Nuxeo Document Management
Building on each organization's strengths, open source document management vendor Nuxeo (news, site) and open source Web CMS vendor Hippo (news, site) have joined forces for the greater good of information management. The result is an integration, built upon the CMIS standard, that bridges the document management / Web CMS gap, surfacing Nuxeo-based structured content via Hippo-managed websites.

More than an Acronym

Typically, content from the Nuxeo Document Management framework is managed and presented either via Nuxeo's own product interfaces or via custom applications built on the Nuxeo platform.

The new CMIS-based product integration allows internal business content to be published via a Hippo website or portal without taking it out of the Nuxeo document management context. In other words, you can now forget about duplicating documents. Thanks to the bridge to the Web CMS system, the documents' content histories, workflows and metadata are maintained across systems.

"The content management acronyms ECM and WCM ...are clearly in separate, but complementary domains,” said Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca. “Nuxeo’s Enterprise Content Management solutions address content-centric business processes that are internal to an organization. Web Content Management communicates information online, to both internal and external audiences.”

Nuxeo and Hippo share some common DNA, as they are both open source, Java-based, CMIS-compliant platforms. The partnership is a natural fit and good news for developers and customers in both communities.

2011-06-nuxeo-arch.jpeg

Nuxeo EP -- Core Content Services Supporting Content-centric Applications 

The Success of CMIS

CMIS stands for Content Management Interoperability Services and its raison d'être is to define a common language and vendor-neutral formats for enterprise content management and other information management systems to interact with each other. The effort to construct the specification came to phase one culmination with CMIS v1.0 being ratified as an OASIS standard in April 2010. 

Many vendors participated in the standard's development including Alfresco, Day Software (now Adobe), EMC, IBM, Nuxeo, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle and others. CMIS commonly enables document exchange between more internally focused Enterprise CMS systems and more publicly oriented Web CMS solutions, though there are many use cases found in practice.

Learning Opportunities

The CMIS technical committee continues to evolve the standard, with version 1.1 on the horizon. And the Apache Chemistry project is progressing a set of open source CMIS tools, including client libraries for Java, Python, PHP and .NET, and a SaaS development server for testing purposes.

Nuxeo, Hippo -- On the Move

Taken separately, both Nuxeo and Hippo also stand alone quite well. Back in March, Hippo launched their Web CMS v7.5, introducing drag-and-drop layout functionality, enhanced localization and channel management. The product, born of the multi-lingual Dutch environment has strong multi-language and multi-site support, and is a natural team player, with a flexible REST API supporting light-weight integration with other systems.

Meanwhile, Nuxeo recently donated its CMIS-compliant content repository to the Eclipse Foundation, enhanced direct integration with the desktop via a WSS connector, and released an add-on bringing digital signature support to their core Nuxeo Document Management platform. The feature provides a secure electronic method for signing and verifying PDF files in Nuxeo DM, based on the X.509 standard.

Stay tuned here as we keep you posted on the developments of Nuxeo, Hippo and the wonderful world of Content Interoperability. We know you can't wait.