Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Year: 2010 (Page 13 of 23)

New Gilbane Beacon on Cloud Content Management

The term Cloud Content Management has begun to appear with increasing frequency in the last few months. But what does it mean? And how is it different from Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?

Gilbane Group answers these questions in our latest Beacon, which it titled Cloud Content Management: Facilitating Controlled Sharing of Active Content. Here is how we briefly define Cloud Content Management and contrast it to ECM:

“Cloud Content Management is an emerging set of content sharing and management
practices and a supporting category of software built on an open, secure, cloud-based
platform. It is rapidly deployed and easily used to manage content, in any format, that is
actively shared among collaborators working both inside and across firewalls. Cloud
Content Management is complementary to Enterprise Content Management, which is more
focused on controlling access to static, unstructured content in TIFF, PDF, and office
productivity document formats as it is electronically captured, stored, distributed,
archived, and disposed.”

The Gilbane Beacon explores the various facets of this definition and goes into much more detail as to how Cloud Content Management differs from, and complements, ECM. We urge you to download the Beacon (free registration required), read it, then return here to share comments.

Adobe introduces Acrobat.com Workspaces

Adobe introduced Acrobat.com Workspaces, a new collaboration space that lets teams inside and outside of organizations work together on projects. With Workspaces, team members can store and organize project content online, and share and manage team access to files helping to eliminate the need to continually e-mail updates. Acrobat.com is a set of hosted services that facilitate internal and external collaboration between individuals and teams. In a few clicks, people can create Workspaces, store and share documents, and convert files to PDF. Teams can also meet in real-time and share their screens using Adobe ConnectNow, or create documents and tables with online office applications, such as Buzzword and Acrobat.com Tables. As with all of the Acrobat.com services, Workspaces are built on the Adobe Flash Platform and operate inside a web browser. Apart from the Adobe Flash Player, no additional software installation is required. Teams can create Shared Workspaces to store and share a set of files related to a project, letting distributed team members work together across times zones and firewalls, with no special file sharing software or IT involvement necessary. Users simply access an online Workspace to review and collaborate on documents. Workspace administration privileges can be assigned to specific team members, to help maintain control over who has what level of access to each project’s documents. Each individual also has their own Personal Workspace on Acrobat.com to store and work on documents before they are ready to be shared with a broader team. Acrobat.com users can create one free Shared Workspace, while Premium Basic subscribers can create 20 Workspaces and Premium Plus subscribers can create an unlimited number of Workspaces. http://blogs.adobe.com/acom

Selling Content Globalization Investments to Executives

When working with enterprise clients, we are inevitably involved in helping our operational champions sell investments in content globalization practices and infrastructures. Sometimes business case support is a formal part of the engagement, and sometimes it just evolves as part of what we do to help companies create competitive advantage with content in multiple languages.

In a recent joint Gilbane/SDL webinar, we made the point that the last pitch to top executives — the one required to seal the deal for funding — is fundamentally different from the others made along the way. If you’ve made it to the executive suite, you’ve done a good job so far. But too often, we’ve seen clients fail to secure investment because they use the same approach to selling that’s enabled them to pass through the previous gates. Some common points of failure when selling globalization technology to executives include:

  • Investment focus that is too tactical.
  • Poorly expressed pain points.
  • Lack of strategic value proposition tied to the top line.
  • Vague ROI.
  • No vision that ensures sponsorship and ongoing support beyond the initial project.

These points of failure can be addressed by recognizing that the funding conversation with executives is truly different, and by restructuring the approach to presenting the value propositions related to the investment you’re seeking. For the webinar, we developed a value-oriented framework for selling globalization technology within the highest levels of the organization. Its four components, as illustrated above, can guide you through the process of creating and delivering an executive sales pitch biased for success. We used the framework to examine six ways to recast an executive sales pitch. We backed up brief analyses of weak and strong answers with data from Gilbane research and real-world customer experiences.

The recorded webinar is now available on the SDL website.

I Don’t Have Time to Read, I’m in Publishing…

Here’s an old joke of mine I’ve unearthed from the olden times when I was first a developmental editor and then an acquisitions editor at a professional resource and textbook publisher.  

If you don’t think the joke is funny, you’re right.  The feeling among those in publishing of being pressed to absurd extent is a very common one, what a good friend of mine calls “running around with your hair on fire.”  Let’s face it: the practice of publishing, with its tight margins, immovable deadlines, and wide scope of responsibilities is fraught with demands on time.  The Gilbane Publishing Practices group certainly sees this.

One of our ongoing efforts is the upcoming report, A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Systems to Re-Invent Publishing, where we’re defining the many systems common across many different kinds of publishing, and describe the technological and process barriers still facing almost every publisher as it moves toward building a successful digital publishing operation.  And, yes, the demands already in place upon the various line-of-business departments are exhausting even to survey.  Add the demands placed upon publishing organizations to create processes that make digital publishing a reasonably good profit center, and it can feel that there is barely time to breathe.  Running around with hair on fire, indeed.

The Gilbane Group means content management, and the long-standing argument that the business of enterprises goes better when content is findable, retrievable, and usable has long been proved by the practices of innumerable enterprises.  With the catchphrase “Every enterprise’s second business is publishing,” it is not surprising that Gilbane has a lot of clients not only in the CMS technology vendor space, but also in the publishing end-user/implementer space.

While there are many similarities between publishers and other enterprises that have a lot of content they need to manage, there are unique aspects too.  Here are a couple examples of the differences: managing royalties and dealing with rights.

Yes, tracking royalties is a sort of accounting issue, and many enterprises—especially those dealing with a lot of rich media—need to take care with rights.  But in publishing, royalties and rights are central to the business.  How does a publisher integrate these key elements of the business with the technology platforms used in other parts of the business process?

Our upcoming report will be quite specific about the real state of opportunity in digital publishing, which means that we’ll need to answer many questions, including the ones about royalty and rights handling.  So it is our turn to run around with our hair on fire, but we promise to still have time to read your comments and inquires about our latest efforts.

Of course, it goes without saying that if one doesn’t have time to read, one probably will be hard-pressed to take a survey: nonetheless, that is exactly what we’ll soon be asking publishers to do.  The survey will be from the book publishers’ perspective and their experiences and concerns about expanding or starting digital publishing programs.  Stay tuned for more specific information on this and for the survey kick-off.

For more information about our Publishing Practices consulting services and our multi-client-sponsored studies, contact Ralph Marto.

Congrats to New CM Pros Board Members and Officers

Congratulations to recently elected officers, and to new CM Pros board members Saravanan Rajan, Brett Zucker and Ian Truscott!

Content Management is often loosely defined but covers a virtual ecosystem of vendors and practitioners. The 2010 CM Pros board extends a call to the community of practitioners to further define product niches and areas of specialist expertise. The goal is to guide the market and the people that look to CM Pros.

Board-appointed officers for the coming year are:

  • Scott Liewehr, President (Senior WCM Consultant at Gilbane Group and Principal at onesta)
  • Saravanan Rajan, Vice President (Chief Technology Officer for CoSI Consulting)
  • Ayse Kok, Secretary (PhD Student, ICT Consultant, and Researcher)
  • Brett Zucker, Treasurer (Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Bridgeline Software)
  • Ian Truscott, Director (Product Strategist, Alterian)

Look for action from this board as they gear up for a full season of activities that will engage the Content Management community. Be sure to join CM Pros at their Spring Summit at The Gilbane Conference (http://gilbanesf.com), May 18 in San Francisco.

About CM Professionals
Founded in 2004, CM Pros provides information, expertise, and support to global content management practitioners and related professionals and the organizations they serve. Through peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, educational events, and advocacy of respected practices, the association fosters a better understanding of this critically important discipline.

Join CM Pros on the Web at www.cmprofessionals.org.

Free Mac Application for Reading Kindle Books Now Available

Amazon.com, Inc. announced “Kindle for Mac,” a free application that lets readers around the world read Kindle books on their Mac computers. The U.S. Kindle Store currently offers over 450,000 books, including New Releases and 102 of the New York Times Bestsellers. Kindle books can now be read on the Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC and Mac, and soon the iPad. Kindle for Mac features Amazon’s Whispersync technology which saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. With Kindle for Mac, readers can take advantage of the following features: Purchase, download, and read the many Kindle format books available; Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free; Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line; Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read; View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone; & Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks. Several features will be added to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights. Kindle for Mac is available to customers around the world as a free download. http://www.amazon.com/kindleformac

Adeptol Partners with VersaPAC

In a move to strengthen reach in the Asian market, Adeptol announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with VersaPAC, a solution provider of information management systems and reseller of HP TRIM records management software.  With the partnership VersaPAC is moving from a legacy viewing system to Adeptol’s document viewing technology embedded in its Saffron web front-end application for HP TRIM. Saffron is available through VersaPAC resellers in Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, North America, and the United Kingdom. The integration allows Saffron to support viewing of over 300 file formats including documents from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, various image files, and Adobe PDF.  Users will have access to the latest features such as document search, annotations, and document conversion to PDF – all from the viewer. Adeptol Document Viewer is a web-based viewer using Ajax technology, and is a built-in Information Rights Management (IRM) module that allows users to protect content by assigning policies to control the viewing, printing, navigating and saving of documents. http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.com/ http://www.versapac.com.my/

More on Microblogging: Evolution of the Enterprise Market

Following my post last week on the need for additional filters in enterprise microblogging tools and activity streams, I participated in an interesting Twitter conversation on the subject of microblogging and complexity. The spontaneous conversation began when Greg Lowe, a well-respected Enterprise 2.0 evangelist at Alcatel-Lucent, asked:

“Can stand alone micro-blogging solutions survive when platform plays introduce the feature?”

I immediately replied:

“Yes, if they innovate faster”

Greg shot back:

“is microblogging autonomy about innovation, or simple elegance? More features usually leads to lower usability?”

And, later, he asked a complementary question:

“is there a risk of Microblogging becoming “too complicated”?”

Is Greg on to something here? Do more features usually lead to lower usability? Will functional innovation be the downfall of stand-alone microblogging solutions, or will it help them stay ahead of platform vendors as they incorporate microblogging into their offerings?

One of the commonly heard complaints about software in general, and enterprise software in particular, is that it is too complicated. There are too many features and functions, and how to make use of them is not intuitive. On the other hand, usability is a hallmark of Web 2.0 software, and, if we make it too complex, it is likely that some people will abandon it in favor of simpler tools, whatever those may be.

But that dichotomy does not tell the entire story. Based on anecdotal evidence (there is no published quantitative research available), early adopters of Web 2.0 software in the enterprise appear to value simplicity in software they use. However, as a colleague, Thomas Vander Wal, pointed out to me yesterday, that may not be true for later, mainstream adopters. Ease-of-use may be desirable in microblogging (or any other) software, but having adequate features to enable effective, efficient usage is also necessary to achieve significant adoption. Later adopters need to see that a tool can help them in a significant way before they will begin to use it; marginal utility does not sway them, even if the tool is highly usable.

Simple may not be sustainable. As I wrote last week in this post, as enterprise use of microblogging and activity streams has increased and matured, so has the need for filters. Individuals, workgroups, and communities want to direct micro-messages to specific recipients, and they need to filter their activity streams to increase their ability to make sense out of the raging river of incoming information. Those needs will only increase as more workers microblog and more information sources are integrated into activity streams.

In the public microblogging sphere, Twitter provides a solid example of the need to add functionality to a simple service as adoption grows in terms of registered users and use cases. As more individuals used Twitter, in ways that were never envisioned by its creators, the service responded by adding functionality such as search, re-tweeting, and lists. Each of these features added some degree of complexity to the service, but also improved its usability and value.

In the evolution of any software, there is a trade-off between simplicity and functionality that must be carefully managed. How does one do that? One way is to continuously solicit and accept user feedback. That allows the software provider and organizations deploying it to sense when they are nearing the point where functionality begins to overwhelm ease of use in a harmful manner. Another technique is to roll out new features in small doses at reasonable intervals. Some even advocate slipping new features in unannounced and letting users discover them for themselves. Hosted deployment of software (whether on-premise or off-site) makes this easier to do, since new features are automatically switched on for people using the software.

So back to the original question; can stand-alone microblogging solutions fend off the collaboration suite and platform vendors as they incorporate microblogging and activity streams in their offerings? My definitive answer is “yes”, because there is still room for functionality to be added to microblogging before it becomes over-complicated.

Based on the historical evolution of other software types and categories, it is likely that the smaller vendors, who are  intensely focused on microblogging, will be the innovators, rather than the platform players. As long as vendors of stand-alone microblogging offerings continue to innovate quickly without confusing their customers, they will thrive. That said, a platform vendor could drive microblogging feature innovation if they so desired; think about what IBM has done with its Sametime instant messaging platform. However, I see no evidence of that happening in the microblogging sphere at this time.

The most plausible scenario is that at some point, small, focused vendors driving microblogging innovation (e.g. Socialcast, Yammer) will be acquired by larger vendors, who will integrate the acquired features into their collaboration suite or platform. My sense is that we are still 2-3 years away from that happening, because there is still room for value-producing innovation in microblogging.

What do you think?

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 The Gilbane Advisor

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑