Category: Content management & strategy (Page 196 of 480)

As a former glue person, I spent numerous hours trading acronyms and definitions with IT analysts on the subject of data and process modeling in the content versus data worlds. Circa 1999, my friend Bob Boeri and I even went so far as to relate logical data models and data dictionaries to DTD structures, using Near and Far Designer as analogous to the more entrenched data modeling tools.

Our goal was to create “common ground” between IT’s deep but solely data-centric view of business applications and the needs of various business units whose focus was decidedly document-centric. Once our “data is content and content is data” analogy was mantra, we had an easier time with subsequent process modeling discussions; i.e. “what we want our content to do with your data” and vica versa. (Reminiscent of those “how did your chocolate get into my peanut butter commercials”)

In the ECM and BPM intersection, those discussions are once again becoming commonplace as more and more complex business processes require hybrid combinations of unstructured content, structured XML content and traditional data from back-end systems. Hence, information analysts that work with IT and business units must define a common knowledge base of process modeling requirements, flows, and techniques.

More than simple workflow (a.k.a “create, edit, approve, publish”), process models for functions such as compliance, claims processing, and contract management need to combine data-centric techniques with the content-centric, human-driven interactions these functions require. In fact, just as data sources are now hybrids, so too are the processes that require, manipulate, and share them. The BPM suite market is increasingly adding simple document management functionality at the business monitoring level to account for content-centric requirements.

More interesting is the market’s approach to workflow, which still appears either data-centric or document/content-centric in terms of standards modeling languages. In fact, a BPM suite vendor’s architecture choice for process modeling and execution is also a clue to their data versus content strengths via support for XPDL (XML Process Definition Language) versus BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Highlights:

• XPDL – initiated and managed by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), XPDL is decidedly human workflow-centric and more oriented for document-driven processes. No surprise that workflow, document management pure-plays, and some ECM players with BPM modules have strong XPDL modeling and processing engines. More info at
• BPEL – originally submitted to OASIS from IBM, Microsoft and BEA, BPEL is decidedly data-centric and more oriented for straight-through processing. No surprise that platform and middleware vendors entering the BPM suite market have strong BPEL modeling and processing engines. More info at BPELSource and
• OASIS One of the more significant questions at the ECM and BPM intersection is, “Where is the best of both worlds in terms of process modeling for complex workflow that is a human and data-driven hybrid?”

We’ve been monitoring acitivity in the BPM market with an eye on the connections between ECM and BPM technologies as they apply to content-centric business processes and applications. The evolution of BPM suites has been particularly interesting and in many ways, analogous to the patterns that formed the current ECM suite market. Technology convergence, vendor consolidation, a full slate of interchangeable acronyms, and rising levels of market confusion surrounding the definitive list of suite-level components are all evident as the BPM suite market continues to define itself. Sound familiar?

BPM suites are clearly an emerging market. Broadly defined as the ability to model, execute, simulate, and optimize business processes, the market consolidates technologies such as analytical modeling, rules design and execution, workflow, data aggregation, and process optimization into a single platform vision. Numerous pure-play BPM providers within each technology segment are evolving toward “the vision” in different ways.

I am positive that this is not a “never the twain shall meet” situation when it comes to content strategies and ECM technologies. Process and content are siblings; it is only a matter of time before many of the isolated technologies that support both will merge in a more tangible manner than simple workflow. This kind of ECM and BPM intersection is more complex than the traditional integration of the BPM market’s straight-through processing (STP) expertise with data-centric, transactional content. Rather, it will be an emerging focus on what we view as process content, or content that travels through a complex, human-driven, interactive, and iterative lifecycle.

EMC’s acquisition of ProActivity is a tangible indicator of this evolving intersection, demonstrated as well by BEA’s acquisition of Fuego, FileNet’s ongoing investment in its BPM components, the progression of DM/BPM players such as Global 360 and Hyland Software, and Lombardi Software’s integration with Microsoft Office. Stay tuned for more as the market heads toward cohesive vertical and horizontal solutions — critical for both traction and helping the user community understand implementation value. We’ll keep you posted.

As we reported yesterday, IBM announced the release of DB2 9, which is the official release name for Viper, their effort to incorporate XML content into a relational database. Microsoft and Oracle have their own strategies for doing this, and once all their work settles down and starts to get seriously deployed, building enterprise applications will never be the same. It has been 20 years since the early demand for databases that could handle marked-up content (SGML back then), and there have been many products developed to manage SGML/XML repositories since then – Astoria, Berkley DB XML, Ipedo, Ixiasoft, Mark Logic, Software AG, Vasont, X-Hive, and XyEnterprise are some currrent examples.
There has been lots of debate over the years about the best approach to managing marked-up content, and it is safe to say that there is not a single answer. This means that you need to understand what the differences are between them – and it won’t be easy for those of you new to the unstructured data world – this is much trickier than the relational data world. In spite of the huge benefits of the major DB players providing serious XML support, the wide variety of content application requirements will ensure a long-term need for quite a few specialty vendors, whether they are targeting vertical applications or horizontal components. The good news is that even with many different XML application schemas, it continues to get easier to integrate all kinds of XML data.
Bill points to an article in eWeek here. Also see Dave Kellog’s comments and links to other articles.

For Immediate Release:

6/5/06

New Session Just Added – WhiteHouse.gov: Utilizing Technology to Communicate the President’s Agenda Online; Free Technology Showcase of Content Management Solutions 

Contact:
Welz & Weisel Communications
Evan Weisel, 703-323-6006
Cell: 703-628-5754
evan@w2comm.com

Washington, DC , June 5, 2006. The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars in cooperation with CMS Watch, today announced that it has pulled together an all-star line-up of government executives set to share with attendees how they use content management solutions to help accomplish their missions at the inaugural Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies for Government. Taking place June 13-15 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington DC, this event also offers a free technology showcase where attendees can meet with leading content management vendors to see product demonstrations.

Speakers include executives from the GAO, FAA, NASA, FirstGov, Navy, Forest Service, EPA, OMB, World Bank, NPR, White House, GPO, International Trade Commission, Department of Energy, Social Security Administration, and many more.

Just announced, a new session titled “WhiteHouse.gov: Utilizing Technology to Communicate the President’s Agenda Online” presented by David Almacy, Internet and E-Communications Director, The White House, has been added to the schedule on June 15 at 3:30 pm EST. As the Internet continues to rapidly evolve, Federal government Web sites are constantly adapting to meet the needs of their visitors. The White House’s Internet and E-Communications Director will provide a brief overview of the White House Web site and discuss how technology is being used to assist in communicating the President’s message to a growing online audience.

Also on display throughout the event will be the Tera Byte 100 Lab.

— The Emergent Relationship Analytics Solution (TERAS) indexes and searches terabytes of multi-lingual, semi-structured text, extracts those pieces of content that are important to the analysts (names, phone numbers, addresses, company names, monetary amounts, etc), and uses the extracted metadata to enhance the categorization of documents and document components. Extracted entities are “marked” within the data so that they can be retrieved, and, the text data can be mined to identify indirect relationships. “Collection” metadata is captured and indexed by the system (e.g., the date/time that the information was collected), allowing temporal queries and retrievals. This very high speed and high efficiency indexing and retrieval system supports search operations across disparate data types. These search operations include fully integrated text and metadata search, as well as ontology-based text mining.

In addition to this special lab, several vendors will offer product demonstrations, including:

— “Aquilent provides Web presence and information management solutions for Federal agencies. On display will be case study examples of improving the user experience for FirstGov, USPS.com, and others agencies.”

— CM Pros is a membership organization that fosters the sharing of content management information, practices, and strategies. Join CM Pros today! www.cmpros.org

— CrownPeak is defining the future of content management with its cost-effective software services for Web content management and site search. Gain complete control over your web site management. www.crownpeak.com.

— Ektron will demonstrate CMS400.NET V6.0’s new features for creating and managing interactive websites and applications, including blogging, web analytics, polls/surveys, forums, content ratings, AJAX-enabled search, enhanced multi-site support and localization.

— eTouch Systems will launch eTouch SamePage Solutions for Government – industry’s first wiki supporting Section 508 compliance while delivering rich functionality and wiki ease-of-use with enterprise-grade scalability, security, and reliability.

— Idiom(R) Technologies optimizes the globalization supply chain by aligning global enterprises, language service providers and translators. Award-winning WorldServer(TM) software solutions expand market reach and accelerate multilingual communication with a proven platform for automating translation and localization processes.

— Mark Logic Corporation provides the industry’s leading XML content server. Mark Logic helps government agencies build custom publishing systems, integrate, repurpose and deliver content, and search and discover information.

— Percussion’s Rhythmyx CMS allows organizations to efficiently manage their Web and portal content, documents, and digital assets. Rhythmyx is rated in the Top 6 WCM vendors in the Gartner WCM MarketScope for 2005.

— Recognized throughout the industry as the fastest to implement and easiest to use, RedDot CMS and LiveServer extend usability, deliver more relevant content, and make site administration simple.

— Sitecore’s pure .NET web content management and portal software for growing and evolving organizations provides ease of use, flexibility and scalability, while seamlessly integrating with existing Microsoft platform investments.

To view the full conference program, visit: https://gilbane.com/gilbane-conference-washington-dc-2006/

About CMS Watch 

CMS Watch(TM) is an independent source of analysis and advice on content management and enterprise search. In addition to the freely-available articles on its website, CMS Watch publishes vendor-neutral technology reports that provide independent analysis and practical advice regarding web content management, records management, and enterprise search, and portal solutions. These reports help sort out the complex landscape of potential solutions so that project teams can minimize the time and effort to identify and evaluate technologies suited to their particular requirements. For more information, visit www.cmswatch.com.

About The Gilbane Group 
Gilbane Group, Inc. serves the content management community with publications, conferences and consulting services. The Gilbane Group administers the Content Technology Works(TM) case study 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:VIGN), and WebSideStory (NASDAQ:WSSI). https://gilbane.com.

About Lighthouse Seminars 
Lighthouse Seminars’ events cover information technologies and “content technologies” in particular. These include content management of all types, digital asset management, document management, web content management, enterprise portals, enterprise search, web and multi-channel publishing, electronic forms, authoring, content and information integration, information architecture, and e-catalogs. http://www.lighthouseseminars.com.

###

We have added a new session to our Washington DC conference the week after next. David Almacy, Internet and E-Communications Director at The White House will provide a brief overview of the White House web site and discuss how technology is being used to assist in communicating the President’s message to a growing online audience.

Also, EMC is now going to host a reception at the conference (which is at the Reagan Building) on June 14th, 4:30 – 6:00pm.

See updated links for 5/30 and 5/31 below.
Friday was a busy day and I did not see the press release on the Hummingbird acqusition until about 3pm. Curiousity killed that cat and I took some time to listen to the archived conference call (find the number in the “Conference Call” section of the Hummingbird press release.)

I got more than I bargained for on a Friday afternoon. Not surprised to find an audience of financial analysts, I was more than a bit surprised to hear comments such as “stunned,” “ridiculous,” and “questionable as to fiduciary responsibility.” Cetainly, many of the financial analysts asked (redundant) questions in the manner that reporters would use, i.e. slow, steady, and determined to get an answer. Others however, were quite more emotional than I’ve ever experienced from an acquisition- or earnings-type call — or from financial analysts for that matter. Some analysts advised shareholders to “vote against this” with vigor. It got so interesting that I realized I had listened to the entire call without intending to.

I must say I too was “stunned” at the announcement because the acquisition was not a technology to technology play. I have followed Hummingbird for years and think they have done a great job educating the market on ECM as well as expanding a very tangible beachhead in the legal vertical. So *my* stunned was that I thought it would be… well, just someone else! Just who is Symphony Technology Group? According to their Web site, it is a strategic holding company. According to Hummingbird, it was the only *serious* bidder they spoke to about an acquisition and talks began in February.

The “open door or not” title describes the crux of the emotion on the part of the financial analysts. In essence, Hummingbird described a process in which Symphony approached Hummingbird. Hummingbird did not solicit other bids from other financial or technology vendors. At the same time however, Hummingbird was repeatedly adament at stating that Symphony was the only serious bidder. Clearly there was at least one more.

In response to repeated analysts’ opinions that the valuation was extremely low, that the company was worth far more, and that the bidding process should have been more open, the Hummingbird response was: “The door is now open, other bidders can come to the table; we were not shopping – we did not put ourselves on the block.” The “or not” part of the “is the door open?” question is that simultaneously, Hummingbird stated that the process will move swiftly and the company is confident that Sympony has no other technology company holdings that overlap Hummingbird’s expertise in ECM. Also according to Hummingbird, “nothing has changed in our company” and there are no management contracts in place with Symphony for the deal.

The documents on full disclosure on the details will be available tomorrow, Tues 5/30, according to Hummingbird. I am sure more blog entries will add to my report. I’ll update this entry with links I find tomorrow.

Reuters has weighed in…

Tony Byrne from CMSWatch has weighed in…

Tuesday 5/30 Update:
Computer Business Review Online has weighed in…

Wednesday 5/31 Update:
Canada.com’s National Post has weighed in… Note the quote “Fred Sorkin and Barry Litwin, Hummingbird’s chairman and chief executive, respectively, own about 12% of the outstanding shares and don’t want the company bought by another technology firm. The company might cut [our] products,” said Mr. Sorkin, although all offers will be entertained. This leads to distraction and lack of value creation.”

Arrangement Agreement Papers Available… The site is www.sedar.com, “the official site that provides access to most public securities documents and information filed by public companies and investment funds with the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) in the SEDAR filing system.” Search for Public Companies = Hummingbird + Date Filed = May 26,2006 if you are interested. Curiously, the Document Type is listed as “Other”.

The “early bird” discount for our conference in Washington DC, June 13-15 has been extended until May 19th. See the conference program, tutorial descriptions, and registration info.

For Immediate Release:

5/9/06

Contacts:
Welz & Weisel Communications
Evan Weisel, 703-323-6006
Cell: 703-628-5754
evan@w2comm.com

Cambridge, MA, May 9, 2006. The Gilbane Report and Lighthouse Seminars in cooperation with CMS Watch, today announced its analyst and end-user driven conference program for the inaugural Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies for Government taking place June 13-15 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington DC. The conference program is divided into three tracks: Enterprise Content Management, Web Content Management and Enterprise Search & Discovery.

“We have put together a strong program that ensures every conference session leads off with a leading industry expert who can educate and provide big-picture perspectives, followed by a federal information manager explaining how they solved a particular problem,” said Tony Byrne, Conference Chair. “This way, the attendee learns both how to approach a content technology challenge as well as draw lessons from peers. And for maximum information exchange, we have avoided clogging the sessions with vendor marketing-speak. All in all, it promises to be a great learning experience for attendees.”

The following highlights several conference sessions taking place at the event:

Opening Keynote Panel: Industry Analysts Debate Current and Future Trends in Content Technologies

Government Keynote Panel: Key Issues in Federal Content Technologies

Enterprise Content Management Track

ECM and the FEA

The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) comprises a collection of interrelated “reference models” designed to facilitate cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration within and across federal agencies. This session will look at Enterprise Content Management in the context of the FEA. Inasmuch as there is no Content Reference Model, do the Business Reference Model (BRM) Service Reference Models (SRM) provide an adequate business framework for architecting ECM solutions? Could either taxonomy serve as an organizing principle for content in a production system?

The iECM Standard: what’s in it for you?

iECM, “Interoperable Enterprise Content Management”, is a proposed standard sponsored by industry trade group AIIM. The goal of the new standard is to produce a single set of functional requirements for process oriented web services that enable disparate enterprise content management systems, portals, and enterprise applications to interoperate – better enabling content to be exchanged, integrated, and managed securely between systems. Led by FAA enterprise architect and iECM co-chair Paul Fontaine, this session will look at how iECM can facilitate greater interoperability among content technologies within and beyond federal agencies.

Web Content Management Track

Building a successful business case for your agency CMS

Content management technology can help relieve overtaxed federal content managers and add value for the enterprise, but CMS implementations typically represent a significant, multi-year investment as well. Join a panel of federal managers who have successfully built a business case to justify the purchase of content management technology. Discussion will include business case justifications, anticipated efficiencies, and navigating the 300-B process.

Role of new media technologies in Government Part I: Blogs, Wikis, and RSS

New communications tools – blogs, wikis, and RSS – have proliferated in the past few years. In industry, many companies now employ these technologies for collaboration, knowledge management, and publishing applications, and innumerable vendors now market products based on these new technologies. Meanwhile, some government agencies have begun to experiment with these tools. Do these agencies only represent the experimental fringe, or are they early adopters of technologies that will soon be part of every agency’s bag of IT tricks? This panel will look at the actual implementation experience: when do blogs and wikis make sense, and when do they not? How do they fit into broader content architectures?

The future of the federal government web

Mired in the day-to-day operations of large, high-profile federal web properties, it’s easy to lose sight of long-term trends in government website management. In a lively look into the future of the government web, FirstGov.gov Senior Content Manager Sheila Campbel will identify key patterns and emerging norms, and leave participants with a peek at what the federal web landscape might look like 5-10 years from now.

Enterprise Search & Discovery Track

Enterprise Search: the federal experience

Google has made everyone pay more attention to search. But providing effective search capabilities across diverse enterprise information repositories represents a far more complex problem than indexing web pages and measuring link relevance. Join this panel of federal managers who have implemented different search technologies as they share lessons learned and advice for their peers.

To view the full conference program, visit: https://gilbane.com/gilbane-conference-washington-dc-2006/

About CMS Watch 

CMS Watch(TM) is an independent source of analysis and advice on content management and enterprise search. In addition to the freely-available articles on its website, CMS Watch publishes vendor-neutral technology reports that provide independent analysis and practical advice regarding web content management, records management, and enterprise search, and portal solutions. These reports help sort out the complex landscape of potential solutions so that project teams can minimize the time and effort to identify and evaluate technologies suited to their particular requirements. For more information, visit www.cmswatch.com.

About The Gilbane Group 
Gilbane Group, Inc. serves the content management community with publications, conferences and consulting services. The Gilbane Group administers the Content Technology Works(TM) case study 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, Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX), SDL International (London Stock Exchange:SDL), Vasont Systems, Vignette (NASDAQ:VIGN), and WebSideStory (NASDAQ:WSSI). https://gilbane.com

About Lighthouse Seminars 
Lighthouse Seminars’ events cover information technologies and “content technologies” in particular. These include content management of all types, digital asset management, document management, web content management, enterprise portals, enterprise search, web and multi-channel publishing, electronic forms, authoring, content and information integration, information architecture, and e-catalogs. http://www.lighthouseseminars.com

###