We updated our survey on enterprise use of blog, wiki and RSS technology for our presentation on the same subject to a group of documentation and training managers yesterday. With 91 respondents the results are a little more respectable. The only obvious differences from our earlier results were an increase the use or planned use of RSS, and the amount of support provided by IT for blogs, wikis, and RSS. We are not sure if there is real “hockey stick” growth going on here – our results don’t show it – but there just might be. Chris Shipley thinks their numbers show it. Perhaps they do, but we need to know more about the demographics. Our own demographics are very broad and include a sizable non-technical component, which could explain the difference. There was certainly strong interest among the doc and training folks yesterday, but deployment was almost non-existent. The only other sort of relevant survey we are aware of is Technorati’s, but that was aimed at bloggers so is a very different animal.
Based on all the evidence, my inclination is to believe the growth is hockey-stick-like. We’ll try and come to some more concrete conclusions on this in time for our keynote debate on this in Boston next month.
Almost forgot to mention the new Yahoo! White Paper on RSS (pdf). If you thought most internet users knew what RSS was you had better read this.
Addendum: Here is more info on the demographics and methodolgy we were looking for re the Guidewire/Edelman survey mentioned by Chris Shipley we referenced above.
Author: Frank Gilbane (Page 71 of 75)
The question is from Charlie Wood’s entry where he references a couple of reports by James Governor on Traction beating Lotus out at a European pharmaceutical organization, and Movable Type beating Lotus out at Alcatel. There is a free case study written by Suw Charman for the former on her blog.
Socialtext also has some increasingly interesting enterprise apps at e.g., Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Nokia, and has recent investment and a new board member from SAP.
We’ll be looking at some more detail on exactly what organizations like these are doing with blog and wiki tools in a follow-on report to Lauren’s earlier article, so let us know of any interesting case studies.
In answer to Charlie’s question, I would say ‘yes’ to collaboration and ‘partially’ to content management.
The brochure for our Fall conference is at the printer, but there is a PDF available and the site with the program schedule, session descriptions, exhibitors-to-date, registration, etc., has been live for a few weeks.
Note that the CM Pros Fall Summit is once again co-located with our event, so it will be a jam-paked few days.
It is good to see that MS is plugging away at this and now providing a way to really take a look at it. I am not qualified to comment on its technical merits, but the idea is important (to content management but more to computing in general) and something we have been watching for a long time. Dan Farber’s entry on this release has some useful links, and Wikipedia has an accessible intro to WinFS
Although not officially announced, a number of trade publications have reported on Oracle’s acquisition of Content Media, and Tony Byrne succinctly captures what is of immediate interest to followers of the content management market.
What we started calling EII (Enterprise Information Integration) a few years ago, and what many vendors called ECI (Enterprise Content Integration) remains one of the biggest challenges organizations face – too big to be served by a small niche market, as evidenced by Oracle’s move, as well as by the earlier IBM and EMC acquisitions. For a more in-depth look at the problem, players and the market see our article on What is Enterprise Information Integration (EII)?
Lot’s of merger and acquisition news this week!
- Hummingbird & RedDot
- Trados & SDL
- Infodata & McDonald Bradley
- Stellent & e-Onehundred Group
- and also a consortium merger: Compliance Consortium & OCEG.
Microsoft announced that XML will be the default file format for Office 12. I’ll look more at the details and what this means to OpenOffice etc. when I get a chance, but this is certainly great news and another major step forward for XML in general and Microsoft’s support for it. It looks like Microsoft has addressed (full Microsoft press release) the main concerns that critics exposed during the OpenOffice debate we have been covering here and in our conferences. Tim is impressed!
Update: Dan Farber has some additional info from Microsoft.
Update 2: Dan points to info from Rick Schaut on Office 12 Mac XML support.
It is excellent news that OASIS has approved OpenDocument as a standard. Hopefully it will also become an ISO standard. However, neither of these mean that it is necessarily the right approach for you. A single schema, no matter how well-designed, will not work for everyone. James Governor is quoted in the release: “One key to success will be the royalty free status of the spec; there are no financial penalties associated with developing to it.” Very true, but Microsoft’s schema is also royalty and cost free, and I believe they have committed (contractually even I think…?) e.g., to the EU, to keep it that way. See more on this here and here.
