Content management

Today we released a major update to our Enterprise Content Management technology evaluations. Our release highlights some important trends, most notably some new mobile interfaces coming down the pike. Our team will share some more details about those trends in the coming weeks. Meantime, if you're a subscriber, you'll receive your updated edition shortly. If not, and you want the inside story on ECM vendor pros and cons, you can purchase the report here, and you can always check out a free sample first.

A report from TowerGroup titled "Beyond the Paper Scourge: Unleashing the Business Value of Electronic Content Management" was recently released on MarketResearch.com. The report covers topics such as: How ECM Works, Unleashing the Business Value of ECM, Innovation in ECM, Supporting Technologies for ECM, and Outlook for ECM Vendors.Some of the claims include:ECM enhances business value by improving operational efficiency, customer experience, compliance, and risk management.ECM spans diverse technology categories that fit together strategically under an umbrella of business process transformation.Many FSIs use some form of ECM solutions, but these solutions often do not connect with other supporting technologies and fall short of the mark in delivering full business value.Innovation in ECM lies in preserving information in its original digital form and in its ability to move information through a process, be stored, and be accessed digitally.

Alfresco Software, the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), recently announced the expansion of its North and South American partner program for system integrators (SI) in response to increasing demand. As open source economics continue to create new opportunities for SIs, the lack of upfront license fees for Alfresco ECM also enables enterprise customers to fund more projects and allocate more budget and resources to project delivery.

Migrating existing content into a SharePoint system, and specifically into a SharePoint Page Library — the foundation of a SharePoint Publishing website — is neither simple nor straightforward.To migrate content into SharePoint we took a look at a number of tools, both commercial tools and custom-built ones paired with a data aggregation framework. Here is a review of our experience, a summary of our final approach and some postmortem thoughts.

There are a few simple web content management systems available today. Cushy CMS, Clover and Surreal are three super simple systems that come to mind when we look at PageLime. PageLime is a hosted web content management solution that let's you very easily add content management to your website without making a lot changes. Just give them FTP access to your site, mark up your pages with some CSS classes and you are off to the races. Add Content Management QuicklyYou may have built your website thinking you didn't need — or want — content management. But, like most, you have found that the need to keep updating your content to keep it fresh and relevant is becoming a bit of a pain in the you know what.

IT management software company CA , along with interactive marketing company Acxiom have set out to produce an enterprise class, cloud-based information governance solution. This new partnership aims to tap into the blossoming eDiscovery market by providing a solution that both companies say cannot be beaten for value.The timing of this announcement is interesting considering Arkansas-based Acxiom is just about to release its Q1 figures, which it has already indicated in June would be close to 21% lower than Q1 last year. Market RealitiesAcxiom’s figures are interesting not so much because of the amount of money involved, but because one of the principal reasons they are citing for income decline.According to a statement issued in June, “The outlook for revenue in the near term remains challenging  [as we] continue to feel the effects of market consolidation, as well as clients continuing to defer decisions on their marketing spending or canceling programs …" GA_googleFillSlot("Inline-300x250--01");

Ohio-based Hyland Software has announced that it has launched its SaaS enterprise content management system OnBase in Europe with its first operation centre already opened in London. As a specialist in medical document management, they really couldn’t have picked a better location as the English National Health Service, like its counterparts across Europe, are just about bankrupt and will be in the market for any solution that will cut costs. Hyland's OnBase enterprise content management suite provides integrated document management, business process management and records management in a single application and can be deployed on-premise or as a hosted solution.

Yes, it's true, the open source enterprise content management system that seems to live to support just about any environment has added another server to the list. Alfresco (news, site) has announced that their Community Edition 3.2 can now be easily installed on Ubuntu Server Edition, free! Alfresco just released the Community Edition 3.2 earlier this month. The latest version of the community edition of their open source enterprise content management software also includes some updated records management capabilities, improved Forms, IMAP support and a nice solution for the iPhone.

It's been a busy summer for the Plone project. In particular, they put out a call for Plone Improvement Proposals (PLIPs) for Plone 4. They also split the initial vision for Plone 4 into a more do-able Plone 4 for this year and a more far-reaching update for Plone 5 slated for next year. Following the PLIP process, the Plone 4 Framework Team has polished off their list of what's to be included in this release. Even with scaled back plans the Plone 4 team chose to include a record 40 improvement proposals.

It's been a while since we heard from Laserfiche, the company that was then busy launching its enterprise content management system Rio.However, recently Laserfiche announced the availability of  Weblink 8, which they say, will significantly expand Rio by enabling developers to build a portal site without having to bother with any of the tiresome coding usually associated with such projects. This additional product adds management capabilities to public web portals and should make Rio and WebLink itself an attractive prospect, particularly in the area of web content management and document management.

Alfresco Software Inc., the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), and content storage software provider Caringo, Inc., recently introduced a combined solution for managing and storing content for billions of files and petabytes of data. Developed by XeniT, a partner of both companies, the Alfresco2CAStor connector is now available on Alfresco Forge, and Caringo is offering a free download of its CAStor content storage software for up to 4TB capacity. Tweet this: #Alfresco and Caringo introduce content management and storage solution, available for download now http://tinyurl.com/Alf2CAS CAStor's unique software approach creates high-performance and massively scalable clustered storage on standard x86 server hardware. This provides customers with affordable content storage that can start with one terabyte and scale seamlessly into Petabytes as your business grows. CAStor's built-in archive features ensure policy based retention and integrity to meet compliance mandates and guarantee accessibility well into the future.

eXo has released the latest version of their Document Management System — DMS 2.5 — with improvements that offer users the ability to change unstructured content into structured content . This, the company says will be done across all the document processes that are capturing, managing, storing, preserving and delivering documents while at the same time securely distributing it. The kicker is that users can do this in the same way they might use File Explorer on Windows and File Finder on MacOSX.

With a public review of the Content Management Interoperability Specification (CMIS) expected to be announced sometime soon, it's definitely time to check in and see what the various player have been up to.Reminder: CMIS is an OASIS specification. It may well end up as a standard (and we hope that this happens), but it's not there yet. Here's where things stand today. CMIS Update

For boutique content management vendors like Digitalus CMS, flexibility comes comparatively easily. There are no multiple corporate hoops to jump though, and development cycles seem to be moving a bit faster (which can also turn into a double-edged sword).Not long ago, we looked (in detail and with a fair portion of constructive criticism) at Digitalus 1.5. The vendor informs us that they've heard us and made templating changes in the newest version of the product — Digitalus CMS 1.8.It seems the chances of breaking the entire front end are now minimized.

The Open Text Web Solutions group, formerly known as RedDot Web Content Management (WCM), has just put out a new and significant release of their mid-range Web CMS product. Yes, Vignette (when the acquisition is finalized) will take place alongside Web Solutions version 10 in this WCM quilt. This update brings improvements to the technology stack, more Enterprise CMS and SAP integration patchwork and an updated user interface. But OTEX didn’t stop there. Let's see what else they've done. We spoke with Marci Maddox, Open Text’s director for global product marketing, to get the details.

Vignette Corporation, the company that the world's leading brands rely on for innovative and dynamic Web experiences, announced plans to release Vignette Content Management 8.0 (VCM 8.0) in the second half of 2009. VCM 8.0, a cornerstone of the Vignette Web Experience foundation, empowers marketers and business users to manage media-rich, global Web properties through an intuitive user interface that can dramatically improve an organization's agility. With VCM 8.0, organizations can easily create and manage an engaging online experience while relieving IT of basic, day-to-day Web responsibilities. The new user interface makes the management of pages and content simple. A novice user will be able to build Web sites in minutes rather than hours while maintaining brand consistency using the proven scalability and power of Vignette architecture. VCM 8.0 also includes productivity enhancing capabilities such as personalized toolbars, favorite shortcuts and workspaces that recall user preferences.

Alfresco Software, the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced the immediate availability for download of Alfresco Community Edition 3.2, unveiling a range of new features that continue to build on Alfresco's ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. In addition to enabling mobile content management, streamlining email management and supporting open specifications and standards including CMIS and IMAP, Alfresco Community 3.2 also lays the groundwork for records management support for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification in September 2009.

Call it rubber-necking or whatever you want, but when one company buys another company in this business we want to know the details.Such is the case with the announcement that Pennsylvania based Really Strategies has just bought out DocZone, a Dutch-based SaaS XML content management provider under — you guessed it — undisclosed terms. DocZone’s DITA solution is known as being one of the most affordable on the market, while Really Strategies’ RSuite is a browser-based web content management system for publishers.

On the heels of its acquisition by Open Text, Vignette plans an imminent introduction of VCM 8.0, a key component of the Vignette Web Experience foundation, which is designed to empower marketers and business users to manage media-rich, global Web properties.Vignette says VCM 8.0 allows organizations to easily create and manage an engaging online experience while relieving IT of basic, day-to-day Web responsibilities. Reportedly, a novice user will be able to build Web sites in minutes rather than hours while maintaining brand consistency. VCM 8.0 also includes productivity-enhancing capabilities such as personalized toolbars, favorite shortcuts and workspaces that recall user preferences.

The initial vision for Web CMS Plone 4 was so complex that it wasn't slated for release until 2010. In order to allow for smaller, more focused releases, Plone Founder Alexander Limi announced at the Plone Symposium at Penn State that the Plone Roadmap has been revised. What was originally Plone 4 has been split into Plone 4 and Plone 5. The New Plone 4Plone 4 is due in late 2009 and its release manager is Eric Steele.  This release will feature: