Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) introduced Salesforce Content, an expansion of its platform and application strategy for managing and sharing all business information on demand. Apex Content, a major new extension to the Salesforce platform, will enable the creation of content-based applications. Salesforce ContentExchange, a new on-demand application built on the new platform technologies, will enable customers to manage their documents and other unstructured data on demand as they manage their structured data within the existing Salesforce CRM applications. Apex Content and Salesforce ContentExchange will be based on technology acquired from Koral Technologies. Salesforce.com acquired Koral in March 2007. Terms were not disclosed. Apex Content will provide a content platform that will fuel Salesforce applications, including AppSpace, Salesforce PRM, and Salesforce Wealth Management Edition. With Apex Content, developers will be able to create new kinds of content applications. The first application to be built on Apex Content will be Salesforce ContentExchange. Salesforce ContentExchange will help companies store, share, find and manage the business information that currently lives in documents, emails and HTML, while keeping all users and content in sync. Salesforce ContentExchange will take community participation, tagging, recommendations, subscriptions, and an AJAX user interface and apply them to enterprise content management. Pricing and availability of Salesforce ContentExchange and Apex Content is scheduled to be announced later this calendar year. http://www.salesforce.com/
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I haven’t been very good at blogging about this conference as it has been a busy Winter and early Spring. In any case, there is still time to join us, especially if you are in the Bay area. Registration is still open online as of this post, and is also available on site at the Palace hotel through Thursday. If you can only get away for one day, make it Wednesday for the keynote with Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. The technology showcase is also open on Wednesday (with a reception) and Thursday.
Managing Editor Inc. (MEI) announced a joint development with Clickability to integrate the SoftCare K4 Publishing System with Clickability’s cmPublish, an on-demand Web content-management system. With this integration, MEI and Clickability are offering a multi-channel publishing solution that helps newspapers and magazines streamline their Web and print workflows. Clickability’s cmPublish is a Web publishing platform used by corporate content sites and online newspaper and magazine publishers combining design, publishing, ad server, subscription, newsletter, analytic and administrative capabilities. The integration supports a seamless exchange of content between cmPublish and K4, the database-driven editorial workflow system integrated with Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy. K4 content with XML tags is automatically detected, parsed and uploaded to cmPublish, allowing simple or complex scheduling and easy repurposing of content for online or print usage. <a href=”http://www.maned.com”>http://www.maned.com</a>, <a href=”http://www.clickability.com”>http://www.clickability.com</a>
Vignette (NASDAQ:VIGN) announced the worldwide availability of its latest Vignette Portal release. Vignette Portal enhanced features include: Support for Web 2.0 technologies like mashups and AJAX; Enhanced personalization through multi-language support; Federated search capabilities, enabling users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources, including Microsoft Exchange, Google, Yahoo and Lotus Notes; Customizable URLs to help drive traffic and improve search engine optimization; and Advanced dashboard capabilities. http://www.vignette.com
Software AG (TecDAX, ISIN DE 0003304002 / SOW), and webMethods, Inc. (NASDAQ: WEBM) announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Software AG to acquire webMethods in a cash tender offer for $9.15 per share or approximately $546 million. This transaction is intended to strengthen the combined company’s position in the SOA and Business Process Management (BPM) markets. Together, the companies bring an expanded product portfolio to a global customer base of over 4,000 organizations and 100 partners in complementary geographies around the globe. Specifically, Software AG will more than double its customer base in North America. This combination also brings minimal customer overlap, providing immediate and mutual access to additional customer segments, particularly in financial services, manufacturing and the public sector. The acquisition will create an SOA and BPM product portfolio including SOA Governance & Enablement, BPM and Business Activity Monitoring, Application Integration and Legacy Modernization capabilities. The transaction has been approved by the Supervisory Board of Software AG. webMethods’ Board of Directors has also approved the transaction and will recommend that their shareholders accept the offer. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close during the second quarter of 2007. http://www.softwareag.com, http://www.webmethods.com
“Web 2.0” is a term that gets bandied about far too often with far too little associated meaning. Essentially, Web 2.0 refers to multi-directional interactivity between one or more humans and one or more Web applications (with their associated back-ends) — period. The term often pops up in descriptions of any of the following: social computing, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, Web services, RSS feeds, online applications, collaboration, mash-ups and the Web as a platform. Don’t let the diversity of topics given as examples of Web 2.0 distract you from the fact that the key operative term is multi-directional communication. What does this mean for WCM?
For the end user, it means that Web applications such as online banking, which now rely heavily on technologies like Flash and AJAX, provide better customer service by building-in higher levels of interactivity between the user and the data within a browser session and by encouraging more efficient communication between the browser and the host. Whereas before, every user request meant a round-trip to the server, now far more data is sent at once to the browser, often in the form of an object with which the browser can interact. The user then manipulates the data multiple times – transferring funds between accounts, paying a bill, and updating an address, for example – and upon logging out, transactions are sent to the server all at once for processing. Because technologies like Flash and AJAX provide for easier inclusion of rich media in the user interface, the combined effect of these Web 2.0 technologies is reduced development time for programmers, a more satisfying user experience for consumers, server processing efficiency for the host, and bandwidth savings for everyone. Another significant advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for WCM is the tendency to be so highly based on well-defined standards that functional components of Web applications are often interchangeable. When built on Web 2.0 technologies, the “address update” function in the Web banking example above would likely be usable by the bank’s credit card Web application as well. This component swapability is the underlying principle behind enterprise mash-ups, a developer-oriented topic for an upcoming blog entry.
Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L) announced that HP has signed a new OEM agreement with Autonomy to use Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) in its products. http://www.autonomy.com/
Preparing for two upcoming meetings with search themes (Gilbane San Francisco and Boston KM Forum) has brought to mind many issues of search usability. At the core is the issue of search literacy. Offering some fundamental searching tips to non-professional searchers often results in a surprised reaction. (e.g. When told, if seeking information about a specific topic such as “industrial engineering,” enclose it in quotes to limit the search to that phrase. Without quotes, you will get all content with “industrial” and “engineering” anywhere in the content with no explicit relationship implied.)
If you are reading this you probably know that, but many do not. In order to learn what people search for on their company intranet and how they type their search requests, I spend time reading search log files. I do this for several reasons:
- To learn terminology searchers are using to guide taxonomy building choices
- To see the way searches are formulated, and followed up
- To inform design decisions about how to make searching easier
- To see what is searched but not found to inform future content inclusion
- To view the searcher’s next step when the results are zero or huge
wo results remain consistent: less than 1% of the searchers place a phrase inside quotations, even when there are multiple words; word are often truncated but do not include a truncation symbol (usually an asterisk, “*”). Both reveal a probable lack of search conventions understanding, a search literacy problem. Here are a couple of possible solutions:
- Put into place better help and training mechanisms to help the lost find their way,
OR
- Remove the legacy practice of forcing command language type symbols on searchers for the most common search requests
Placing punctuation around a search string is a holdover from 30 years ago when searching was done using a command language. Since only a limited number of people ever knew this syntactical format, why does it persist as the default for a phrase search for Web-based search engines?
The solution of providing a better help page and getting people to actually use it is a harder proposition. This one from McGraw-Hill for BusinessWeek Online is pretty simple with just seven tips but who reads it? I expect very few, although it could dramatically improve their search results. http://search.businessweek.com/advanced.jsp.
If you are trying to improve the search experience for your intranet, there are two resources to consult for content usability on all fronts, not just search: useit.com, Jakob Nielsen’s Website and Jared Spool’s UIEtips, User Interface Engineering’s free email newsletter. In the meantime, think about whether you need to demand more core search usability or tunable default options from vendors, or whether better interface design could guide searchers to better results.
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