Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals
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/
For those of you interested in the conversation about defining more than simple workflow, the WS-BPEL 2.0 Specification public review period started on September 10 and ends November 9. (HTML version)
Microsoft architect John Evdemon is the co-chair of this OASIS committee and has all related links for the specification on his Loosely Coupled Thinking blog. Bruce Silver’s BPMS Watch, Ismael Ghalimi’s IT/Redux, and the BPEL section of ITtoolbox Blogs are good sources for perspective.
Your definition of “document composition” will largely depend on your perspective.
A graphic designer might immediately think of Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. A desktop publisher could probably name various plug-ins to those environments or perhaps list database-publishing tools like Corel Ventura or Adobe PageMaker. If you are approaching this question from an operations, IT or print production perspective you have a much longer and more granular continuum of needs which can only be met with high volume composition software. In my work, I deal with both ends of the continuum from the graphic designer to the high-volume output specialist (see www.ArtPlusTechnology.com)
Composition products range in their ability to design documents from static to dynamic, and it can be generally stated that the more dynamic the document, the less fine control you have of layout, layering and color management. Beyond static page layout and database publishing tools are two categories of composition solution that begin to bring marketing, operations and IT needs together.
High Volume or Transactional Composition: the “big rigs.” These are the tools that use business rules to transform data into dynamic documents for a variety of print and electronic media.
The high-volume composition products did not start off with even a tip of the hat to marketing. The long-time leaders evolved from one of four major categories:
These days, many of the leaders are sunsetting their traditional products and launching new products that attempt to serve all four categories and drive output to both print and online channels. More and more, the desire to reach marketing users (and their budgets) is driving their product requirements.
Some of the key developments in the evolution of these products since the early 1990’s include the introduction of proportional fonts, data-driven graphics, graphical user interfaces (most of these tools did not have UI’s when first introduced), marketing campaign and message tools, post-processing tools for intelligent sorting and postal management. Some of the many tools that have established themselves in the market since the late 90’s include:
While these products are trying to serve broader audiences and layer more and more into their solutions, new players are emerging that go back to the approach of trying to do one thing well. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s not clear what that one thing is. With no slight to their products intended, I find it challenging to place tools like XMPie and PageFlex into the continuum above. There are many other products that are not listed here that are targeted to very specific document types or vertical industries. I will drill down on some of those in future entries.
Meanwhile, I would be interested in feedback on the products that you are most familiar with and how you categorize them.
Elizabeth
Are you a content management professional with experience in content globalization for Latino audiences?
The CM Pros program committee for the Fall 2006 Summit is seeking a knowledgeable participant (consultant or enterprise user) who can discuss cultural issues and technical challenges associated with creating, managing, and delivering content for one of the world’s fastest growing populations. Forum could be panel, workshop, or roundtable. The CM Pros Fall Summit takes place 27 November 2006 in Boston. Send mail to CM Pros board member Mary Laplante (mary@gilbane.com) to learn more.
For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Mary Laplante
617.497.9443 ext 212
mary@gilbane.com
Cambridge MA, September 19, 2006. The Gilbane Group today announced they have launched a blog for Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) who are involved in enterprise content applications, whether vendor, integrator, or enterprise implementer. The content technology CTO Blog is hosted by the Gilbane Group as a service to the content and information technology community. The purpose of the blog is to facilitate ongoing discussion and debate on technologies, approaches and architectures relevant to enterprise content applications.
CTOs have a wealth of critical information about technologies that is not always accessible to enterprise customers. CTOs also have demanding jobs, and have limited time available to meet with each other with customers, or with other industry influencers. This blog is intended to encourage communication both between vendor CTOs and between enterprise customer CTOs and vendor CTOs. All CTOs are invited to participate.
“Long gone are the days when analyst firms, marketing departments and VARs had a lock on product technology information channels. But it is still a challenge for many companies to find the in-depth technical expertise they need for strategic IT decisions.” said Frank Gilbane, CEO, Gilbane Group. “Our mission has always been to facilitate dialogue about information technologies between technologists, implementers, customers, investors, analysts and consultants. The CTO blog is a great addition to our open information community approach and complements our conferences, analyst blog, website, and other activities.”
Two CTO Blog charter authors have already contributed posts during the pre-launch testing. John Newton, a Documentum founder and now founder and CTO of Alfresco, provides a provocative take on “content management 2.0”. Vern Imrich, CTO of Percussion Software, shares insights into the apparent contradiction of content management technology moving up and down the technology infrastructure stack at the same time. See (CTO Blog posts are integrated in with the Gilbane Blog) to see the full posts, a list of topic areas, to comment, or learn more.
Additional charter authors of the Content Technology CTO Blog include:
Vern Imrich, CTO of Percussion Software, said, “This is an ideal time for the Gilbane Group to launch their Content Technology CTO Blog. The content management market is maturing in a variety of different directions, and organizations are looking closely at how they can apply content management to everything from basic storage and retrieval to new content-driven applications used to produce measurable line-of-business returns. Giving CTOs a place to comment on the issues surrounding this dynamic market will provide significant value. I’m happy to participate and eager to hear what my peers have to say.”
About Gilbane Group Inc.
The Gilbane Report serves the content technology community with publications, conferences and consulting services. The Gilbane Report also administers the Content Technology Works program disseminating best practices with partners Software AG (TECdax:SOW), Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW), Artesia Digital Media, a Division of Open Text, Astoria Software, ClearStory Systems (OTCBB:INSS), Context Media (Oracle, NASDAQ: ORCL), Convera (NASDAQ:CNVR), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Idiom, Mark Logic, omtool (NASDAQ:OMTL), Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX), SDL International (London Stock Exchange:SDL), Vasont Systems, Vignette (NASDAQ:VGN), and WebSideStory (NASDAQ:WSSI). https://gilbane.com
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Over the summer we came up with the idea for hosting a blog for CTOs from all parts of the content and information industry to debate technologies and architectures. We finally got around to launching the Content Technology CTO Blog today. Here is the press release, and more info on how it works and how to contribute. John Newton, CTO of Alfresco and Vern Imrich CTO of Percussion already have posts up. Stop by and comment!
The next version of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) is bearing down on us (you can get the Beta here), and the SharePoint ECM Team Blog has an announcement about some upcoming Webinars for developers, administrators, and authors. They kick off in early October and finish in mid-November.
With the Boston program complete, we have been getting requests for the deadline for speaking proposals for our Gilbane San Francisco conference April 10-13, 2007. We publish this info at https://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html on the bottom of the page when we have it. The deadline for submitting proposals for Gilbane San Francisco 2007 is January 3, 2007.
The summer of ’06 gave credence to the notion that multiple ECM and BPM suite vendors are preparing for the business buyer at the ECM/BPM intersection. Examples include:
June’s announcements included EMC/Documentum’s acquisition of ProActivity, Metastorm’s integration with Documentum, Hummingbird, Interwoven and Meridio — quickly followed by a major upgrade of its BPMS suite, which includes a strong focus on strengthening its Sharepoint integration. Not to be outdone, Ultimus announced its iBAM Suite, targeting non-technical business users who need visibility into BPM-enabled business processes. The tagline? “Go from Zero to BAM in less than 10 minutes.”
July’s announcements included one from the open source community, a hot arena across all content technology categories. Describing its offering as the first Zero-Code BPMS, Intalio describes its BPMS 4.2 product as ideal for “complex business processes that include Web Services orchestration and web-based human workflow.”
August’s IBM-FileNet merger got lots of press and continues to focus on “synergistic BPM technologies.” Although this news seemed to overshadow the Oracle-IDS Scheer partnership, this announcement also deserves attention for those following the chase between Oracle, IBM and Tibco Software (who seems to have finally made significant progress in 2006 on maximizing its 2004 Staffware acquisition.
These “catch up” summer activities are strong signals to competing vendors already traveling the path toward meeting the requirements of complex business processes that must combine data-centric BPM integrations (including SOA) with content-centric, human-driven interactions. Players with earlier investments or partnerships supporting this roadmap include BEA’s Fuego acquisition in March, the Vignette-Lombardi alliance in April, Interwoven’s strategy to bolster visibility for its Fujitsu partnership, and Global 360’s steady progress toward “bridging the islands of process automation across BPM, transaction management, ERP and content management systems” by integrating its G360 EX and G360 BOS products.
Now comes the fall and expectations for 2007 products that are not simply infrastructure-ready, but rather solution-specific ready. It is our belief that applying integrated ECM/BPM solutions to real-world issues requires the ability to handle hybrid, complex, and high-volume processes in a manner that enables rapid deployment through ease of use and pre-packaging of vertical or horizontally-specific capabilities including workflow, modeling objects, business rules, and end-user dashboards for monitoring and analytics. This will be critical to vertical uptake in industries such as Banking, Insurance and Telecommunications as well as horizontal arenas such as compliance, claims processing, accounts payable, and human resources.
Some vendors can already point to these capabilities, which ultimately cross the unstructured content and structured data worlds; Others are well on their way to demonstrating them. The fall of 2006 should be an interesting quarter.
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