Mark Logic Corporation announced MarkLogic Cloud Services, a new line of services that will make Mark Logic software available on Amazon Web Services. The first such offering in this line is MarkLogic Server for EC2, which enables customers to use MarkLogic on a pay-by-the-hour basis on Amazon EC2, the popular elastic computing cloud platform. MarkLogic Server for EC2 consists of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with MarkLogic Server pre-installed. For faster and easier deployment, users can subscribe to the MarkLogic Server AMI directly from Amazon Web Services. This service also allows users to pay for only the resources they need. MarkLogic Server is also now certified on two cloud infrastructures. The first is Amazon EC2, where customers can deploy MarkLogic Server on an infrastructure offered by Amazon Web Services. The second is the VMware virtualization platform, which enables customers to implement clouds on self-managed hardware. http://www.marklogic.com/
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 121 of 468)
This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.
Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.
Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.
For some historical perspective see:
https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/
Ephox announced it has acquired the WebRadar product line from Web Presence Architects, a web strategy consulting firm. With WebRadar, Ephox has a web content intelligence system that provides content administrators and project managers with a way to proactively monitor and manage their existing WCM solutions. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. WebRadar helps web content administrators and project managers identify, fix, and monitor problems with WCM content and processes. For example, WebRadar can determine where the bottlenecks are in a particular process, which pages are expiring within a set timeframe, which content authors are actively using the system, and which pages are assigned to specific team members. Reports can be easily produced to analyze workflow processes, content items, and content author adoption of the WCM. Charts provide at-a-glance insights into WCM processes. The WebRadar product line will be integrated into Ephox’s suite of solutions over the course of Q1, 2010. http://www.webradarwcm.com, http://www.ephox.com
Ephox announced the latest version of the company’s rich text editor, EditLive! V7. Integrated with IBM Lotus Web Content Management and IBM Lotus Quickr software, EditLive! allows business users to create content in a desktop word processing environment. With new features to increase user productivity, team collaboration and web site quality, EditLive! V7 is designed to help non-technical users keep company web sites, blogs and wikis up-to-date with relevant online content. EditLive! V7 supports Autosave to preserve content, even if the web browser crashes, or the server session times out. V7 also includes templating functionality, giving content administrators the ability to create reusable content templates for consistent web site styles and standards that can be employed by business users. The HTML editor also improves collaboration for online documents with new context-based commenting capabilities, in which users can comment directly on any text or object in a document and track conversations related to specific comments. For increased quality of content in web sites and wikis, EditLive! adds broken hyperlink reporting. The new version of EditLive! includes enhanced integration with IBM Lotus Web Content Management and now deploys as an application in the portal environment. In addition, performance improvements have been achieved through a series of optimizations to caching, configuration and compression mechanisms. In addition to new functionality in EditLive!, the OEM version now includes several features that were previously only available in the Enterprise Edition. These capabilities include Auto-Correct for automatically correcting spelling errors, the ability to import Word documents, and Thesaurus. EditLive! 7 is available immediately in OEM, Professional and Enterprise Editions. http://www.ephox.com/
SDL plc announces the acquisition of Fredhopper, experts in targeting and marketing software for eCommerce. This acquisition is part of SDL’s strategy and commitment to delivering solutions for enterprises with complex, multi-lingual sales and marketing and customer support requirements. SDL has seen a growing demand for solutions that manage and optimise high value customer engagements to drive online revenue and improve customer satisfaction across multiple channels. The deal will allow Fredhopper, which counts Clarks, Toys R Us, B&Q, Waitrose and Otto Group – the world’s second biggest eCommerce company behind Amazon.com – among its stable of over 100 large international retail customers, to embark on a global rollout of its product suite and expand operations into the US and Asia. The company currently operates in four European countries – the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Fredhopper will become an independent division of SDL that will be named ‘SDL eCommerce Technologies.’ The division will be led by Fredhopper’s current management team, and be focused on providing targeting and marketing software for online retailers. Fredhopper brings technology for effective targeting and personalisation, intelligent search, merchandising and measurement. In addition, Fredhopper brings R&D and Professional Services teams into the larger SDL group. The acquisition will also enable Fredhopper to launch its online targeting technology into new verticals – namely financial services, insurance, and manufacturing, through SDL’s existing Web Content Management solutions. http://www.fredhopper.com/, http://www.sdltridion.com
Given that we’re halfway through January, I figure it’s high time I get around to writing my predictions for the Web Content Management industry in 2010. Let me correct that: these are my hopes for the WCM industry in 2010. I believe there’s enough evidence to support the notion that my desires have a shot at coming to fruition, but I’ve come to grips with the fact that Nostradamus I am not.
I have a long list of both predictions and desires, but I’m focusing on my top 4 since they are all tied to a single theme, are the most likely to come to fruition, and are all driven by what we at Gilbane believe will be one of the four global, cross-industry Megatrends for 2010: Customer Experience. We believe that customer experience has been and will continue to be a significant basis for competitive advantage for all companies, as it defines their relationships with their customers. Experiences are personal, and thus, they must be tailored to the individual. Companies, now more than ever, need to identify (and prioritize!) their customer segments in order to individualize their experiences, and they must consider both stated and latent customer feedback as essential metrics. ALL interactions with customers then, whether in-person or via the web, must be 1) grounded in an understanding of the customer, and 2) empowered to adapt based on recent feedback. This valuation of customer experience is [finally] starting to raise the bar for the WCM industry…gone are the days when we can get away with merely providing a means of doing more with less. CIOs and CMOs alike are now recalling those long-promised ROI calculations which included increased sales, and they are holding the WCM vendors accountable. If they’re not doing so already, I sure hope they start because the technology has finally caught up to the hype. So, with that said, here goes…
Hope #1: Audience Engagement Frameworks [The almost forgotten promise of WCM]
If you haven’t heard of an Audience Engagement Framework, it’s because I just coined the phrase last week. Hopefully it’s at least partly self-explanatory. AEFs, in my opinion, are the future of marketing on the web. They will enable WCM to realize its full potential. AEFs include traditional WCM combined with web analytics, marketing automation, audience segmentation and dynamic content delivery. Analysts and thought leaders have been discussing the notion of Persuasive Content for a while — the idea that content is tailored to suit the consumer / visitor. The only bit I would add to this is that in order to be persuasive, one must also be perceptive. Perceptive Content, another phrase I’m laying claim to, is that which is informed by visitor behavior via analytics (preferably in real-time), search, user-generated content, etc. AEFs includes both the perceptive and persuasive aspects of content, and a handful of innovative vendors have already released varying degrees of the framework in their products. I fully expect this trend to continue in 2010. And, while some vendors will implement it more wholistically than others, at least we’re not talking about WYSIWYG editors being the biggest leap forward anymore. Or, at least, I’m not.
Hope #2: Search [Tightly integrated and much improved]
In 2009, we saw a mutual interest between the Search and WCM industries as Autonomy purchased Interwoven, Squiz bought Funnelback, and a number of WCM vendors such as Drupal and eZ Systems took major steps to integrate advanced search engines into their products. Many of the newly integrated products include features such as faceted search, auto-complete/suggest, content spotlighting, relevance ranking, and more. As I see it, this was more than just an attempt to improve the usability of their resulting websites in response to an ever-increasing shift towards search as the primary form of navigation. I believe, er, I hope, this trend is an intentional step towards improving a site’s perceptive capabilities. Our ability to understand our audience’s desires will most certainly be enhanced by attending to their searches, and our ability to manipulate the search results based on the visitor’s (and her associated segment’s) interaction with the website should only improve her [customer] experience which I’ve deemed so imperative above. If my guess is right, today’s notion of search within a website will get a serious upgrade in the year(s) to come.
Hope #3: User-Generated Content [WCM gets even more social!]
User-Generated Content such as micro-blogs, social networking, tagging, commenting, etc. is everywhere. Many WCM Vendors have offered various UGC features in their products for a while now, but most have not implemented ways for companies to capitalize on the resulting content. As the industry continues to brainstorm ways to monetize the “social” trend, a handful of vendors such as Alterian and Sitecore have begun leveraging this content to improve audience engagement, thus again following suit with my theme from Hope #1. It won’t take long for others to follow.
Hope #4: Globalization [Multi-lingual gets localized in the mainstream]
In the days of old, multi-lingual content capabilities were only promised by specialized vendors. However, as more and more companies are concerned with improving the experiences of their international customer base, a number of mainstream WCM vendors have begun to include these features in their products. With a few exceptions, the capabilities of most are relatively immature at this point, but 2010 should see an improved understanding of localization by mainstream vendors. The continued enhancement of such features should help to avoid what my colleagues have termed the Language Afterthought Syndrome, and the engaged conversation will be allowed to thrive worldwide.
Well, that’s it. I’d love to know your thoughts. We’ll be discussing many concepts related to the Audience Engagement Framework in the Customers & Engagement track at the upcoming Gilbane Conference in San Francisco, so mark your calendars for May 18-20! I also intend to write more on the subject and am just getting underway with some related research, so please stay tuned!
Follow me on Twitter: @sliewehr
Kaltura, Inc. announced it has released a Kaltura-based video extension for Joomla! The Kaltura extension allows Joomla site-builders to handle every aspect of video and rich-media, including content management, syndication, monetization, transcoding, uploading, importing, editing and remixing. The extension is simple to install, customize, and use. The Joomla extension is available in two flavors: a free community-supported, video platform extension that is self-hosted by the publisher, and a video extension based on Kaltura’s SaaS platform, which includes a 10GB free trial, including Kaltura support and additional paid services such as tier-1 hosting and streaming, transcoding, syndication, advertising, security and more. http://www.kaltura.com
Alfresco Software, Inc. announced the availability of Alfresco Content Services for Lotus social collaboration products, an integration between the Alfresco open source enterprise content management (ECM) system and IBM Lotus Quickr, Lotus Notes, Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal. This integration brings together a combination of the Lotus social collaboration capabilities and Alfresco’s enterprise content management. Alfresco Content Services for Lotus allows access for programmers to extend the integration from Lotus Notes, Domino, XPage and Portal applications using a wide choice of languages, APIs, protocols and services, including Java, JavaScript, JSP, PHP, CMIS, JSR 168k CIFS, IMAP, JCR, WebDAV, FTP, NFS, SMTP, XForms, SOAP, and .net. Alfresco Content Services for Lotus includes an implementation of the SharePoint protocol. This provides users with access from Microsoft Office, while giving companies the freedom of choice in their IT architecture. Alfresco Content Services for Lotus will be available in the spring of 2010, and will be available to download from January 17. http://www.alfresco.com/ibm
Though we are still catching our breath from the Boston conference and the holidays, it is time to get moving on our annual San Francisco conference, which the 3rd week of May this year. The conference site is http://gilbanesf.com, is still mostly populated with 2009 information, but will be updated this week with a new site design and current information. Content from the 2009 event is at http://gilbanesf.com/09/ will be moved to a subdirectory and continue to be available.
In the meantime, The description below is taken from the draft site and will give you a good idea of the topics we’ll be covering. If you are interested in submitting a speaking proposal, remember that the deadline for submissions is January 18. See https://gilbane.com/speaker-guidelines/.
Oh, and the Twitter handle is http://twitter.com/gilbanesf and the hashtag we’ll be using is #gilbanesf.
Gilbane San Francisco 2010
Web, content, and collaboration technology have reached a new level of maturity. This is true in terms of technology, but more importantly, it is true in terms of what businesses expect to be able to do with these tools. Web and enterprise content management permeate every aspect of an organization. Public facing internet sites are the front door to an organizations’ products and services, and where customers, partners and investors engage with the corporate brand and develop perceptions. Internal websites, whether in the form of intranets, blogs, wikis, or portals, provide knowledge workers increasingly efficient ways to collaborate and share knowledge. Customer and internal-facing applications share requirements that call for a number of enterprise content, publishing and infrastructure technologies, such as multi-lingual, social media, search, and integration software.
Gilbane San Francisco is organized into four tracks so that whether you are responsible for marketing, IT, a business unit, or an internal function, you will be able to easily navigate among the conference sessions. If you are responsible for customer-facing business activities start with the Customers & Engagement track, and then add appropriate sessions from the Content Technology & Content Publishing tracks. If your role is focused on internal collaboration, knowledge sharing or support activities, start with the Colleagues & Collaboration track, and supplement it with sessions from the technology & publishing tracks.
Track 1: Customers & Engagement
Corporate websites are now the most important public face of an organization, and the best way to grow, and communicate with, a broader customer base. Successful sales and marketing now requires Web sites that can reach a global audience, a mobile audience, and an audience familiar with social media and used to richer media. Websites also need to be findable, accessible, engaging, real-time & responsive, and have accurate and timely information that is synchronized with other channels. This is a tall order, but it is what your customers expect, and what companies are building.
Attendees:
For anyone responsible for marketing, business, or technical aspects of public facing websites, including, sales & marketing, digital marketing, brand managers, business units with P&L, Web strategists, IT, Web managers, business managers, digital media, e-commerce managers, content managers and strategists.
Topics:
Web content management, analytics, web design and UI, social media, rich media, global reach, multilingual practices, personalization, information architecture, designing for mobile, e-commerce, search engine optimization.
Track 2: Colleagues & Collaboration
Well-designed internal websites for collaboration on projects or operational activities, whether in the form of intranets, portals, blogs, or wikis are critical for supporting modern corporate missions. Social software has reignited interest in enhancing employee collaboration and knowledge sharing, and the right use of social software, alone or combined with an intranet or portal, is a competitive requirement. Employees already use it, and expect it, and can be much more productive with it. While some business use-cases are obvious, companies are a long way from having enough experience to know how best to integrate and deploy different types of social software to best support business requirements.
Attendees:
For anyone responsible for internal websites, portals, collaboration & knowledge sharing activities, including, knowledge managers, product managers, project managers, IT, and content managers.
Topics:
Collaborative authoring, intranets, knowledge management, search, wikis, micro-blogging and blogging, managing social and user-generated content, integrating social software into enterprise applications, SharePoint, portals, social software platforms, enterprise 2.0 strategies.
Track 3: Content Technology
There are many different technologies involved in building web and enterprise content applications. Some of them are simple and some complex, some are open source and some are commercial, some are available via license, some as a service, some are ready for prime time, some aren’t, and some might be ready, but are controversial.
Attendees:
For those who are either responsible for technology decisions, or those who need to keep up-to-speed with the latest technology for enterprise content applications of all types, including, central IT, departmental IT, strategists, and managers who need to know what’s possible and what’s coming.
Topics:
Multi-lingual technologies and applications, XML, standards, integration, content migration, mobile, search, open source, SaaS, semantic technologies, social software, SharePoint, XBRL, and relevant consumer technologies.
Track 4: Content Publishing
Multi-channel publishing has been a goal of many organizations for years, but it is now more important than ever – and not that much easier. In addition to more traditional print and web channels, smartphones, e-book readers, other mobile devices, and even “in-product” displays need to be considered. In addition to more channels, there are more media types to manage. Dynamic publishing is a key business requirement for both single and multi-channel delivery.
Attendees:
For those responsible for content creation, management, and multi-channel/multi-lingual publishing, IT and others that need to learn about publishing technology because of new multi-channel demands, including corporate or commercial publishers, content managers, digital asset managers, documentation managers, and information architects.
Topics:
Multi-channel publishing, multi-lingual publishing, e-books, tablets, mobile, digital rights, digital asset management, documentation, structured content, XML, dynamic publishing, and publishing business models.
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