News

Coveo 6.1 expands search into Enterprise 2.0 data

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:09:10 -0400

Coveo recently released the latest version of its enterprise search tool, Coveo Enterprise Search 6.1. The newest release includes the ability to index data from Enterprise 2.0 tools from companies like Confluence and Jive (we interviewed Jive CTO Matt Tucker recently One on One). What's more the new version provides a search sidebar that works inside Microsoft Outlook, providing a way to search for enterprise content without ever leaving Outlook, a tool that many business users spend a good part of their day using.

The Outlook Sidebar includes more than just a search box though. It also enables users to see location, photos, contact information and availability. This is the same type of information they could see in Jive or Confluence, but without opening a separate tool to do it.

As more companies implement Enterprise 2.0 tools such as microblogging, it becomes increasingly important to find a way to index this data to get at the information that is flowing through this social chatter. Coveo 6.1 can provide a window into this information.

In addition to the Outlook sidebar, this new product includes a "Floating Desktop Searchbar." This floats over any Windows application to give users (who may not be Outlook aficionados) a way to access Coveo search information wherever they are working.

Sue Feldman, who covers search for IDC, believe it is critical for companies to have a single view of the enterprise content repositories to get a grip on the ever-growing data stream.

"Forward thinking organizations are seeking an integrated information access and management platform that pulls together a variety of common functions. These new search-based applications use search and discovery technologies to unify access across multiple sources and formats of information," Feldman said.

Coveo is certainly working hard to include all types of content in its index, and to provide different ways for users to access this content depending on their work styles. Whether this is convenient or overwhelming will depend on how well it's implemented. Certainly many tools are trying to stake out a place in Outlook and you have to wonder at what point that real estate gets saturated with information overload.

For more information:
- see the Coveo press release

Google Apps marketplace begins to take shape

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:49:44 -0400

Google launched a brand new applications marketplace last week called Google Apps Marketplace. It works in a similar fashion to the wildly successful Salesforce.com AppExchange. It gives Google Docs business users the ability to add new applications to the Google Apps tool set, and these applications often integrate directly with Google Apps functions such as mail and calendar.

Among the companies that have added applications to the marketplace are Zoho, Box.Net and Intuit (the makers of the popular Quickbooks software). For a price, these applications give Google Apps enterprise customers the ability to expand upon the base functionality in Google Apps. This could be especially useful for small- and medium- sized businesses (SMBs) looking for a cost-effective way to implement new software within a familiar framework.

According to the video Google produced to introduce the new service (which can be viewed below), you need to have administrative privileges to add new software to Google Apps from the Marketplace, but the process is fairly straightforward and of course includes a nice search tool to narrow the scope of the search.

For more information:
- see the Official Google Blog post

New Oracle imaging solution helps solve workflow issues

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:11:49 -0400

This week, software giant Oracle released a new imaging and workflow product: Oracle® Imaging and Process Management 11g. The product gives enterprise customers the ability to scan business documents and put them through a defined workflow. Oracle is billing this as part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product set.

The idea behind this product says Andy MacMillan, Oracle's vp of product management (whom we interviewed One on One) is to provide a way to control the onslaught of paper documents that are still a part of just about every enterprise's work process. The goal, he says, is to simplify that process. "Invoices, receipts and exceptions can create a paper storm that delays payments, increases resource requirements and results in penalty fees and damaged business relationships," MacMillan said.

"The launch of Oracle Forms Recognition and Oracle Imaging and Process Management 11g," he explained, "delivers a unified, comprehensive imaging and process management platform that helps put those documents and images where they belong and where they can be easily managed--in the applications business people use every day to complete their jobs."

The product, like many of this ilk, includes a set of common, pre-defined workflow templates to give IT departments a head start in deploying these types of solutions, but it will still in all likelihood require a significant IT effort to implement these solutions. Still, if the product can, as Oracle claims, provide a way to reduce paperwork in a cost-effective manner, it could justify that effort.

One other feature worth mentioning is multi-lingual support for 27 languages providing a way for multi-national organizations to process invoices in multiple languages across a variety of geographic locations.

For more information:
- see the Oracle press release

Rosette 7 multilingual text analytics works with Lucene/Solr

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:44:48 -0400

Basis Technologies unveiled the latest version of its multilingual text analytics tool this week, Rosette 7. Highlights of the new release include improved entity extraction accuracy, new name matching and translation modules, and native integration with open source search tool Apache Lucene/Solr. The tool provides a way to extract text in multiple languages across a range of tools including content management systems, eDiscovery and general business intelligence applications.

Sue Feldman, an analyst who covers enterprise search for IDC says that it's a mistake to dismiss text analytics as an academic exercise, as it has increasingly become part of the mainstream tool set for many enterprise settings. "It has become a necessary component in most search and discovery software--from selling products, tracking terrorists, delivering news or playing music--to improving communication among people worldwide"

This means that more companies have to employ this type of technology to stay on top of their information, especially as it gets spread out across multiple repositories in multiple languages. Feldman says, "IDC believes that we are in the midst of a profound change in the way text analytic and search software is created and deployed. Basis Technology's new Rosette 7 platform ups the ante with its improvements in accuracy, enabling its customers to power a new breed of intelligent workspace applications."

The product includes special tools for name indexing and translation and works across multiple languages. Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Urdu are among the languages that have been added to the latest package. The product is available now for evaluation.

For more information:
- see the company press release

Spring Design releases multimedia eBook reader

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:19:17 -0400

Spring Design announced this week they have released a brand new, dual-screen multimedia eBook Reader they have dubbed Alex. Alex features a 6" EPD (Electronic Paper Display) screen and a full color 3.5" Android based touchscreen LCD enabling users to multi-task over the Internet (albeit on a small display) while reading their eBooks. The company expects Alex to be available in mid-April. Press release

Location-based data needs content management

Jeff Shuey — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:13:46 -0400

Location Based Services (aka LBS) are growing and going mainstream. This will come as no surprise to most people that are busy playing with GPS-enabled mobile phones. Even mobile devices without GPS can triangulate your position fairly accurately. GPS just makes it much more accurate and in some ways that much more dangerous.

This is not your father's LBS; today's Location Based Services are very different than what used to pass for location based services. Back then, YOU were the "service"--meaning YOUR brainpower provided the service. The "service" was limited to what you knew and how you were able to apply your skills.

What's changed?

Today, LBS offers a new kind of brain power. A device you can hold in your hand can tell you more than you might ever want to know about the place you are standing.

Examples include:

iPhone based temperature checks: Using the built in GPS to tell you the temperature where you are sitting right now is a location based services application. Usefulness factor? Maybe a 6 out of 10.
History and the historical significance: A GPS-enabled device can tell you a lot about the location where you are standing (or where your phone and global calendar know you will be traveling to). Usefulness factor? Maybe an 8 out of 10.
Extrapolating on the history: Let’s say you are in Washington, D.C. and standing at the Lincoln Memorial. You could retrieve the history of the structure--why it was built, when it was built, etc.--the history of Abraham Lincoln and information about other significant events that took place at the Lincoln Memorial-–perhaps the Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have A Dream" speech. Most newer devices allow for streaming audio and video. The educational aspects of the experience could be incredible or it could induce a sensory overload.
Shopping: Your favorite book store may have an author signing while you are nearby, or an antique store in the area you are traveling will be able to alert you when a specific item is in stock. Usefulness factor? It depends; it could be a 10 out of 10.
Dining: Perhaps you like a specific type of food or a particular chef. Your device can help you find them and alert you (and the restaurant too) in order to make a reservation. Usefulness factor? Another potential 10 out of 10.

The key point

A Location Based Service can check your calendar, confirm with your GPS, and alert you to what's happening near you. It doesn't need to be real-time either. If you allow it, everything can be automated for you, even when you travel or are out running errands. I say "if you allow it" because the next generation of LBS applications will provide a lot more flexibility for opt-in and for rules-based check-ins based on the profile set by the user.

Another way to look at it is, as Thomas Friedman said in "The World if Flat," everyone can be a a supplier and a consumer. I point out both sides of the supplier and consumer relationship because who you are is being defined by where you "check-in," what you buy, where you buy and when you buy. All of this information is being tracked.

Tomorrow's LBS

Right now, consumer oriented LBS applications are all the rage. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are popular. In my opinion applications like this are living on borrowed time, but not because they aren't useful. On the contrary, they have proven to be very useful at educating the market and getting people to think about location and Location Based Services.

My prediction is that applications like Yelp and full blown search engines like Google and Bing will dominate the future of LBS. I also think that Facebook will make a play into this space. With the Facebook user count edging near 350M users they are a force to be reckoned with and one that will likely acquire a few of the aforementioned smaller players. The current trend with consumer-oriented LBS applications continues to drive interest and awareness for the LBS concept. They have done this by making it into a game to "check in" and become the "mayor" of some location (if you check in the most times). While this is an interesting phenomenon it's not going to pay the bills. Businesses need to make money and the big search engines and platform providers like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, SAP, Facebook and big retailers are chomping at the bit to help crack this market.

Sure, new and innovative applications will continue to enter the market and this is to be expected. But make no mistake, Google, Yahoo! and Bing have a lot of information (psychographic, demographic and socioeconomic) about the way you search, think and buy. So do Target, Safeway and Macy’s.

Each of them have vast data warehouses that form part of their Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions. They are looking for ways to mine data about the consumers (and businesses) that they work with on a regular basis. I'm totally OK with this. That is capitalism at its finest. I just point this out because some people will feign shock and surprise when data about them is used to try and provide pinpoint accuracy based on their LBS profiles and GPS coordinates.

Yelp spans consumer and business

Applications like Yelp are unique in that they span both the consumer aspects of opinions, and the business side of marketing. I don’t think they have the model right yet, but they are moving in the right direction. I expect Yelp to be snapped up relatively soon too. I highlight Yelp because they have gone after a business model that seeks to combine businesses needs with the consumer and they have come the closest to creating a solution that appeals to both sides of the supplier and consumer relationship.

Back to business

Content is content, but some content is more valuable than other content. ECM based content is more valuable than most. It's been vetted, categorized and shaped to be very business specific. Businesses have spent millions (make that billions) of dollars to capture the data streams from you, the consumer.

As applications like Yelp, the big search engines and platform providers start to collate and make their vast repositories of data available for federated search--perhaps with or without your permission--a very clear picture of your searching, traveling and buying behaviors will start to appear.

This is a perfect case for a Business Intelligence oriented solution to offer up ideas for your perusal and perhaps consumption. These ideas may be offered up to you because you have set your permissions within your Location Based Search applications to alert you to a set of specific scenarios. Companies have paid a lot of money to collect, manage and sort through your data streams. I think companies are looking for the right time to jump into Location Based Services. That time is coming--and soon!

What do you think?

Will it take a corporate commitment before LBS really takes off?
Should your data be made public so that companies can more effectively "target" your interests?
What LBS application(s) would you like to see?

Share your thoughts in the comments here or click on any of my contact links below. I do want to hear from you.

Jeff Shuey has spent the better part of the last 20 years working in various aspects of the ECM industry. He is currently with Kodak as a Director of Business Development. In the past, he spent time at Kofax, Microsoft, FileNet, K2 and at Captaris (which was acquired by Open Text in Nov 2008). Prior to that he was a Unix VAR running his own company. Follow him on Twitter, check out his blog, send email or find him on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Harmony lets you share Google Docs in Outlook

Ron Miller — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:44:33 -0500

While Google was purchasing DocVerse this week, Mainsoft was releasing a free Beta that lets you access and share Google Docs documents from within Outlook. The tool isn't from Microsoft, but it does put Google Docs users back in the Microsoft ecosystem, so I'm sure it's a tool that must at least make the folks in Redmond smile, especially in light of Google's recent actions.

In addition, users can also access documents found within Microsoft SharePoint from the Harmony pane. It enables users to share a single copy of the document instead of sending attachments to emails, and ensures that participants should have the most up-to-date copy of the document.

Since many business users spend a great deal of their day inside Outlook, this tool could be very useful. After you install Harmony, it creates a new pane in Outlook.

Matt Cain, research vice president and Gartner’s lead email analyst, thinks this tool provides users with a key function that's been missing from email. "We believe the ultimate role of the email client is to aggregate communication and collaboration streams from many modalities into one common interface. In this way, the email client becomes the communication and collaboration master console--a universal queue, so to speak."

Harmony should provide a way to access documents from Google and SharePoint, providing users with a useful service for no cost. At the very least, it's certainly worth trying out and seeing if it works for your organization.

For more information:
- see the Mainsoft press release

Socialtext delivers 4.0

Ron Miller — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:55:06 -0500

Last week, Socialtext, the Enterprise 2.0 company, released version 4.0 of its product, which brings together a number of initiatives they have launched recently, including Socialtext Signals, which is their microblogging tool, and a spreadsheet they created in conjunction with spreadsheet pioneer Dan Bricklin.

Specifically 4.0 includes the ability to:

Create collaborative groups around a project, department or area of common interest,
Send a microblogging message to one of these groups,
Search microblogging traffic to find nuggets of information lost in the information stream,
Filter by group within a Signals stream,
And see who is available (as you can with an instant messaging tool).

Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee says these tools can help increase the likelihood of collaboration and knowledge sharing inside an organization. "Socialtext 4.0 takes that an extra step forward. It allows people to circulate information, ideas and updates in a targeted way with teammates, so they can move quickly to take advantage of new opportunities."

You can purchase 4.0 as a hosted service or as an appliance you install behind the firewall. The product is also accessible on smart phones including the Blackberry, iPhone and Android phones.

A tool like Socialtext can help enterprises looking for new ways to collaborate and share information. These new tools provide the means to narrow the focus of the larger information stream and find the nuggets that are often hidden in the stream and that's a big step forward. At the same time, it provides ways to share information via blogs and Wikis around a single issue that requires more space than a microblogging tools can provide.

The video below explains how Socialtext works in a larger context:

For more information:
- see the Socialtext press release

EMC SourceOne email supervisor monitors email

Ron Miller — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:05:50 -0500

EMC announced this week they were releasing EMC SourceOne Email Supervisor, a tool that can automate email monitoring. This could be especially important for companies which are required by law to monitor email for certain information such as social security numbers or other sensitive data. For instance, U.S. brokerage companies are required to monitor email to make sure employees are complying with appropriate laws and government regulations. This tool makes it easier for these companies to do that by creating a set of rules against which the electronic monitor checks the email.

Sara Radicati, CEO of The Radicati Group believes that it's prudent for all organizations to get a grip on electronic communications. "Supervision of electronic communications has become increasingly important for all industries and business functions and customers should consider it as an essential element of their information governance strategy,” she said. She adds that a tool like this makes the monitoring process easier and more cost-effective.

The tool lets organizations define business policies about which types of information should not be sent in email, then check against the email stream and deliver reports to appropriate management or supervisory personnel. It will even produce a report that offers proof of compliance that an organization can show to government regulators.

Tools like this that help companies comply with government regulations are part of a growing business around eDiscovery and compliance issues. EMC created SourceOne last year as part of an effort to take advantage of this market and provide a set of modular products that companies can pick and choose from to suit their unique requirements.

For more information:
- see the EMC press release

Google sticks it to Microsoft with DocVerse purchase

Ron Miller — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:37:43 -0500

Last week Google purchased DocVerse, a tool that lets multiple users share and edit Microsoft Office documents online. The purchase gives Google a way to bring Office users under the Google Docs umbrella. Google recently made it possible to upload any type of document into Google Docs. DocVerse provides a way to make the Microsoft Office ones (of which there are likely to be many) editable within the Google Docs framework.

As they reported in their blog post announcing the purchase, they understand there are many businesses still committed to using Office documents:

"But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office."

And even while Microsoft is making a bigger and bigger play to the cloud (as I wrote recently on DaniWeb in "Microsoft Supposedly Commits to the Cloud"), Google has found a way to undermine that play by making Microsoft's documents work in its environment. It's a brilliant move, and one which should help companies committed to using Office (at least for now) to begin to transition to Google Docs if that's what they plan to do.

You can learn more about how DocVerse works in this video:

DocVerse from Amir Khella on Vimeo.

For more information:
- see the Google Blog post announcing the deal

One on One with Jeff Segarra of Nuance

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:42:11 -0500

Jeff Segarra is the Director of Product Management for the Imaging Division at Nuance Communications where he leads the team that delivers the company's scanning and business productivity products. We asked Jeff about his company and how it balances the different products it sells.

FCM: You do a lot of things including imaging, speech to text, health solutions and so forth. Do you keep these divisions separate or do they work in tandem?

JS: Nuance is made up of four divisions: (1) Enterprise, providing customer self service and call center applications, (2) mobility, command and control capabilities for mobile and consumer electronics, (3) healthcare, clinical documentation and dictation services, and (4) imaging, PDF conversion, scanning and document management products.

Automating business processes is a common theme that runs through nearly all of our solutions, across all of our divisions. It’s important to note, however, that our divisions only really work in tandem when a customer needs a solution from multiple divisions. Say, for example, that a customer wants to change an ECM research report that is on paper to audio in order to listen while driving. Nuance OmniPage allows you to scan a paper document to Kindle and then Kindle transforms the document to audio using Nuance speech to text technology. There are many other ways our technologies work together to provide valuable offerings for our customers. This is just one example.

FCM: You've been making a lot of purchases lately. What is your long term strategy for the company?

JS: Our strategy is to continue to serve our customers with the most complete solutions possible. Acquisition can be a quick and cost effective option when it allows us to fill a gap in our offerings to better meet our customers’ needs. We consider carefully what the customer needs to be more productive or to save money and then we make a build or buy decision. Sometimes there are technologies available at a price that will work within our business model. Other times, it makes sense to develop the software ourselves.

FCM: What impact have the government Electronic Medical Records directives had on your business?

JS: As a result of the government’s directives, EMR opportunities for our document imaging products are beginning to present themselves. We are seeing more activity in this arena, especially in situations where the customer needs to extract data from paper documents for use in EMR systems. But the most significant impact for our company has been in the area speech recognition solutions for direct dictation into EMR. It all boils down to this: Physicians can speak faster than they can type. Speech to text solutions make doctors more productive, improve the quality of the EMR data and allow them to spend more time with patients.

FCM: What aspect of your business do you see having the most growth opportunities over time?

JS: One of the most promising growth opportunities within our imaging business is to offer sophisticated production capture technologies in products that are easy enough for the average office worker to use. Industry analysts agree that, today, less than 10 percent of office workers use document imaging technologies to automate their document workflows. It’s simply too difficult for the average office worker to use. On the other hand, centralized production capture departments have long used powerful tools to increase productivity, speed workflows and remove the drudgery that comes with processing paper. The key to tapping into this promising opportunity is to make these technologies simple and straight forward to use. Nuance is moving to take advantage of this opportunity.

FCM: There has been a lot of talk that ECM has been an abused term and some have called for document management to be moved into a separate category. Do you agree and does your company have its own DM solution?

JS: Although I understand why some would call for a new document management category, I believe that both document management and document imaging fit appropriately into the category of ECM. This is true even though the category continues to expand and change. There is a very wide continuum of document management software available as part of the ECM market--with varying capabilities, functionality and price points. We describe Nuance PaperPort as document management software because our customers use it to manage paper and electronic documents. With PaperPort, we have chosen to offer powerful document imaging capabilities and lighter document management features, preferring instead to address more sophisticated document management needs through our connectivity to partner systems. The result is a product that hits the sweet spot for users working in a range of settings from home offices to the largest enterprises.

Spotlight: eZ Conference in Berlin

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:25:41 -0500

eZ Systems, makers of the open source content management system eZ publish, will be holding their annual user conference in Berlin June 24 and 25. The conference will bring together users, developers and speakers from the open source world including Rasmus Lerdorf ("father" of PHP) and David Axmark (Co-Founder, MySQL). In addition to presentations and workshops, members of the eZ team will be there to work with users. Press release

Is WordPress a CMS?

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:36:09 -0500

Tony Byrne has a short post on the CMS Watch Blog today about a Twitter debate over whether WordPress is a "true" CMS or not. Byrne says since companies are using it as such, that makes it a CMS.

As a WordPress user, I have to agree. It may not be a sophisticated web content management system, but it does everything you need a CMS to do. It provides a structure for entering and managing your content and administering the back end of your website. You can add analytics tools to monitor your website traffic and you can design and build in search engine optimization. You can customize it to create a design that reflects your organization's look, feel and brand.

What's more you can manage your media and even do some light editing. It's not exactly digital asset management at its most advanced, but it does the job. If you are using it as a blog, you can control the comments stream and WordPress has an excellent comment spam filter.

So it might not be the most innovative CMS around, but CMSs as whole sit along a spectrum of functionality. If it offers what you need, it's good enough. If it doesn't, you need to look at something that meets your needs. For a small business or an individual, a tool like WordPress is highly valuable. Just because it isn't necessarily suited to the needs of a larger organization is no reason to write it off.

For more information:
- see Tony Byrne's blog post

Ballmer discusses Bing's place in the market

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:02:05 -0500

Yesterday at the Search Engine Marketing Expo, in Santa Clara, Calif., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was interviewed by Danny Sullivan, Editor in Chief at Search Engine Land, chief sponsors of the event.

In a wide-ranging interview, Ballmer acknowledged the obvious, that Google was number one, and that it wasn't likely Bing would ever catch them. Of course, he didn't come right and say it because he's far too good a politician for that. When asked specifically by Sullivan if he would be happy being number two, Ballmer responded, "There's no good answer. We've got great long-term optimism. Tomorrow's goal is to gain a few points, a tenth here, a tenth there and just keep working and working."

In fact, a few points are really all of they've gained since launching last year to much fanfare and a top-dollar ad campaign. I've said many times that Bing is a decent search engine. It looks pretty and it has some very nice features, but Google's market share numbers have remained steady since the launch, so it's not hurting Google a bit.

Sullivan asked the obvious questions about whether Yahoo! search can survive Bing. Catching Yahoo! actually is a far more realistic goal than catching Google, but Ballmer obviously couldn't just write off his big partner. When asked about this, he said, "The number one objective is for Bing to be the number one product that it can be. There's an advantage to having the power of two, as opposed to the power of one."

Ballmer is a slick politician, which is his job as CEO of a big company like Microsoft. He has to talk up his products and sell the company to the world, but he obviously knows that trying to catch Google is an unrealistic goal. They are the number one search engine, and it's going to take something monumental to change that. For now, Bing is just a small part of what Microsoft does. It's not their core business, and gaining a couple of points of market share here and there is a good thing.

If Microsoft can continue to push Google to innovate, in the end, it will have succeeded in acting as a check against the search giant, and as consumers, that's not a bad outcome (although it's probably not the one Ballmer would admit to be hoping for).

For more information:
- see the Search Engine Land Live Blog post from SMX West

Clarabridge launches Beta aimed at SMBs

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:21:59 -0500

Clarabridge, a text analytics firm with products that are typically only within reach of the largest organizations, announced recently that they had launched a Beta of an online portal aimed squarely at smaller organizations that don't have the budget for Clarabridge's other solutions.

Customers can upload emails, survey open-end verbatims, transcripts, social media content and any other textual data sources into the portal. In fact, under a limited time offer, you can use Clarabridge's tools to analyze up to 10,000 records for free.

After you upload the data, Clarabridge's analytics software analyzes it, categorizes it and determines general sentiment analysis. Users can drill down through the data or view reports based on it.

Justin Langseth, Clarabridge president and chief technology officer is excited to be offering this type of capability to a market that typically can't access these types of tools. "Now anyone in the world can upload their textual data to our hosted application, and Clarabridge can read, categorize, assign sentiments and linguistically analyze it hundreds of times faster than is manually possible," he said.

If you want to take advantage of the free service, you need to sign up for the Beta program on the Clarabridge website. Pricing and availability, post-Beta should be available later this year.

For more information:
- see the Clarabridge press release

Google adds Nearby option

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:39:57 -0500

Google announced on its blog recently that it has added a Nearby filtering option. It lets you sort results by your geographic location. This can be your default location or a custom location (if you are on the road or planning a trip, for example). For more information, see the Google blog post.

Jive releases idea organizing tool

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:40:45 -0500

This week Jive Software released Ideation, an idea filtering and organizing tool. In many organizations, ideas may be locked on local hard drives or inside Excel spreadsheets, but this tool provides an outlet for the community to talk about these ideas and vote them up or down.

Users can submit ideas, then they can be filtered according to where they are in the process. Filters include "Active," "For Future Consideration," "Under Review" and so forth. A manager or community member can easily find the types of ideas he or she wants by narrowing the list with a filter. The community can then vote on these ideas in a manner that looks similar to Digg, but also leave comments, start a discussion, add a video or any of the actions you might expect in a collaboration tool. The Ideation tool is part of the Jive suite so it's completely integrated with other tools.

J.C. Groon, who is head of innovation programs at NAVTEQ, a company that generates digital map and traffic solutions, says Ideation has helped employees generate and find the best ideas, regardless of where they are in the world. "Success in our innovation program depends on our ability to enable our employees to interact across geographic and functional boundaries and innovate together." A tool like Ideation enables them to do this.

In a business, where you don't see many new ideas, a tool to manage ideas is a good one and it's unique. It provides a way for employees to check out the viability of their ideas, and while there is probably going to be political and social intrigue mixed in with all of this, it gives companies that thrive on ideas a place to test them out and see what others think.

Ideation is available as a module for Jive software customers.

For more information:
- see the Jive press release

Every CMS fails and what you can do about it

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:18:18 -0500

Guest post by Robert Rose
I just spent a few days at two different clients. One is a $4 Billion enterprise that has global divisions and uses a myriad of enterprise software products--including more than their fair share of content management systems (and by the way I’m referring only to web CMSs from this point forward). The other is a small non-profit, running mostly open source software, most notably to manage the content on their website.

What did they have in common? Well, other than excellent Peet’s coffee (which seemed oddly coincidental), both had CMS implementations that failed, and both were looking to re-examine their options.

You’ve all seen the statistics: 85 percent of all CMS implementations fail. Or, is it 65 percent? Or only 40 percent? Gack--let’s get Gartner on the phone. We can actually settle the debate once and for all: 100 percent of all CMSs fail at some point after implementation.

So, the question isn't: "Is the CMS going to fail?" The question is: "How big will the failure be?" And, once you acknowledge that--feel free to go through the entire Kubler-Ross grief cycle--you can address the core issues, get tremendous value out of whatever solution you deploy and mitigate the challenge of the new process you’ll ultimately put in place.

First, why do they all fail?

Wikipedia defines content management as "a collection of procedures used to manage workflow in a collaborative environment." Put simply, a CMS is a process meant to grease the workflow skids for managing web content. It doesn’t matter if it is a million dollar software tool or some dude named Sergei FTPing files from Dreamweaver, every organization that updates a website has a CMS.

So no matter who handles the implementation of the CMS, the only thing that's possible is to capture that workflow process as a singular moment in time.

Now, of course, some initial implementations go well; and some don't. And there have been excellent implementation best-practices posted by practitioners such as Jeff Cram, Seth Gottlieb, and Lisa Welchman and her crew.

But regardless of how good your initial implementation is, your CMS is only as good as its ability to change. I can tell you that almost all of the clients I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the last 10 years in web content management have answered the initial “Why are you changing your CMS” question with some variant of the following:

Our existing CMS just doesn’t meet our needs any longer.
Our IT group is bottlenecking our ability to produce content fast enough.
We need to empower our local non-technical people to manage their own content.
We are re-designing our website and our existing CMS just won’t handle it.

But I can also tell you that many times, once you dig a little further, you also find:

The initial implementation of their existing CMS was actually quite professionally handled.
Although the IT group actually is “bottlenecking” the content production process, the organization actually has zero appetite for errors, and their process, while slow, is actually error free.
They actually tried rolling out the process to the local managers and it “just never quite took”--so, of course, a new software tool will fix that.
The re-design of the website is really driving the desire for a CMS re-design, because it just feels like things should start “fresh”.

Now, I do realize that sometimes a failure is just a failure. Products fail. Implementations really do go haywire. Software companies go bust or merge, and requirements sometimes really do radically change to a point where a new tool is needed.

But that’s also the point: Whether you have a great implementation or a horrible one; or whether you chose an excellent product or a poor one; your CMS process will change. The key to how big that change will be is how much attention you paid while the change was happening.

In short, all CMSs fail and boil down to a situation where, “We’ve changed and our CMS hasn’t.”

Change you really can believe in…

Ideally the choice to purchase a new tool to manage your CMS process should be to take advantage of new opportunities--and grow into new challenges--not solve old problems.

How do we make sure that your impending CMS failure is only a small speed bump and doesn’t necessarily mean you have to switch solutions wholesale? Here are three things to keep in mind:

Recognize that your organization will change. You or your team actually might change jobs. The workflow will change. The approval processes will change, and your website had better change or you may not have a choice about the changing jobs thing. Don’t be afraid to re-examine your CMS implementation every six months or so. Does it still reflect your internal process, or have end-users institutionalized “work-arounds” based on the way content “really gets done”.

Every CMS implementation (independent of the product) I’ve looked at that was more than one year old had some of this residue. Here’s the way it works. A veteran user says to a new user “I know this is how they say to do it, but if you just do “this” it gets it done faster/easier/with less hassle. Over time, “this” becomes a problem because “this” becomes “these” and inevitably “these” seem like the product has failed to meet some core requirements. If you address those issues iteratively, your system will last longer, your tool will produce many more smiles and the inevitable failures become smaller.

Recognize that nobody *really* wants to use a CMS. A CMS is not email or iTunes or Facebook. No matter how slick the interface is, a content management system is something in which no one wants to spend any more time than absolutely necessary. It’s also a software tool that typically only a few people in your organization will use with any frequency. And those core users are who you should build your process around. I’ve seen too many clients try and make the really infrequent “end-users” really happy and end up with far too many “simplified” templates and an over-complicated workflow.  

Seth Gottlieb really nailed this idea in a recent blog post: The Myth of the Occasional CMS User. Remember, before the CMS, Sally in marketing used to just email the press release to Joe in IT to go up on the site. It took two weeks to get published, but Sally could move on to other things. Now that you’re “empowering” Sally and she may not be as grateful for that as you think. Interesting factoid here: If you’re in the middle of looking at new CMS software, your estimate for the number of end-users is almost assuredly too high. If you think you have 20, you probably only have six or eight core end-users. In my experience, I’ve watched almost every implementation shrink over time to be about half of the original set of end-users. In only very rare instances does the number of users increase. In fact, over time, charming end-users (you know who they are) cajole core users to manage their content for them.

Your requirements are not unique, so don't make them so. I’ve been in too many meetings where someone will say “they’ve never seen a project like ours”. Guess what? Yes they have. Every CMS implementation has about 85 percent to 95 percent of the same stuff, and then the remaining 5 percent to 10 percent are indeed, weird esoteric requirements that your organization is bringing to the table. If you’re looking at the appropriate strata of CMS tools for your business, chances are any of them will handle the basic blocking and tackling of your requirements. You may like one interface over another; or one sales guy over another, but any decent CMS will handle your basic workflow needs, and will make it easier for your non-technical people to manage web content. So, certainly when you’re reviewing CMS vendors look at the entire fit of the vendor. (CMSMyth has an excellent post on this topic.)

But once you get into the implementation, don’t try using every esoteric feature of that chosen CMS. Recognize that the process you deploy today will change. It just will. And the more complex you make the implementation today the harder it will be to change it down the road. Your risk for larger failure goes up with every decision in favor of complexity that you make.

In the end, remember that implementing a CMS for your organization is not simply a successful build, install or subscription to software. That’s a very small piece of the project. The real project is designing a process for change. That’s the whole idea of a content management system. No matter how big or how small your organization is, you’re anticipating change, and building a process that supports it iteratively.

And, look at what’s happening on the consulting and vendor landscape. This is where an experienced practitioner can help you. The reason it’s so confusing is because CMS tools typically support some processes much better than others (see the fit criteria mentioned earlier).

If your process is focused on web marketing, there’s an app for that.
If it’s facilitating employee access to digital assets, there’s an app for that.
If it’s focused on compliance and governance, there’s an app for that.
If it’s global thermonuclear war...well, there I can’t help you...

Taking an iterative approach to your content management process is the best way to ensure that when you fail, you fail fast, small, gracefully and with insight on how to make it better in the future.

Robert Rose is the Founder and Chief Troublemaker at Big Blue Moose, a consulting firm that develops marketing strategy, demand generation programs, web technology selection, social media and content strategy. For the last eight years Rose served as VP, Marketing & Strategy for CrownPeak; a SaaS company focused on web content solutions for marketers.

Acquia tries to mainstream Drupal with Drupal Gardens

Ron Miller — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:01:08 -0500

Acquia announced recently they were releasing a new tool called Drupal Gardens that makes it easier to create websites using the popular open source Drupal platform. In a recent blog post Acquia VP of Marketing, Lynne Capozzi wrote about how, rightly or wrongly, some people are intimidated by the idea of building a website using a tool like Drupal.

It's great for the power users who can build an understanding of how site building in Drupal works, but Drupal Gardens puts this in the hands of less technical end users. It provides an easy path to creating the site, then choosing a theme (either provided or one you create on your own), color schemes, fonts and so forth.

Of course, you can control all of these elements in the Drupal design process regardless of whether you are using a front-end tool or not, but Drupal Gardens makes it relatively easy to build sites and choose site elements within a framework. Acquia believes giving users this flexibility will make it more likely that companies will choose Drupal.

Capozzi says that it will also help companies build marketing campaigns much more quickly:

"There are so many applications of Drupal Gardens I'm anxious to see incorporated into marketing campaigns, but one I believe will really excite my fellow marketers is the ability to quickly and easily create slick, feature-rich microsites for a campaign. Marketers are focused on building targeted audiences and social communities and so many of them see microsites as the primary launching pad for brand and loyalty building."

We will see how well this tool works for this purpose, but it does clearly put Drupal site design within reach of a much broader set of users. The product is currently in private beta.

For more information:
- see Capozzi's blog post

Zoho now allows Facebook login

Ron Miller — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:51:39 -0500

Zoho announced on its blog this week that it was allowing Facebook users to use their Facebook login to access Zoho content, effectively giving Zoho access to Facebook's massive 400 million user community.

Zoho's Raju Vegesna (whom we interviewed One on One last year) wrote on the company blog that given that 30 percent of Zoho's users are students, this integration makes perfect sense. It gives users direct access to Zoho services within Facebook, making it according to Vegesna, the first Facebook office suite. What's more, it enables users to share Zoho documents with users who might not have Zoho accounts.

If someone sends you a document from a service where you have to sign up to access it, that could be a threshold that's too high for many users. By allowing users to use their Facebook login, it saves them the step of having to create an account. Zoho also allows users to use logins from Google, Google Apps and Yahoo! giving it broad integration across a variety of popular web services.

In a market where it's often difficult to gain any significant market share or attention, this is a smart move by Zoho to piggy back on the user base of popular services like Facebook. If even a fraction of the Facebook community adopts Zoho, it would likely give them a big boost in user numbers. Zoho has continually shown the ability to be creative to develop its market and this just another example of that.

For more information:
- see Raju Vagesna's blog post

Nuance debuts new PDF Reader

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:53:21 -0500

Nuance announced this week that they had introduced a new PDF Reader as an alternative to the Acrobat Reader. Both products are free, so why would you be inclined to switch? Nuance offers a few key, new features:

While it's fully compatible and capable of reading any PDF, the Nuance product is lighter weight than the Acrobat Reader, which tends to be on the bloated side.
Nuance claims their product is more secure. According to Nuance, "The Nuance reader addresses a troubling PDF security issue found within some readers by turning off JavaScript processing by default--something Adobe does not address. A recent McAfee Labs report predicted Adobe would overtake Microsoft as the primary target for hackers and virus writers in 2010."
Finally, a key new feature is the ability to convert any PDF document into a Microsoft Office document for free on NuancePDF.com.

The new tool also includes basic annotation tools, but only the ability to highlight and cross out text. Inexplicably, it doesn't include a commenting tool, which is a major limitation for document reviewers. It's worth noting, to get any annotation ability in Acrobat Reader, you have to use the full version of Acrobat Pro and add annotation features on a per-document basis for a given list of reviewers who can then edit the document in Adobe Reader.

The new Nuance PDF Reader is definitely worth checking out. The new features remove some of the annoyances about using the Acrobat Reader, while at the same time providing some higher-end advanced services at no charge to the user. But it doesn't include all of the features you may be looking for, so you have to decide if it's worth the trade-off.

For more information:
- see the Nuance press release

Open Text snags Nstein

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:17:02 -0500

Open Text announced this week they were purchasing fellow Canadian digital asset management (DAM) and text mining vendor NStein for $34 million. This comes on the heels of last week's announcement that Open Text was deepening its relationship with SAP around DAM.

What's curious, as Tony Byrne from The Real Story (formerly CMS Watch) pointed out, however is that Open Text already owns two DAM solutions, Artesia and its recently purchased eMotion. Byrne wonders if the company is going for the "Power of Three" as in having three DAM solutions is better than one.

Open Text has a habit of buying solutions it doesn't really seem to need for reasons that are hard to understand. Analyst Seth Gottlieb wrote on Twitter about the purchase: "Does that mean they are done euthanizing their last few acquisitions?" Gottlieb clearly has little patience for the Open Text buy-sell cycle adding, "Open Text is in the business of buying and then bleeding software products to death." Gottlieb says that this is the software customer's worst nightmare.

But NStein does offer some pretty nifty semantic technology, which helps generate semantic metadata for FT.com's Newsift site. Perhaps Open Text has its eye on this technology and the digital asset management is just an after-thought. Open Text President and Chief Executive Officer John Shackleton seemed to like the fact that both companies were Canadian and would give them a stronger presence in Quebec.

"This is a good fit for two strong Canadian companies," said Shackleton. "With Nstein, we have an opportunity to continue to grow as Canada's largest software company, expanding Open Text's presence in Quebec. Nstein will also add complementary technology and expertise that enhances our ECM solutions portfolio."

Whether it enhances the portfolio or not is certainly open to argument, but with NStein, Open Text has some valuable tools and technologies and it will be interesting to see what they end up doing with these pieces moving forward.

For more information:
- see the Open Text press release

Iron Mountain buys email archiving firm Mimosa

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:10:29 -0500

Iron Mountain announced this week they were purchasing email archiving firm Mimosa for $112 million. What's interesting is that Iron Mountain has concentrated mostly on cloud-based archiving solutions. This purchase gives them an in-house solution for email, SharePoint and other data files. Press release

One on One with Matt Tucker of Jive Software

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:37:03 -0500

Matt Tucker is CTO at Jive Software. He is responsible for the long-term technical and strategic direction of Jive's products. He helped co-found Jive Software in 2001 and has been part of building the company from two people to over two hundred. We asked Tucker how a company like Jive can help facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing using Enterprise 2.0 tools.

FCM: People talk about the wisdom of the crowd, but can't the crowd also get chaotic? How do you balance the free-flow of ideas with too much information, too many different tags and so forth?

MT: Social software naturally does a fantastic job of helping us find the content that we care about. We connect to and follow the people whose opinions and knowledge we value and that acts as a natural filter. For example, the people I follow on Twitter provide enough of a cross-section of information flow on the Internet that my RSS feed reader has become less important. But noise is a problem, and especially for the social business use-case where there are an enormous number of systems and activity to tie together into a single, unified view. More advanced techniques like recommendation engines and smart filtering are becoming increasingly important and those are big investment areas for Jive.

FCM: I read today about the concept of Personal Knowledge Management--for instance using Evernote to track your favorite articles and websites. How does a platform like Jive facilitate this type of personal information management inside the enterprise, while at the same time allowing this personal information to be part of the public information stream?

MT: We focus most on collaboration and conversation between groups of people, often very large groups. But personal tools absolutely have a role in social applications like Jive. For example, the ability to create private documents or personal bookmarks. The added value to social software over purely personal tools is that as soon as you choose to make your content public, you get immediate additional value, not to mention providing value to others. Take a document--other people comment on it, tag it and even edit it with you if you allow them to. And all of that work gets put into the enterprise activity stream so that the right people can discover it. This is truly a new way for people to get work done together.

FCM: How do you work with content management systems to manage social information and what role does the content management system have in bringing social information to the surface?

MT: An enormous amount of valuable knowledge is locked away in content management systems. CMSs generally have an atrocious user experience and are therefore only used by small pockets of people inside a company. So integrating with the major CMS applications and making it much easier for that content to be consumed and shared with the entire company is a major priority for us with our Jive Connects technology. We focused on SharePoint first and released that integration last year. But we'll be extending that to the other major content systems in the near future.

FCM: How well do you interact with enterprise search tools. Are they designed to help find the type of unstructured tidbits of information found in social communication streams?

MT: Integrating with enterprise search is important. We try to make that as easy as possible by supporting standards like Open Search and have also done several deeper integrations. But social software is also turning the entire notion of search on its head. Activity streams now make it possible for knowledge to find people instead of the other way around. We've all seen how powerful this is in our personal lives. The activity streams in Facebook and Twitter have made us more connected than ever before and much of what I personally find valuable is content that I never would have known to search for. Businesses are just beginning to realize the power of this concept and it will revolutionize the way we get work done.

FCM: What impact do you think SharePoint 2010 will have on a company like yours that is trying to make it as a stand-alone Enterprise 2.0 tool vendor?

MT: It's incredibly validating for our market that Microsoft is investing so much in social features for SharePoint. It's the same story for the social business investments being made by the other major software vendors. We are strongly confident in our ability to compete, for several reasons.

First, SharePoint 2010 isn't even available yet and it will be two years or more before most companies are able to get through the upgrade process. But companies need a social strategy now and Jive is able to greatly improve the value of SharePoint installs today through our integration. Second, a full social business strategy requires engaging with not just employees but also customers and partners in the social web. It's very difficult for applications like SharePoint that have grown up in the internal content management space to reach outside the firewall. Finally, we're continuing to make massive investments in innovation and plan to stay at least two years ahead of every other product out there, including SharePoint.

Open Text and SAP expand relationship to DAM

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:01:22 -0500

Open Text and SAP have had a cozy relationship for some time, so much so that some have suggested that SAP might as well just purchase them and be done with it. This week, they didn't go that far, but they did expand their successful partnership to include Open Text's digital asset management product.

It's no secret that companies out there are collecting more and more digital content and they need tools to manage these assets effectively and efficiently. To that end, SAP will begin selling Open Text's DAM product under the name, "SAP Digital Asset Management application by Open Text."

There are a couple of interesting aspects to this agreement. First of all, they are continuing to expand their relationship. At some point, you have to wonder if they will just go all the way and combine the two companies. Apparently, SAP isn't really fond of mergers and acquisitions, but this one would certainly make a lot of sense for both parties.

Secondly, SAP isn't just taking the step of selling Open Text's products. It's actually working to integrate Open Text's technology into existing SAP products. This is significant. Some companies have trouble doing this after a merger. SAP and Open Text appear to be able to work together and bring their products under a single cohesive system, even while operating as separate organizations.

Whether they end up marrying at some point, the relationship appears to be solid, and it's hard to argue with success.

For more information:
- see the Open Text press release

Google Aardvark purchase has expert finder potential

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:13:10 -0500

While everyone was off discussing Google Buzz last week, Google made a potentially interesting purchase when it scooped up the social search tool, Aardvark.

One thing that has always been difficult inside any company is finding the right expert to help you out. Even if the company isn't huge, it's not always easy to know what people know. If you could tap into existing expertise inside your organization, it could potentially save you time and money. That's why I found Google's purchase of Aardvark so intriguing.

The idea behind Aardvark is to use it as a social expert finding tool. Aardvark looks at your list of Facebook or Google friends and based on that information, tries to find someone who has the expertise to answer your questions. Google's Marrissa Meyer, in discussing the company's long-term strategy recently has said, that this is one area they want to tap, the ability to search among your friends to find the best answer. Sometimes the crowd knows more than a given website could tell you.

But if you take this same kind of technology and you apply it internally inside the enterprise, you could have the start of a decent enterprise-class expert finder tool. Instead of tapping into Facebook, maybe the tool taps into Sharepoint, Jive or Telligent and looks at user profiles to find the right expert to answer your question or start a team for a given project.

It's still very early in the development of this technology, but as it continues to evolve, it should be interesting to see if Google decides to use this tool as a consumer tool or an enterprise one. As with the rest of its social platform, it's not always clear what direction it will take.

For more information:
- see the Official Google Blog post announcing the purchase

Windows Phone 7 is all about content

Ron Miller — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:35:37 -0500

Microsoft unveiled its long-awaited release of Windows Phone 7 this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and content was front and center in the announcement:

Zune: Microsoft has made Zune services available for Windows Phone 7 users meaning they can access it in the same way iPhone users can access iTunes from the iPhone.
XBox Live: Microsoft has made XBox games available as a service for Windows Phone 7 opening up the phone as a lucrative platform for the XBox games market.
Microsoft Office Hub: Here's the key piece for you content managers out there. Users will be able to access Microsoft Office, One Note and SharePoint along with email and appointments.

Sure, you can argue that this was a long-time coming, but for Microsoft-centric enterprise settings this is a huge development because it means you can hand out one of these phone to your employee and the rest should be easy from a back-end management perspective.

The real issue out there is the gap between a demo at a conference and the reality of the finished product. How well all of this works in practice is all that matters, and we won't know that for a long time until the phones hit the market and employees start testing them in earnest under real conditions.

Regardless, if you are using SharePoint and Office, the prospect of having a series of handsets that are potentially completely compatible with what you are doing on your in-house servers has to make you smile. Only time will tell, however, if it actually works in practice.

For more information:
- see the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 press release

Zoho enhances invoicing product

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:29:55 -0500

Zoho announced this week that it was releasing version 2.0 of its invoicing product. The new release boasts a fresh interface and new features including an Expenses module. Zoho Invoices makes use of open APIs to enable you to enhance the product or use it in internal workflows. Zoho blog

EMC teams with FatWire on WCM

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:52:10 -0500

EMC announced this week that it was forming a partnership with FatWire to offer a web content management solution under the EMC umbrella. My first thought after hearing this was: Why a partnership instead of a full purchase? Maybe this is a way for both companies to feel each other out before making a deeper commitment.

Seth Gottlieb, a content management consultant and author of the Content Here blog, says there had been rumors of acquisition talks, but perhaps the price was too high, and the partnership was a compromise that worked for both parties. "My only explanation for the partnership rather than merger is that FatWire was asking for too much money. They feel like they are the only enterprise class Java WCMS in the market and to some extent that is true."

Robert Rose, who is founder of Big Blue Moose, a digital marketing firm (and former marketing VP at CrownPeak) thinks it was more of a matter of sizing each other up before making it permanent. Rose wrote on Twitter, "My guess is that 'buy' was [the] original intention - but with the personalities - 'date before marriage' won the day."

An EMC spokesperson says it was simply because "a partnership with FatWire aligns to EMC’s strategy of providing business solutions that reflects a broader and more comprehensive approach." What's more, the partnership provides them "with quicker time to market by selecting a partner who is focused and dedicated to the Web Experience Market (WEM)."

Gottlieb added that many of FatWire's competitors have gotten distracted from WCM (e.g., Oracle), fallen on hard times (e.g., Vignette), or just slowed down (e.g., Percussion). Gottlieb said that in spite of prevailing wisdom to the contrary, he doesn't necessarily think that EMC got the best Java WCMS out there in his opinion. "Personally, I don't think their position is that strong. At the high end, Day CQ5 is a very strong product: Architecturally superior and more aggressively developed. There are also some very worthy mid-market Java products that are very capable of serving FatWire's customer base (TerminalFour, Hannon Hill, etc.) and the open source Java WCM products are also coming on strong: dotCMS, Jahia and Magnolia in particular come to mind."

But Melissa Webster, an analyst with IDC thinks it was a good deal for both parties. "IDC believes that this new partnership will deliver great value to customers of both EMC and FatWire by giving them the tools they need to succeed with their online marketing efforts. With this move, EMC is clearly signaling its intent to compete strongly in the WEM arena."

Gottlieb says EMC likely had little choice but to move on to a better solution. "Up to this point, EMC's attempt at WCM was little more than transforming enterprise documents into web-friendly formats (.html, .pdf and .jpg). Compared to where the WCM market is now, this is the stone age. They were probably seeing their customers and integration partners defect to other products on the WCM side. Integrating with FatWire will save them the expense of building true WCM capability and give their salespeople and partners a more compelling offering," he said.

But EMC says FatWire is just part of a broader offering. "Customers and integrators also have an opportunity to take advantage of EMC's broader and more comprehensive approach using best-in-class capabilities to enable their business users and marketing teams adding that EMC's marketing solutions includes brand management (via Documentum), marketing process management (via partners), customer communications management (via Document Sciences) and web experience management (via FatWire)."

With WCM taking on a key role in many company's marketing strategies, EMC required a stronger offering to continue to compete in this space. Whether FatWire gives them the total package remains open to debate, but it certainly appears to put them back in the game and enables them to offer a stronger WCM offering than they had previously.

For more information:
- see the EMC press release

The future of CMIS

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:19:13 -0500

Guest post by Laurence Hart
The past year was a good year for the proposed Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The specification was released for public review and efforts began to build an Open Source implementation of CMIS, Apache Chemistry. The next year promises to be even bigger, beginning with the second public review wrapping-up on February 17.

So what is next for CMIS as it evolves from a promising specification to an established and important standard?

Here come the clients

It has been stated before that if the repository vendors didn't support CMIS that it would fail to become an established standard. To date, repository vendor support has been strong. The next factor that will drive adoption is the creation of CMIS clients.

There are several clients that have been developed during the past year. CMIS Spaces has been a popular open-source interface built using Flex-AIR. It has been tested against multiple repositories and is regularly leveraged to test new CMIS implementations repositories.

The clients that have begun to surface more recently are impressive.

An exciting client recently announced is the CMIS browser application for the Android operating system. This will allow people to access content from CMIS repositories directly from their mobile phones. It will not be long before other applications begin to be released for other mobile platforms that do more than just browse repositories.

There has also been an emergence of vendors that are building fully-functional Content Management user interfaces. Given the state of the average user interface from the repository vendors, this is potentially welcome news.

Generis has updated their existing common interface, Cara, to leverage CMIS in order to work against multiple repositories. WeWebU has announced plans to follow suit with their OpenWorkdesk interface. These offerings represent two early attempts to commercialize on the interoperable aspects of CMIS, allowing organizations to separate the decision for the right interface from the capabilities of the underlying repository.

By the end of the year, there should be a rise in content applications that are designed around business problems supporting CMIS rather than individual repositories.

Working on CMIS 2.0

While the efforts in creating an ecosystem of clients is important, the continued evolution of CMIS is what will make the difference between it being a foundation for content applications over the next decade and just the latest in a string of content management standards.

There has been a lot of discussion around what enhancements would make the most sense for the next version of CMIS. While any new features are likely two or more years away, work will need to be started now in order for them to be included.

WebDAV Binding: There have been a lot of comments from the WebDAV community about the overlap of CMIS and WebDAV. CMIS 1.0 has two protocol bindings, Web Services and Restful AtomPub. The addition of WebDAV as a third binding would add to the utility of CMIS, especially from desktop applications.
Aspects: While not widely supported by every repository, the call for Aspects is frequently heard from technical reviewers of CMIS. There will be serious consideration of this for the next version.
Semantic Support: As the Internet moves toward the Semantic Web, the need for support to better manage Web 2.0 metadata requirements and the semantic relationship of content is becoming more important.

These are just three of the potential features for future versions CMIS. The next year will determine which ones take root and become part of the next release.

The future is now

This will be the year that CMIS establishes itself and its potential for the future is written. There is a lot of momentum and if CMIS shows signs of continued growth, that momentum should continue for the foreseeable future.

Laurence Hart is the Director of Information Management Solutions for Washington Consulting, Inc. and the author of the blog "Word of Pie." He is a member of the AIIM iECM committee and an outspoken advocate for the CMIS standard. He has been working in the ECM industry for 13 years, implementing software from multiple vendors.