I am sitting in on the session, A Look at Some Management & Technical Challenges, which is moderated by Seth Gottlieb of Optaros. The speakers are Ann Rockley, Jan Johnston-Tyler, Hardware Writing Manager at Juniper Networks, and Scott Handley, Master Technologist at Hewlett-Packard.
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XyEnterprise announced the availability of the latest releases of its products: Content@ 3.2 XML content management software and XML Professional Publisher (XPP) 7.3 enterprise publishing application. The new releases provide enhanced XML capabilities and build on Content@ and XPP’s Web Services interfaces, editing adapters, and workflow automation features. In addition to standard integration with the latest versions of XML authoring tools, Content@ 3.2 adds support for Oracle 10g, Microsoft Windows 2003 and the Apache Web Server, as well as updates to its Microsoft InfoPath adapter. Content@ 3.2 provides XML schema and namespace support for those editorial tools with this capability. Content@ 3.2 also incorporates the latest version of Verity K2 Developer. This OEM search product for independent software vendors includes search features that enable users to retrieve, categorize and re-use information based on content, XML attributes (e.g., tags or metadata) or both. XML Professional Publisher 7.3 supports Microsoft Windows 2003 servers and XP clients. XPP 7.3 features several enhancements to its XyView editing interface that enable users to more efficiently handle structured content. The latest release also adds enhanced XML schema and Xpath support, as well as a new integration for MathML editing using the Design Science MathFlow Editor. XPP 7.3 includes a long list of specific enhancements requested by XPP customers.
Vignette Corp. announced the general availability of Vignette Portal release 7.2. This latest portal release extends Vignette’s personalization, identity management, reporting, collaboration, content management and application integration. Vignette has extended its ability to consume third-party standards-based portlet applications based on the Web Services for Remote Portlets standard (WSRP), whether created in Java or .NET. Vignette Portal release 7.2 includes: Enhanced out-of-the-box search capabilities that allow users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, relational databases, file systems and Web sites; the ability to derive personalization rules from multiple data sources; the ability to link personalization attributes and mined data from multiple systems across the organization; and integration with Vignette Records and Documents through the use of standards-based JSR-168 portlets. The latest version also advances support for globally distributed portal deployments. Included in this release is the ability to synchronize disparate portal clusters, allowing organizations with multiple portal deployments in separate geographies to maintain their portal installations as a single source across the organization. Vignette Portal also implements an administrative component API that can be used to encapsulate Web applications that plug into the Vignette Portal administrative console. Vignette Portal release 7.2 is shipping and available to customers. Licensing costs for Vignette Portal begin at $75,000 (U.S.). http://www.vignette.com
I am liveblogging the Keynote Debate between Microsoft and Sun on what is the right strategy for information interchange. The panelists are Tim Bray, Director, Web Technologies, Sun Microsystems, and Jean Paoli, Senior Director, XML Architecture, Microsoft. Jon Udell is moderating.
- Actually Frank Gilbane is moderating, and not Jon, so we will hear some of Jon’s thoughts as well
- Frank: the session is really about strategies for sharing, preserving, and integrating document content, especially document content with XML.
- Frank gave some background about the European Union attempts to standardize on Microsoft Office or OpenOffice
- Tim elucidated some requirements of your data format. (1) Technically unencumbered and legally unencumbered (2) High quality (and a notable aspect of quality is allowing a low barrier to entry). Tim: “As Larry Wall (the inventer of Perl) noted, easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible).”
- Jean predicted that by 2010, 75% of new documents will be XML.
- Tim agreed with Jean that 75% of new documents will be XML by 2010, but asked how many of them will be XHTML (as opposed toa more specialized schema, I assume).
- Some agreement by all that electronic forms are an important aspect of XML authoring, but Tim thinks the area is “a mess.” I’m paraphrasing, but Tim commented on the official XForms release, “Well, it’s official.”
- Jean commented that XML-based electronic forms are made more difficult because forms themselves require consideration of graphical user interface, interactivity, and even personalization to a degree. This suggests forms are more complex than documents. (And this reminds me of a comment Mark Birbeck made about there being a fine line between an electronic form and an application.)
- Good question from the audience. So much time has elapsed since SGML got started, and we are still only have XSL-FO (which this person was not happy with). What does this suggest about how long it will take to get better, high-quality typographically sophisticated output?
- Tim would suggest we are seeing some improvement, beginning with better resolution on the screen.
- Another commenter weighed in, suggesting that format is important and format does convey meaning. Would like to hear that the tools are going to get better.
- Frank: when do you need a customized schema?
- Jean: best way to safeguard your data and systems is to have an XML strategy. You can gain efficiencies you never had before. Also suggested that the Microsoft schemas will not somehow trap your content into Microsoft’s intellectual property.
- Jon’s takeaways: (1) software as service (2) XML-aware repositories and (3) pervasive intermediation (the content flows in such a way that you can intermediate it)
Liquid Machines, Inc. announced a new Solutions Provider program that will enable Value Added Resellers (VARs), Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and System Integrators to leverage Liquid Machines ERM solutions. Liquid Machines Enterprise Rights Management solutions provide comprehensive control of electronic corporate assets throughout the information lifecycle. Liquid Machines auto-integration technology allows seamless integration with existing desktop and back-office applications to ensure that information is used according to corporate policies, making users more efficient and reducing the risk of compliance violations and intellectual property leakage. Liquid Machines Solutions Providers are eligible to resell Liquid Machines Document Control and Email Control products as part of their information security, regulatory compliance, and email archive practices and solutions at a significant discount to their customers. Partner benefits include not-for-resale Liquid Machines software, marketing support and tools, product training, technical support, and access to qualified lead pass programs. Liquid Machines Solutions Provider program is well-suited for Enterprise Rights Management partners as well as Intelligent Archiving and Secure Email Solutions providers. Liquid Machines solutions support Windows RMS to allow Microsoft customers to extend RMS protection to non-office and non-Microsoft applications. Liquid Machines also maintains partnerships with information lifecycle management vendors Veritas and EMC, and has certified the Liquid Machines Email Control product to work with both vendors archival products.
Vivisimo upgraded the Vivisimo Velocity enterprise search platform. The new version of Velocity offers comprehensive reporting capabilities, enhanced security, meta-alerts and collaboration features for better management of the information retrieval process. Vivisimo Velocity is a rapid-deployment, customizable enterprise search platform that combines dynamic clustering, search and meta-search into one solution. The platform is built on Vivisimo software and includes the company’s Clustering Engine. Velocity’s new comprehensive reporting feature is entirely customizable and enables administrators to ask and answer critical business questions. Velocity document-level security provides administrators complete control over access to individual documents or groups of documents. It allows only authorized users access to search results involving sensitive information. Velocity allows users to set up alerts from multiple sources of information from a single point of access. Users no longer need to access each source individually; instead, they can initiate and receive alerts for a topic from several sources in one combined email. Alerts can be initiated simply by clicking on a result or by adding them through user profiles. With a simple click, Velocity users can export results into Endnotes, Procite or Reference Manager, email reports in HTML or plain text format, or save reports as text, HTML or XML. Vivisimo Velocity pricing starts at $10,000 per year and scales with the number of documents to be crawled or meta-searched. The upgraded Velocity search platform will ship within 30 days.
Hot Banana Software Inc. announced that it will be launching Hot Banana On Demand, a Software-as-a-Service pricing model. The Hot Banana On Demand or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model offers benefits for companies of all sizes looking to reduce overhead, increase competitiveness and focus on core competencies. The key advantages of using the Hot Banana On Demand Web Content Management Suite (CMS), are accelerated implementation timelines, and faster ROI, lower up front costs, predictable ongoing expenses, reduced IT overhead and ease of installation, updates and maintenance. Hot Banana is actively positioning itself to capture a share of the global application hosting market. Hot Banana has the following pricing models for the three versions of the Hot Banana Web Content Management Suite – Small Business, Mid-Market, and Enterprise, depending upon the number of seats: Hot Banana On Demand for clients who want the convenience of rapid deployment of Software as a Service, and the lower monthly costs associated with the pay-as-you-go model; Hot Banana Licensed for clients who prefer a perpetual license, who want to own, install and run the software themselves in their own data centre, or choose a dedicated hosting installation at the Hot Banana Hosting Center. The new pricing model is designed to accelerate the market adoption and growth of Hot Banana. The on demand pricing model is complimentary to the existing Hot Banana software licensing model, and allows clients to choose which method of paying for a Web CMS is best for their business.
Serena Software, Inc. announced that the next release of Serena Collage, the company’s web content and change management solution will integrate with Macromedia Contribute 3.1, a rapid web authoring environment enabling customers to easily contribute, manage and update website content. The new integration enables users to easily make changes to site content within the familiar Contribute interface and save to Collage once changes are complete. In Collage, the content is automatically routed for further editing and approval, merged with other content and design elements and published to multiple destinations. Collage customers are able to take advantage of the rich web page authoring, offline editing and native support for Mac OS X that Contribute offers. Similarly, Contribute customers can extend their existing investment by employing Collage and benefit from enterprise-class versioning, workflow, tracking, content categorization, page generation and site deployment capabilities. Serena Collage v4.6 will be available in late April 2005 and will work with Macromedia Contribute 3.1. http://www.serena.com
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