Open source tries to make collaboration the differentiator

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:36:55 -0500

As the economy slips further into a recession, companies looking for ways to keep IT spending in check will begin to take a closer look at open-source alternatives. InfoWeek has a good story on how two open source packages, Drupal and Alfresco, are hoping to gain more market share in the coming year by providing advanced collaboration tools as part of the standard offering.

Both have been working in the Web 2.0 space since their inception and that might give them an advantage over more traditional proprietary vendors who have only added Web 2.0 functionality in recent releases. They also can compete with Sharepoint, as the article states, especially Alfresco, which has built a Sharepoint alternative that mimics Sharepoint's look, feel and functionality with an Alfresco content repository on the back end.

It's clear that as we move deeper into the recession, open source alternatives will look increasingly attractive, especially when they provide similar or better functionality than their proprietary counterparts. You can download either package for free and try it, then if you wish to implement it, purchase support and maintenance packages to make sure your open source software is running and tuned as it should be.

For more information:
- see the InfoWeek article

Amazon announces Amazon CloudFront Beta

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:48:31 -0500

Amazon announced today that it was opening a public beta of its highly-anticipated CloudFront content delivery services. We wrote recently about this in 'Amazon announces new content delivery service.' What was once speculation, however is now reality and we can now see pricing and functionality for the new service. As expected, the new service is used in conjunction with Amazon S3 online storage services.

The idea is that you can store your content online, then deliver it to users by making a simple API call to register your content with CloudFront. According to the Amazon announcement, "This API call will return a new domain name for you to include in your web pages or application. When clients request an object using this domain name, they will be automatically routed to the nearest edge location used by Amazon CloudFront for fast delivery of your content."

And pricing seems very reasonable starting at .17 per gb for the first 10 TB of data. The price drops with the more content you deliver. You can learn more about the pricing structure on the CloudFront pricing page. For small and medium sized companies looking to deliver high volume content such as video, this can give you a head start at a reasonable price, so long as you are willing to lock into an Amazon cloud solution.

For more information:
- see the Amazon CloudFront website

Day releases big upgrade to CQ5 WCM product

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:29:41 -0500

Day released a new version of its CQ5 CMS product this week with a new interface and a new approach to deployment. Kevin Cochrane, who is the CMO at Day, says Day has always been a product built with open source components, taking a package of Apache components and making them what he calls "enterprise ready." Day has ECM, WCM and DAM capabilities, but the latest upgrade concentrates on the web content management piece. Cochrane says the other pieces will receive makeovers next year.

The chief upgrade in this release according to Corchrane is that they aimed to completely revamp the user experience. "We're moving away from an ease of adoption paradigm to a fun-to-use one. We want people to want to use the system and play with the system," he says. To that end, Day looked at what it takes to get work done and went so far as to analyze, and attempt to reduce the number of clicks. He says the idea was to put more power in the hands of the business users.

The interface is built using Ajax, so there is lots of drag and drop ability and quick auto refresh, giving users a desktop feel in a web-based application.

For more information:
- see the Day press release

EMC announces Captiva 6

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:58:47 -0500

EMC announced this morning that they were releasing the latest upgrade to the Captiva product. The new release boasts SOA support, giving you the ability to expose Captiva document capture functionality as web services. They have also improved the end user interface, building it with dockable palettes that give the user or administrator the ability to customize the user interface and add or remove pieces, depending on required functionality.

What's more, the administrative console also got a makeover giving administrators access to a variety of information and reports in a dashboard view. Administrators will also like the ability to install the client piece remotely without having to send an IT staffer out to the field. On the back end, EMC has provided faster processing speed, making it possible to process high volumes of documents faster and more efficiently.

Sean Baird, who works in Captiva product management, says the changes have been designed to help customers deploy and manage the scanning function, regardless of how spread out in the organization, the scanning function may be. Baird says that EMC recognizes that scanning is not the main business of any company, but a means to capture and use information. These new features enable organizations to do that more efficiently.

For more info:
- see the EMC press release

Google Site Search upgrade includes on-demand indexing

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:48:45 -0500

Google announced last week that they were upgrading the Google Site Search product to include on-demand indexing. In previous versions of the product, when you added new content to the site, you had to wait for Google's algorithm to kick in and re-index, a situation many customers were not happy with. The newest version enables you to click the "Index Now" button whenever you add new content, giving the site owner complete control over the indexing process. Article

Open Text walks the Web 2.0 walk at user conference

Ron Miller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:33:16 -0500

It's been another busy week here at FierceContentManagement with lots of content management news and announcements, as you will read about in this week's Top 5. When there's a flurry of information, as there was this week, it's always hard for me, as an editor, to pick out something from the pack to cover in my Editor's Corner, but usually something pops and that's what happened earlier this week.

I was having a conversation on Monday with Bill Forquer, who is executive vice president of ECM business development at Open Text, about Open Text's Content World 2008 user conference, which is going on this week in Orlando, FL. As you would expect, there was the usual pre-conference hype, but Forquer surprised me when he started talking about the two-way communications devices they were giving every attendee at the conference. Bingo!

Real-time Communication

Open Text is giving each conference attendee a SpotMe device. Forquer calls it a "radar detector" for attendees. Each person who pre-registered for the conference entered information about themselves such as their name and company and their areas of interest. Since Open Text includes a variety of content management products from ECM, to WCM, to DAM, it provides a way for people who share common interests to find one another. It also enabled Open Text to tailor a program for each attendee, and then program that unique conference path right into the device.

As attendees meet one another and begin to form social bonds, they can track new friends in the device's buddy list, then use the device to find their new friends. Forquer says, you can enter the name of an attendee, or select it from your buddy list, and as you walk around, when you get near the person, the device sends a text message that you are looking for them.

It's Also Green

Another advantage of using these devices, says Forquer is that they no longer have to produce a program for each person attending the conference. That not only lowers costs for Open Text, it also saves trees. The devices are programmed with each conference track enabling users to see what's available throughout the conference, but also gearing the information for the attendee's interests. What's more, the devices act as a PDA, letting the person know where they must go next and how to get there, which can be useful in a large and busy conference.

Forquer says the devices also enable Open Text to send out survey questions to attendees, and they planned to set the second day's schedule based on feedback about the first day, giving the attendees real input into the conference content. He says, this is a great way to show people at the conference what it actually means to have personalized content and user-generated content because that's what's happening at the conference itself.

When the conference is over, attendees do have to give the devices back, but Forquer says they will get personalized information such as notes and buddy lists given to them (although he wasn't sure how that worked when I asked him). This is a fantastic Web 2.0 experiment that Open Text is undertaking with its users this week, by using these devices to get attendee feedback, build social links and communicate with conference organizers and one another. Open Text customers are getting a taste of real-world social networking and it is clear that Open Text is not only talking the Web 2.0 talk, they are really walking the walk. - Ron

One on One with Bård Farstad of eZ

Ron Miller — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:31:39 -0500

Bård Farstad is co-founder and CTO at eZ, the software company behind the open source enterprise CMS system eZ Publish. As CTO, he is one of the main software architects behind eZ Publish and he has also written several magazine articles and spoken at numerous conferences about Content Management, Open Source and the online media industry. We spoke with him about his company, open source content management and how it makes money selling an open source product.

FCM: Tell me about your background and your company?

BF: eZ has its roots back to 1999. Unlike most technology companies, it was started with a philosophy on how we wanted to do business. The technology itself arrived as a result of this philosophy if bringing people together to create great technology. We call this the eZ Philosophy, based on the core values of openness, sharing and innovation, where open source is like a catalyst. And it is simple; if people openly work together sharing their information and knowledge, great innovations will occur. If you are able to do this as a company, you have made a great step. And if you can do so as an entire ecosystem of customers and partners you can accomplish anything. This was our starting point, and where we are today is proof of it working.

FCM: How is open source changing content management?

BF: Open Source adds a powerful value proposition to the content management market. First, based on the open innovative development process, including customers and partners, you can create superior software at a significantly lower cost and bring it to market faster. With a lower development cost and distribution model, you are also able to create more value for your customers. Last but not least, open source gives the customers additional freedom and reduced risks.

In an uncertain economic environment, all of this is very important. Open Source CMSs are disruptive challengers to the established providers. For some customers, open source has been perceived as inferior, just because it is free, even though the abilities of the software itself have matched or surpassed the proprietary competitors. But when you have tougher budgets, forcing customers to look for alternatives to a 100,000 Euro license and you have professional companies like eZ backing the software with complete service offerings and guarantees, all at a significantly lower total cost of ownership, we will see a faster adoption of open source in the enterprise. At eZ we have found many enterprise customers this way and we expect to see more in the coming years.

FCM: What are the pros and cons of an open source approach for a potential customer?

BF: The pros are quite clear based on the value proposition mentioned above; superior software, at a lower cost with less risk.

The biggest [knock] with open source has traditionally been that there is no responsible provider. It might work well for small or medium sized companies to use a open source web publishing tool without a company behind it. But when you are talking about major financial institutions or media groups, running mission critical enterprise content management installations, they need to make sure their investment is guaranteed, supported and maintained. This is the core idea of the eZ business model; to bring together the best of both models. We call it enterprise open source; full freedom of open source with total product responsibility.

FCM: How do you make money offering a product for free?

BF: The last sentence of the former [response] is the basis of our business model. We have one software, but two versions; you can either download it for free, then install it, use it, maintain it and invest your own time and risk. Or you can buy eZ Publish Premium, which is the same software functionality, but with guarantees, maintenance and support. So you invest money, but with no time and limited risk. We are experiencing triple-digit growth rates in eZ Publish Premium sales, which has made eZ into a profitable company in 2008.

FCM: You have a lot of media customers and a growing financial services market. What do you think is attracting financial services companies to open source?

BF: Most of our clients within the financial industry, as well as media industry, do not choose eZ because of it being open source, even though that is always a plus. We won these deals in head to head competition with top tier proprietary players, because of a combination of functionality, flexibility and usability; total cost of ownership and fast time to market. Our strongly growing reference base is also helping us in this process, as we have proven our capabilities for these customers.

FCM: What affect if any will a CMIS standard have on your company? In general, what impact will a standard like this have on the industry?

BF: In general, standards are a good thing and eZ Publish is a CMS based on open standards. However, a standard has low value until it is used by a critical mass. In the case of CMIS, we see that as a positive initiative but we are still unsure about how wide the adoption will be. We are waiting a bit to see how it evolves before supporting it.

It's also hard to see if vendors start a standard because of a real need or for PR/marketing purposes. This is also why we prefer waiting. We see, from our side, more of a content exchange standard based on REST/Widgets. We may look into that ourselves if the demand for such concepts continue to grow as is the case now in our ecosystem.

Can e-Discovery control and Web 2.0 coexist?

Ron Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:08:02 -0500

Matthew Hodgson has a post this week on the {app} gap where he raises an interesting question. Can a company bent on controlling access to information allow users to go onto the open web and interact in social networking tools, or is it an all or nothing proposition? Hodgson doesn't believe it is, and he says that by restricting users from a broad swath of Internet real estate you are actually inhibiting them from doing their jobs.

I agree. You can find ways to protect your turf without completely locking the gates and not letting anyone in or out. There is too much valuable information out there, too many useful tools, too many opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals who can help and support the effort your company is trying to undertake. To limit the company in this fashion in the name of security is to sacrifice the very life blood of communication that helps your company thrive.

So take Hodgson's advice and lighten up a bit. You can be secure without shutting yourself off from the outside world.

For more info:
- see the {app} gap post

Make sure your CMS vendor understands your needs

Ron Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:03:42 -0500

Jeff Cram and the crew at CMS Myth are always good for a reality check when it comes to content management issues. Any site that has a tag line like "There is a treacherous gap between the expectation of a CMS and reality of the final implementation," is well worth reading. This week, Jeff tackles the growing trend of CMS vendors selling to marketers.

He wonders, quite rightly, if the CMS vendors are simply talking the marketing talk or actually building the CMS for the mostly non-technical marketing personnel--those who will be updating web content, building online campaigns and measuring the results to figure out what works and what doesn't. Cram notes that content management vendors have traditionally sold to IT, a technical sell, rather than the marketing department, a non-technical sell (for the most part).

Regardless of whether you're in the marketing department, or evaluating Web 2.0 and collaboration components of whatever you're doing, you should heed Jeff's advice and always make sure you're not falling for the hype machine. You need to truly evaluate vendors based on how well they meet your needs, not how well they say they do. It's easy to fall for a list of functions and some glossy brochures, but the proof of the pudding, as the old saying goes, is in the tasting.

For more info:
See the post, "Are CMS Vendors Selling to Marketers or Building for Marketers?"

Verizon offers business customers online WCM

Ron Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:34:22 -0500

Verizon announced today it was offering its Verizon Business Managed Hosting customers access to new browser-based web content management services. The new service is provided by web content management vendor Alterian, using the Alterian Content Management Enterprise Edition. Alterian's Morello Media Surface solutions are geared toward making it easier for non-technical personnel to make changes to web properties without IT intervention.

By offering this service, Verizon is allowing its customers access to a platform that could allow non-technical end users to add and change content on websites, intranets and blogs. And it's not just businesses which are taking advantage of this offering. In fact, the government of Wales is using these services to keep its 3 million constituents up to date on government business.

The web content management services are part of a suite of application hosting services Verizon offers. This latest offering should give customers who don't have internal web content management services a way to take advantage of these types of services without having to invest in expensive hardware.

For more information:
- see the Verizon press release

Related Articles:
Verizon news from FierceCIO