Alterian News & Articles

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) is one of the areas -- in addition to WCM and ECM -- where Gartner (news, site) exercises its magic by the quadrant. In one of its recent 2010 reports, the analyst firm highlighted several Web CMS vendors as players in the niche quadrant for MRM.

Quite an eventful week in the content management industry! Here are our highlights of the week and most popular stories, jobs, featured events and -- new in this column -- polls and your votes.

Top Stories of the Week

• Open Text Reports Good Q2, Vignette Contributes to YoY Spike. OTEX did better than in the past quarters, in part, thanks to Vignette and (formerly known as) RedDot contributing to the bottom line.
• SharePoint 2010 - 5 Hot Features to Look Forward To. With the release of SharePoint 2010 getting closer, people are getting either a) excited, b) nervous or c) all of the above. Have a look at the top 5 noteworthy changes coming with SharePoint 2010.
• Alterian Drops Immediacy, Morello Web CMS Brands. In this exclusive, we discussed Alterian's plans and WCM strategy. In short, it boils down to major consolidation efforts in the mish-mash of Web CMS technologies the company currently offers. Customers, get ready for changes.
• Webtrends Adds Advanced Targeting and Mobile Analytics. The Web analytics solution provider released both advanced targeting capabilities and Webtrends Mobile Analytics. Heads up marketers, this one’s for you.
• Selecting a CMS: How to Build a Short List. In this guest post, Seth Gottlieb drills down into the science of building a short list -- one of the important steps in any Web CMS selection process. Don't let the high stakes paralyze you.
• Day CQ 5.3 Aims to Brighten the Days of Techies and Marketers Alike. Day’s latest minor release includes more than 600 enhancements over CQ 5.2.0 code base. Changes start right from the welcome screen.
• Social Media Minute: Social to Rule the Enterprise, Unless Spam and Malware Win Out. Gartner offered five social software predictions for the near future. Social networking will spread into the enterprise, they say, and will replace e-mail as a primary communication platform for 20 percent of business users.

Most Popular Articles

These articles were what you fancied most this week, according to Unlce Google's analytics data.

• Gartner’s Top 5 BPM Predictions for 2010 And Beyond. Gartner released latest report on business process management highlighting what they see as the five major trends in business process management for 2010 and beyond.
• Web Design: Top 5 Wireframing Tools. As more wireframe tools become available, the focus is shifting to include IA. Here is a selection of wireframes that are sure to prove useful.

• 10 Best Practices for Website Landing Pages. These top ten best practices for landing pages encourage companies to make smart marketing choices, which will not only engage the user but be able to show higher ROI.

• Alert: What's Coming for Open Source CMS in February 2010. Updates from the majority of open source CMS players: from Acquia to XOOPS.

• 6 Ways Document Management and Records Management Differ. The question is, will your document management system also support records management? At the core of this question is what is the differences between document management and records management. Let's examine six differences.

• Google Drops Bomb on MS Internet Explorer 6. If you swear allegiance to both Internet Explorer and Google Apps, as of March 1st you may find yourself in an uncomfortable predicament, and frankly speaking, we're rather happy about all this.

• SharePoint 2010, A Business Collaboration Platform. 100 million licenses and 4,000 partners later, Microsoft thinks they have a handle on this SharePoint phenomenon.

Polls and Your Votes

• What's Your Biggest Digital Asset Management Challenge? Is it taxonomy management, usability or selecting a product? So far, it looks like the biggest struggle is the usability of the system at 23% with 98 votes. Vote and let us know what your challenges with DAM are.
• What's Your Web CMS Focus in 2010? Cloud hosted or SaaS, search integration or integration of social media? As of today, the majority of readers (25% with 18 votes) say their focus lies in the cloud and SaaS area. Do you agree? Cast your vote and see what others think.

Content Management Jobs

Here's what's been brewing lately in the CMS jobs and careers field. For both seekers and employers, catch the best fish of the season on our content management job board.

Featured Jobs:

• Software Engineer at NewsGator
• Social Media Business Assistant at Mashable
• Technical Writer at ZL Technologies
• Project Manager at TERMINALFOUR
• Territory Sales Manager at Kentico Software, LLC
• Sales Representative at Nuxeo
• Web Developer at ADAM Software

Traveling or Virtual, There are CMS Events to Attend

Wondering how to spend your time in the next few weeks or months? Attend a conference or maybe just a webinar or two. Have a look at our Industry Events Calendar to see what's happening in your area.

Featured Events:

• February 9-10 (Santa Clara): SDL Innovate 2010
• February 9-12 (Phoenix): ECM Master Class
• February 10-12 (San Francisco): SharePoint Technology Conference 2010
• February 17 (Online): Webinar: 4 Essential Strategies for Advancing Your Website's Business Impact
• February 17-18 (Universal City): Createasphere DAM 2010

There have been some rumors circling around about Alterian (news, site) discontinuing its Immediacy Web CMS brand. Morello, their other CMS, is part of that goodbye story as well.

So, is it true that it is finita la comedia for Immediacy and Morello? We had a chat with Alterian’s VP of WCM product strategy Ian Truscott to find out.

Wake up call: social media is more than just communication, it’s customer engagement. If you’re not engaging with customers using social media, you’re not maximizing your effort.

Research from Alterian’s Engaging Times Summit has revealed that social media is the biggest factor changing how marketers approach customer engagement. Enter: a new type of customer engagement strategy for how to best handle brand interaction.

The study explored the shifting marketing landscape and increasing importance of true customer engagement and surveyed more than 200 marketing professionals at Alterian's Engaging Times Summit in August, 2009.

Now some of you might ask why Alterian (news, site) would have two SharePoint connectors in their inventory content management connectors. If you knew the history of Alterian, you would know. It's because they have two web content management systems: Morello and Immediacy. And each one connects to SharePoint a little bit different.

Alterian (news, site) has just bought Techrigy, a social media and analytics software developer, which only goes to show that if companies don’t have all the tools they need, it's a smart idea to buy a company that does have the tools instead of starting from scratch in-house.

In Alterian's, a provider of integrated marketing solutions, case, the unspecified sum of money involved in the deal will probably have put quite a dent in their £ 6.1 million (US$ 10.1m) pre-tax profits from the last financial year.

But both seem happy. It was a meeting of minds rather than a boardroom bloodbath they say, with the deal adding interesting new elements to the Alterian package as well as signaling a shift away from mass marketing to marketing targeted at individuals.

Alterian, an integrated marketing platform provider, released the upgraded Immediacy WCMs 6.1. In its latest version, Immediacy features Language Pack capabilities enabling users to work in their local language preference.

Release 6.1 also utilizes many of the latest web technology standards, including AJAX, and improved performance “to blistering levels.”

 Alterian, a leader in providing marketing services and system integrations, is possibly making progress with its recent acquisition of web content management systems vendor Mediasurface. Recently, the company made strides with the integration of Dynamic Messenger with Immediacy and Morello.

So an integrated marketing platform provider went out and bought a web content management company. That was story several months ago for Alterian and Mediasurface. But now that it’s all said and done, what’s the plan going forward? Alterian lays out their new platform strategy.

The worlds of integrated marketing and content management come a little bit closer as Alterian, a provider of integrated marketing announces it intent to acquire web content management vendor Mediasurface. What does a marketing company want with a content management company? Well to offer a fully integrated product suite of course.