Category: Content management & strategy (Page 368 of 482)

IBM announced it has agreed to acquire all the shares of Trigo Technologies, Inc., a provider of product information management middleware. Financial details were not disclosed. Trigo’s product information management middleware enables companies to integrate and centrally manage comprehensive product information that is typically scattered across an enterprise and a supply chain. Trigo’s middleware also links product-related information with terms of trade such as pricing and then synchronizes this information internally with existing enterprise systems and externally with business partners. The acquisition of Trigo’s technology will extend IBM’s portfolio of integration middleware as part of the WebSphere brand of products. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including government regulatory approval. The two companies expect to close the deal in the second quarter of 2004. www.software.ibm.com, www.trigo.com

Industrial Medium unveiled Version 2.7 of its Expressroom content management system, the first major upgrade to the software since it was acquired from Borland Software last year. Version 2.7 includes major enhancements to the core product, including new automation tools, an embedded search engine for searches both within Expressroom and on the resulting Web site, lower resource utilization for higher performance, and significant improvements to all major software modules. An optional module, the Expressroom Document Assistant, allows content authors and other contributors to create and edit documents in Microsoft Office programs and transform them into Web content designed specifically for their sites. The module automatically handles the reformatting and conversion tasks for a range of text, image, presentation and other file formats. Expressroom was originally developed in 1997 by Worldweb.net, based in Alexandria, VA. Worldweb, along with Expressroom, was acquired in 2001 by Starbase Corp. Two years later, in January, 2003, Starbase was in turn bought by Borland Software. Last May, Industrial Medium finalized an agreement with Borland to acquire the Expressroom product line. Expressroom 2.7 is available for immediate deployment. www.industrialmedium.com

Blackboard Inc. announced the general availability of the Blackboard Content System. The Blackboard Content System benefits students, faculty and campus IT administrators by lowering the costs and increasing the simplicity of managing learning content, digital assets and e-Portfolios in an enterprise learning environment. The Blackboard Content System is one system in the Blackboard Academic Suite, a family of integrated applications that provides a unified enterprise environment for teaching, learning, research, knowledge-sharing, communication, and student life. The three solutions that make up the Blackboard Academic Suite, the Blackboard Learning System, Blackboard Content System and Blackboard Portal System, have a shared architecture, consistent interfaces, file sharing, and administration features. www.blackboard.com

Quadralay Corporation, announced WebWorks FinalDraft, a new product that helps writers produce high-quality content by streamlining the edit-and-review process. FinalDraft gives technical writers, documentation departments,
engineering groups, marketing organizations, and other content providers the ability to achieve accurate and complete documents. FinalDraft offers functionality designed to address the entire edit-and-review process from first draft to final. Instead of printing out numerous documents, keeping track of colors, or e-mailing different versions of a document to multiple reviewers, all drafts are automatically generated from a single source document, authored in Microsoft Word or Adobe FrameMaker. FinalDraft is an e-mail-based system, so a Web server is not required. Drafts are sent to reviewers as WebWorks Archive files (HTML), requiring only a small plug-in
installed into Microsoft Internet Explorer, available at no additional
cost. FinalDraft is based on .NET. FinalDraft uses a well-planned graphical user interface with toolbars, menus, and keyboard shortcuts. WebWorks FinalDraft will be shipping in April 2004. It will be available for purchase by authors for US$399 at www.webworks.com

Interwoven, Inc. announced the availability of Interwoven MediaBin Asset Server 4.0. MediaBin 4.0 is the cornerstone of Interwoven’s Marketing Content Management Solution, also announced, providing a foundation for solutions that manage the marketing content supply chain between enterprises and their internal and external sales channels. The new version connects multiple servers, both inside and outside of the organization, to help manage all marketing content locally, while providing centralized, global access for employees and business partners to ensure that brand-related digital content is always properly formatted and up-to-date throughout the marketing content supply chain. Features in MediaBin Asset Server 4.0 include Syndication Manager, a Mac OS X Client, metadata enhancements, and MetaTagger Content Intelligence Server Integration. Interwoven MediaBin Asset Server 4.0 can be purchased from Interwoven today. www.interwoven.com

Ektron Inc. announced the latest version of the company’s content management solution, CMS300. Ektron CMS300 Version 4.1 now includes support for membership groups, administrators and users can create, assign and monitor content management tasks on a Web site or intranet, a “smart desktop dashboard”, highlighted search, Out-of-the-box intranet, IXIASOFT TEXTML integration, and threaded comments. www.ektron.com

Documentum announced a strategic alliance with Thunderhead, Ltd., a provider of technology for rules-driven document assembly and multi-channel publishing. Documentum will integrate Thunderhead with its ECM platform and deliver a solution that will enable organizations to automate and accelerate the creation, assembly and delivery of vast quantities of personalized documents across multiple channels such as email, web, PDAs and print. This solution is designed for highly regulated industries such as investment and retail banking, insurance and other financial services, which rely on high-volume, document-intensive processes as the foundation of their core business. The solution leverages business rules to guide the assembly of finished documents from components that may include regulated content, personalized text, graphics and data. Built on J2EE and XML, the solution allows non-technical business users to remain in control of the document generation and publishing processes. www.thunderhead.com, www.documentum.com