OutStart Inc. and Eedo Knowledgeware Corp. have combined their operations, making the new company a provider of software for creating and sharing organizational knowledge through learning and social collaboration. The company will work to serve the LCMS and learning market, while supporting the emerging need for a business social software platform to enable effective informal knowledge sharing. The combined company has more than 300 customers, including commercial, government and defense organizations; a global base with close to 40 percent of its business coming from international clients; and, solid finances with 50 percent of its revenue coming from recurring business. The company will make its headquarters in Boston and maintain offices in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. http://www.outstart.com
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Updated August 5
Thursday, July 31, 1:00 pm ET/10:00 am PT
New Gilbane research confirms that when it comes to delivering multilingual content for global websites, marketing, business, and IT professionals use whatever resources they have at their disposal to just get it done. It’s clear, though, that performing tactically is no longer enough to attract international audiences, maintain competitive positioning, and scale to meet demand. How are companies large and small are making the shift from performing tactically to thinking strategically? More importantly, what can you learn from their experiences?
Darren Guarnaccia, VP product marketing for Sitecore, and the Gilbane globalization team share insights in a lively online panel discussion that will help you sell your executives on investing in strategies as well as tactics for multilingual web content.
Register today.
Hosted by the American Marketing Association. Sponsored by Sitecore.
Update: If you missed the live event, the recording is now available. Please contact us for a copy of the Gilbane presentation delivered during the webinar.
 
I am tempted…
 
Amidst post Gilbane San Francisco business. I have been reading what everyone else has been writing about search the past couple of months. While there continues to be much speculation and gossip about the Microsoft acquisition of FAST, and which companies may soon be absorbed into larger entities, there also continues to be interesting activity among the mid-tier and start-up search vendors. Meanwhile, I advise those who aspire to acquire a search solution for “behind the firewall,” don’t wait for the “big players” to come up with the definitive solution to all your search needs because it will never happen. I’m in good company with other analysts who advise moving on with point search solutions for specific business needs. You will save money, and time because most of the new products are optimized for rapid deployment, in weeks or months, not years.
If you check out my new research report, Enterprise Search Markets and Applications; Capitalizing on Emerging Demand, June, 2008, you will find a directory to companies offering search solutions with choices for what Steve Arnold refers to as “beyond search.” Deep test drives of many of these products can be found in his report, as well. Meanwhile, new releases of products listed, and new products both continue to be announced. ISYS, Coveo and Expert System (Cogito) have brought new offerings to market in the last month and Collexis, a relative newcomer, is drawing attention to itself by demonstrating its products at numerous meetings this year.
So, keeping reading and checking out the possibilities. While you are at it, be sure to put the Gilbane Boston Conference on your calendar for December 3 – 4. We are all busy rounding out the program right now.
I am particularly interested in hearing from those of you who have participated in the selection of a search product in the past two years, implementing or deploying a system anywhere within your own enterprise. Please consider sending me a brief proposal for a presentation at the conference. For your effort, you will get to attend all the conference sessions, as well as help the audience with the needed reality checks on what it takes to conduct a selection process and follow through with implementation. I particularly want you to share your learning experiences: the good, the frustrating, and the lessons you have accrued. Professional speaking experience is not required – we want stories. [You’ll find my email on the “Contacts” page of the Gilbane site and you should also look at the speakers guidelines for additional information.]
Day Software announced the general availability of Day Content Repository Extreme (CRX) v1.4. The latest version of Day’s product enables the storage, management and exchange of content across large-scale enterprises. Day CRX v1.4 was designed for large-scale enterprise production environments. The product is a packaged, commercial version of Apache Jackrabbit. Day CRX 1.4 manages both structured and unstructured content, enabling content-centric business applications to take advantage of the repository’s content services, and flexible and extensible content storage. Day’s technologies allow companies to access information about their specific businesses, processes, products, customers and documents, which were previously ‘locked’ in proprietary repositories. http://www.day.com
JustSystems announced that it has successfully completed testing of xfy (pronounced ‘x-fye’), its document-based composite application for the IBM Retail Integration Framework. xfy serves as a management interface, providing retailers optimal management and decision support through real-time views of data in underlying applications and repositories. xfy Helps IBM Deliver Real-Time Visualization of SOA IBM Retail Integration Framework utilizes open standards, including Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), Open Application Group Integration (OAGIS) and Global Standards (GS1), to unlock communications between services, information sources, and business processes, making the store and the retail enterprise one seamless landscape rather than disconnected islands. xfy, among the first solutions to take advantage of IBM’s DB2 pureXML, unifies and processes data from multiple sources within a simple and intuitive document interface. The Retail Integration Framework initiative brings together platform- independent software vendors that deliver proven solutions designed and built for the retail industry. Through this initiative, IBM works with select IBM Business Partners to validate solutions that meet a rigorous assessment of next-generation, open-standards-based store environments. xfy provides an end-user interface that unifies and processes data from multiple sources into a clear, contextually-rich document interface. xfy connects directly to the native information sources that drive the retail environment, allowing the data processing to be done within the document itself and providing a real- time view of information. http://www.justsystems.com/
Today I got one of those phone calls: someone from a call center representing a trade magazine, asking me to verify my contact information for their subscriber database and as proof that I’m an actual subscriber that they can include in their circulation numbers. You’ve undoubtedly gotten many of these. They are as much the banes of B-to-B publishers’ existence as they are annoying to subscribers.
I told the phone rep what I tell them all nowadays: I ask if they have a digital edition of their publication. If so, I ask them to switch me to it. If not, I ask them to cancel my subscription. I do this mainly as my tiny way to help the environment, as well as so that I can see what publishers are doing (or not) with digital edition technologies.
The phone rep on today’s call said that the magazine in question, KM World (published by Information Today Inc.), does not offer a digital edition but that he was going to ask whether I’d be interested in one. This shows that digital editions are on more B-to-B publishers’ radar screens.
Our market study of digital editions cites concern for the environment as one of the three primary factors driving growth in digital editions, particularly in B-to-B publishing (the others being lower costs and speed of delivery). Several publishers told us of their own environmental concerns as well as those of their customers and readers.
The routine subscription database update call that included a question about this is further evidence.
And yes, I also don’t like getting trade publications in print because I don’t want my office to be any more cluttered than it is already. Don’t you?
Well, our blogging hiatus is over. No, we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, as some loyal readers might have thought. Quite the contrary. We’ve been criss-crossing countries and continents since April, speaking at industry events, user group meetings, and our own conference in San Francisco.
What’s really keeping us busy, though, is new original research and analysis on content globalization within multinational organizations. Gilbane Group’sMultilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Organizations Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain will be published this summer. The report provides an in-depth look at the current state of content globalization initiatives and emerging best practices. Highlights include profiles of companies with worldwide brands who are bringing together people, process, and technology to align multilingual content initiatives with strategic global business goals.
You may have gotten a sneak peek at preliminary results if you attended Gilbane San Francisco, Localization World in Berlin or the STC annual meeting in Philadelphia, or Sajan or SDL customer events in May. In the weeks ahead, the research will be featured in several webinar events, such as the July 24 event with study sponsor RedDot, and in our blog entries (so check back often).
In addition to RedDot, sponsors are Jonckers, Sajan, Sitecore, SDL Tridion, Systran, and Jahia.
We’re very excited about the insights we uncovered in the research, and we look forward to sharing them with our readers. Stay tuned.
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