Percussion Software announced the release of CM System 6.7. This release provides partners, enterprises, institutions and organizations the ability to package and deploy the CM System capabilities they create. Percussion’s packaging tool also offers an upgrade capability. Percussion CM System 6.7 helps organizations keep pace with changes by making it possible to encapsulate custom CMS application functionality into modular, upgradeable packages, which can be configured and reused standalone or in concert with other packages, allowing a building-block approach to the web content management system. When unanticipated needs arise, packages can be updated and re-deployed to extend the life of the development investment by allowing multiple, iterative changes to existing components. Percussion plans to sponsor an open exchange whereby customers and partners can swap, sell or buy application packages. The exchange leverages the open source model by bringing together the unbridled thinking of the Percussion community and the of the Percussion CM System. CM System 6.7 is available for immediate delivery. http://www.percussion.com
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 145 of 481)
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/
Bluenog announced the availability of Bluenog ICE 4.5, an Enterprise 2.0 application development platform built on pre-integrated open source collaboration, content management, presentation and reporting projects. ICE 4.5’s Integrated Collaborative Environment of content management, portal, and business intelligence software now includes an Enterprise Wiki, secure group calendaring features and enhanced centralized administration. ICE 4.5 aggregates functionality from over a dozen open source projects into a single commercial product, with additional integration and features, all supported by Bluenog. This pre-integration helps eliminate the need for developers to manually code features such as security permissions and access to legacy systems across all their applications. Based on the JSPWiki open source project, ICE 4.5 allows users to create and share content through a portal interface. Stored in a secure, enterprise-wide repository, all Wiki pages can be searched, with access permissions defined at the Wiki and page level. ICE 4.5 also introduces an enterprise group calendaring application based on the open source project, Bedework. Bluenog has extended Bedework with secure, restricted access to calendars based on user, group and role. Another feature introduced in ICE 4.5 is ICE Central. This Central Administrative Console includes an improved interface for handling user groups and permissions across ICE’s CMS and Portal components. Additionally, its propagation tool enables bulk import/export of ICE CMS Content Types and Content Data assets. The new release extends ICE’s CMS functionality with an enhanced rich text editor and configurable HTML cleaner. These new features allow for a more customizable, browser friendly Ajax-compatible style. Bluenog ICE 4.5 will be generally available June 30, 2009. Bluenog ICE 4.5 is available via annual subscription and includes 9×5 support. Priced per-server rather than per-CPU or per-user. http://www.bluenog.com/
Positioning content practices as strategic, making business cases that get funding, and selling up within the organization are among the most common challenges presented to Gilbane Group analysts in conversations with users, adopters, and buyers of content technologies. Our advice to clients always includes aligning the target investment with the strategic goals and objectives of the business. By placing content practices and infrastructures directly in the path of promises to customers and shareholders, managers improve their chances of securing financial and sponsorship support. In some cases, they can effect innovative change that not only advances their domain’s capabilities but also results in new value creation for the enterprise.
Gilbane believes that true innovation delivers new value to organizations that are willing to take the risks associated with fundamental, qualitative change. The innovations resulting from FICO’s alignment of product and content development practices with business strategies are object lessons for any organization that needs to compete effectively in global markets.
Download the FICO story here: Innovation3: The FICO Formula for Agile Global Expansion
Listen to the webinar archive here: Innovating for Agility: Global Content Practices at FICO
SDL Tridion announced that it has partnered with Q-go to provide an integrated Natural Language Search engine within SDL Tridion’s web content management platform. The solution provides the online search environment within websites only targeted and relevant search results. Q-go’s Natural Language Search is now accessible from within the SDL Tridion web content management environment. Content editors are able to create model questions in the Q-go component of the SDL Tridion platform. This means that the most common questions pertaining to products and the website itself can be targeted and answered by web content editors, creating streamlined content and vastly increased relevance of searches. The integration also means that only one interface is needed to update the entire website, which can be done anywhere, anytime. You can find more information on the integration at the eXtensions Community of http://www.sdltridionworld.com
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 — 11:00 to 12:00 (GMT -5:00) Eastern Time
* To check the webinar time in your local area, go to: www.timezoneconverter.com.
The challenges facing FICO, a leading supplier of decision management analytics, applications and tools, will sound familiar to global organizations: the need to streamline product and content development lifecycles, support global expansion with accurate and timely localization and translation processes, and satisfy customers worldwide with consistent, quality experience. What makes FICO’s story unique is its strategic and proactive approach to addressing them.
With a successful business case based on reuse as a “first principle,” FICO is building an enterprise content infrastructure that includes XML and DITA, component content management, translation memory and terminology management, and automated publishing. Learn how FICO is aligning global content practices with the company’s business goals and objectives. If you need to spark that “aha!” moment within your organization, you won’t want to miss this webinar event. Topics:
- Reuse as the tipping point: the synergies of component approaches to product and content development
- Implementing an end-to-end global information strategy
- The value of content agility in FICO’s global business strategy
Speakers:
- Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
- Carroll Rotkel, Director, Product Documentation, FICO
- Howard Schwartz, Ph.D., VP Content Management, SDL Trisoft
Registration is open. Sponsored by SDL.
I was at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco last week, where I answered questions as a panelist, moderated another panel, heard many excellent presentations, and joined in many engaging discussions. On the plane ride home, I took some time to piece together the individual bits of information and opinion that I had absorbed during the two-day event. This reflection led to the following observations regarding the state of enterprise content management practices and technologies.
Up With People
Many content software vendors are now focusing on people first, content second. This is a huge shift in perspective, especially when voiced at a content management conference! Kumar Vora, Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise at Adobe was the first person to proclaim this philosophical change during his opening keynote presentation at Gilbane San Francisco. He reported that Adobe has shifted its business philosophy to focus on serving people and their needs, as opposed to thinking about content first. Many other vendor representatives and attendees from end user organizations echoed Kumar’s emphasis on people during the event. It is too early to say definitively what this radical change in perspective means, but we should see more user friendly enterprise content management tools as a result.
Keyword Fail
Keyword search has largely failed end users and incremental improvements haven’t been able to keep up with the explosion in newly created content. Jeff Fried, VP Product Management for Microsoft’s FAST search engine actually proclaimed that “keyword search is dead!” The business world is at a point where alternatives, including machine-generated and social search techniques, must be explored. The latter method was on many attendees minds and lips, which should not surprise, given the shift to people-centric thinking identified above. Social search will be an increasingly hot topic in 2009 and 2010.
SharePoint Upheaval
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has the potential to completely shake up the information management market. The next version of SharePoint will likely include a raft of (as of yet unconfirmed) Web Content Management features that have been missing or rudimentary. In her keynote address, Tricia Bush, Group Product Manager for SharePoint said that the promise of content management has not yet been realized and that her team is focusing diligently on the opportunity. This increased emphasis on content management is contrary to the first trend that I described above, and the negative perceptions many hold of SharePoint may increase unless Microsoft also better enables people in SharePoint 2010 (it is rumored that the product will also see substantial additions to its currently limited social collaboration functionality.) Those placing bets should do so knowing that Microsoft intends to, and probably will, be a major force in enterprise information management.
Simplicity Trumps Complexity
Enterprise applications and systems managed by IT departments continue to grow in complexity. As this happens, end users turn to simpler alternatives, including consumer oriented Web 2.0 applications, in order to get work done. The “problem” is that these consumer applications aren’t approved or controlled by the IT function. The opportunity is a potentially large market for software vendors that can create enterprise ready versions of Web 2.0 applications by adding security, reliability, and other attributes demanded by CIOs. For those vendors to succeed, however, they must retain the simplicity (intuitiveness and ease of use) that are the hallmark of consumer Web 2.0 applications.
Communication Beats Publishing
Communication applications are increasingly being used by end users to collaborate, because enterprise content management applications have become too complex (see the trend immediately above). Additionally, communication tools are favored by end users because they can use them to simultaneously create and distribute content. This increased speed of content publication also accelerates general business process execution, allowing users of communication tools to be more productive than users of formal enterprise content systems. Communication tools will continue to become an important and growing back channel that employees use to share content when overly complex publishing tools impede or fail them.
Having one’s ideas validated by a reputable peer is always rewarding. John Mancini, President of AIIM, published a blog post in the time between when I first formulated these thoughts on the flight home from San Francisco last week and when I published this post today. Reading John’s post should encourage you to believe that the trends I (and he) have described are for real. The question for all of us now is how will we respond to these emerging realities.
Yooba Ltd announced the full commercial availability of its online Flash creation and management system, Yooba. Yooba is a content management system (CMS) specially designed for Flash website content creation. As with CMSs for static content, Yooba puts full creative power over Flash, right down to the object level, but without the need for programming skills, into the hands of editors and others responsible for site content origination and maintenance. As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, there are no licensing issues with Yooba and users are always working with the latest version. The SaaS structure also gives full scalability on pricing, to suit anyone from individual professionals to enterprise companies. Once content is created, Yooba simplifies the scheduling and publication of created and edited material. This is carried out through Yooba’s graphical admin dashboard, which gives users total control of Flash objects within a website at a glance, making it easy to update and change them as frequently as information and sales campaigns require. http://www.yooba.com/
Vignette Corporation (NASDAQ: VIGN) announced the release of Vignette Content Management Audit Solutions. The solutions allow organizations to track and archive changes across multiple Web sites and provide a simplified process for meeting operational or regulatory auditing compliance requirements. In addition to enabling compliance, Vignette Content Management Audit Solutions help organizations optimize and improve operational Web site management processes by reporting on content creation, contribution and user trends that can identify system or process bottlenecks. Once an organization knows how and when its content is being managed, it can easily make modifications to drive efficiency and reduce the amount of time it takes to publish fresh content. Vignette Content Management Audit Solutions are available in complimentary and enhanced packages. Vignette Content Management Audit, included within the Vignette Content Management console, includes event history views. The enhanced offering allows organizations to leverage on-demand reporting of events, users and time periods in a dashboard or drill down format in order to identify trends. http://www.vignette.com
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