Category: Content management & strategy (Page 160 of 468)

Attention, buyers and users of content and globalization management solutions! Wondering about the right integration approach for your company?
The globalization track at Gilbane Boston 2007 includes a session entitled “Integrating Content and Translation Processes: Managing Global Customer Experience.” The panel brings together two content management vendors, two providers of translation technology and services, and one middleware company that connects multiple CM and GM systems. Our goal is to explore the different options that you have when integrating the two technologies to create solutions supporting the global content life cycle.
In the session description, we promise to use “real world scenarios” to drive the panel. We’re issuing an invitation to our readers to submit suggestions for the scenarios that we’ll use for discussion. Do you have CM and GM practices that need to be streamlined? Are you planning to acquire and deploy CM/GM in the future, but not sure how to best fit the technologies together? Need fresh ideas for outmoded processes? Then think about proposing a scenario for the integration session at Gilbane Boston.
We’ll arrange a call with you to discuss your scenario and its context. If your scenario is chosen for use in the session, you’ll help us write up a description that we’ll share with the panel participants prior to the conference. Whether we choose your scenario or not, you’ll have the benefit of a little free advice from the Gilbane Group in the course of discussing your situation, constraints, requirements, etc. Please note that you need not register for Gilbane Boston in order to submit a scenario for possible use in the session. But if you do plan on attending the conference, you’ll have the option of presenting your own scenario to the panel.
Send scenarios or questions about the session to me or to my colleague Leonor. We’d welcome the chance to speak with you about this unique opportunity.

Web content management takes center stage at the CM Pros Fall Summit, November 26 at the Westin Copley in Boston. The keynote speaker is Salim Ismail, who heads up the Brickhouse at Yahoo, a semi-autonomous unit charged with creating cool new things for Yahoo channels. As CM Pros president, I’ll moderate a discussion on new and improved WCM technologies and how they impact content management professionals. Topics on the one-day program include choosing a WCM solution, syndicating web content, wiki/WCM convergence, “2.0” and what it really means for businesses and users, social media optimization, migrating legacy content, WCM and rich media, and more. See the program and list of presenters on the event website.

Early-bird registration fee is $295 for members, $395 for non-members through September 30. Fee thereafter is $395 and $495, respectively. Continental breakfast, lunch and post-program reception included.

CM Pros sincerely thanks its event sponsors: Astoria Software, CrownPeak, Duo Consulting, FatWire, NetReach, and Terminal 4.
Don’t delay. Sign up and get $100 discounts today!

Comparing relational vs. object-oriented database use in content management is highly subjective, and can’t be generalized. That would be like saying that the movie is always better than the book it is based on. Take the Harry Potter series. While the books have been phenomenally successful, the movies are doing equally well at the box office.

There’s not a one-size fits all approach for technology either. Comparing relational and object-oriented databases needs to be done from several perspectives – notably business rationale for the end user as well as technological advantage – not just one.

On the business end, documentation is mission critical, and must be available 24×7. Relational databases like Oracle support application clustering and high availability out of the box. Customers can count on Oracle always being available, and in a global working environment, everyone can get their job done.

Many businesses need to migrate from some form of binary documentation to XML, but it doesn’t happen instantly. Using a relational database, these businesses can store their binary documentation and take full advantage of a CMS while they undertake the process of converting to XML. A relational database can also act as a single repository that stores both XML and binary content, eliminating the need for a separate file system and creates a more homogenous environment for IT.

When business demands and technology realities meet, an argument can be made that a mission critical database application like Oracle requires an amount of care and feeding to be properly maintained. There is, however, also a misunderstanding that with an XML database, an end user can simply let it run and everything is fine.

In reality, many companies like to have control over their “family jewels,” and may want the option of feeding other applications that have canned integrations to relational databases. XQuery may be great, but businesses need to search for content that can be in many forms, XML, PDF, Word, etc. Using a relational database and other technologies, it is possible to support a very robust search mechanism across over 295 different formats.

In both cases, scalability is always a concern. The user must be able to scale and manage both vertically (larger machines) and horizontally (additional machines) while maintaining the integrity of the data and 24×7 access to the system.
Relational databases provide out-of-the-box horizontal scalability, as well as the ability to acutely control how system resources are used. This is crucial in serious business applications. Relational databases can stuff entire areas of XML into a single row (such as a … with hundreds of sub tags). This can be a real advantage, especially if is the users’ only needs are to work with and repurpose that section.

In the native XML database model, the users would end up with hundreds of rows in their database because each tag is stored separately. Even if all the users wanted to do is repurpose a section, they would need to handle every single row.

The proof lies in customer deployments. Many companies have replaced object oriented databases in large part because they didn’t scale. Consequently they’ve been able to grow into very large solutions using a relational database. In fact, one global customer expects to manage a terabyte of data in their (Contenta) CMS by year’s end. Now that’s scalable.

Just as there are many business and technology needs, there are many viable alternatives, including relational and object-oriented databases. To dismiss an entire technology because of one company’s recent acquisition is a blatant sales pitch at best, and technological ignorance at its worst.

I have said this many times before, and will say again: the world is multilingual, and more and more people are working daily in a multilingual environment. In companies, this multilingual environment is not only about translation, but about working with customers and colleagues whose native language is different from one’s own. That can lead to a lot of miscommunication, and I think that nobody has even started to measure the real costs or missed sales arising from it.

Communication starts with terminology, and that is where I see a lot of needs (and opportunities) for new solutions. Corporate terminology – “that which we call a widget by any other name goes in other companies” – is something that I think benefits from active input from corporate experts. Wikis seem an interesting way to enhance corporate communication, so I emailed with Greg Lloyd, CEO of Traction Software to ask whether he has seen wikis used for handling multilingual issues. He can be reached at grl@tractionsoftware.com.

Traction Software has been in the corporate blog/wiki business since July 2002, and has 250+ corporate customers. According to Greg, Traction’s TeamPage is best described in terms of Doug Engelbart’s NLS/Augment model, re-imagined for the Web (more at Traction Roots | Doug Engelbart.

KP: Do your customers use wikis to handle multilingual issues, such as terminology?
GL: We have an international pharma customer who wanted to provide an interactive online glossary of terms that have specialized meanings. For example, in writing a new drug application, many terms have specialized meanings and interpretations dictated by regulatory authorities in the U.S., Europe and other regions.
At this customer, glossary definitions are usually written by people with specialized experience in new drug applications and similar filings, but the glossaries are intended for working reference by everyone in the company – not limited to those who deliver translations. The company has offices around the world, but most working communication is in English or French. A majority of employees have very good reading knowledge of both languages, but aren’t necessarily aware of some specialized meanings and interpretations – including those which change as new regulations are issued.

We developed a “Glossary skin” to address this need. The Glossary skin is a Traction “skin” or UI presentation layer that in this case, provides a specialized and simplified Glossary view of the underling blog/wiki data stored in the TeamPage Journal. It gives the users versatile tools for handling terminology, such as looking up glossary terms, term definitions, guidance on how to use the term, and the possibility to comment a term or ask questions about it. All terms are in both English and French. Changes and additions can be tracked with standard blog/wiki features, and the users can also subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds on updates. These are just a few of the functionalities of the solution.

KP: Do the wiki glossaries integrate with other glossaries or localization tools, such as translation memories?
GL: For the Glossary Wiki there are no special translator tools built in. I believe that general purpose translation tools will likely best be loosely-coupled mashup style. I haven’t seen requests for industry specific glossaries from customers, but I think there may be a business opportunity.

KP: What kind of feedback have you received from your customer? Have there been requests for special functionalities?
GL: The pharma customer is very happy with the result, which is used company-wide. We’ve also demonstrated the Glossary skin to customers in Japan and other countries. Several have expressed interest and are piloting use of the Glossary skin, primarily for developing and delivering specialized glossaries for internal working communication as well as translating deliverables.

The ability for global enterprises to create interactive Glossaries for working communication among employees, suppliers and other stakeholders seems to be getting the most interest. Many global companies use English as a standard for internal communication, but the ability to add comments or questions in other languages is a big plus. The ability to create and delivery interactive Web glossaries in Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. as well as European and other Asian languages is also very useful.

Traction uses UTF-8 Unicode to store, search and deliver content written in any combination of European and Asian alphabets in any blog/wiki space (or in the same page), so a multi-lingual global glossary is easy to deliver and can be simple to author using the standard Web browser interface.

KP: What have been the biggest advantages your customers have received from using a wiki to create a glossary, instead of using a specialized terminology management tool?
GL: The biggest advantages are: 1) Simple access using a Web browser, particularly when the wiki has specialized skin to make the Glossary application work with no training; 2) Simple group editing and history using the the wiki edit model; 3) Simple integration of comments and feedback; 4) Simple, scalable and secure deployment corporate-wide.

KP: Corporate wikis seem to be an interesting way to share information and expertise. Do you see them also being used for translation work?
GL: Yes, I can certainly see how the Glossary skin could be extended to support other wiki per-page translation models. At present the Glossary skin implementation is available to TeamPage customers as a Traction Skin Definition Language (SDL) plug-in. We’ll be packaging it along with its SDL source code as a free plug-in example later this summer. We’ll work with customers and partners to determine how to best provide translation wiki’s powered by Traction TeamPage.

Google has added Sun’s StarOffice to its free Google Pack. This has been expected and is of course targeting Microsoft’s Office suite. Richard MacManus reported it Sunday, and Dan Farber says most of what I would say about it.