Interwoven, Inc. announced the introduction of Interwoven OffSite, an offering that provides business professionals with the capability to access and modify their working documents, e-mails, and projects while working offline. A new module for Interwoven WorkSite 8 software, OffSite enables business professionals to experience the functionality of WorkSite when disconnected from the network. With OffSite, users can create new documents, modify documents or file e-mail into appropriate folders. On reconnection to the network, this content is automatically synchronized with the entire matter or client file. As a fully-portable version of WorkSite, OffSite uses the same familiar user paradigms and interfaces available in online mode. Complete collaborative document management functionality provides users with the ability to browse the file hierarchy, view and modify existing documents, create new documents, and search repository content just as if they were connected to the network. Interwoven OffSite will be available in Q2 2005 as an add-on module to Interwoven WorkSite 8. www.interwoven.com
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Intellext announced that it has emerged from its research and development stage and is now commercially marketing and shipping its software solution, Watson. By reading and understanding what people are working on and using that knowledge to proactively find and deliver useful information to the user, Watson is able to find information the user didn’t know existed — in places they otherwise might not have looked. In emerging from the incubation stage, the company has changed its name to Intellext from Open Road Technologies. Watson determines what information is relevant to each user, and forms contextually-based queries rather than simple one or two-word search terms to generate the most useful and complete set of results. Watson automatically brings users any relevant information from their company’s external and internal information sources including websites, desktop search applications, online news sites, subscriber services and search engines, as well as documents and data from a company’s corporate knowledge management systems, databases and intranets. If the user chooses, Watson will even retrieve advertisements that are related to their current work. Information from Watson’s multiple sources is then organized by relevance regardless of its source, and presented to the user in a non-intrusive way. The online information collected and presented by Watson is based solely on relevance, so users do not receive intrusive advertisements and unrelated content that interrupts their work. Intellext is also offering the MuseSearch MuseServer as part of the Watson solution for large organizations. www.intellext.com
Microsoft provided an analyst briefing on Thursday January 27th titled “Creating Business Value through Collaboration.” Personally, I was struck by the presence of a clear strategy for infrastructure dominance (in the sense of OS, server and core technologies such as email, search, etc.) as well as the absence of the same for solution-specific or industry-specific dominance in the market for content technologies. I think the resulting messages — ranging from the clear to the hinted — were intentional, further demonstrating the company’s ability to boldly state “where it wants to go today” without necessarily divulging the types of technology providers it intends to run over in the process.
In terms of collaboration from a generic perspective, the Microsoft “information worker” strategy has been evident since at least 2001. At that time I wrote “Each [product] provides just enough collaborative technology to hover in and around the realm of markets such as knowledge management, document management, portals, and virtual project management” in a discussion on SharePoint, Exchange and Mobile Information Servers in relationship to the significance of .NET and the acquisition of CM vendor NCompass, Inc. (InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, Inc. Analysis, 05/03/01) It was clear that Microsoft encouraged speculation on how the aquisition could change the content techology landscape. As a result, most analysts predicted an impending “market shakeup” due to the entrance of platform players such as Microsoft and IBM into specialized areas such as CM, DM, and portals.
Looking back from early 2005, I would not describe Microsoft inroads to content technology markets as “earth-shattering” or “competition-crushing”, but I would describe the marketing and technology development progress as calculated, consistent, broad, and more recently, deep. In 2003, Microsoft executives such as Jeff Raikes and Steve Ballmer discussed aspects of the information worker vision in detail through public “Executive E-mails”. Touching on issues such as content authoring, publishing, rights management, collaboration, and compliance, the Microsoft roadmap included highways such as Live Communications Server, Exchange Server, Project Server, Sharepoint Services and Rights Management Services with interconnected avenues such as LiveMeeting, OneNote, Office 2003, and InfoPath. According to Raikes, the vision — branded “Office System” — represented the company’s transition from a client applications provider (read: desktop/workgroup market for content technologies) to a client, server and services provider (read: enterprise market for content solutions.)
Thursday’s collaboration briefing was a solid message about the technology areas in which Microsoft feels “comfortable”, and in the words of the presenter, “areas in which we consider ourselves best of breed.” (Kurt DelBene, Corporate VP, Microsoft Office Servers Group) Considering that the primary flavor of the presentation stressed providing software and services as platforms for partner-driven solution development, it was interesting to note when “best of breed” was mentioned in the same breadth as “out of the box capabilities.” IOW, the ability of Microsoft to continue directly competing against ECM, DM, WCM, and portal vendors should clearly not be underestimated.
Other points of interest:
- Microsoft is moving more content and collaborative functionalities to an infrastructure level, possibly affecting change for competitive differentiation in the content technologies market. IOW, do others follow and move more specialized capabilities to a commodity level? One of the more interesting discussed in this context was content-based privilege and rights management. Surely not a new subject (see Gilbane Report in 2001) but interesting nonetheless.
- Microsoft strategy for a broad infrastructure functionalities coupled with a mammoth developer base assures that “build versus buy” is still a major competitive headache to suite and pureplay content technology vendors.
- Microsoft is clearly still in the game of “out of the box” collaborative workspace solutions (i.e. LiveMeeting, SharePoint), directly competing with pure-play vendors and other platform titans like IBM (i.e. Workspace.)
And the beat goes on…
Microsoft provided an analyst briefing on Thursday January 27th titled “Creating Business Value through Collaboration.” Personally, I was struck by the presence of a clear strategy for infrastructure dominance (in the sense of OS, server and core technologies such as email, search, etc.) as well as the absence of the same for solution-specific or industry-specific dominance in the market for content technologies. I think the resulting messages — ranging from the clear to the hinted — were intentional, further demonstrating the company’s ability to boldly state “where it wants to go today” without necessarily divulging the types of technology providers it intends to run over in the process.
In terms of collaboration from a generic perspective, the Microsoft “information worker” strategy has been evident since at least 2001. At that time I wrote “Each [product] provides just enough collaborative technology to hover in and around the realm of markets such as knowledge management, document management, portals, and virtual project management” in a discussion on SharePoint, Exchange and Mobile Information Servers in relationship to the significance of .NET and the acquisition of CM vendor NCompass, Inc. (InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, Inc. Analysis, 05/03/01) It was clear that Microsoft encouraged speculation on how the aquisition could change the content techology landscape. As a result, most analysts predicted an impending “market shakeup” due to the entrance of platform players such as Microsoft and IBM into specialized areas such as CM, DM, and portals.
Looking back from early 2005, I would not describe Microsoft inroads to content technology markets as “earth-shattering” or “competition-crushing”, but I would describe the marketing and technology development progress as calculated, consistent, broad, and more recently, deep. In 2003, Microsoft executives such as Jeff Raikes and Steve Ballmer discussed aspects of the information worker vision in detail through public “Executive E-mails”. Touching on issues such as content authoring, publishing, rights management, collaboration, and compliance, the Microsoft roadmap included highways such as Live Communications Server, Exchange Server, Project Server, Sharepoint Services and Rights Management Services with interconnected avenues such as LiveMeeting, OneNote, Office 2003, and InfoPath. According to Raikes, the vision — branded “Office System” — represented the company’s transition from a client applications provider (read: desktop/workgroup market for content technologies) to a client, server and services provider (read: enterprise market for content solutions.)
Thursday’s collaboration briefing was a solid message about the technology areas in which Microsoft feels “comfortable”, and in the words of the presenter, “areas in which we consider ourselves best of breed.” (Kurt DelBene, Corporate VP, Microsoft Office Servers Group) Considering that the primary flavor of the presentation stressed providing software and services as platforms for partner-driven solution development, it was interesting to note when “best of breed” was mentioned in the same breadth as “out of the box capabilities.” IOW, the ability of Microsoft to continue directly competing against ECM, DM, WCM, and portal vendors should clearly not be underestimated.
We haven’t looked closely at the PRISM Metadata effort in a while, but the group reached a milestone recently with the release of version 1.2 of the specification. It looks like the recent update focused on some enhancements around RSS and RDF.
In an article for EContent Magazine in late 2003, I wrote:
If you google “XML,” you do get a stunning 20.5 million hits, which is about four times as many as “Britney,” but—sensibly—half as many as “God.” So I guess XML falls short of omniscience. Still, the prevalence of XML has led to its being a too-ready answer to seemingly every question about information technology in general and content management in particular. The assumption seems to be that, no matter the requirement or problem, XML is the answer.
Updating those searches for today’s results on Google, I get 119 million hits for XML, which is now about six times as many as “Britney,” and now only 10 million fewer than “God.”
Every few months my wife and I have a party. Apart from the goodness of
seeing friends, it also forces us to get the house cleaned up. A good thing all
around.
It is in this same spirit that Stephen Ashton, director of Global IT business management
at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein says that Sarbanes-Oxley
is good for IT. (See the article, "Sarbanes-Oxley
‘Good for IT‘", by Andrew Donahue published yesterday by ZDNet
UK.) Despite having 10% to 15% of the banks total headcount currently
committed to compliance ( !! ), Ashton feels that the gain is greater
than the pain. “We have just completed a data center review. The thing that came out of it was that we have
tons of information but very little knowledge. There is a lot of partial and inaccurate data in our
systems." Ashton also talked of now having to invest in bringing
together disconnected "silos" of information that had just developed
over time, without planning. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is now
investing in cataloging and integrating this information to make it useful.
We don’t really decide to have parties to get the house cleaned up. But
it is a nice side-effect. Are readers finding good side-effects of
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance?
Interwoven, Inc. and Landor Associates announced that the two companies have entered into a strategic partnership in which Landor is now reselling MediaBin Asset Server, Interwoven’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) product, as a component of many Landor Brand Management and Marketing systems. Landor’s Brand Management and Marketing systems provide clients with instant access and control over virtually any branding situation or promotional opportunity. These systems simplify the process of visual asset development and classification, enabling clients to manage a brand consistently in every medium. By employing the transformation capabilities of Interwoven MediaBin, Landor can provide a new level of targeting and visual personalization for clients’ brand marketing campaigns. Under the terms of the agreement, Landor has become a worldwide Value Added Reseller (VAR) for Interwoven’s MediaBin product line. Landor is integrating Interwoven MediaBin software into Brand Management solutions that support any form of branding expression including: packaging, advertising, promotional items, websites, signage, business cards, brochures, vehicles, or retail environments. www.landor.com, www.interwoven.com
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