SDL announced the release of SDL Global Authoring Management System, a global authoring system based on SDL AuthorAssistant. The system is used to help companies to improve brand consistency, increase the efficiency of their global authoring process and reduce time-to-market for global content. Through its centralized system which checks against corporate assets, SDL Global Authoring Management System (SDL Global AMS) enables enterprise-wide consistency of terminology, style and linguistic best practices, as well as maximizing the reuse of previously written content. The upgraded system is now tightly linked with SDL’s automated translation technology, allowing authors to create content that is better prepared for automated translation. The post-processing required from automated translation is then significantly reduced. Other enhancements in SDL Global Authoring Management System include sophisticated linguistic and grammatical enhancements, enhanced collaboration throughout the content lifecycle, and centralized access for enterprise-wide configuration and profile management. For more information on SDL Global Authoring Management System visit http://www.sdl.com
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 162 of 479)
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/
Just a quick observation about the March 11 edition of Gilbane’s email news round-up. Five of the ten “news-of-note” summaries were developments in the globalization space that we cover in this blog.
- Across Systems formally establishes presence in North America.
- Translations.com merges with Alchemy.
- Clay Tablet partners with Oracle.
- Sajan releases new search-and-match technology for multilingual content.
- MultiCorpora offers packaged solutions for corporate translation applications.
More evidence that there’s lots shaking in the world of people, process, and technology for multilingual business communications.
As many of you know, we will be publishing a new report by Stephen Arnold in the next few weeks. The title, Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn’t Work, begs the question of whether there is such a thing as “enterprise search”. The title of Lynda’s consulting practice blog “Enterprise Search Practice Blog”, begs the same question. In the case of content management, a similar question is begged by AIIM – “The Enterprise Content Management Association” (ECM) and the recent AIIM conference.
The debate about whether “enterprise fill-in-your-favorite-software-application” makes any sense at all is not new. The terms “Enterprise Document Management” (EDM) and “Enterprise Resource Planning” (ERP) were first used in the 80s, and, at least in the case of EDM, were just as controversial. We have Documentum to thank for both EDM and ECM. Documentum’s original mission was to be the Oracle of documents, so EDM probably seemed like an appropriate term to use. Quickly however, the term was appropriated by marketing pros from many vendors, as well as analysts looking for a new category of reports and research to sell, and conference organizers keeping current with the latest buzzwords (I don’t exclude us from this kind of activity!). It was also naively misused by many enterprise IT (as opposed to “personal IT” I suppose) professionals, and business managers who were excited by such a possibility.
ECM evolved when the competition between the established EDM vendors and the fast growing web content management vendors reached a point where both saw they couldn’t avoid each other (for market cap as well as user requirement reasons). Soon, any vendor with a product to manage any kind of information that existed outside of (or even sometimes even in) a relational database, was an “ECM” vendor. This was what led AIIM to adopt and try to define and lay claim to the term – it would cover all of the records management and scanner vendors who were their existing constituents, and allow them to appeal to the newer web content management vendors and practitioners as well.
We used to cover the question “Is there any such thing as ECM?” in our analyst panels at our conferences, and usually there would be some disagreement among the analysts participating, but our mainly enterprise IT audience largely became savvy enough to realize it was a non-issue.
Why is it a non-issue?
Mainly because the term has almost no useful meaning. Nobody puts all their enterprise content in a single ECM repository. It doesn’t even make sense to use the same vendors’ products across all departments even in small organizations. – that is why there is such a large variety of vendors with wildly different functionality at ECM events such as AIIM. The most that you can assume when you hear “ECM vendor” is that they probably support more than one type of content management application, and that they might scale to some degree.
There are many who think it not unreasonable to have a single “enterprise search” application for all enterprise content. If you are new to search technology this is understandable, since you may think simple word or phrase search should be able to work across repositories. But, of course, it is not at all that simple, and if you want to know why see Stephen’s blog or Lynda’s blog, among others. Both Steve and Lynda are uncomfortable with “enterprise search”. Steve prefers the term “behind the firewall search”. Lynda sticks with the term but with a slightly different definition, although I don’t think they disagree at all on how the term is misused and misinterpreted.
Why use “Enterprise … Whatever” terms at all?
There is only one reason, and that is that buyers and users of technology use these terms as a shortcut, sometimes naively, but also sometimes with full understanding. There is just no getting around the barrier of actual language use. Clearly, using the shortcut is only the first step in communicating – more dialog is required for meaningful understanding.
SYSTRAN announced the release of SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 6, a solution that meets the full range of enterprise language translation needs. Enterprise Server 6 enables corporate users to understand multilingual information in real-time and to deliver consistent and validated translations enabling them to follow best business practices and communicate across different languages. Available in three editions targeted to the small and midsized businesses and enterprise platforms, Enterprise Server 6 addresses complex translation tasks and provides a workbench for managing translation projects. The solution automatically translates all types of documents and files ranging from manuals, procedures, reports, product and support information, content applications, websites, and all written texts. It translates most file types through a Web-based interface or a SYSTRAN Toolbar available on the user desktop. Corporations can integrate it into enterprise applications to drive multilingual information in and across channels, like the enterprise content management system, portal, search, website, etc. Common uses include adding an online translation service to the corporate intranet, on-demand website translation, localization for document workflows, integration with content management systems, databases, and other enterprise applications. SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 6, Workgroup Edition is designed for the small enterprise Intranet with up to 100 users. Price starts at $15,000. SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 6, Standard Edition is designed for the midsize Intranet or Extranet with up to 2,500 users using the Online Tools and Application Packs. Price starts at $30,000. SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 6, Global Edition is designed for enterprises with advanced translation requirements with unlimited user access. Price starts at $150,000. http://www.systransoft.com/
Our Gilbane San Francisco conference from June 18-20 extends our discussion of global content to the West Coast. We’ll be talking about the ability to create, define and manage a Global Content Value Chain within two distinct operational areas: customer service and brand management, both highly dependent on accurate, consistent, and contextual multilingual communications.
We’ll also provide content professionals with a succinct knowledge map of translation process and technology components, increasingly handy as the content and translation management worlds collide. Then, onto an update on system integration opportunities based on enterprise strategy rather than ad-hoc processes. Join us!
GCM-1: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Product Support Content
Wednesday, June 18: 2:00 – 3:30pm
Product support content includes technical documentation as well as the content that lives with a product or service in many formats and contexts, including pre-sales, post-sales, aftermarket, training, and service. The global economy adds languages as yet another output to the traditional multichannel formula, increasing content volume due to the nuances of dialect and culture. Speakers explain how to build global content value chains that combine core content technologies with heavy doses of authoring assistance, collaboration, automated workflows and project management to documentation and translation processes. Results include multilingual product content that satisfies customers, enables simultaneous shipment of products worldwide, and delivers cost and operational efficiencies.
GCM-2: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Web Content
Thursday, June 19: 8:30 – 10:00am
Customer-facing Web content must consistently communicate an organization’s core brand regardless of the language through which the message is delivered. The integral role of company Web sites in engaging with customers worldwide means that effective management of multilingual Web content must be central to content and IT strategies. Effectively managing this content presents specialized considerations such as understanding the benefits of machine translation, integration with analytics and search engine optimization tools, and segment-based translation that keeps multiple Web sites in multiple languages in synch with customer expectations. Speakers explain how to build global content value chains that combine brand management techniques with web content creation, management and distribution processes. The result is multilingual Web content that ensures the best brand experience in any language, at any time.
GCM-3: Case Studies in Translation and Localization: Process and Technology Overview for Content Managers
Thursday, June 19: 11 – 12pm
The worlds of language professionals, content managers, program and product managers, and IT are colliding, driven by the growing demand for integrating content management, translation process management, and other processes and practices comprising the global content value chain. The collision can be managed more effectively if all participants understand what’s in the toolboxes of the other groups and how to put them to good use in the context of a total solution. In a case study format, language professionals explain their tools of the trade and show you how they add value to multilingual content. A session in partnership with Multilingual Magazine and Localization World.
GCM-4 & WCM-6: Case Studies in Integration: WCM & GM
Thursday, June 19: 3:30- 5pm
Content and translation management are core processes in the global content value chain. Integrating the systems that handle them is essential to streamlining processes, increasing the volume of language translations, controlling costs, improving efficiencies and ensuring customer satisfaction. To make the most of investment in people, process, and technology, integration of WCM and GM requires an enterprise strategy, not ad hoc processes that are recreated each time a new website is launched. This session uses real-world scenarios to walk you through different approaches to integration so that you can make an informed decision about strategies and practices that are right for your organization.
Recent studies describe the negative effect of media including video, television and on-line content on attention spans and even comprehension. One such study suggests that the piling on of content accrued from multiple sources throughout our work and leisure hours has saturated us to the point of making us information filterers more than information “comprehenders”. Hold that thought while I present a second one.
Last week’s blog entry reflected on intellectual property (IP) and knowledge assets and the value of taxonomies as aids to organizing and finding these valued resources. The idea of making search engines better or more precise in finding relevant content is edging into our enterprises through semantic technologies. These are search tools that are better at finding concepts, synonymous terms, and similar or related topics when we execute a search. You’ll find an in depth discussion of some of these in the forthcoming publication, Beyond Search by Steve Arnold. However, semantic search requires more sophisticated concept maps than taxonomy. It requires ontology, rich representations of a web of concepts complete with all types of term relationships.
My first comment about a trend toward just browsing and filtering content for relevance to our work, and the second one about the idea of assembling semantically relevant content for better search precision are two sides of a business problem that hundreds of entrepreneurs are grappling with, semantic technologies.
Two weeks ago, I helped to moderate a meeting on the subject, entitled Semantic Web – Ripe for Commercialization? While the assumed audience was to be a broad business group of VCs, financiers, legal and business management professionals, it turned out to have a lot of technology types. They had some pretty heavy questions and comments about how search engines handle inference and its methods for extracting meaning from content. Semantic search engines need to understand both the query and the target content to retrieve contextually relevant content.
Keynote speakers and some of the panelists introduced the concept of ontologies as being an essential backbone to semantic search. From that came a lot of discussion about how and where these ontologies originate, how and who vets them for authoritativeness, and how their development in under-funded subject areas will occur. There were no clear answers.
Here I want to give a quick definition for ontology. It is a concept map of terminology which, when richly populated, reflects all the possible semantic relationships that might be inferred from different ways that terms are assembled in human language. A subject specific ontology is more easily understood in a graphical representation. Ontologies also help to inform semantic search engines by contributing to an automated deconstruction of a query (making sense out of what the searcher wants to know) and automated deconstruction of the content to be indexed and searched. Good semantic search, therefore, depends on excellent ontologies.
To see a very simple example of an ontology related to “roadway”, check out this image. Keep in mind that before you aspire to implementing a semantic search engine in your enterprise, you want to be sure that there is a trusted ontology somewhere in the mix of tools to help the search engine retrieve results relevant to your unique audience.
As the initial dust settles on the announcement of SDL’s acquisition of Idiom, we noticed a couple of interesting trends — some anticipated, some surprising, and some just plain troubling.
Expected trends? A steady outcry from the translation community, bemoaning the loss of the “Switzerland” of translation technology. A logical assessment, given that Idiom built an enviable brand as a pure technology provider and posed no threat to neither Language Service Providers (LSP) nor ECM players. OTOH, the neutrality factor left the status quo in place, leaving room for translation and content management players to handle integration needs as partnerships and in some cases, fairly loose integrations. Also expected? Fear-driven reactions inevitable to consolidation in any software segment, summed up by the “what now” debate.
Our take? Consolidation happens. The ECM market has demonstrated it for over 10 years — the Search and BPMS market are well on their way. The platform players, i.e., the Microsoft, Oracle and IBM’s of the world, have eaten more than their share, by some analyst accounts. So, consolidation happens. It is not really “what now?” that’s the most important question; rather it is “what’s next?” Consolidation is not always positive; it’s disruptive, no doubt about it. In addition, technology mergers and acquisitions are notorious for the length of time they take to strategically integrate what’s purchased. Some never do. Others have a plan from the get-go.
However, there’s room for upstream opportunity and technology metamorphosis within disruption, both of which the translation industry is in need of. By all accounts, this industry is overdue for major change, requiring innovation from technology, service providers, pricing, and from our perspective, “the corporate champions,” currently struggling to raise the visibility of globalization as an enterprise priority. We’re not ready to predict that this acquisition will bring positive changes to any of these elements. That’s for the new product roadmap to lay out — and our advice to SDL/Idiom would be to tackle this sooner rather than later.
At the end of the day however, our take hardly matters.
Whose does? Well, THE BUYER, silly. In terms of translation as part of the global content value chain, the documentation world is ripe and I dare say ready, for innovation based on solid knowledge of single sourcing and multichannel strategies. Add the ferocious uptake of DITA over the past 2 years, and you have a situation where a language can be an output rather than an overdue afterthought. Over on the “other side of the house,” marketing is still trying to prove the value of geographically-targeted web sites as critical to brand and new revenue. Though these audiences may currently search for different solutions to their problems, they are today’s buyers of translation and localization technologies.
Surprising trends? A lack of concern about tomorrow’s buyer. You know, the corporate champions who already view globalization as an enterprise mandate, but can’t justify an enterprise cost yet. The technology industry would be wise to “get ready,” so to speak and by some accounts, they are. According to the BDO Seidman 2008 Technology Outlook Survey, 73% of CFOs at leading U.S. technology businesses expect to post increased sales revenue in 2008 over 2007. Over 39% cited consumer demand for innovative personal technology as the greatest growth driver, closely followed by 32% who cited international expansion as the main driver. Promising, yes. But what about the corporate CIO’s? Many corporate champions we talk to still describe cultures that perceive translation and localization as the “black box” at the end of a larger process.
Troubling trends? The lack of response from the large US-based ECM vendors. It would not have been surprising for us — and we dare say more “savvy” than surprising — to see an ECM or WCM best-of-breed pick up Idiom. Perhaps SDL understands that value, in light of the Tridion acquisition as well as the Trisoft investment. We’ve been on the integration bandwagon for some time; there’s opportunity to squelch the ad-hoc, siloed approaches to content and translation management as the norm. Trouble is, the “conversation” has yet to rise to a level where a departmental challenge transforms to an enterprise initiative.
Consolidation happens. It doesn’t mean the end of a market, but its reshaping. From our perspective, the time is right for vendors and users alike to collaboratively define the transformation.
Kentico Software announced that the new version 3.1 of their Web Content Management System will support Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Kentico Software will release a new version 3.1 of their Web Content Management System Kentico CMS for ASP.NET in the middle of March 2008. The new version will work with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 that will be launched on February 27. This news comes soon after the company announced their CMS supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft IIS 7.0 at the beginning of February. Kentico CMS will keep the support for Windows Server 2000/2003 and SQL Server 2000/2005 as well. http://www.kentico.com
Subscribe to the Gilbane Advisor
