an extensive library for managing and manipulating Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents. Intelligent Authoring – the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word provides the ability to build a role- and task-aware application within Microsoft Office Word 2007 to improve the content authoring process. This functionality allows users to easily locate and preview content at any level of granularity and insert it into an active document, as well as manage custom document metadata. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word allows developers to build content applications that leverage Office Open XML, the native XML-based format of Microsoft Office Word 2007. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word includes an add-in application for deploying web-based content applications into Microsoft Office Word 2007. This enables developers to use web development techniques, such as HTML, JavaScript, and .NET to build applications that work in concert with the Microsoft Office Word 2007 authoring environment. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word also provides XQuery libraries that simplify working with Office Open XML for granular search, dynamic assembly, transformation, and delivery with MarkLogic Server. By leveraging the underlying XML markup, content applications built with MarkLogic and Microsoft Office Word 2007 can “round-trip” documents between various formats. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word allows developers to inspect, modify, and even redistribute the source code to meet specific needs. You can download the latest release of MarkLogic Toolkit for Word at the Mark Logic Developer Workshop. http://www.marklogic.com
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 software, an upgrade of its solution for authoring, reviewing, managing, and publishing rich technical information and training content across multiple channels. Using the suite, technical communicators can create documentation, training materials and Web-enabled user assistance containing both traditional text and 3D designs along with rich media, including Adobe Flash Player compatible video, AVI, MP3 and SWF file support. The enhanced suite includes Adobe FrameMaker 9, the latest version of Adobe’s technical authoring and DITA publishing solution, Adobe RoboHelp 8, a major upgrade to Adobe’s help system and knowledge base authoring tool, Adobe Captivate 4, an upgrade to Adobe’s eLearning authoring tool, and Photoshop CS4, a new addition to the suite. The suite also includes Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended and Adobe Presenter 7. Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 is a complete solution that offers improved productivity along with support for standards-based authoring including support for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an XML-based standard for authoring, producing and delivering technical information. It enables the creation of rich content and publishing through multiple channels, including XML/HTML, print, PDF, WSF, WebHelp, Adobe FlashHelp, Microsoft HTML Help, OracleHelp, JavaHelp and Adobe AIR. FrameMaker 9 offers a new user interface. It supports hierarchical books and DITA 1.1, and makes it easier to author topic-based content. In addition, FrameMaker 9 provides a capability to aggregate unstructured, structured and DITA content in a seamless workflow. Using a PDF based review workflow, authors can import and incorporate feedback. Adobe RoboHelp 8 allows technical communicators to author XHTML-compliant professional help content. The software also supports Lists and Tables, a new CSS editor, Pages and Templates, and a new search functionality. The Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 is immediately available in North America. Estimated street price for the suite is US$1899. FrameMaker 9, RoboHelp 8 and Captivate 4 are available as standalone products as well. Estimated street price for FrameMaker 9 and RoboHelp 8 is US$999 for each, US$799 for Captivate 4. http://www.adobe.com
