Content Management Matters ™

So maybe it's not the end of Microsoft Outlook, but the news coming from Australia this week may be a sign of the changing times for the mighty Marketing machine. Google's Gmail application has kicked Outlook out of the schools by Australia's education sector. The New South Wales Department of Education has announced that Gmail will replace Outlook as the email application for over 1.3 million students.

A big win for Google, a big loss for Microsoft.

When Xobni was formed in 2006 by two graduate students, it sought to improve, enhance and otherwise fix Microsoft Outlook.

Now, it's taking its efforts even further with a new tool that plugs into Outlook. Their software, free and downloadable, indexes all the e-mail in Outlook and makes those messages easily searchable and readily available.

Seems like it was only yesterday we were talking about IBM introducing a Quickr Content Integrator that will help move organizations away from SharePoint. Oh, right it was yesterday...

Today, we see that IBM may actually be wise enough to tackle the SharePoint challenge from both ends. Another IBM partner is helping to bridge the integration gap with SharePoint. The partner -- Mainsoft. The solution -- SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes. If you are one those organizations that has a mixed technology environment -- and you are not alone -- this solution will go a long way to help.

Cemaphore Systems wants to reshape the way you manage and protect your e-mail content. Their MailShadow for Google Apps (MailShadowG) sets out to do so by immediately synchronizing email, calendars and contacts between Outlook, Exchange and Gmail, making it the first SaaS email continuity and disaster recovery solution utilizing the Google Apps cloud-based services.

With MailShadowG, these business-critical services are now affordable and accessible to end users, SMBs and enterprises.

Heads up United Kingdomites! Gradian Systems Ltd, a UK based enterprise security solutions company specializing in the messaging market, has teamed up with MessageGate Inc. signing a strategic agreement with the organization. This agreement is an exclusive UK distribution partnership between the two organizations that is intended to make MessageGate available in the UK. God save the queen!

MessageGate, a provider of enterprise email governance solutions, says that after doing extensive customer and market research, they have upgraded their product to include features to help customers better control email going into, out of, and across the organization.

Of late, law is getting a lot of help from the enterprise CMS side of the fence.

Interwoven has just announced the availability of a solution for the legal world, which just today also earned a committed pledge from Open Text and Microsoft.

But while OT and Microsoft focus on the document management and collaborative aspects of the lawful entanglement, Interwoven has devoted its energies to search. The new suite improves indexing for email, contracts and other documents, thereby simplifying the process for finding what you need.

Icing on the cake? Hierarchical access privileges enable use of the platform on mobile phones. (We're going to blame the iPhone for this one.)

This week Google announced the acquisition of Postini, a communications security and compliance company, for US$ 625 million.

Google has made inroads into the enterprise and higher education markets with notable additions to their Google Apps offering. But Postini's capabilities are an entirely different value proposition, making the search giant into a contender for the long, arduous battle with legal and corporate compliance concerns.

In order to help customers better manage their electronically stored information while also meeting internal and external governance requirements, EMC has delivered new versions of both their email and file system archiving solutions.

Web CMS and email marketing. What could be a more intuitive pairing? The question begs asking because until now, few have entertained the idea of consolidating the two.

Then again, few have been better poised than JL Halsey, which cleverly acquired Web CMS provider Hot Banana and EmailLabs, a marketing email solution, last year.

eDiscovery still got you down? Fear not, little enterprise. LiveOffice Corp debuts the Sentinel, an aptly-named web-based admin console that brings archived messages back from their long rest, right beneath your fingertips.