Content Management Matters ™

Open Text Corporation has announced a number of enhancements to its range of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Among these enhancements is a new offering that lets customers manage compliance rules for social computing capabilities like blogs, wikis and forums on websites, as well as a set of Web 2.0 collaboration tools that kick employee interaction up a notch.

Enterprise Content Management provider Open Text is diving deeper into content transactions by announcing a new solution called Transactional Content Processing (TCP). This new solution takes the company further into the world of business process management -- a place where content and transactions are tightly intertwined.

Despite the implied vulnerabilities, whether they be security or implementation-related, Web 2.0 technologies can help to redefine the Web as a platform to harness collective intelligence as well as to establish enterprise 2.0 applications that can improve user experiences, knowledge sharing and collaboration, and increase employee productivity.

Open Text is certainly setting their goals higher, but I suppose that's the point of a strategy.

Confronting the demands of the marketplace, Open Text will begin to provide a comprehensive set of new solutions. Looking beyond the traditional silo approach in which businesses address each application individually, Open Text has instead decided to take a "holistic approach for their Enterprise 2.0 aspirations".

FeedRoom Inc., a provider of Web video and digital media solutions and services, is getting cozier with Open Text's Artesia Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, broadening its use in order to better serve its growing client base.

Open Text, an enterprise content management vendor, announced a new software solution to manage critical process changes at refineries and chemical plants. They call it Livelink ECM – Management of Change solution.

When the updated version of Europe's records management software standards are ready for adoption in 2008, Open Text says it will be poised to deliver compliant solutions and assist customers with preparation.

Last month we reported that Open Text's data integration strategy rested on the shoulders of the Genio product, a technology they bought alongside the Hummingbird takeover in '06.

Now we get to see the finished article with the official release of Genio v7. This 64-bit information management application transforms, cleanses and directs structured and unstructured content from a range of repositories.

Featuring web service support and full content integration capabilities, Genio laughs in the face of incompatible system interfaces and proceeds to process content and digital assets from data marts, ERP systems, mainframe systems, CRM, and so on. (And, of course, from various content management frameworks.)

It's always nice when your blood, sweat and tears get recognized by the critics in your field. This is that time for Open Text.

Forrester Research has just named Open Text a global big player in its report, The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Content Management Suites, Q4 2007.

According to Forrester, Open Text was the only pure-play ECM software provider worthy to be called leader amongst the 11 companies researched.

60 criteria served as battering rams to gauge an enterprise content management system's quality.

Livelink ECM has long been the shining star in Open Text's suite, and it apparently shined brighter still on paper after the gleam Forrester gave it. "Open Text Livelink ECM shows great breadth and depth, with strong scoring in core ECM capabilities — document imaging, document management, records management, and content archiving — plus good support for web content management and digital asset management," the report reads.

That's a lot of bases to cover.

Congrats to Open Text. Being crowned King by the cold, hard analysts of the world has earned you a hat-tip, and maybe a few round of drinks, to boot.

Open Text announced their data integration tool Genio, adopted after the Hummingbird purchase in '06, will become a key part of incumbent content and data integration strategies.

At the LiveLinkUp 2007 user conference in Orlando last month, Open Text discussed the state of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market today, how it’s changed over the last year, and what the future holds. Consensus is that more customers are looking at the bigger picture of ECM.

As is well known by the readers of this site, Open Text concludes that ECM has become a key element of the information strategies of global organizations.

Ladies and gentlemen, Open Text is proud to announce the winner and finalists of the GlobalStar Awards contest. A contest that recognizes forward thinking companies in enterprise content management and occurs at the annual LiveLinkUp conference.

(drum roll please...)

Vital Path has just released a new version of its PathBuilder offering, in which vestiges of virtualization are used for the greater good: "in-place" records management (that's VP's specialty).

As impossible as it is to deny the importance of effective content and records management within an organization, it is just as difficult to deny the overwhelming lack of enthusiasm with which staff greet the idea of yet another system to learn and depend on.

One of the biggest headaches associated with eDiscovery is trying to manage loose electronic conversations taking place at or about the office. Email is hard enough, but instant messaging? Can you imagine...?

Thankfully, Open Text -- in partnership with FaceTime Communications -- have brought records management to the latter, hairier, medium. Meet the FaceTime IM Auditor.

The answer is buyer's remorse. The question is: what was the emotion felt by the senior leadership of all the organizations that invested in Hummingbird Enterprise just before their subsequent acquisition by ECM behemoth Open Text?

While most acquisition stories end with the acquiree going away never to be heard from again, this tale continues to have a happy ending for Hummingbird Enterprise customers.