Vasont Systems introduced a new integration between the Vasont Content Management System and Microsoft Word. Vasont is a single-source content management system that enables organizations to store their multilingual content once for multi-channel delivery. Using the Vasont Universal Integrator (VUI) extension, this integration enables users to: access Vasont directly from the Microsoft Word interface, so that they can take advantage of Vasont’s versioning, advanced search, and workflow capabilities to streamline the editorial process; mix-and-match Microsoft Word content with XML content already stored in Vasont to create new documents; and convert Microsoft Word-authored documents to XML for use across an entire enterprise, while still maintaining a link to the source document. www.vasont.com

The Apache Lenya development community announced the 1.2.1 release of Apache Lenya. Apache Lenya is an Open-Source Content Management System written in Java
and based on XML and XSLT. Lenya is built on top of Apache Cocoon and other components from the Apache Software Stack. Its XML-centric architecture allows for content delivery targeted to the capabilities of various devices, and avoids data lock-in. Apache Lenya is built around Off the Shelf components from the Apache Software Foundation. Apache Lenya comes with the features you can expect of a modern Content Management System, such as Revision Control, Scheduling, a built-in Search Engine, separate Staging Areas, and Workflow. Apache Lenya 1.2.1 is based on Cocoon 2.1.5.1, but Lenya 1.2.1 is also known to work with Cocoon 2.1.6. You can use Cocoon features such as Caching, multi-channel output, it’s many connectivity options to quickly build customized solutions to meet your specific needs that are not already covered by Apache Lenya. http://lenya.apache.org

Idetix Software Systems’ Revize Version 4.3 Web Content Management Software is now available. Changing or adding web page content is easier with Revize v4.3. Simply go to the page on your website and start editing. Adding content to a website with Revize v4.3 Contextual Edit Forms is also easier to do. No special tools or training is required. Every task is done through the browser by simply clicking and typing, using a Microsoft Word-like rich text editor, within the exact context of the webpage and seeing the results as you go. The Revize v4.3 template builder is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visual editing tool incorporated as a Macromedia Dreamweaver extension. Revize v4.3 offers the ability to publish both static HTML pages and dynamic pages and publishes dynamic pages to any corresponding web server that would include the following types of dynamic pages: .jsp, .cfm, .php, .asp, .aspx, etc. www.idetix.com

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. XInclude 1.0 provides a method for merging multiple XML documents into a single composite document. XInclude 1.0 is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents. This function is important for software applications that need to easily combine XML documents. XInclude 1.0 can be used in environments without DTD (Document Type Definition) support, more common since the adoption of XML schemas. Unlike the mechanism used in DTDs, i.e. XML external entities, XInclude gives the content author a fallback mechanism in cases where the external document cannot be retrieved, for whatever reason. XInclude allows an application to leverage the syntax in existing XML constructs – elements, attributes, and URI references. XInclude allows an author to choose how to include another XML document in new composite content – either as markup or text. In addition, no XML entity declarations, which were required in the older method when using DTDs, are required for XInclude. XInclude 1.0 can be used with any version of XML, as well as other existing XML-related specifications, such as the XML-family components XML Schema and XSLT, as well as with XML applications such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and VoiceXML 2.0. XInclude 1.0 also takes advantage of the XPointer Framework and can be used to include sub-resources, such as fragments of XML documents, that are identified by a separate xpointer attribute. www.w3.org

Enterprises plan to increase IT spending by 3.9 percent in 2005, according to a new survey of 1,368 IT decision-makers at North American and European enterprises from Forrester Research, Inc. It affirms the 7 percent increase in overall North American IT spending that Forrester projects for 2005, which includes spending by small and medium businesses, as well as spending outside IT departments. Fifty-four percent of the executives polled have a positive outlook for their business in 2005, compared with 44 percent last year. Business services, financial services, and insurance were the most optimistic industries. Public sector organizations are increasing IT spending by 7 percent in 2005, compared with a decrease last year. Applications are the big winner for budgets in 2005. Fifty-nine percent of decision-makers surveyed identified deployment or upgrade of major packaged applications as a priority, replacing security as the top priority from the past year. Thirty-eight percent of decision-makers consider support for governance, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, a critical priority, while 65 percent said it was a priority. Demand for business intelligence (BI) increases 9 percent. Content management could be the next “killer app.” Purchase plans for content management increased 15 percentage points from last year, as firms adopt enterprise-wide strategies for managing Web content, documents, records, and digital assets. www.forrester.com

Verity Inc. announced the signing and closing of its acquisition of Dralasoft Inc. for an all cash payment of approximately $8 million. Dralasoft became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Verity as a result of the transaction. Dralasoft’s ongoing business includes its customer base and sales pipeline as well as its technology portfolio, consisting of component-based business process management solutions and business activity monitoring (BAM) software. It includes Dralasoft Workflow, an enterprise BPM suite that features an orchestration engine with a suite of graphical tools including Dralasoft Workflow Studio, a visual design tool. In addition, Dralasoft Workflow is an embedded application found in many software products used in several vertical markets. As part of the transaction Verity is offering continued employment to all Dralasoft employees, including its founder, president and chief technology officer, Suresh Ramaswamy. Verity intends to utilize Dralasoft’s BPM technology as a means to better unify the capabilities of Verity’s Intelligent Content Services and Content Capture/Process Automation offerings. Verity expects the Dralasoft acquisition to be accretive within the fourth quarter of its current fiscal year. The company will offer details on re-branding initiatives as well as service and maintenance programs shortly. Verity will immediately market the Dralasoft products through both its direct and OEM sales organizations. www.verity.com

Infodata Systems Inc. announced the general availability of its new Infodata Annotation Suite 2.0 product, built from its AnnoDoc technology. Annotation Suite 2.0 delivers the functionality organizations require to ensure the integrity of content as it relates to compliance mandates such as 21 CFR, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, DoD 5015.2 and others. Annotation Suite 2.0 offers organizations the means to implement a single annotation technology across any content repository (ECMs, databases, or line of business applications) while providing individual businesses units control over their unique content review processes in a manner that ensures compliance. Annotation Suite 2.0 specifically addresses the business processes around document reviews by allowing distributed teams of colleagues to review and comment (i.e., “annotate”) documents in parallel. Annotations are stored separately to maintain the document’s original source structure. All changes to annotations are tracked by a complete audit trail. Infodata Annotation Suite 2.0 provides compatibility to a broad set of environments, including EMC/Documentum (4.x, 5.x, DCM 4 and 5, and numerous client types). Third party integrations also include Adobe Acrobat 5 and 6, and Liquent’s PDFAqua 4 and 5. In addition, this release includes the integration to IBM’s DB2 Content Manager for Multi-Platforms v8.2 thus providing the opportunity for multiplied thousands of additional users to incorporate and leverage Infodata’s annotation technology for improved management of compliance documents. www.infodata.com

Sleepycat Software announced the general availability of Berkeley DB XML 2.0. The major new release includes support for XQuery 1.0 as well as performance and usability enhancements. New features in Berkeley DB XML 2.0 include: XQuery 1.0 support that allows application portability through complying with the July 2004 draft of the XQuery standard, XPath 2.0 support that allows the selection of a portion of an XML document, PHP API support to enable developers using the PHP scripting languages to work with XML documents, improved query performance that can be up to 10 times faster for multi-megabyte XML documents, ability to control storage granularity of documents (whole documents or nodes) to optimize query performance, XML document streaming into database that simplifies how documents are stored, and documents can now be streamed in from an URI, memory, or file. www.sleepycat.com