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What is the future of software as a service

November 28, 2006 / Carl Sutter / 2 Comments

I’m not at the conference this week (we do have several people from our shop there), but to answer a question posed by Frank Gilbane:

What is the future of software as a service, and is it appropriate for enterprise content applications like content management, authoring, etc.?

The SaaS model seems to have been proven to the point where it’s hard to imagine that it won’t keep growing. We recently posted a whitepaper on SaaS myths, which debunks most of the common arguments against SaaS. In addition to that discussion, I’d offer the following four points:

1) SaaS is a proven technology. It arguably extends to the early days of the web with software ASPs. I guess you could even argue the lineage goes all the way back to mainframe apps! 🙂 Certainly, though, the existing SaaS companies have been working successfully with this business model for more than six years now.

2) Web technologies have reached a point where SaaS is an out of the box solution. You can now count on fast network connections for users both in the office and home. Security systems are complete from SSL with web browsers up through terminal services like Citrix which allow even HIPAA compliance. For web apps, browser technologies like IFRAMES and AJAX allow apps to be easily integrated on a page (mashups).

3) SaaS provides much more robust server management and security, especially for small and medium sized businesses. As web applications grow more complex, SaaS allows much more convenient, rigorous and cost-effective control over hosting. By centralizing and focusing, the best resources can be brought to bear on fewer hosting environments.

4) This one is a bit of a prediction, and is specific to web sites. Currently, you have a couple options when adding components like blogs, rss, ecommerce, polls, surveys, and search to web sites. You can install apps for those services, which allows you to control ad placement and design. The alternative is to use free hosted apps where the ad revenue goes to the SaaS company. So, the logical next step is for high quality hosted apps where the ad revenue is shared with the web site. This is already appearing with sites like MetaCafe. For an advanced CMS, though, I am not sure this will happen since the CMS tends to be the hub for all the other web apps, but it is certainly possible for a basic CMS.

Webinar: How Sun Takes Brands and Solutions to the Global Marketplace

November 27, 2006 / Leonor Ciarlone / 0 Comments

Are present processes slowing down your global product launches and campaigns? Do you have trouble ensuring global brand consistency across many markets and communication channels? Do you deliver a global customer experience that induces people to come back and encourages customer loyalty?

Join The Gilbane Group, SDL International and Interwoven to learn how Sun Microsystems used a global information management solution to deliver product information, support services, and java.com information in many languages to deliver an enhanced customer experience.

Date: 13th December, 2006
Time: 8:30 Pacific, 11:30 Eastern, 16:30 GMT, 17:30 Central Europe
Duration: 1 hour
Register here.

Globalization Survey

November 27, 2006 / Leonor Ciarlone / 0 Comments

There’s still time to add your voice to our survey on Content Globalization.

Thursday’s Content Globalization Workflows panel includes speakers from Idiom Technologies, LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association), LinguaLinx, and General Electric.

Topics to be covered include: globalization business drivers, the impact of market consolidation, achieving process management and project management, defining “unified globalization management,” and best practices. Hope to see you there!

Gilbane Boston Keynote Survey Results

November 27, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

There is a post over on our events blog listing the top questions from the survey we are conducting for the “Future of Content Management” debate on Wednesday morning at the conference this week. The full results so far are published here.

Gilbane Boston Keynote Survey Results

November 27, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The survey on the list of questions for our keynote panel on Wednesday is still open, but we have published the results so far at: https://gilbane.com/gilbaneboston_keynote_survey.html.

There are a couple of different ways to calculate the most popular questions based on a combination of the “important”, “interesting” and “not interesting” ratings. You can look at the results and come to your own conclusions, but no matter how you do it the popular questions so far are:

What are the top 3 technologies that must be considered in any content management strategies in the next 12-24 months?
Are search ‘platforms’ going to replace CMSs as the primary user entrance to content repositories?
How will Blog and Wiki tools be used in enterprise content applications? How are they being used today?
What is the number one advantage, and the number one disadvantage of each of the approaches represented on the panel (ECM suite, CM application, infrastructure CM, hosted CM, open source CM)?
Are there any breakthrough classification or metadata tagging technologies on the horizon that will significantly impact content management strategies?
How is widespread adoption of RSS/Atom going to affect content delivery? And what does this mean to enterprise content management or publishing strategies?
How will the new SharePoint Server’s CM capability affect the CM market?

You still have 2 days to cast your vote, and to get to Boston to hear the keynote panel (which is open to all) debate these and other questions.

What’s Wrong with Web 2.0

November 26, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 1 Comment

In a word, “expectations”. There is nothing wrong with the moniker itself, but when used as if it were a thing-in-itself, as something concrete, it inevitably becomes misleading. This is not something to solely blame on marketing hype – people crave simple labels, marketers are just accommodating us. We need to take a little responsibility for asking what such labels really mean. When forced to reduce Web 2.0 to something real, you end up with AJAX. There is also nothing wrong with AJAX or its components. The problem is overestimating what it can do for us.

Bill Thompson’s post “Web 2.0 and Tim O’Reilly as Marshal Tito” yesterday on The Register’s Developer site, is perhaps a little overstated, but is useful reading for VCs and IT strategists. Here’s a sample:

Web 2.0 marks the dictatorship of the presentation layer, a triumph of appearance over architecture that any good computer scientist should immediately dismiss as unsustainable. … Ajax is touted as the answer for developers who want to offer users a richer client experience without having to go the trouble of writing a real application, but if the long term goal is to turn the network from a series of tubes connecting clients and servers into a distributed computing environment then we cannot rely on Javascript and XML since they do not offer the stability, scalability or effective resource discovery that we need.

Next Week’s Gilbane Conference & Events Blog

November 22, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

You may have noticed we haven’t posted here as much about Gilbane Boston as we have about our previous events. That’s because we now have a special Events Blog. Although we will still mention important announcements here, we plan to keep posts on this blog focused on analysis and industry discussions, which may include opinions on conference sessions etc. The Events Blog, on the other hand, is set-up so that any of our conference team can post anything, including our event announcements, press releases, deadlines, discount offers, and all other promotional news. Other useful permanent event links are our Conference Overview page, and our Speaker Submission and Guidelines page. See the latest post on Gilbane Boston at https://gilbane.com/eventsblog/.

Why CMS Professionals should care about composition

November 20, 2006 / Elizabeth Gooding / 0 Comments

On August 15, 2006 another Gilbane blogger, Rita Warren, queried whether a marriage between CMS and CRM made sense. “Circa 1996… it was all about one-to-one customer communications. That (broad) vision was apparently too hard to realize back then! Maybe it’s possible now.”

Well, circa 2006 it’s still all about one-to-one, but I think we understand what that means a lot better. One-to-one customer communications are not only possible, but they are happening in many small and large businesses. In most cases they are not coming from major CRM implementations ala Siebel – they are coming from composition tools. Many composition tool vendors now refer to themselves as personalization or customer communications management products. If you look at some of the case studies from the composition vendors included in my last entry you will find case studies for communications such as statements, enrollment books, and invoices that tailor messaging, educational content, product content, document format and delivery channel based on customer data or stated preferences.

Okay – so as a CMS professional why should you care about composition tools? Several reasons:

Personalization is a beast that feeds on content. Lots and lots of content. Many composition experts have never even heard of taxonomy – CMS architects needed!
Many composition tools have rudimentary content capabilities – but integration with “real” content management tools is necessary to feed the beast – CMS integrators needed!
High volume composition tools are getting to the point where they can serve printed and electronic transactional channels equally well and are starting to move upstream into driving personalized web content. CMS and composition tools are not on the same path – visionaries needed!

It’s only a matter of time before some of the composition vendors decide that they should be in the CMS business. Personally, I think that trying to tightly couple those capabilities with composition would be a bad idea. Composition tools are complicated enough as it is. CMS vendors who have been trying to deliver the holy grail of print and web content management across document types are still not there yet. I find it hard to believe that a composition solution would leapfrog over the current CMS vendors. I suppose this is one instance where it would be nice to be proved wrong.

Meanwhile, an easier path to integrating current CMS technology for managing web and print content with leading high-volume composition tools would be welcome. Document Sciences has worked with Documentum and a few others. GMC Software has partnered with Interwoven a couple of times and Exstream and Metavante have both partnered with IBM OnDemand. I have also seen a number of Exstream – Vignette combos. Few vendors have broad and established content management partnerships and the market is ripe for this kind of collaboration.

The Gilbane Advisor

Page 345 of 918

What is the future of software as a service

Webinar: How Sun Takes Brands and Solutions to the Global Marketplace

Globalization Survey

Gilbane Boston Keynote Survey Results

Gilbane Boston Keynote Survey Results

What’s Wrong with Web 2.0

Next Week’s Gilbane Conference & Events Blog

Why CMS Professionals should care about composition

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