Microsoft has announced that the 2010 release of Office, SharePoint, Visio and Project are available to business customers worldwide. 2010 Releases are Available to Businesses after Record Beta Adoption: The beta programs for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 were the largest in the products’ history, reaching three times the size of prior Office beta programs. As a result, 8.6 million people are already using Office 2010 and related products. In addition, more than 1,000 partners are already building solutions for the 2010 set of products. Office, Project and Visio will be generally available online and in retail outlets in the U.S. on June 15th. Microsoft’s Office Web applications will be available to all Office volume licensing customers, offering productivity technologies in the cloud. In addition, customers will be able to purchase a subscription to Office Web Apps as part of Microsoft Online Services, Microsoft’s cloud-based applications. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are available in 14 languages, and over the next few months, 80 more languages will be added. A live webcast further detailing this release can be viewed at 11 AM EST 5/12/10. www.the2010event.com
Year: 2010 (Page 11 of 23)
Trying to summarize a technology space as varied as that covered in two days at the Search Engines Meeting in Boston, April 26-27, is a challenge and opportunity. Avoiding the challenge of trying to represent the full spectrum, I’ll stick with the opportunity. Telling you that search is everywhere, in every technology we use and has a multitude of cousins and affiliated companion technologies is important.
The Gilbane Group focuses on content technologies. In its early history this included Web content management, document management, and CMS systems for publishers and enterprises. We now track related technologies expanding to areas including standards like DITA and XML, adoption of social tools, plus rapid growth in the drive to localize and globalize content; Gilbane has kept up with these trends.
My area, search and more specifically “enterprise search” or search “behind the firewall,” was added just over three years ago. It seemed logical to give attention to the principal reason for creating, managing and manipulating content, namely finding it. When I pay attention to search engines, I am also thinking about adjoining content technologies. My recent interest is helping readers learn about how technology on both the search side and content management/manipulation side need better context; that means relating the two.
If one theme ran consistently through all the talks at Enterprise Search Meeting, it was the need to define search in relationship to so many other content technologies. The speakers, for the most part, did a fine job of making these connections.
Here are just some snippets:
Bipin Patel CIO of ProQuest, shared the technology challenges of maintaining a 24/7 service while driving improvements to the search usability interface. The goal is to deliver command line search precision to users who do not have the expertise to (or patience) to construct elaborate queries. Balancing the tension between expert searchers (usually librarians) with everyone else who seeks content underscores the importance of human factors. My take-away: underlying algorithms and architecture are worth little if usability is neglected.
Martin Baumgartel spoke on the Theseus project for the semantic search marketplace, a European collaborative initiative. An interesting point for me is their use of SMILA (SeMantic Information Logistics Architecture) from Eclipse. By following some links on the Eclipse site I found this interesting presentation from the International Theseus Convention in 2009. The application of this framework model underscores the interdependency of many semantically related technologies to improve search.
Tamas Doszkocs of the National Library of Medicine told a well-annotated story of the decades of search and content enhancement technologies that are evolving to contribute to semantically richer search experiences. His metaphors in the evolutionary process were fun and spot-on at a very practical level: Libraries as knowledge bases > Librarians as search engines > the Web as the knowledge base > Search engines as librarians > moving toward understanding, content, context, and people to bring us semantic search. A similar presentation is posted on the Web.
David Evans noted that there is currently no rigorous evaluation methodology yet for mobile search but is it very different than what we do with desktop search. One slide that I found most interesting was the Human Language Technologies (HLT) that contribute to a richer mobile search experience, essentially numerous semantic tools. Again, this underscores that the challenges of integrating sophisticated hardware, networking and search engine architectures for mobile search are just a piece of the solution. Adoption will depend on tools that enhance content findability and usability.
Jeff Fried of Microsoft/Fast talked about “social search” and put forth this important theme: that people like to connect to content through other people. He made me recognize how social tools are teaching us that the richness of this experience is a self-reinforcing mechanism toward “the best way to search.” It has lessons for enterprises as they struggle to adopt social tools in mindful ways in tandem with improving search experiences.
Shekhar Pradhan of Docunexus shared this relevant thought about a failure of interface architecture and that is (to paraphrase): the ubiquitous search box fails because it does not demand context or mechanisms for resolving ambiguity. Obviously, this breaks down adoption for enterprise search when it is the only option offered.
Many more talks from this meeting will get rolled up in future reports and blogs.
I want to learn your experiences and observations about semantic search and semantic technologies, as well. Please note that we have posted a brief survey for a short time at: Semantic Technology Survey. If you have any involvement with semantic technologies, please take it.
Open Text Corporation, a provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, announced Rights Management Services (RMS) for the Open Text ECM Suite designed to safeguard confidential and sensitive information from unauthorized uses even after it leaves the content repository. Though the content may be stored in a secure repository, once users have the right to read a document and save it on their local drives, the content becomes vulnerable. Open Text Rights Management Services lets organizations augment their strategies with protection that remains with the content. Rights Management Services works by enforcing content protection constraints for documents and other content based on rules such as “do not email,” “do not print” or “do not save locally.” The application then encrypts the content and the publishing license together. The content and rights remain encrypted during transport, extending security to wherever the content travels. When a recipient opens rights-protected content, a request goes to a rights management server to validate the user’s credentials and usage rights. Round-trip scenarios are also supported allowing editing and uploading of new versions that retain the rights management constraints. As a shared service in the ECM Suite, Rights Management Services are also available to any content application in the organization. Protection spans Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 applications as well as PDF, HTML, engineering drawing file formats, image files, ZIP, archives among others. Users can also read and protect content viewed on BlackBerry smartphones. The Open Text RMS solution takes advantage of the Active Directory Rights Management Service from Microsoft. Open Text is also partnering with both GigaTrust and Liquid Machines, to add support for specialty content types such as computer-aided design (CAD) files, Visio, Adobe PDF, graphic files, and many other file formats, plus rights management support for documents available via BlackBerry devices. Open Text Rights Management Services for the Open Text ECM Suite is available now. Partner offerings are also available now directly through the partners. http://www.opentext.com http://www.gigatrust.com http://www.liquidmachines.com/
Or collaboration, enterprise social software, search, analytics, market trends, customer engagement strategies, intranet architectures, multi-channel publishing …, or a prediction one of us has previously made that was prescient or presumptuous.
To learn more about the analysts on the panel including links to their blogs and Twitter accounts click on their name below.
K2. Industry Analyst Keynote Debate: Industry Analyst Debate – What’s Real, What’s Hype, and What’s Coming – May 19th 4:00pm – 5pm, Westin Market St, San Francisco
We invite industry analysts from different firms to speak at all our events to make sure our conference attendees hear differing opinions from a wide variety of expert sources. A second, third, or fourth opinion will ensure you don’t make ill-informed decisions about critical content and information technologies or strategies. This session will be a lively, interactive debate guaranteed to be both informative and fun.
Panelists:
Rob Koplowitz, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Hadley Reynolds, Research Director, Search & Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDC
Tony Byrne, Founder, The Real Story Group & CMS Watch
Scott Liewehr, Senior Consultant, Web Content Management, Gilbane Group
How to submit questions:
- If they are short enough, DM @gilbanesf or tag a tweet with #gilbanesf
- Comment on this post
The Gilbane Group’s new web-based survey for book publishing professionals has just gone live. This “Blueprint” survey is one of the research mechanisms for our upcoming study A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing. The study will be published in June 2010, and all participants in this survey will have full access to the full-length study posted on The Gilbane Group website and through the websites of the sponsors of the report.
Please note: This survey is for high- and mid-level book publishing professionals. If this does not describe you, please do not take this survey.
This 10-minute survey seeks to gain detailed information about what is really happening among the full spectrum of book publishers related to ebook and digital publishing efforts, and will identify the "pain points" and barriers encountered by book publishers when it comes to their developing or expanding digital publishing programs. Issues such as royalties, digital format choices, and distribution difficulties are addressed.
For more information about A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing, or other activities of The Gilbane Group Content Technologies and Strategies practice, please email Bill Trippe.
The Gilbane Group Web-based survey of book publishing professionals is now active!. This survey is one of the research mechanisms for our upcoming study A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing. The study will be published in June 2010, and all participants in this survey will have full access to the full-length study posted on The Gilbane Group website.
This survey, which will take most participants between 10-to-15 minutes to complete, seeks to gain a clearer picture of ebook and related digital publishing efforts underway among the full spectrum of book publishers. Furthermore, the analyst team at The Gilbane Group seeks to identify a number of “pain points” or barriers encountered by book publishers when it comes to developing or expanding digital publishing programs, including areas such as royalties, digital format choices, and distribution problems.
Broadly speaking, A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Systems to Re-Invent Publishing is a professional education effort, and its utility will rely, in large part, on the active and open participation of the book professionals on the front lines of the digital transformation of books.
Please note: This survey is for high- and mid-level book publishing professionals. If this does not describe you, please do not take this survey.
TAKE SURVEY
Thank you for your participation!
Last week Andrew McAfee wrote a blog post entitled Drop the Pilot wherein he discusses the challenges associated with piloting Enterprise 2.0 tools, and then arrives at the conclusion that we should abandon pilots altogether for such implementations and go as broad as possible right away. As much as I hate to, I respectfully disagree.
Call me a cynic, but when I hear suggestions which go against my gut and break some very fundamental principles, such as the need to proactively manage change as well as risk, I tend to stand back and watch others jump off the bridge to see what happens before i even think about stepping to the edge. As technologists, we are innovating at a rapid pace and paradigms are constantly shifting around us, but we need to be cautious about
I do agree that E2.0 projects pose unique challenges, one of which is that their effectiveness is often [but not always] tied proportionally to the number of users in the ‘system’ (e.g. with microblogs…try launching one with only 100 diverse people in your test group and see well it takes off. Hint: it won’t). I also agree that it’s been universally accepted that “pilot” = “small”, and that this characterization, by definition, hinders the chances of success for an E2.0 pilot. But the ‘aha’ here should not be that we should start throwing caution to the wind and launching new tools across our organizations.
Hi, I’m Ian Truscott and as you may have seen I’ve recently joined our WCM practice (you can get a bit of introduction to me here) – I am pleased to say this is my first blog post (hopefully of many) for Gilbane.
It’s an exciting time for this segment of the CMS industry and to be joining Gilbane and I am looking forward to sharing my passion for web engagement – hence the unashamedly buzz word laden title.
Depending on the commentator; we are either in a social media age, or we are post the social media revolution – in either case the Internet is no longer an extension of the traditional passive consumption media channels, it is a place where information and brand consumers get involved.
In fact, folks are now arguing that it’s no longer ‘social’ it’s just ‘media’ – the way we create, consume and socialize content has changed forever and for everyone. And of course, there is so much of it – how do you make your message stick?
This has mean’t a shift in focus for our industry, we’ve seen the age of the IT developers platform, been through the focus on ‘easy to use’ for content contributors to now – where being audience centric has become mainstream thinking (and a business imperative).
This has spawned a number of descriptions for this extension of WCM and the tools and practices we need to apply to become audience centric, including Persuasive Content, Web Experience Management, Customer Engagement or Web Engagement.
All of these have something in common; a cycle of listening to the audience, understanding their needs and behaviour, using that to create and optimize content and some form of relevance based delivery.
At it’s simplest, from a tools perspective – it’s the intersection of WCM, web analytics and personalized delivery. But it gets more complex, with the inclusion of social media, CRM, marketing automation, e-mail, mobile delivery, auto-categorization, search – this list can go on.
Yes, you can throw the kitchen sink at this one – but software and industry best practices are being aligned, for sound business reasons and they are aligning behind the audience, the citizen, the consumer.. you in fact.
I’m going to finish on a couple of quotes from Frank Gilbane – from the foreword to ‘Web Engagement’ by Bill Zoellick (a book I’ve enjoyed for a while):
The most unique characteristic of the web is in the way that it changes the relationship between your business and it’s customers.
You will not be able to take advantage … and know your customers without engaging them in a way that encourages them to share information with you.
Engaging your customers requires understanding the new tools and data that are available and applying them in a way that nurtures a new level of trust.
Not just saying that to be nice to the boss (although it can’t do any harm!), or to point out that the book was authored by a Gilbane alumnus – I think the most relevant part of the quote is the date that Frank wrote that foreword – it was February 2000.
Hence my excitement in joining Gilbane, a firm that has a great, long standing pedigree as an authority on web engagement, which is, as I say, my passion and I look forward to the privilegeof contributing to that.
Interested in reading more on Web Engagement? – I suggest reading this White Paper by Mary Laplante or check out our guide for marketers at Gilbane San Francisco – where our speakers will be discussing a lot of the subjects I touch on here.
