A Look at Automated Content Migration: Part 2 - Vamosa

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Dec 17, 2009 Comments

1 comment

Vamosa (news, site) has been around for a number of years now, but the latest version of their Content Migrator — version 3 — was just recently released. In this second article of our series (see part one covering Kapow Technologies here) we take a look at Vamosa Content Migrator 3.0. Come along for the ride.

A Quick Look Back

We started our look at content migration solutions with Kapow Technologies. Part of the company's Web Data Server, the Kapow Content Migration Module utilizes Robots that you configure (not code) using a Visual Development Environment.

Robots pull content — both visible and invisible — from the presentation layer of a website. Kapow's Migration Module allow you to test the robot on real content, telling you instantly if your extraction and transformation is successful so you can quickly make iterative refinements.

Vamosa's Growth in Content Migration

According to Nic Archer, Senior Vice President of Vamosa, Vamosa actually started out as an implementer of content management systems. The concept of a content migration solution came when they were working with their largest client.

From Content Classification

The first step into the world of content migration came through the classification of source content that lived in file stores, as documents or static web pages and other non CMS locations.

Called Source Classification, the tool performed the initial perusal of source content and surfaced the nascent structure of web content. It also identified and tagged components of content and helped automate the mapping of that content to a new structure.

This was the first version of the Content Migrator.

…to Content Cleansing

But it's not just unstructured or unmanaged content that you want to get into a new content management system. There is also the need to move information from an existing system into a new one.

And so version 2 of the Content Migrator added what's called "Content Factories". These are connectors built for specific content management systems like Vignette and Interwoven, and typically use the CMS vendor's API to migrate the content into that CMS.

These are "pragmatic" connectors which process system required data using the vendors API, but also perform other activities such as consolidation, de-duplication and adapting to a new IA.

The connectors provide a way to get content into a new CMS without having to re-invent the wheel. And they are bi-directional so you could ensure source systems were always up to date.

Of course, it's not as simple as a one-to-one mapping and that's where content cleansing and enhancements come into play.

Vamosa has mapped out a clear path for content migration:

Identification of content
Source Cleansing
Enhancement
Deployment

Vamosa Content Migrator Process Flow

To Content Migration in the Cloud

The latest version of the Vamosa Content Migrator was just released. What's new in version 3? The biggest change is the ability to use it in the cloud. Now, that cloud can be your own or a hosted platform of your choosing. Or it can be Vamosa's SaaS version, living on Amazon EC2.

What Vamosa discovered is that organizations were finding it harder to justify technology like content migration tools, especially when they were only used for short periods of time. So the idea of offering a SaaS version made perfect sense.