Component Content Management News & Articles

With all the aplomb of a wet Monday in November, SDL (news, site) (which refers to itself in a recent press release as the ominous sounding “The Group”) announced quite casually this week that it has made lots of money in the first half of this year. Net interim cash of £32.9 (US$ 56) million to be precise.

Ready for more Enterprise Content Management acquistion news? SDL (news, site) has acquired XyEnterprise (news, site) for consideration of US$ 14.7m. The acquistion of XyEnterprise will add deeper xml and component content management capabilities to their global information management solutions.

Enterprise-wide structured content initiatives are most effective when they take into account the needs of some of their least technical, but most valuable content contributors -- the subject matter experts. Ignore the daily work habits and common tools of this group and your initiative is sure to suffer.

"We have to know about our customers better because by 2012, it's likely that 75% of the content we interact with will be delivered to us based on what is known about us." says Whit Andrews, Vice President of Enterprise Search at Gartner.

The latest version of SDL Trisoft – Trisoft 3.7 - has just been released, and if the UK-based vendor of this Component Content Management (CCM) system has got it right, then this solution will dramatically increase the speed and quality of targeted technical writing.

Responding to the need of companies to provide customized content to users in their own language and over the web, Trisoft 3.7 has a number of new feature.

With out-of-the-box DITA functionality, this solution gives companies the ability to handle thousands of variations in technical content that can be integrated dynamically and according to customer needs.

Component Content Management (CCM), the technology that allows enterprises to manage content as componentized chunks of information rather than docs or webpages, has just expanded. Generally being a domain of small, niche software vendors, CCM is now welcoming ECM vendors and large digital publishing companies with open arms. The expansion not only brings companies of various sizes together, it also potentially brings XML to the masses.

"Component content management has traditionally been the purview of the technical industry, but increasingly organizations are adopting DITA and CCM to create sales and marketing, policies and procedures, and regulatory material," notes Ann Rockley, lead analyst for The XML & Component Content Management Report 2009.

Some key points found in the report:

• IBM is building a strategic presence witnessed by its recent integration of DITA with IBM FileNet Content Manager in partnership with Quark XML Author
• Microsoft has signaled an interest in the space with the promotion of Intelligent Content Framework
• Open Source options are now available through Alfresco via DocZone and Componize
• Adobe and Quark have moved publishing from technical XSL-FO (XML formatting language) to high end digital media delivery
• EMC and Mark Logic have taken content retrieval to new levels with intelligent XQuery and dynamic delivery

As Analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe puts it, “The involvement of enterprise focused vendors is bringing about a profound change, and buyers of XML/CCM technology will need to review their own strategies accordingly.”

With more and more organizations taking global content management and localization more seriously, the race for the best translation management solution is on.

Most recently, a new solution by Vasont and Lionbridge made it to the market. The challenge here is not only to provide an efficient solution for managing and translating content, but also to translate the importance of global content management to customers.

Vasont Systems, a provider of component content management solutions, integrated its Vasont Content Management System (CMS) with Freeway, the Web-based translation management platform from Lionbridge Technologies, Inc.

Lionbridge is known for its globalization efforts and translation, testing and development outsourcing services. This direct integration between the Vasont CMS and Freeway provides clients with a more efficient method of translating content and monitoring the status of translation projects.

Using the Vasont Translation Package with the Freeway integration, customers can initiate translation quotes or translation projects to Freeway directly from the Vasont interface.

Content and status information are automatically sent back and forth between the Vasont CMS and Freeway during the translation process. Clients can monitor the status and history of high-level projects, or of detailed subprojects for each language, using Vasont’s new translation window.

Ah, yes, another wonderful Webinar for the viewing pleasure of those who are curious about how technology can help businesses grow and function more efficiently.

This upcoming Webinar by XyEnterprise, Component Content Management In Action: Delivering on the Promise of XML, focuses on how businesses can utilize XML and structured content in combination with frameworks (such as DITA and S1000D), processes and technologies to create and realize value.

CMS Watch has a new report out that many organizations are sure to want to read. It’s called The XML & Component Content Management Report 2008 and it’s review of the leading Component Content Management vendors and XML tools on the market today. With all the conversations happening around DITA today and the number of vendors coming out with XML-based solutions, you need to understand the market well to know how to work within it.

Refresh Software has just released an updated version of its proprietary component content management offering.

Woven together by DITA, XML and web publishing experts, SR2 7.1 utilizes an SOA-based J2EE content repository. It installs directly into the IT back-end and sports a simple interface for front-end users.

SR2 also:

• Automates the development of technical documentation
• Makes it easy to author content on a hosted interface, or via Microsoft Word
• Enables XML content publishing across the Web, or on intranets, internet, RSS and portals
• Deploys DITA-based content architecture for topic-related authoring and content repurposing
• Supports any programming language using Web services or SQL, including .NET and Java

The updated offering also supports data migration, hot deploy external triggers, back-end search, and — for the aesthetes — customized WYSIWYG buttons.

JustSystems is hosting a complimentary webinar called “Fast-track Single Sourcing: The Road to DITA Success,” part of its XML Advisor Webinar series.

The event takes place on Thursday, 25 October at 1 PM Eastern. Attendees will learn how to build a business case for the Darwin Information Type Architecture (DITA), currently the standard for XML-based and single-source (a.k.a. component) content management.

You’ll also learn how to define topic templates, conditional text and metadata; considerations for specialization and training end users; and how to customize DITA output or create a tool checklist.

Lots of handy-dandy stuff. Register here.

In.vision and Vasont have just developed a product integration relationship to better address the needs of publishing clients.

In.vision is a software provider for enterprise XML authoring; Vasont builds single-source ECM systems that help manage and store multilingual content.

In particular, the pairing will yield an extension that allows Xpress Author for Microsoft Word users to access, deposit, search for and reuse content kept in Vasont databases. Word users will also be able to build XML documents that include sophisticated data structures (think DITA) for multi-channel publishing.

CMS Watch and the Rockley Group recently teamed up to create a more comprehensive CMS industry report.

To aid in this venture they are releasing a call to Component Content Management users to participate in a web-based survey. Those who complete it may receive a free hour of consulting from the content-savvy pair.

In an ongoing effort to refine (and define) single-source content management, Vasont releases Vasont 11, the latest version of the powerful solution intended to help businesses better organize multi-tiered, structured and repetitive but multi-lateral information.

Sound convoluted? Baby, you don’t know the half of it.

Analyst firm CMS Watch and consulting services vendor The Rockley Group have announced plans to team up on a new CMS industry report. The collaboration will produce the forthcoming “Content Component Management Report” and will focus on and evaluate Content Component Management technology, otherwise known as single-sourcing content management technology.

This is an area of the CMS landscape that has historically not been well understood, nor broadly discussed. Read on for the report details.