Mary and I did the Webinar with Oracle this week. You can see the recorded version and download the associated white paper over at the Oracle site. The focus was on the challenges of multisite management.
Web content management is a staple technology for thousands of enterprises–and for good reason. Every enterprise needs a basic web presence, and organizations of even modest size and complexity have multiple websites. These multiple sites likely span a range of purposes and needs, including supplier and distributor extranets, customer support websites, and corporate and departmental intranets. Every enterprise’s needs will vary of course, but the larger the organization, the likelihood that the organization will have multiple websites, spanning a range of internal and external needs.
The abundance of websites results from sound business needs. These needs begin with the obvious requirement to have a web presence, but extend to many other areas. Consider the need to work closely with suppliers, and how that requirement can be met by a content-rich and functional extranet. Human Resources is another likely arena, where the organization might want to provide benefit information through an interactive website. The examples abound, and the recent explosion of blogs and wikis has amplified the need.
A key element in multiple website management is understanding who does what when it comes to website design, content creation, and the day-to-day efforts to keep the site or sites going. Can these users be productive and efficient? The matter of scale is another central question: Are there only one or two sites, or is your enterprise in the position of having dozens or even hundreds of sites, and serving content to intranets, extranets, and portals, with new websites regularly demanded by the needs of the business?
Multiple websites present challenges in many different typical workflows and processes. These include identifying and empowering the IT personnel who need to take the lead in web architecture to the line of business manager who must decide on the content and organization of the site and keep it up to date. Perhaps most significant are the needs of the content contributors. At the end of the day, they need easy-to-use tools that allow them to create content within the policies of the overall enterprise and the specific line of business.
Given the strong demand for multiple websites and the potential costs and inefficiencies of building these out separately, there is a natural need for the right technology. At minimum, organizations need web content management technology that supports centralized strategy and governance and that uses IT resources efficiently; at the same time, the technology must give site managers and contributors the means to create and manage the content quickly and easily.
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 176 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/
Customers we met at Interwoven’s GearUp ’07 reminded us of how much really hard work goes into complex content-centric applications. We see the glittery, exposed tips of solutions, while the bulk of the application lies under the surface, often at depths where only the experts go. A presentation by Sun Microsystems at GearUp is a case in point.
The session focused on Sun’s Starlight platform, a global information management infrastructure described in a Gilbane CTW case study. It was an opportunity to hear the Starlight story live, in a panel discussion featuring Sun’s Sean Browne, director of web publishing, and three members of his team, including Kristen Harris, content management engineering manager, and Jed Michnowicz, engineering lead. In the program, we noticed that the session was being moderated by Steve Van Leishout from NEC Corporation of America (NECAM). What was the connection, we wondered, between Sun and NECAM?
During the discussion, we learned that NECAM is a long-time Sun partner, providing program management and technical expertise in support of the redesign of Sun web properties. A few examples of the heavy lifting that NECAM has done at Sun: helping to migrate nine properties into two primary vehicles of approximately 225,000 pages and assets, and coordinating the hand-offs between more than 100 stakeholders responsible for publishing content to sun.com, java.com, two developer sites, and over 35 country sites in 12 languages. The hard work below the surface enabled us to gain a new appreciation for the success story documented in the Gilbane case study on Starlight, reminding us that there’s usually much more to successful applications than meets our eye.
If you have an iceberg application that you’d like to share, consider submitting a speaking proposal for Gilbane Boston 2007. The deadline is May 15.
To learn more about Sun’s Starlight platform, see Leonor’s entry on the Gilbane globalization blog entitled Aging: Web Years Are Worse Than Dog Years.
SDL announced the release of SDL Translation Management System 2007, a new release of its on-demand solution which helps companies create and reuse multilingual content throughout the complete global content lifecycle. By closely integrating with existing content management systems SDL Translation Management System 2007 manages the process of taking approved content, localizing it and making it available for a global audience. This provides an Internet hosted application that enables integration and visibility across the translation supply chain, from content creation and content management to localization and publishing. The new release of SDL Translation Management System 2007: Automates the Complete Translation Supply Chain – A two-way synchronization capability between SDL Translation Management System 2007 and SDL Trados 2007 enables seamless exchange of content; Enables Greater Language Content Reuse – SDL Translation Management System 2007 drives greater content reuse by leveraging both SDL Perfect Match and Cross File Repetition Scanning technologies; and Delivers Enhanced Quality Assurance – SDL Translation Management System 2007 automatically checks documents for completeness and consistency during the localization process. http://www.sdl.com
Vamosa has launched free content analysis and migration software for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The free software combines Vamosa Community Edition and Vamosa developed SharePoint 2007 connector technology. Vamosa Community Edition was originally released in November 2006 as generic content analysis and migration software downloadable for free from www.vamosa.com. It combines the full functionality of Vamosa’s software, Vamosa Content Analyser and Vamosa Content Migrator, into a single product. The extension of Vamosa Community Edition to include the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 connector allows the SharePoint community to capitalise on the benefits an automated approach to analysis and migration has to offer. Although the software will continue with the limitation of 1000 pages users will be able to: Gain a detailed understanding of up to 1000 pages of content in the fastest manner possible, Improve content quality through the removal of duplicate and out-dated content, Enhance content via the application of relevant metadata, and Reduce the pain involved in migrating content to SharePoint. Vamosa plans to release further editions of Vamosa Community Edition for other leading ECM vendors. Offerings for IBM and Interwoven are due in the near future. Vamosa Community Edition for SharePoint can also be downloaded from http://www.vamosa.com/sharepoint2007
Siderean Software announced that it has entered a reseller agreement with Inxight Federal Systems. Effective immediately, Siderean will be added to Inxight’s GSA-approved price list. Inxight’s software structures unstructured data by “reading” text and extracting important entities, such as people, places and organizations. It also extracts facts and events involving these entities, such as travel events, purchase events, and organizational relationships. Siderean’s Seamark Navigator then builds on this newly structured data, providing an relational navigational interface that allows users to put multi-source content in context to help improve discovery, access and participation across the information flow. Seamark Navigator uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Siderean’s Seamark Navigator will provide an important add-on to Inxight’s metadata harvesting and extraction solutions. Inxight’s government customers will now be able to leverage Siderean’s relational navigation solutions to access more relevant and timely results derived from the full context and scope of information. As users refine their searches, Siderean dynamically displays additional navigation options and gives users summaries of those items that best match search criteria. Siderean also enables users to illuminate unseen relationships between sets of information and leverage human knowledge to explore information interactively. http://www.siderean.com, http://www.inxightfedsys.com
John Murrell, in his Good Morning Silicon Valley blog says that the price of the Negroponte laptop (http://www.laptop.org/) has hit $176 (it keeps climbing!), but as he writes, “the bigger news (is) that it may run a version of Windows in addition to the customized Linux OS and open-source apps designed for it.” )
The blog is here:
I’ll be giving a talk on “Managing Content for Compliance: A Framework” at the annual IT Compliance Institute Conference — Friday, May 4th in Crystal City Virginia.
Sneak peek at my recommended actions:
- Secure senior leadership
- Develop policies and procedures
- Develop information architecture and systems
- Expect to iterate.
No real magic — just a lot of hard work! Fortunately, the smart use of relevant content technologies will help.
The integration of content and translation management workflows has a great deal of value for globalization projects. And as we’ve discussed, there are various market approaches to streamlining these increasingly complex processes. With the announcement of SDL International’s intended acquisition of Tridion (set to close by end of May,) buyers officially have an additional approach — translation and Web content management under one roof.
In this case, the opportunity is clearly for marketers who struggle to meet growing corporate and consumer demand for a multi-site, multi-lingual Web presence that drives revenue and protects brand (for the former) and delivers localized customer experiences (for the latter.) The time is right for this marriage, as globalization continues to climb toward the top of the CIO’s “must-have” strategy list.
SDL and Tridion are undoubtedly headed toward a cohesive integration of their respective TMS and Web CMS technologies, which makes a great deal of sense for those organizations wishing to standardize on one platform for Web site translation and management. As we would expect, API-level workflow integration is at the top of the priority list, according to executives from both companies. There’s quite a bit of potential for more, when one considers the ability of SDL’s Author Assistant to enhance the value of content at its source, i.e. during content creation, as well as the power of Tridion’s Communications Statistics module to drive process improvements based on data culled from user activities. Safe to say it will be interesting to watch the evolution of this combined product line for its impact on the Web content lifecycle.
As we’ve seen in the ECM and BPM suite market, the trend toward vendor consolidation changes the landscape dramatically and spurs the inevitable “suite versus best-of breed” debate. Within the globalization market, we expect this acquisition to follow suit — after all, the marriage crosses the “dotted line” by solidifying the value of content and translation management integration.
At the end of the day however, the buyer defines the purchasing decision that makes the most sense, based on the most pressing — or painful — business requirements. As it stands now, Tridion will be a separate division within SDL and operate autonomously. R5 will be sold as a module within the SDL product set and renamed SDL Tridion R5. In parallel, SDL TMS will be sold as a Tridion module.
In effect, this strategy leaves decision-making in the hands of the buyer, as it should be. Hence, the immediate goal for this marriage is to demonstrate just how compelling the promise of a “total solution” will be. The CMPros community is already weighing in on the potential; Gilbane readers: join the conversation! We’d like to continue this discussion with your feedback.
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