Clixpress

ESG Survey Reveals Two out of Three Enterprises Use SharePoint as Business …

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:42 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC, Aug 30, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
Metalogix Software, the leading provider in content lifecycle
management (CLM) solutions for Microsoft(R) SharePoint(R),
Exchange(R), and legacy environments, today announced that it solves
key challenges for companies that are making big bets with SharePoint
as a top business critical application, as outlined in the new
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) whitepaper, “Managing SharePoint as a
Business-critical Application.” The new research paper, authored by
ESG’s Brian Babineau and Bill Lundell, outlines how SharePoint
management should be an investment priority because today’s
considerations with SharePoint infrastructure management, security
and data migrations are only going to gain importance as usage
increases and the profile of users evolves.

According to the ESG study, which surveyed 3,129 IT professionals, 64
percent of North American and Western European organizations are
currently using SharePoint, while an additional 12 percent intend to
within the next 24 months. This overwhelmingly confirms that
SharePoint is now considered to be a top business application — 80
percent ranked it among their top 10 business applications — a
significant update since the March 2009 survey. This major shift in
enterprise content management direction is driven by the increasing
need for team and document collaboration as well as document
versioning and management with the SharePoint 2010 SP1 version.
However, the survey shows this rapid adoption of SharePoint and its
resulting business reliance comes with some significant management
gaps that ISVs are poised to fill.

“SharePoint optimization requires several different tracks, including
increased asset utilization, data mobility and movement and storage
management, all while maintaining satisfactory application
availability and response times,” said Babineau and Lundell in the
ESG paper. “Organizations must consider this process holistically in
order to avoid relying on one-off resolutions that don’t scale and
end up costing more money in the long run.”

Metalogix solutions for SharePoint delivers this holistic approach to
SharePoint management, providing users with the freedom to
consolidate, manage and optimize their enterprise content the way
their applications behave. Metalogix eliminates the out-of-the-box
operational constraints and enables organizations of all sizes to
optimize the SharePoint content infrastructure in order to
consolidate, scale and cost-effectively manage, migrate, store,
archive and protect enterprise content whether on-premise or in the
cloud. The following are the three key SharePoint management
challenges outlined by the ESG paper and how Metalogix solutions help
to resolve them:


        --  Storage and Infrastructure: In the area of SharePoint infrastructure,
            ESG reports that the most common issue IT departments report is
            performance and scalability, from many different perspectives. This is
            largely due to high data growth, which can cause difficulty in
            provisioning storage capacity, wide area network performance problems,
            poor application response times, lengthy content search times and slow
            backup and recovery processes.

            Metalogix StoragePoint's BLOB externalization and archiving solution
            helps eliminate this critical SharePoint infrastructure challenge by
            enabling organizations to keep their unstructured binary large objects
            (BLOBs) out of SharePoint's content database and offloading them onto
            virtually any tier of NAS, SAN or Cloud storage platforms. Here, the
            BLOBs can be stored on less-expensive systems and SQL clusters can be
            right sized for optimal performance by consolidating and vastly
            reducing unnecessary content databases and thereby improve search,
            back up and archive performance times by as much as 95 percent.

        --  Content Migrations: The ESG report states that upon deploying a new
            SharePoint farm or site, organizations have to make a critical
            decision regarding their legacy content and files -- migrate it or
            portal the metadata content within SharePoint. Another challenge is
            often moving data between SharePoint -- either to a newer version or
            when moving existing on-premises SharePoint deployments to other
            servers, consolidating sites or moving some or all to the cloud.

        --  Security Implications: When it comes to application security
            management challenges experienced since deploying SharePoint, over
            half of the ESG study respondents said that managing the permissions
            of who has access to content was a key concern. Provisioning sites in
            accordance with internal security policies was also a significant
            concern.

            Metalogix Migration Manager helps to resolve this challenge through
            its built-in ongoing farm management capabilities by preserving all
            views, version chains, metadata and user-edit information when
            migrating between SharePoint sites. It can also map and migrate site
            permissions so that internal security policies can be easily enforced.

Regardless of an organization’s desired content lifecycle strategy,
Metalogix offers a migration solution to help. Metalogix migration
solutions migrate content into SharePoint from numerous sources or
legacy systems. Adoption of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online
Suite (BPOS) and Office 365 is also simplified with easy-to-use, cost
effective and powerful migration solutions and Metalogix is the only
SharePoint migration product that has passed both the security and
performance criteria set by Microsoft to be approved for installation
on Office 365 dedicated servers.

“Clearly, SharePoint is rapidly coming of age now, and is becoming
one of the most critical content collaboration delivery platforms
that is driving this new era of mobile and social-based business
applications, and with it comes with some new management
responsibilities,” said CEO Steven Murphy. “At Metalogix, our team
has been solving SharePoint migration and management challenges for
more than 10 years. We take a standards-based approach to delivering
comprehensive content lifecycle management solutions that enable
organizations to increase the useability and performance of their
content applications while reducing the administrative, storage
costs, and operational risks associated with your growing Microsoft
content.”

To download a copy of the ESG whitepaper, “Managing SharePoint as a
Business-critical Application,” please visit:

http://www.metalogix.com/Freedom/Managing-SharePoint-ESG-White-Paper.aspx

Tweet this: @Metalogix Optimizes #SharePoint Deployments and Resolves
Key management Challenges as Outlined in New Enterprise Strategy
Group Whitepaper @ESG

Follow Metalogix at

http://www.twitter.com/metalogix

About Metalogix
Metalogix is the leading provider of content
lifecycle management solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange,
and legacy enterprise content environments. We enable organizations
to scale and cost-effectively manage, migrate, store, archive and
protect enterprise content whether on-premise or in the cloud. The
company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, privately held, and
backed by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Metalogix, and the Metalogix logo are trademarks of Metalogix
Software. All other product and company names herein may be
trademarks of their respective owners.


        Media Contact:
        Sabrina Sanchez
        Ventana Public Relations for Metalogix
        (540) 253-5060
        Email Contact

SOURCE: Metalogix


http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=91FF3CBFC14468C0

Cisco buys collaboration software vendor, Versly

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:42 +0000

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) tried to beef up its Cisco Quad enterprise collaboration product this week by purchasing Versly, a small software vendor still in private beta. The Versly product, however, provides a way for users to collaborate at the document level inside Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office, which was probably the appeal for Cisco.

Certainly Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager of the Collaboration Software Group at Cisco saw it this way. “The integration with Versly will drive productivity improvements for organizations and their knowledge workers, many of whom are among the 600 million Microsoft Office users,” Sitaram said.

But given how early Versly is in product development, consultant Dan Keldsen from Information Architected sees this as more of a talent grab than a technology buy in the pure sense.

“As others are suggesting, the acquisition seems to be mostly a talent grab, since it is unlikely that Versly has much client traction, with the private beta only months old. In general, this rounds out the portfolio of collaboration tools for Cisco to compete with Jive, Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, VMWare, and to a smaller extent, Google,” he said.

In a statement, Ned Hooper, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Cisco suggested this might indeed be the case. “With this acquisition we are gaining strong talent and innovative technology that builds on Cisco’s successful collaboration platform,” Hooper said.

Keldsen believes that Cisco may be doing this to speed Quad to market. “Cisco Quad and the related offerings need to ship pretty quick–the pre-announcement of last year is getting a bit long in the tooth at this point. This economy prizes speed over FUD, we’ll see if the Versly team adds some gas to the tank here,” Keldsen said.

Whatever the reason, Cisco appears to be making a big push in enterprise collaboration and social software, and this purchase is meant to boost that to some degree.

For more information:
- see the Cisco press release

Web content management’s march to commoditization–a historical perspective

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:41 +0000

Guest post by Tony White

The web content management (WCM) market began circa 1995, as it emerged as a separate space from document management (DM). The early significant players in the market were companies such as Vignette, Interwoven, ATG, BroadVision, Stellent, Net Perceptions, Future Tense, RedDot, Percussion, Ektron, Mediasurface, PaperThin, Day Software and others. A few of the early players still exist. Some are defunct. Many were acquired.

However, in the time since the mid-1990s, WCM has remained a robust stand-alone technology and independent market space, even with some overlap with markets such as digital asset management, records management, portals, enterprise information management, collaboration and search. Relative to the rest of the technology market, WCM has been a particularly strong performer over the last 15 years. In approximately 2005, when the market realized that the overblown scope of ECM made it an impossible strategy to implement, buyers returned to the more realistic, tactical objectives of WCM.

By 2005-2007, however, WCM products had reached full maturity, and they began to experience the effects of commoditization. In about 2007, we began to see a bifurcation in the WCM market. There was downward pricing pressure on pure-play WCM vendors, and products which had been selling relatively well at the $70k-80k price range began to be so discounted heavily so that they were actually selling in the $40-50k price range.

Simultaneously, former pure-play WCM vendors who were able to supplement their product lines with compelling value-added layers – often focused around enhanced online marketing capabilities–were able to increase their prices. The average sales prices for these products moved up from the $70-80k mid-market to the $100-125k range.

Current pricing trends in the WCM market

Since the beginning of this simultaneous downward and upward pricing momentum, WCM had continued to evolve into late maturity as a technology. While WCM has been a mature product type since 2007, some vendors (and even new market entrants) continue to occasionally add features and functions to their core CMS feature-functionality lists. But this continued evolution is occurring at a much slower pace, and the effects of commoditization have only strengthened in the period from 2008 to 2011.

This leads us to an interesting point in the market. WCM as a pure-play, stand-alone application, is reaching the end of its lifespan. Right now, we have:

Pure-play WCM vendors competing at the $40k price point. Without significant additions to their product lines, prices will continue to fall over the next few years.
Former pure-play vendors who have been able to enhance their product lines with marketing-centric modules. These vendors now tend to compete in the $50-150k price range. These vendors will remain a competitive force in content-technology markets for the next few years, given continued enhancement to their marketing-centric modules.

Enterprise, cross-platform, experience management vendors have also emerged. Their products include WCM, but their primary value rests in holistic marketing capabilities, such as managing customer and partner interactions across multiple enterprise applications, devices, channels, sites, etc. These vendors are competing in the $250k+ range. The few vendors who are currently able to compete in the enterprise marketing management (EMM) or customer experience management (CEM) markets commonly have license sales of $400-500k.

Product development opportunities and market Leaders

Our advice to technology vendors in these areas looking to evolve their product lines or to launch new ones is to exploit the readiness in the market for applications that excel at:

Mobile marketing;
Multi-site, multi-channel, multi-device capabilities based on an understanding of customer behaviors and needs across channels;
Comprehensive enterprise brand- and marketing-management; and
Customer experience management.

It is in these areas where the opportunity to make the most compelling value proposition exists. Existing CMS vendors who don’t focus on these or closely-related areas will only get forced further down-market over the next 2-3 years. Those who successfully address pent-up and growing demand for these capabilities–all related to cross-channel marketing and the ability to manage customer interactions–stand to grow quickly and to secure meaningful market traction in these nascent spaces.

As the market currently stands, we believe that Adobe, Open Text and SDL are in the best positions to make a compelling value proposition to prospective clients. Their product lines already contain many of the components required for EMM or CEM, though only Adobe has assembled the components into a unified, cohesive CEM product offering (very recently). Open Text’s and SDL’s offerings still require considerable assembly and customization to function effectively as CEM or EMM solutions.

Aside from these three vendors, there are only two or three others whose products could be assembled and customized in this way–possibly Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), HP (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM)–but doing so would require a Herculean, risky effort.

Emerging markets and conclusions

As for prospective entrants to this emerging market, we see the pure-play WCM vendors who are currently adding marketing-oriented, multi-site, cross-channel, analytics-based feature-functionality as the ones with the best chance of success. All of the core feature-functionality in WCM applications can be leveraged in these new product types. Entrants from non-WCM backgrounds would have significant work to do in filling in the missing WCM functionality. That said, WCM vendors will still need to supplement their products considerably.

So the question arises, “Why are existing pure-play WCM vendors in a better position to capture this market than, for example, CRM lead management vendors?” The answer is that WCM feature-functionality is a major component of EMM and CEM solutions, and it is a component that requires a lot of development time. The leading CRM lead management vendors such as Aprimo, Eloqua and Marketo would need 25+ man years of development time to create the feature-functionality of the current WCM offerings on the market. Comparatively, the existing pure-play WCM vendors would need only 4-5 man years to develop the supplemental features required for respectable EMM.

The second reason is that vendors such as Aprimo, Eloqua and Marketo have relatively immature products. That is, their solutions don’t add all that much to stand-alone CRM products such as Salesforce.com (and the missing pieces can be added by Salesforce’s AppExchange partners). Relative to existing WCM products, they really have no advantage in being able to supply multi-channel, multi-application EMM solutions.

In sum, any technology vendor with a complete set of core WCM functionality and 5 or more years of discretionary developer time that can be devoted to multi-channel online marketing requirements stands a good chance of assuming a competitive role in EMM.

Tony White is Founder of Ars Logica, a vendor-neutral analyst firm that helps companies evaluate their web content management requirements and select suitable WCM software. Ars Logica also assists software vendors in analyzing the market and planning their product roadmaps. Prior to founding Ars Logica, Tony ran the WCM Practice at the Gilbane Group; he was an analyst at the Yankee Group and Giga Information Group; and he served in senior marketing roles at Interwoven and BroadVision.

Formtek® Announces Partnership with Ephesoft(TM), Adds Leading Document …

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:41 +0000

CONCORD, Calif., Aug. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Formtek, Inc., a leading provider of document and content management solutions to industrial clients for over two decades, announced today that it had signed a Partnership Agreement with Ephesoft, Inc., developer of the only Open Source Document Capture Solution with enterprise support in the world.

With this partnership, Formtek® adds the Ephesoft(TM) Enterprise Edition to its existing product portfolio, which includes Formtek | Orion(TM), Alfresco® Enterprise, and the Formtek Engineering Data Management (EDM) Solution for Alfresco.

Formtek chose to partner with Ephesoft because Ephesoft Enterprise Edition provides a feature set equivalent to that of the current industry leaders, using the latest tool sets, in a 100% web-based Open Source solution, and at a much lower total cost of ownership. Ephesoft advanced features include high performance automatic classification and separation technology based on content and layout, learning of documents, and meta-data extraction technologies using bar-code, regular expression, and phrases.

Formtek is also an Alfresco Gold SI Partner, and Ephesoft seamlessly interfaces to Alfresco through CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services). This allows Formtek to offer a single integrated solution that includes both advanced scan/capture, based on Ephesoft, and enterprise content management, based on Alfresco.

With the addition of the Formtek Engineering Data Management (EDM) solution for Alfresco, including the Formtek EDM Connector for AutoCAD®, Formtek is positioned to provide the market with the only pre-packaged, installation-ready, minimal services solution that combines enterprise scan/capture, content management, records management, and engineering data management, on an Open Source content platform, and without expensive license fees.

“We welcome Formtek as an Ephesoft Platinum Partner,” said David Talarico, Ephesoft Senior Vice President Sales Marketing – Americas. “Formtek brings over twenty years of experience in scan/capture, imaging, and document management to our Partner Program, as well as a unique domain expertise in engineering and other industrial markets.”

“Formtek has a long and very successful history of providing mission-critical content management solutions to some of the most demanding organizations in the world,” said Dennis M. Scanlon, Formtek’s President and COO. “With the addition of Ephesoft to our product portfolio, we now offer our clients a state-of the-art, Open Source alternative for advanced document and data capture to complement our existing document management, records management, and engineering data management solutions.”

Additional information on Formtek’s products, including access to datasheets, can be found at

http://www.formtek.com/products/products.shtml

About Formtek

For over two decades, Formtek has been providing mission-critical Enterprise Document and Content Management solutions and services to some of the most demanding industrial operations in the world. Our capabilities and experience have helped both small organizations as well as large global enterprises manage their most important information assets. Formtek solutions address real, day-to-day engineering data management, document management, content management, records management, and secure collaboration requirements for worldwide customers in manufacturing, aerospace, defense, telecommunication, utility, and government. To learn more about Formtek, visit
http://www.formtek.com/ .

About Ephesoft

Ephesoft, Inc., based in Irvine, CA, has developed an intelligent document capture system designed to improve the automation of “mailroom” processes through classifying, sorting and separating incoming documents, and extracting pertinent information from these business documents for distribution and processing. Our mission is to have this technology available to enterprises of all sizes and enable them to process business documents efficiently and effectively in an integrated fashion. To learn more about Ephesoft, visit
http://www.ephesoft.com/ .

Formtek is a registered trademark, and Formtek | Orion is a trademark, of Formtek, Inc.

Ephesoft is a trademark of Ephesoft, Inc. in the United States, the European Union and other countries.

Alfresco is a registered trademark of Alfresco Software, Inc. in the USA and other countries.

AutoCAD is a registered trademark or trademark of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and other countries.

Media Contact:

Mr. Victor MalespinaFormtek, Inc.904-829-9251 (USA)vmalespina@formtek.com

This press release was issued through eReleases(R). For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at
http://www.ereleases.com .

SOURCE Formtek, Inc.

Context Will Drive The Future Of Web Content Management

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:40 +0000

Written By Tom Wentworth

Tom Wentworth: Keep it all in context.

Web content management is at the most significant inflection point in its 15-year history. It’s now all about the context.

By 2013, Gartner contends, 40% of large companies will have context-aware computing projects on the way. Context is driving content and intelligent customer interactions, delivering Web experiences that will engage site visitors and deliver better business results.

For example, in the case of the mobile Web browsing, the context is that visitors are accessing the Web from a mobile device, usually with a specific task in mind. These visitors don’t need – in most cases don’t want – the same experience presented from a desktop browser or on their iPad. Not only must Websites be mobile-friendly (meaning they render correctly on a wide range of mobile devices), but the experience also must fit the purpose of the device.

Or consider the difference between a visitor looking at the Hewlett-Packard home page and their viewing an HP product page on Amazon.com. The context is different, and likely so is the visitor’s intention. A visitor may be on the HP site to research products – or to find a job. Amazon visitors are almost certainly shopping.

Context defines a visitor’s Web experience. If a visitor has come to a site through a search, he doesn’t want to click through multiple, slow-loading, hard-to-read pages to find a single piece of information. If visitors are on your site to make a purchase, it is imperative they experience the same level of checkout/shopping cart convenience that they would in the brick-and-mortar world. If a prospect has arrived on a landing page via an e-mail marketing campaign, Sales and Marketing definitely wants that page to display correctly on any device the prospect is using.

“Delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty,” note the authors of a recent Harvard Business Review article. “Reducing their effort — the work they must do to get their problem solved — does.” Showing an understanding for the customer and respecting the manner they want to interact breeds loyalty.

Context, the Future of Web Content Management

Content management systems have long played an important role in helping companies align their business strategies to the Web. Today, however, the core capabilities of content management have evolved to help global enterprises deliver better business results. Web content management systems are being used to create sites localized for multiple languages with content tailored to meet the unique cultural needs of each country while also enabling these same organizations to publish thousands of daily updates without relying on IT intervention and manual processes. Enterprises are also managing hundreds and sometimes thousands of sites on a single platform, providing significant operational efficiency improvements.

It’s often said that “content is king.” The ability to create high-quality content that attracts, engages, retains and converts visitors is still an important objective for every website. Content is indeed still the heart and soul of every site. But if content is king, context is its queen; and together they will rule the kingdom of audience engagement and of the corporate Web site experience.

Why Context Matters

Pages: 1 2

Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel & Burns, LLP Selects ADERANT StarLaw Enterprise …

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:22 +0000

ATLANTA, Aug 30, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
ADERANT,
the world’s largest independent legal software company, announced today
that Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel Burns, LLP has selected ADERANT
StarLaw as its enterprise content management system. Johnson Pope
Bokor Ruppel Burns is one of the Tampa area’s leading law firms with
more than 50 timekeepers and offices in Clearwater and Tampa, Florida.

“Our firm cast a wide net in search of the industry’s best document
management system before we ultimately determined that ADERANT StarLaw
was the most intuitive, well designed solution in the marketplace,” said
Frank R. Jakes, managing partner for Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel Burns.
“We have a proud tradition of leveraging technology to increase
efficiency and using creativity to improve the practice of law, and we
feel that ADERANT StarLaw aligns well with those directives.”

As a long-standing ADERANT client, Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel Burns
will add the ADERANT StarLaw enterprise content management system to
streamline operations and reduce risk. ADERANT StarLaw is a
comprehensive suite that delivers integrated document, records, and
email management functionality.

Chris
Giglio, chief executive officer for ADERANT said, “As a client of
more than 17 years, Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel Burns has always looked
for opportunities to maximize both internal efficiency and the client
experience. By using ADERANT StarLaw, the firm will manage its exposure
to risk by effectively and efficiently managing the entire lifecycle of
documents, records, and emails.”

Designed from the ground up to meet the unique needs of law firms,
ADERANT StarLaw supports how attorneys utilize information and is
accessible through Microsoft Office applications for ease of use. It
manages the entire lifecycle of data, allowing attorneys to easily
create, categorize, store, access, share, and dispose of documents,
records, and emails.

Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel Burns, LLP will implement ADERANT StarLaw in
2012. The firm presently uses ADERANT
Expert, ADERANT’s signature practice management system, which
provides additional ways to streamline work processes, improve business
operations, and increase profitability.

About ADERANT

ADERANT, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is a global provider of
comprehensive business management software for law and professional
services firms. ADERANT’s complete suite of solutions includes: business
development, calendar/docket matter management with built-in court
rules, client relationship management (CRM), practice and financial
management, time and billing, case management, document management, and
business intelligence. ADERANT helps firms more effectively and
profitably run, grow, and protect their businesses. More information is
available at
www.aderant.com .

Editor’s Note: The correct usage of the ADERANT name is all capitals.

ADERANT and ADERANT Expert are registered trademarks of ADERANT
Holdings, Inc. or its subsidiaries. All other trademarks mentioned
herein are the properties of their respective owners.

SOURCE: ADERANT


        ADERANT Public Relations
        Adam Kincaid, 678-668-1028
        adam.kincaid@aderant.com

SharePoint for Customer Experience Management, Not So Far Away

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:21 +0000

SharePoint has come along way since SharePoint 2003. Its success has surprised many and frustrated others. But to be successful, you can’t remain in one place. And it sounds like Microsoft has some big plans in the works, much related to web content management and customer experience.

SharePoint Success

According to Jared Spataro, Director, SharePoint Product Management at Microsoft Corporation, SharePoint earned the software giant US$ 1.2 billion last year and has achieved double digit growth since then. He says that if SharePoint were a standalone vendor it would be bigger than Salesforce.com.

A few other tidbits: SharePoint has 100% penetration in developed economies and on average 70-80% around the world. It is, without a doubt, the 200 lb elephant in the corner of the room.

But Spataro says people aren’t asking what SharePoint is anymore. Now, they are asking “what can I do with it” or “what’s the best way to take advantage of it”?

Enter Microsoft’s research and a three phase model that shows how SharePoint has been implemented in the enterprise:

Initial deployment
Broad adoption
Business solutions

Phase 1 — Initial deployment — is where you see the penetration numbers coming from mentioned above. In its research, Microsoft found that the bulk of SharePoint 2010 deployments over the last couple of years have focused on team sites and portal sites, with fileshare coming in third. Spataro said that one of the main things they observed is that organizations are focused on specific capabilities and that governance is key for every feature and/or capability implemented.

According to its research, about 80% of organizations will have upgraded to SharePoint 2010 in the next twelve months. It looks like SharePoint 2007 may be on it’s way out the door — finally.

Phase 2 — Broad Adoption — is about using SharePoint as the platform it’s designed to be. It’s about content management, mostly document management, but sometimes web content management. The rich metadata and term store features within SharePoint 2010 are key to this. Also in this phase, organizations are moving from doing just SharePoint governance to the broader Information governance.

Phase 3 — Business Solutions — This, says Sparato is the place many are interested in. But he warns that orgs should do Phase 1 first. This is where you see many partners getting on board, integrating their solutions into the platform and extending SharePoint. But it’s also where you see custom solutions created from scratch by development teams, to support specific needs within the organization.

Microsoft plans to spend the next twelve months sharing the message and publishing the technical content needed to support organizations in all of these phases. But they are also heads down thinking about what comes next. And it sounds like customer experience management is a key part of the next phase of SharePoint.

What’s Coming Next for SharePoint

I don’t have my crystal ball in hand right now, and you know that Spataro wasn’t going to give me specifics. But he did tell me a few things:

Microsoft knows Customer Experience is critical and it has been making key investments into the different areas of CXM that will push SharePoint into a leadership position in this area. Here, web content management will play a role.
Microsoft is learning a lot from the FAST acquisition and it will be taking a lot of that into SharePoint.
The focus on SharePoint as a broad platform will not change and Microsoft is committed to growing its business via the fantastic ecosystem that currently supports it.

Web Content Management the Customer Experience

Spend a little time with Jared Spataro and you will see that Microsoft is serious about using SharePoint for web content management, and they have the clients to prove it. The wssdemo.com website shows you 2,263 public facing websites built on the SharePoint platform, ranging from government to financial to educational sites. The user experience ranges from Flashy to portal like and the functionality varies as well.

comments

Continue reading this article:

Useful article?

Email It

Follow @cmswire

KMWorld Magazine Names iAPPS Product Suite a 2011 Trend Setting Product

clixman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:38:20 +0000

WOBURN, Mass., Aug 31, 2011 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) –
Bridgeline Digital, Inc.

/quotes/zigman/106862/quotes/nls/blin BLIN
+2.47%

, developer of the award-winning iAPPS web experience management (WEM) platform and interactive technology solutions, today announced that the iAPPS Product Suite has been named a Trend Setting Product for the second consecutive year by KMWorld Magazine. KMWorld is the leading information provider serving the Knowledge, Document and Content Management systems market with over 45,000 subscribers. Bridgeline’s iAPPS Product Suite is the only leading WEM platform available as either a SaaS or perpetual license that unifies Content Management, e-Commerce, e-Marketing, and analytics capabilities – enabling Marketers to swiftly enhance and optimize the value of their web properties. The iAPPS Product Suite was recently selected as a finalist for two 2011 CODiE Awards and iAPPS Content Manager is the 2010 CODiE Award Winner for Best Content Management Solution, globally.

iAPPS enables Marketers to optimize their online channels and more effectively hit their web marketing goals. The recently launched iAPPS Analyzer offers a smart recommendations engine that proactively suggests ways in which all site content, whether on a landing page or within an eCommerce store, can be optimized to meet and exceed identified business and campaign goals. Further enhancing iAPPS’ overall WEM capabilities, iAPPS Analyzer brings Goal Driven Marketing directly into the web browser and empowers Marketers to optimize all of their multichannel marketing efforts under unified campaigns. Marketers can then track campaign progress in a way that drives towards attainment of set goals and business objectives.

Inclusion in the Trend Setting Products listing has been a significant achievement since its inception in 2003. The 2011 Trend Setters were selected from over 800 products and were assessed by KMWorld’s judging panel which consists of editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators, vendors, line-of-business managers and users. The products selected all demonstrate clearly identifiable technology breakthroughs that serve the vendors’ full spectrum of constituencies, especially their customers.

“The iAPPS Product Suite has a clear track record of steady and significant innovation, more than legitimizing last year’s designation as a Trend Setter, and making this year’s successive award even more significant,” says Hugh McKellar, KMWorld editor in chief. “Bridgeline remains well ahead of the content management curve, offering true benefit and creative solutions to the industry. With iAPPS’ latest innovations, they have added significant advantages that organizations can easily use to manage and interpret online campaigns and enhance results on an ongoing basis.”

“We’re honored that the iAPPS Product Suite has been recognized for the second year in a row by KMWorld,” says Thomas Massie, Bridgeline’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “The innovations we’ve added to iAPPS with version 4.6 and iAPPS Analyzer over the past year have significantly advanced its web experience management capabilities. iAPPS continues to lead with innovations that empower customers to take control of their WEM and directly drive their online business with engaging content and exciting results.”

About KMWorld

KMWorld is the leading information provider serving the Knowledge Management systems market and covers the latest in Content, Document and Knowledge Management, informing more than 45,000 subscribers about the components and processes – and subsequent success stories – that together offer solutions for improving business performance. KMWorld is a publishing unit of Information Today, Inc. (
www.infotoday.com ).

About Bridgeline Digital

Bridgeline Digital is a developer of an award-winning web experience management product suite and award-winning interactive business technology solutions that help customers leverage best in class web-based technologies to achieve their business objectives. The iAPPS Product Suite is an innovative SaaS solution that unifies Content Management,eCommerce, eMarketing, and Analytics capabilities into the heart of websites, online stores, intranets, extranets, and portals — enabling business users to swiftly enhance and optimize the value of their web properties. iAPPS’ flexible architecture provides customers with a state-of–the-art Cloud-based deployment or traditional dedicated server deployments.

Combined with award-winning interactive technology development services by Microsoft Gold-Certified development teams, Bridgeline Digital helps customers to cost-effectively maximize the value of their rapidly changing web applications. Bridgeline’s teams of developers specialize in web application development, e-commerce development, usability engineering, SharePoint development, rich media development, and search engine optimization.

Bridgeline Digital is headquartered near Boston, with additional locations in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, and Bangalore, India. Bridgeline Digital has hundreds of customers ranging from middle market organizations to divisions within Fortune 1,000 companies that include: Sun Chemical, Honeywell, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Novartis, Shaw Flooring, Marriott International, Berkshire Life, PODS, Budget Rent A Car, AARP, National Financial Partners, The Packard Foundation, DTCC, Cadaret, Grant Co., National Insurance Crime Bureau, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. To learn more about Bridgeline, please visit
www.bridgelinedigital.com .

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

All statements included in this press release, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, management’s beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “predicts,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing,” similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions including the risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. We expressly disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire,
www.globenewswire.com

SOURCE: Bridgeline Digital, Inc.


        CONTACT: Brian Bolton
        Bridgeline Digital, Inc.
        Vice President of Marketing
        781.497.3013
        bbolton@blinedigital.com

/quotes/zigman/106862/quotes/nls/blin

Add BLIN to portfolio

BLIN

Drupal 8 to be about mobility, tablets, usability

clixman — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Jason Stamper
Published 24 August 2011

More than just bug fixes going into next rev of popular open source CMS

Dries Buytaert, inventor of Drupal, founder of Acquia

The inventor of popular free and open source content management system Drupal, Dries Buytaert, said that Version 8 will have a big focus on the building of mobile applications for tablets and smartphones as well as key improvements to usability.

Speaking to CBR, Buytaert said that Drupal 8, expected later this year, will feature native support for HTML 5, making it what he called the, “go-to place for devs to build mobile applications”. The current version, 7.7, can be configured to support HTML 5 but it’s a bit of a chore today, Buytaert said.

He also told us that usability will again be a big theme – it was the biggest theme for the version 7 release.

Buytaert conceded that there is a “big learning curve” for developers getting to grips with the open source CMS – already used by millions of websites including ones as large and busy as Whitehouse.gov, Mozilla and NASA. “It’s easy if you just want to build simple websites but today everyone wants to build a Facebook,” Buytaert said. “It gets easier with each new version and it will get easier again with version 8.”

Buytaert also started a company in 2007 to help companies who have built their websites with Drupal to maintain and manage them – Acquia. Acquia, which has 140 staff, offers solutions, tools and support. But as well as the developers at Acquia and Buytaert himself, each new version of Drupal is contributed to by the open source community. Buytaert claims that there are thousands of active developers, though every change is approved by a team of up to 12, and signed off by Buytaert himself.

Buytaert originally developed Drupal as a message board, but soon started to add additional functionality that turned it into a full-blown CMS. He open sourced it under a license equivalent to the GPL, and it took off virally. Buytaert had originally wanted to call the thing Dorp, the Dutch word for village, but he spelled it wrong on a website registration application and ended up with ‘drop.org’, which he then morphed into drupal, the Dutch for droplet.

Please follow this author on twitter: www.twitter.com/jasonstamper

Formtek® Announces Partnership with Ephesoft, Adds Leading Document Capture Solution to Its Product Portfolio

clixman — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:08:46 +0000

CONCORD, Calif., Aug. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Formtek, Inc., a leading provider of document and content management solutions to industrial clients for over two decades, announced today that it had signed a Partnership Agreement with Ephesoft, Inc., developer of the only Open Source Document Capture Solution with enterprise support in the world.

With this partnership, Formtek® adds the Ephesoft™ Enterprise Edition to its existing product portfolio, which includes Formtek | Orion™, Alfresco® Enterprise, and the Formtek Engineering Data Management (EDM) Solution for Alfresco.

Additional information on Formtek’s products, including access to datasheets, can be found at http://www.formtek.com/products/products.shtml

About Formtek

About Ephesoft

Formtek is a registered trademark, and Formtek | Orion is a trademark, of Formtek, Inc.

Ephesoft is a trademark of Ephesoft, Inc. in the United States, the European Union and other countries.

Alfresco is a registered trademark of Alfresco Software, Inc. in the USA and other countries.

AutoCAD is a registered trademark or trademark of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and other countries.

Media Contact:

Mr. Victor Malespina
Formtek, Inc.
904-829-9251 (USA)
vmalespina@formtek.com

This press release was issued through eReleases(R). For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.