Pearson made an interesting acquisition yesterday. Their acquisition of eCollege continues their corporate foray into Student Information Systems and Course Management. Last year, Pearson acquired PowerSchool and Chancery Software yielding a very strong position in Student Information Systems for the K-12 market. Clearly, they like these learning infrastructure markets for several good reasons.
1. At present, they seem to be solid businesses with only a few competitors that are poised to grow at rates exceeding their traditional textbook businesses.
2. The acquired customer base brings them many new customers and brings them closer to the students (and parents) who use their instructional products. The information about these students and the ability to reach them with additional product offerings is not to be underestimated in this digital world.
3. As the range of course materials such as content modules, learning software, simulations, educational websites, etc. continues to grow, the value of the course infrastructure technology will increase as well as provide a strategic advantage for integration with their broad range of course materials.
Last week at the Digital Book conference in New York, several speakers agreed that college textbook publishers will look more and more like software publishers over the next ten years. The reasons for this transition will center on using technology to: 1. deliver appropriate content to the student when it is needed to solve homework problems and prepare for tests; 2. integrate traditional material with innovative simulations and learning modules available from communities like MERLOT; 3. add life to static published content by enabling further exploration via web links and domain specific search engines and content repositories.
Pearson is wise to acquire successful software and technology companies to give them the pockets of technical expertise that would take many years to develop within the company. While there may be some culture clashes, this strategy should serve Pearson well and position them to maintain or expand their leadership position in educational publishing.
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Well, Thomson Learning has finally been sold (subject to rote “due diligence”) to private equity firms. Everyone figured it would be private equity firms that would make the purchase, partly because these firms are buying just about everything these days except your old underwear, and also because the higher education textbook market is so concentrated that even George Bush’s “I’ve never seen a merger I didn’t like” administration would have had trouble fobbing this one off. Too many children would have been left behind.
The big surprise was the price. A whopping $7.75 billion, over 3 times the annual sales of the division, and apparently roughly 15 times cash flow (see . The same article points out that “by comparison, the average cash flow multiple paid in leveraged buyouts of $500 million or more last year was around eight times cash flow, with media deals typically in the low-double digits, according to buyout industry statistics.” The price is also some 50% more than company officials originally stated they thought they could fob the division off for.
Would we say there’s a little too much cash out there looking for comfy homes? Or would we wonder why this Thomson division, much maligned by management when the sale was first announced, is suddenly as valuable as DaimlerChrysler? (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/automobiles/15chrysler-web.html)
I guess we’re stuck with Thomson’s overriding stated view that higher education just wasn’t getting with the program fast enough in an online, electronic sort of way, and so the division had to be jettisoned. (Although Thomson CEO Richard J. Harrington admitted after the sale announcement that the company had no complaints about the educational unit’s financial performance. Textbooks are, by and large, a high-margin product ).
On the other hand, memory serves to remind us that Thomson was previously determined in a fierce way to get the heck out of the news business, and now it’s about to merge with Reuters.
What I’m most cognizant of is that Thomson shares had been languishing in the mid-$30s for years before the announcement of the bold move to get rid of textbooks. Now those shares are in the $40s. A lot of senior Thomson executives have made a whole lot of cash from these recent maneuvers (not to mention the Thomson family). No senior Thomson executive was left behind (as for the the operating staff; it is not polite to ask).
(To glimpse the stock chart:
SiberLogic announced the integration of SiberSafe DITA Edition with Adobe’s FrameMaker 7.2 Application Pack for DITA. With the Application Pack configured, SiberSafe automatically adjusts its integrated menu options to deliver sophisticated DITA content management from within the familiar FrameMaker environment. FrameMaker users can open a document and retrieve topic-based content along with associated dependencies such as xref targets, link targets, conref targets, and referenced images. Content reuse is streamlined and straightforward via SiberSafe’s support for content references (conrefs). And SiberLogic’s functionality is available directly from the FrameMaker menu: authoring and review assignments are automatically distributed via workflow email; each contributor has a list of tasks and knows how and when to execute them; and managers can keep track of progress and resource allocation. With additional features such as collaborative review, task analysis, and translation management, the FrameMaker/SiberSafe DITA integration aims to reduce the complexity of DITA-based technical documentation processes to a single integrated platform. http://www.siberlogic.com/framemaker/
The deadline for submitting proposals for Gilbane Boston, November 27 – 29, 2007 is May 15, 2007. Instruction for proposals are at: https://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html We will still accept proposals after tomorrow, but chances of acceptance start to diminish quickly as we start designing the program in the next couple of weeks. Remember that we always receive many more excellent proposals than we can fit into our program. Please do not be discouraged if you are not selected. We do multiple events, and may be able to fit your presentation into another conference.
Bill has a nice summary of SDL’s research into the use of XML in delivering global content across multiple channels. Seven golden rules is right on target — given the age-old premise from cognitive psychologist George A. Miller.
Check it out.
This week, EMC announced a collaborative research network, with this headline: New EMC Innovation Network to Harness Worldwide Tech Resources, Accelerate Information Infrastructure Innovation. Among the areas that the research network will explore are Semantic Web, search, context, and ontological views.
There is a lot to feed on in this announcement but the most interesting aspect is the juxtaposition with other hardware giants’ forays into the world of document and content search software (e.g. IBM, CISCO), and recent efforts by software leaders Oracle and Microsoft to strengthen their offerings in the area of content and search.
One of the phrases in EMC’s announcement that struck me is the reference to “information infrastructure.” This phrase is used ubiquitously by IT folks to aggregate their hardware and network components with the assumption that because these systems store and transport data, they are information infrastructure. We need to recognize that there are two elements missing from this infrastructure view, skilled knowledge workers (e.g.content structure architects, taxonomists, specialist librarians) and software applications for content authoring, capture, organization, and retrieval. Judging from the language of EMC’s press release this might just be tacit recognition that hardware and networks do not make up an information infrastructure. But those of us in search and content management knew that all along; we don’t need a think tank to show us how the pieces fit together nor even how to innovate to create good infrastructure. Top notch professionals have been doing that for decades. Will this new network really reveal anything new?
EMC does not explicitly announce a plan to make search and information infrastructure product commodities but they do express the desire to build “commercial products” for this market. They have already acquired a few of the software components but have yet to demonstrate a tight integration with the rest of the company. Usually innovation comes from humble roots and grows organically through the sponsorship of a large organization, self-funding or other interested contributors. This effort to lead an innovation community to solutions for information infrastructure has the potential to spawn growth of truly innovative tools, methods and even standards for diverse needs and communities. Alternatively, it may simply be a push to bring a free-wheeling industry of multi-faceted components under central control with the result being tools and products that serve the lowest common denominator users.
From a search point of view, I for one am enjoying the richness of the marketplace and how varied the product offerings are for many specialized needs. For the time being, I remain skeptical that any hardware or software giant can sustain the richness of offerings that get to the heart of particular business search needs in a universal way. Commodity search solutions are a long way off for the community of organizations I encounter.
One of the unique aspects of the translation and localization industries is the breadth of contributors and skill sets that actually get the work done. I remember standing in line last summer for the ferry to Ellis Island and marveling at the number of languages being spoken simultaneously and the number of cultures represented in one huge line. But for that moment, (2 hours actually) that line was a community with a single purpose. Despite language barriers, everyone shared the excitement of the historical adventure to come.
No, the San Diego-based WorldSummit organized by Idiom Technologies didn’t offer a cross-country trek to the Status of Liberty. It did however, offer an opportunity for an impressive group of professionals with multiple skill sets and cultural backgrounds to come together and share the excitement of where the industry is heading and what it can achieve along the way.
Blending technical writers, brand managers, and marketers from varied organizations with translators from multiple countries, LSPs, university professors, industry researchers, and analysts is no small feat. But for that moment, (3 days actually) WorldSummit fostered community and conversation amongst those who research, those who groom the next generation of translators, those determined to author source content with globalization in mind, those faced with the nuances of dialect and locale, and those who provide the services and technologies so necessary for this complex work.
With Mary and I both attending, we got to compare notes and reactions as we moved through various user sessions, informal conversations, and social events. One clear pattern we both noticed is the power of human connection; IOW, the power of face-to-face, passionate conversations. Without belittling the impact of Web communities, I am standing firm on the notion that there’s nothing like eye contact, body language and the sight of folks waving their hands to speak to fuel the adrenaline of a community conversation. It’s positively contagious. Here’s some examples of the adrenaline I’m talking about:
- Mary’s user panel, “Evaluating and Selecting a Globalization Management System – Best Practices,” included real-world advice from Brian Shorey – Cisco Systems, Alma Siller – Continental Airlines, and Mimi Hills – Sun Microsystems. This was not a panel of “nirvana” stories told through predefined slides; this was an honest and thoughtful discussion of the approaches each participant used to pave the way for success (including some colored commentary on the challenges to expect along the way!)
- Keynotes on translation quality and the future of technologies were passionately delivered by well-known researchers such as Jaap van der Meer and Alan Melby. The wealth of history these two brought to the table resulted in many a cramped finger as the audience scribbled furiously.
- Machine translation’s potential to resolve time to market challenges and its intersection with human expertise was absolutely hot, as John Yunker notes over at Global by Design. Whether more acronyms are useful or confusing, it is quite clear that the pool of worldwide translation talent may not be able to keep up with demand.
- And I’ll not soon forget the students from Kent State University and California State University Chico, who cheered their professors with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen at a technical conference for some time.
Whew. Documenting the varied participants and choosing my highlights was tough enough. Pulling off the event was surely another story. Kudos to the Idiom team for achieving a well-rounded and extremely organized event.
Squarespace, a subscription-based solution for managing websites and blogs together in the same platform, has released version 4.0 of its publishing software. Along with improvements to site architecture and enhancements to bandwidth and storage, five features have been added to provide users with more options for creating a professional and dynamic web presence. Bloggers will have access to a search function that operates across all of a website’s content types, including blog posts, discussion forums, FAQs, photo galleries and standard webpages. Squarespace search can also operate on protected areas of a site and index content as soon as it is published. Users can create online forms, allowing users to address the difficult problem of capturing and analyzing data from their customer base. Website owners can use Squarespace’s new FAQ component. Publish questions and answers in a search engine friendly format that is as easy to manage as a blog post. Webmasters and bloggers alike are now able to host a discussion forum within Squarespace just as they would a photo gallery or guestbook. Users can add Google Maps to their site and highlight the location of offices, meetups or other events for their readers. Hosting packages range from $7 to $65 per month, and are available for individuals or businesses. Enterprise users can also take advantage of Squarespace’s customized support and bandwidth plans for $175 per month. http://www.squarespace.com
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