Microsoft Corp. laid out the next phase in its strategy for online services, offering a road map for new offerings that synthesize client, server and services software. Microsoft plans to deliver a variety of solutions during the coming months under two families of service offerings– “Live” and “Online.” “Live” services from Microsoft are designed primarily for individuals, business end-users and virtual work groups. These services emphasize ease of use, simplicity of access and flexibility, and are suited for situations where people either don’t have access to professional technical expertise or don’t require high levels of system management. “Online” services are for organizations with more advanced IT needs where power and flexibility are critical. Online services from Microsoft give businesses the ability to control access to data, manage users, apply business and compliance policy, and meet availability standards. Microsoft is providing business customers with the flexibility to choose between traditional on-premise implementations, services hosted by Microsoft partners and now Online services that reside in Microsoft’s datacenters. Microsoft also unveiled– Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a new Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others; Microsoft Exchange Labs, a new research and development program for testing new messaging and unified communications capabilities in high-scale environments; Continued customer and partner support for Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM; The renaming of the Microsoft Office Live hosted small-business service, a service dedicated to addressing small-business pain points, including core IT services and sales and marketing services, to Microsoft Office Live Small Business; and Microsoft BizTalk Services, a building block service that enables developers to build composite applications. Anyone can pre-register for the English language beta of Office Live Workspace at http://www.officelive.com
Category: Content creation and design (Page 62 of 70)
Technologies and strategies for authoring and editing, including word processors, structured editors, web and page layout and formatting, content conversion and migration, multichannel content, structured and unstructured data integration, and metadata creation.
I spent two days last week at the Office 2.0 conference organized by Ismael Ghalimi. The first thing to say about it is that it is truly amazing what Ismael can put together in 6 weeks. As someone who has organized 60-70 conferences, my amazement and respect for what Ismael accomplished, while not unique, is probably more pronounced than others’.
What is “Office 2.0”? As far as I could tell the consensus in the opening panel “The Future of Work” (and in other sessions) was that it referred to any office-in-the-cloud tools, including but not limited to replications of Microsoft Office.
I would say “Office 2.0” is differentiated from “Web 2.0” by having mainly a business focus, and is differentiated from “Enterprise 2.0”, at least in terms of this event, by being more about the technology than the effects of its deployment on enterprise practices. There was some gentle push and pull between Microsoft and Google on the relative importance IT/workflow/regulations versus end-user/real-time-collaboration. When pushed on what they would be adding to future work environments, both Microsoft and SAP stressed the importance of business social networks.
Though not a business social network, in spite of a growing number of professionals using it that way, Facebook was discussed throughout the event. There was much hand-wringing and disagreement over whether people would combine their personal and professional activities, contacts, and information for the world to see. I find it hard to fathom, but it is clear that there are a number of people who are happy and eager to do this. However, just as we’ve said about enterprise blogging, it is important to separate the technology from the way it is used, and there is a big difference between using a tool with social computing-like functionality inside a firewall, and the way people use Facebook. I don’t think there is any doubt that social-computing technology has a large and important role to play in enterprises. Note however that the Facebook generation does not necessarily agree!
Ismael gave an in-depth presentation on his exclusive use of “Office 2.0” tools for organizing and producing the conference. This was a fascinating case study. I have to say that after hearing about Ismael’s experience I don’t think we are quite ready to try this at home, mainly because of the integration issues. We will look at some of the individual tools though. In fact, as Ismael warns, integration is in general the main gotcha for enterprise use of Office 2.0 technology, both between the new tools and between Office 2.0 tools and existing enterprise applications. Ismael describes the event and its organization as an experiment, given what was learned, it was surely a successful experiment.
(See some the the announcements from Office 2.0 at:
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced Adobe Captivate 3 software, an eLearning authoring tool for the delivery of computer-based simulations, scenario-based training, and interactive quizzes. Adobe Captivate 3 offers enhanced features including multi-mode recording, rerecording, new Microsoft Powerpoint import capabilities and support for rich media formats, such as Adobe Flash Player compatible .SWF, MP3, and AVI files. Adobe Captivate 3 allows learning professionals to create software training in a simple screen capture session. The screen capture generates multiple learner modes, including demonstrations with mouse movements and automated text descriptions of each recorded task, practice simulations with instructional automated or customized feedback, and assessments with scored user interactions. The enhanced Microsoft PowerPoint import functionality supports the conversion of slide animations into Flash Player compatible SWF format and allows authors to create interactive presentations incorporating audio and video. Adobe Captivate 3 software automatically generates Adobe Flash Player-compatible content, allowing files to be e-mailed, posted to Web sites, intranet sites, and online help systems. The new XML export and import feature simplifies the localization process of projects by exporting captions to the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF). Adobe Captivate 3 will be available for Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista and is expected to ship in August 2007 or later this summer at an estimated price of US$699. Localized versions in French, German, Japanese, Italian and Spanish are expected to be available in September 2007. Users of Macromedia Captivate 1 and Adobe Captivate 2 can upgrade to Adobe Captivate 3 for an estimated price of US$299. http://www.adobe.com/go/captivate
On Wednesday, June 13 at 1:00 EST, Senior Analyst Bill Trippe will be doing a Webinar with Medtronic and the XMetal folks at JustSystems.
While documentation is a necessary deliverable for all companies, its value and contribution to bottom-line business results is often underestimated and overlooked. For Medtronic, one of the world’s most innovative medical device manufacturers, documentation is much more than a checkbox on a product release timeline – it is a direct link to customer satisfaction and patient well-being. Medtronic’s Rob Kimm will discuss Medtronic’s approach to delivering a better customer experience while also ensuring compliance with regulations that impact technical documentation.
Prior to using DITA, Medtronic had a decentralized, heterogeneous environment that slowed production and resulted in redundant workflows. Seven project deliverables were developed in 5 different tools, and the mutually-exclusive tools allowed for little to no ability to achieve true reuse of common content. They now can reuse common content across deliverable types, which has led to great efficiency, accuracy, and consistency.
To register for the Webinar, please visit here.
Altova announced general availability of Version 2007 Release 3 (v2007r3) of its software product line. Altova v2007r3 software provides support for the new Microsoft Office 2007 Open XML document format and IBM DB2 9 pureXML databases, as well as other application development and data management capabilities. Altova XMLSpy is an XML editor and development environment for modeling, editing, transforming, and debugging XML-related technologies. New features in XMLSpy 2007r3 include: Extended database functionality, Microsoft Office 2007 Open XML support, Cascading stylesheet (CSS) editor, Enhanced XML Schema and WSDL documentation, and an XSLT 1.0 profiler. AltovaXML is an XML standards processor, comprising the same engines that drive Altova’s XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision development tools. AltovaXML includes Altova’s XML validating parser, XSLT 1.0 engine, schema-aware XSLT 2.0 engine, and schema-aware XQuery 1.0 engine, as well as COM, Java, and .NET interfaces so that it can be used within a variety of different applications. New developments in AltovaXML 2007r3 include: Office Open XML support, and Significant speed increase in the XSLT 1.0 processor. Version 2007 Release 3 of Altova XMLSpy 2007, MapForce 2007, StyleVision 2007, UModel 2007, DatabaseSpy 2007, and SchemaAgent 2007 is currently available with pricing starting at (USD) $499, $249, $249, $129, $129 and $129 respectively. These products may be purchased directly from Altova. 30-day free trials of all Altova products may be downloaded from: http://www.altova.com/download.html
MadCap Software and across Systems announced a strategic partnership to combine technical content creation with advanced translation and localization. Through integrated software from MadCap and across, technical documentation professionals will be able to publish multilingual user manuals, online Help systems, and other corporate content for the international market from a single source. MadCap provides XML software for creating multi-channel publishing, including its product Flare for delivering context-sensitive online Help and print documentation, and Blaze, MadCap’s answer to Adobe’s FrameMaker for publishing large documents, which will be launched later this year. MadCap will also announce MadCap Lingo — an XML based integrated Help authoring tool and translation environment. MadCap Lingo offers complete Unicode support for all left-to-right language. Through their strategic partnership, the two companies will enable integration between Lingo, Flare and Blaze, and the across Language Server, a comprehensive corporate platform for the entire translation process. Providing a centralized translation memory and terminology system, it serves to control the whole translation workflow, and to network all corresponding systems and persons involved. From the project manager up to the translator and proofreader, all participants work in a consistent client/server-based work environment. http://www.across.net/, http://www.madcapsoftware.com/
SiberLogic announced the integration of SiberSafe DITA Edition with Adobe’s FrameMaker 7.2 Application Pack for DITA. With the Application Pack configured, SiberSafe automatically adjusts its integrated menu options to deliver sophisticated DITA content management from within the familiar FrameMaker environment. FrameMaker users can open a document and retrieve topic-based content along with associated dependencies such as xref targets, link targets, conref targets, and referenced images. Content reuse is streamlined and straightforward via SiberSafe’s support for content references (conrefs). And SiberLogic’s functionality is available directly from the FrameMaker menu: authoring and review assignments are automatically distributed via workflow email; each contributor has a list of tasks and knows how and when to execute them; and managers can keep track of progress and resource allocation. With additional features such as collaborative review, task analysis, and translation management, the FrameMaker/SiberSafe DITA integration aims to reduce the complexity of DITA-based technical documentation processes to a single integrated platform. http://www.siberlogic.com/framemaker/
StreamServe Inc. announced it has entered into an agreement with Adobe Systems Incorporated to provide support for XML Forms Architecture (XFA), the format of Adobe LiveCycle Designer software. This collaboration provides a common design environment for the production and distribution of business-critical documents in support of both interactive and high-volume output processes. XFA combines the data and capabilities of XML with rich presentation capabilities for multi-channel delivery, including PDF. Adobe LiveCycle Designer enables the creation of dynamic XFA form templates. This software supports XML data and schema bindings, enhances document security with template designs for digital signatures and enables compliance with government accessibility requirements for online forms. With it, anyone with Adobe Reader software can participate in secure, interactive data capture processes that extend to customers, partners or suppliers. Examples include new account applications, bid response or correspondence generation. StreamServe Persuasion permits companies to take information from enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, SCM and legacy systems and transform it into business correspondence that acts as a dynamic and personalized marketing vehicle for cross-sell, up-sell and brand building. http://www.streamserve.com
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