Verity Inc. announced the establishment of Verity Italy, a wholly-owned subsidiary that will be based in Milan. The opening of the Milan facility marks an expansion of Verity’s operations in Europe, which includes in-country presence in the Benelux, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Verity Italy will sell Verity K2 Enterprise advanced search, classification and recommendation software as well as add-on capabilities such as Verity Collaborative Classifier and Verity Extractor. The company’s existing resellers and partners will continue to sell Verity K2 Enterprise and Verity Ultraseek enterprise search engine, as well as the company’s content capture and process automation products: Verity TeleForm and Verity LiquidOffice. www.verity.com

Senior Editor Bill Trippe looks at the case for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) in “Topic-Oriented Information Development and Its Role in Globalization.” Sponsored by Idiom, Inc. www.gilbane.com/whitepapers.html

Mediasurface has unveiled the latest version of its Enterprise Content Management system Mediasurface 5.1. The new version contains features designed to improve the way businesses manage and control their websites. It gives non-technical users more power to produce websites and the IT department facilities they need to run a web application. Morello, Mediasurface’s Smart Client application, has been enhanced to facilitate better collaboration, off-line working and has a more intuitive look and feel, with visual workflow, drag and drop, copy and paste and undo functionality. The workgroup collaboration features of Mediasurface 5.1 follow the principles of standard instant messaging services, but are enhanced to bring teams working on web projects closer together. In addition to the ability to send and receive messages in real-time, Mediasurface 5.1 allows pages, links and other items to be dragged & dropped into the message pane, so that a dispersed team can simultaneously view and comment on aspects of the site they are building. Users get instant notification of workflow-related matters, such as completed work that needs their approval. www.mediasurface.com

Cognos announced it is extending its open data strategy through the company’s strengthened partnership with IBM. Cognos has enhanced its support of IBM’s DB2 Information Integrator product in its latest release of Cognos ReportNet for customers who have requirements to access a diverse set of data sources including mainframe, database, and content systems. Cognos’ solutions, built upon the information infrastructure layer provided by IBM DB2, offer data access tools integrated with an automated data management process. IBM’s DB2 Information Integrator software helps businesses access and integrate any data – e-mail, XML, multi-media, Web services, and competitive data sources such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases – wherever it resides, in real-time, as if it were stored in one place. DB2 Information Integrator extends the reach of ReportNet to a wide variety of information sources, including traditional, mainframe non-DB2 data sources such as VSAM and IMS, and content repositories such as IBM DB2 Content Manager, FileNet and EMC/Documentum. By accessing message queues, Cognos’ solutions can monitor real-time data within organizations that have EAI systems. Cognos customers needing critical elements of business activity monitoring (BAM) and guided analysis can define highly personalized business alerts that can be delivered to any e-mail- enabled device. The federated data access capabilities of DB2 Information Integrator extends Cognos’ reach to include non-relational data sources such as any remote SOAP Web Service, Flat Files, XML files, and content repositories. www.cognos.com

Oracle announced Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g with new real-time collaboration tools and enterprise content management capabilities. Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g is designed to enable contextual collaboration and to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time and in the context of their current activity. Built on the Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g, it supports management of all enterprise information, structured and unstructured, on a single architecture. The real-time collaboration component of Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g brings together a full suite of collaboration tools. By adding presence awareness, instant messaging and voice functionality to its existing Web conferencing capabilities, this new version of Oracle Collaboration Suite enables users to detect other users, chat via text or voice, share information and collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers. Using Oracle’s collaborative portlets technology, corporate portals can be customized to include a user’s favorite collaboration tools, such as Web conferencing, IM and content management. Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g also enables real-time collaboration tools to be built into any business application, including Oracle Applications. www.oracle.com

Oracle announced the launch of its enterprise-class content management technology, Oracle Files 10g, built on the Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server. Oracle Files 10g, available on its own or as part of Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g, was created with the broad business user population in mind. The intent is a content management solution that delivers the functionality users require without changing the way they work. The new release combines file management and sharing capabilities with new policy-based document management functionality such as fine-grained security, automatic versioning, enforced attribution and event-driven workflows. Together, these capabilities are designed to increase productivity by adding structure, context, and intelligence to content without burdening the user with unnecessary information or additional actions. Oracle Files 10g facilitates regulatory compliance with advanced records management functionality. Oracle Files 10g’s file-plan creation and management processes, as well as its document retention and disposition management capabilities, facilitate compliance with federal, local and industry-specific regulations. The product provides a rich set of Web services application programming interfaces. In addition, Oracle is working closely with partners, developers and customers to support integration, automation and functional extension of the product. www.oracle.com

Canto and MediaSec Technologies, developer of watermarking technologies, announced a new partnership targeted at protecting the ownership of digital assets. MediaSec has developed a tool that enhances Canto’s product, Cumulus, by applying digital watermarking to assets. This reduces copyright infringements and unwanted manipulation of assets such as digital photographs, artwork and videos. MediaSec’s MediaSign Digital Plug-in for Cumulus provides users with a secure and inexpensive method for watermarking digital assetsalong with control over the management, use and publication of these assets. Cumulus supports other watermarking technologies as well. MediaSign Digital Plug-in is immediately available for download in Canto

RSD (Roger Software Development) announces a new release of EOS Thin Client with functionality to deliver user-designated report content, formatted for data mining. EOS Thin Client, version 3.2 facilitates the automatic transformation of PDF, AFP and text formatted application generated reports into content specific files that can be analyzed using desktop software. To facilitate efficient usage of the data, EOS displays the report and enables the user to graphically designate what information to include. This template is created only once and can be used repeatedly to create a transformed output file from the report. www.rsd.com