Welcome to the Astoria Rich Media WebLog

Fully mobilizing rich media through content management

2010-01-15T21:58:22Z

Mobility trends are clear and undeniable, it is not just that the global market for mobile devices is now measured in the multiple billions, but also that the next generation of mobile devices has gained traction at a remarkable rate. While smart phones only account for slightly more than 15% of mobile devices worldwide, that’s 15% of several billion, which is itself a pretty respectable number. In the long run, it will be interesting to see the dynamics between terminal devices with access to SaaS applications, vs. smart phones that provide processing services on the device itself. In both cases there is a significant content play since the main use of a smart phone or SaaS feature phone is data-centric, rather than voice-centric applications. Content not only needs to be mobilized, it needs mobilization across a broad range of media deliverables. The whole point of a content management system is to control complex information resources (including integration into back-end systems), and deliver the right information at the right time, and more often than not, to a mobile device. For field service personnel that require access to complex rich media information, this implies the content system needs to manage virtualization (doesn’t matter what the access device looks like, the information should always look and act the same), and synchronization (the fact that I’ve accessed and perhaps changed my files while on a mobile device should not result in multiple versions of the same file). This, of course, is in addition to baseline mobile requirements such as security, compliance with IT governance, etc.

The fact that information resources can be meta-tagged and categorized via some form of vertical ontology (that is, tagged and bagged), and have this done independent of the media type, means that when a field worker looks for information, the content management platform becomes a mobile enabler. It doesn’t (and should not) matter what the media type is; video can be tagged and bagged, just like text documents, graphics, .wav files, essentially any resource that has relevant information can be organized and stored at the component level, and assembled on the fly in response to a query (e.g. “what is the proper procedure for replacing the armature platter on an MRI Scanner?”). Having a medical/technology ontology that categorizes tagged and bagged information resources means the field worker receives a full blown rich media response to this query: this can include a text description of the procedure, a video tutorial, graphics that can be exploded and rotated, a voice walk through, and so on.

In this context, a component content management system become a mobilization platform for rich media enterprise applications, and this can also be expanded to include supply chain partners that may feed information resources into an assembled product field guide. The combination of mobility requirements and the drive towards rich media is breathing new life into the content management domain across a broad range of vertical markets.

End-user content and the closed feedback loop

2009-12-15T21:22:46Z

Once a sale has been made, the customer has a limited range of interaction points with the vendor. There is the product or service itself, there is the documentation that supports the product (and more frequently delivered on-line rather than hard copy), there is the monthly bill, and there is the customer support center.

In most companies all these elements are treated separately from a process and personnel point of view. Customer support rarely interacts with product management, product marketing, documentation groups, billing, or sales, yet all these groups revolve around the same core: the customer. Sales is overtly focused on customers, product marketing focuses on customers, but normally on an aggregate level, product management interacts with select customers to define requirements for product roadmaps (unless they’ve implemented crowd-sourcing, which most companies have not), billing interacts with customers on a monthly basis, documentation rarely interacts directly with the consumer (in spite of the importance of the deliverable), and customer support deals with customers on an exception basis, when something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

Every one of these interactions provides product or service vendors with an opportunity to get a step ahead of the customer and anticipate requirements (and in all fairness, most people do take their customers seriously), the problem is that all these groups are probably dealing with the exact same customer, gaining multiple perspectives on incredibly valuable information, yet a holistic and integrated view that factors in all organizational facets in the context of the customer is rarely available. The best example of this is probably the customer support center. Why? Most people are calling because they’re having a problem; the product doesn’t work, the documentation isn’t clear, something is not working, etc. This is an ideal opportunity to gain meaningful insight because the customer is dealing with the vendor on an emotional level; as a vendor you’re actually much more likely to get unambiguous feedback from someone who’s upset, and of all the organizational groups, Customer Support is most likely to take the hit.

In most instances we find the core problem is ambiguity in documentation; complex products that are poorly documented can be a nightmare for the customer, which draws a direct correlation between the documentation and customer support groups, who rarely, if ever, interact. This is another push for a fully integrated rich media deliverable, pictures speak louder than words, moving pictures speak even louder, and providing a direct feedback loop to customer support through the documentation deliverable (which is quite possible in an on-line model) closes the focal gap that keeps most companies guessing about their customer intentions.

Content for the Mobile Enterprise

2009-09-15T19:46:43Z

The aggregate trends for mobilization of rich media continue to show strong growth, despite a lingering global recession. The drivers on the surface are obvious; the number of mobile devices continues to expand both in terms of smart phones and in terms of cloud-enabled feature phones, Apple has gotten hundreds of millions of people all wound up on the sexier aspects of mobility (primarily through a much friendlier user interface), an entire generation (actually multiple generations) have moved their lives on-line and are now moving to a complete mobile paradigm, and the underlying framework for this is a rich media experience as a core driver. Pushing pretty pictures around with your finger is a lot more interesting than typing in arcane instructions at a command line processor, and the fact that Apple has gone from zero to 10% market share in a very short interval attests to the fact that consumers prefer their information in pretty, mobile, bite-sized chunks.

There are a number of trends that will be affected by this continued shift; social networks (including business social networks) are and will continue to have a huge effect on how content is packaged and delivered, consumers who are now used to a very user friendly mobile experience will expect the same type of easy interface while access mobile applications in a corporate setting (since presumably most of them have jobs), which has a completely different dynamic from pure-play consumer interactions. Security is a huge issue (as is privacy on the consumer side), virtualization and synchronization are a baseline requirement for mobile content, and require precise collaboration between mobile content enablers and mobile infrastructure enablers, most of whom are dealing with their own particular, separate ecosystems. Continued focus on content standards such as DITA need to expand to encompass the entire range of media types (video, graphics, speech, text, etc.) while also expanding to include the inherent security concerns associated with a mobile framework.

Setting the value of content

2009-05-07T16:59:31Z

When mobile services were first introduced on a global level, one of the deployment issues that received a lot of attention was whether or not to charge for enhanced network services (that is, anything above basic connectivity). Most carriers at the time were looking for rapid adoption, and were adamant about giving everything away. I worked as a consultant at that time, and my consistent push back was no, you have to charge something, even if it’s only a symbolic amount. If you create an initial mindset that enhanced services are free, you’ll never be able to charge consumers for anything in the future. And now, several years later, the on-line and mobile content space is having the same conundrum.

There have been a lot of business models developed and deployed over the years to try and commercialize the vast amounts of on-line content that is continuously generated by professional authors, the news media, and consumers. Most commercialization models are either ad hoc pricing (popular with the analyst communities), subscription pricing (popular with the news media), advertising based content delivery (also media as well as User Generated Content), as well as, of course, free content (like this blog).

One of the core challenges content creators face is driven by the need for utility, uniqueness, and monetization. If I’m a market research professional with a large organization, and I need a report on a very specific topic in a hurry, I can trot over to an analyst site and cough up $3000 for a copy of exactly what I need. The information has high utility, it is unique, and I have the means to purchase it. However, if I’m doing research for myself, then that $3000 is coming out of my own pocket, and given the opportunity cost of $3000 (for example, a 65 inch LCD monitor), I am much more inclined to take my time and try to find a free version of the same material. If I’m lucky enough to find the free version, it doesn’t matter if it’s supported by advertising; clicking on the ads are optional, the important thing is that I’ve found what I want at a much lower price point.

This utility/uniqueness model works when the information is a reflection of extensive research and analysis done by experienced professionals. The problems facing the news media is that most of what they cover is current events, with limited analysis. If you want a quick and dirty overview of swine flu, you can find unlimited sources of information without having to pay a penny; therefore anyone trying to charge for it is one click away from being out of luck. They have utility, but they lack uniqueness.

User generated content faces an even higher hurdle; the barriers to entry are essentially flat, the rate of content generation is staggering, and as I’ve mentioned in prior blogs, very little of the information begin created is organized or tagged, and is therefore going to be very difficult to find or syndicate. This ecosystem is then further muddied by folks who are trying to create device specific readers such as Kindle, or the recent announcement by News Corp that they are looking to create a delivery device specifically for their own content. The default access device for any network based content is going to be a smart phone; you can build devices like the Kindle, but if you can get the same content on an iPhone, why bother with a new device that only serves a single purpose?

The only area that is a solid bet for direct monetization is high value information written by experienced professionals (utility and uniqueness). User generated content and news can generate revenue through advertising, but it s a secondary effect (that is, people are not paying for the content directly). Content creators in this group will still make money, but it requires a much broader reach since the click through rates are a small percentage of people who view the content. The more interesting challenge is how to apply monetization schemes to the 7th mass media channel (see the post from 3.3.09 for more detail). I will address that in my next post.

Reaching the tipping point

2009-05-05T04:40:35Z

What are the implications for the creation, management, and analysis of rich media content as the entrenchment of mobile access drives the world towards a haiku communications paradigm? Several items….

First, vastly higher volumes of data; User Generated Content (UGC) is already creating billions of transactional content snippets per day, each with a payload that needs to be categorized, cross-referenced, tracked, and subsequently processed for analytic manipulation.

Second, a more stringent need for analytic applications geared towards the peculiar nature of mobile computing. Because mobile devices generate dynamic IP addresses, the only consistent way to track the source of mobile data (which is needed not just for schematic purposes, but also for data syndication) is through the phone number, which carriers protect like the family jewels.

Third, a genuine and wide-spread need for data abstraction and simplification; we are rapidly approaching the point where petabytes of data are the operational baseline framework (some companies like eBay are already past this point). How do you interpret and manage that level of data? Tables, columns and rows are useless, the numbers by themselves are becoming so large they’re hard to grasp; the further this trend proceeds, the less likely business types will be able to get their arms around what they have.

So what we have at the moment are terabytes of content being generated by billions of users in increasingly smaller pieces, no particular emerging standard for categorization, and a level of complexity that limits understanding of the information to highly skilled data analysts. This is also no longer a problem that affects only large companies, even mid-range and smaller companies are being inundated with higher volumes of smaller data sets, and they literally have no way to interpret what they have.

The folks who have the highest need for actionable information (those with a bottom line responsibility such as sales and marketing), are forced to wait days (if they’re lucky) to get access to processed information from their analytics team (assuming they work for a company big enough to afford an analytics team). There also appears to be a significant gap between the results claimed by analytic (and by association, content management) vendors, and what those vendor’s customers see as results.

The core driver for both content management and analytics applications is therefore likely to be data visualization; the higher the volume of information, the more urgent the need for abstraction. This not only allows a better grasp, but it brings manipulation of the underlying information into the hands of people who are in the best position to benefit.

The Mobility of Rich Media Content

2009-03-03T22:36:19Z

The mobile internet has been defined as the 7th mass media channel. For those unfamiliar with the expression, the prior six mass media channels are print, recordings, cinema, radio, television, and the internet, which is distinct from the mobile internet. What makes this particularly interesting are the usage numbers; 900 million personal computers in use at the end of 2007, 1.3 billion internet users, but over 3.3 billion mobile subscribers (including 798 million WAP users- the mobile version of the internet, and 2.4 billion people using their phones for SMS texting). Not only the usage numbers for mobile internet far larger, they are growing far faster than the numbers for the traditional (PC-centric) internet.

Why do these numbers matter? Because they indicate a permanent shift in how people receive and send information. It’s a reasonably safe assumption that if you’re reading this, you have a PC somewhere, which you access frequently. It’s an ironclad assumption you have a cell phone, which is always with you, and always on. Is your PC always with you and always on? Unlikely, even if it’s a small laptop.

In addition to the always on/always with you convenience of mobile devices, the other core influence for the mobile experience is the size of display real-state on a mobile device; the small footprint forces efficiency in visual communications. Combine that with text limitations of 140 characters per SMS message, and you have literally billions of people who are evolving to a lifestyle where they only receive information in bite-sized chunks.

Because mobile devices are now the dominant information tool for the mass-market, there is also a corollary shift underway in how information is created, managed, and delivered. This is one area where rich media component content management systems are actually ahead of the curve; these systems were designed against standards that demand a minimalist efficiency (such as DITA), and are set up on the assumption that fast access and pithy delivery are the key drivers.

Similar to the social sites need for a hierarchical rich media content management infrastructure, the mobile internet requires structured access to broad stores of information, but delivered with a more condensed payload, a faster cycle time, and lots more potential for re-use and syndication. Traditional CMS systems are going to find themselves in a world of hurt with this new model, while component content management vendors are going to be facing a near Greenfield opportunity.

Rich Media Standards for Social Networks

2009-02-19T17:26:22Z

One of the good news/bad news developments playing out with social networks revolves around the vast amount of data being created and uploaded every minute. On one level the model works; sites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. are pulling in members at enviable rates, but more importantly, the members are active users of a broad range of rich media technologies. User generated content is the key driver for success for social networks, and it is being generated in staggering volumes. That’s the good news.
The not so good news is that this content is poorly organized; the vast majority of people uploading rich media files onto social networks haven’t got the slightest idea of what metadata or vertical taxonomies are, much less how to classify what is being uploaded. While taxonomies or metadata may sound like wonk-speak to most people, they are a core requirement if anyone plans to find anything on a social network website.
By comparison, most content generated in a corporate setting is created by professionals who categorized the information, either manually, or using applications delivered by content management systems. This works because most corporations have a vertical taxonomy that is specific to their use of language; pharmaceutical companies, chemical manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, etc. all use language that is specific to what they do. The information is categorized according to the organizational rules for that taxonomy, on the assumption that easy access is the key deliverable for any content generated.
This model works fairly well for text-centric content in a structured corporate setting, but less so in an unstructured social setting, and even less so for rich media such as videos, audio files, ad hoc web pages (think of anything on Facebook). The social scenario is further exacerbated by the fact that users create rich media content, upload it to their computer, then upload it again to a (e.g.) photo site like flicker or photobucket, where is then shared far and wide across a broad range of applications and networks, and/or is subsequently syndicated.
So the challenge here is how can rich media be categorized in a semi-automatic fashion, using tools that are easy enough to use that any Facebook user will intuitively start categorizing their data, ideally without even knowing they’re doing it? And this only covers the search angle within the first place the data lands after it leaves the user’s computer. How about all those folks trying to syndicated videos, where there are multiple layers of use and re-use? Using distribution tools like RSS feeds to syndicate data across a broad range of integrated social networks is like firing into the dark.
And finally, who is in the best position to drive the development and implementation of a standard to define categorization of rich media? It won’t be the end users; they’ll just move on if things don’t work the way they’re supposed to. Standards bodies are a viable choice, several like OASIS are already driving initiatives across a broad range of content schemas like DITA; this would be a natural fit for them. However, the sector that really has its neck stuck out are the social networks; the development of categorization standards for social networks goes beyond basic exchange of information (for example, Open Social), and needs to focus on core value deliverables such as search and syndication. Social network’s value is in their content, that’s the whole point of the network. If millions of users can’t find anything, and can’t find a graceful way to distribute what’s been uploaded across all the multiple social sites to which most of them belong, the entire thing will eventually collapse under its own weight.

Further validation of SaaS and DITA as market driver

2008-02-15T21:48:41Z

SDL’s acquisition of Idiom confirms and accelerates some core, strategic shifts within the content management ecosystem. More than anything, it appears to be another in a series of market validations that Component Content Management (CCM), driven by the widespread adoption of DITA/XML is becoming an increasingly viable strategy for both the SMB and Fortune 1000 markets. This is an area where Astoria Software has not only been a long-time advocate of both DITA and SaaS, but has been steadily pushing the market towards the concept of Component Content Management. SDL’s most recent acquisition is a welcome endorsement of these core content management concepts; not only is SDL’s focus on this area becoming much sharper, as evidenced by its recent string of acquisitions, the Idiom acquisition is another step towards SDL’s longer-term goal of being at the top of the food chain when it comes to CCM.

There is some thought among analysts who track this space that the next step for SDL would be the acquisition of an XML editor as part of a fully integrated solution. This seems like a low-probability event; part of SDL’s success comes from its agnostic approach to vendor authoring tools (similar to Astoria’s). Once you commit to one vendor, you’ve pretty much shut out the rest of them, and with XML capabilities becoming an integral part of most authoring offerings, there’s no reason to do this.

The other technology implication in this acquisition is SDL’s move toward SaaS as a delivery method; Idiom has a strong SaaS offering (better than SDL’s), so if their intention was to accelerate the ramp for a SaaS product, snapping up Idiom just saved SDL 18 to 24 months of development effort for a very reasonable price. As mentioned earlier, this is another in a series of acquisitions for SDL as they try to 1) reposition to become a serious contender in the global delivery of on-demand component content management and 2) position defensively against LionBridge, the only player in their immediate ecosystem that is bigger and potentially a threat. Tactically, Idiom will be a jagged little pill for SDL to swallow, but strategically they’re definitely well positioned for the future.

Most importantly, this is another in a long series of validations of the increasing acceptance of both DITA as an authoring standard, and on-demand as a delivery mechanism, both areas where Astoria has long been a driving force in the market. From our point of view we’ve had very good working relations with both SDL and Idiom, having the two entities combined into a global, SaaS-enabled partner who has deep DITA knowledge is not only a boon to Astoria’s SaaS offering, but to the entire documentation function across multiple, global industries as well.

If you agree or disagree, or would just like to comment, please feel free to visit my blog at http://www.astoriablogs.com/rich-media/ , or drop me an e-mail at dortega@astoriasoftware.com.

Social Networks and Manufacturing Collaboration

2007-11-26T17:29:49Z

New technologies that are consumer friendly have always run into opposition from IT groups in large corporations. Initially, there was widespread resistance to allowing internet access (oddly enough, a lot of companies still restrict access), and each successive generation of new technology runs into the same barrier. Is it fear of the unknown? Grow up. Don’t trust your employees? Fire them and hire ones you do trust. As we’ve seen over and over again, all technology eventually makes it into the corporate realm, it’s just a matter of when and how gracefully.

Given this predisposition, it’s interesting to watch the social networks dance around the enterprise domain. The socialization of the enterprise does not mean introducing the consumer version of a social network into an enterprise framework, but rather taking the baseline concept of collaboration and anchoring it around a dynamic content paradigm with a specific objective in mind. Projects that are enterprise-wide in scope, such as a new product launch, cut across multiple divisions within a company. In theory engineering, marketing, sales, training, and customer support should be tightly coupled.

The current best in class performers can provide a tight integration for this type of production workflow, but in nearly every instance the application of the process is linear. This approach would be ideal if companies produced one product, one time. This, of course, does not happen; companies are constantly introducing new products and/or services, as well as expanding their existing offerings with feature enhancements, new services, etc. Because the nature of development and release of new products is inherently dynamic, the processes that drive and support this cycle need to be dynamic as well. Large groups of people are constantly collaborating to create better/faster/cheaper products, and more often than not they’re slowed down by the lack of a true collaboration solution that allows dynamic functional integration. That is where the collaborative aspect of social networks comes into play, and the catalyst for this is the associated integration of dynamic content management.

How do you socialize existing content resources within a corporation? A really great example is currently playing out with the British Library. The British Library recently extended it’s presence into Facebook, by taking a vast repository of information that had been “hermetically sealed” and making it available to a wide range of users, with information delivered in the context of a social exchange that can be on-going or event driven. This is a very cool, very forward-thinking approach to managing your content resources, and allows a new generation of users to breath life into a content repository that might have otherwise become marginalized. So what is the corporate corollary to this? Think about the vast content resources that are sitting in most corporations, all locked up in tight little silos. Imagine if all those content resources could be re-purposed dynamically in response to collaborative requirements that are inherent in any product development cycle. Allowing full access to content repositories in the context of a fully integrated collaborative workflow could bring the same re-energizing benefits to major manufacturing companies that the British Library is currently enjoying.

Adobe on Fast Forward

2007-11-13T22:54:33Z

Adobe’s unexpected announcement of a new CEO triggers a number of interesting questions, the most relevant of which is probably, what next? Shantanu Narayen is taking the reins of company that’s in very good shape; they’ve got strong revenue growth and a steady stream of new product launches, essentially a company that seems to be hitting on all cylinders.

So what is next? There is of course, the need to go mobile in a hurry, which has already been covered by a number of other bloggers, as well as the need to move their massive desktop applications into an on-demand delivery model. Adobe has already stated their intention to do so (over the next ten years), and took an opening foray by acquiring Virtual Ubiquity and making Buzzword available for free.

Another area that will require a strategic focus is not only taking the company’s applications off the desktop, but embedding them deeply into the production workflow of their customers. An on-demand application set facilitates this, but offering a product like Buzzword as a SaaS product is a long way from offering an enterprise grade product like Framemaker as a SaaS product (which could explain the ten year time frame).

So how to shortcut a ten year conversion process? The real issues revolve around use and perception. Astoria, for example, offers a product that operates both as a perpetual and as a hosted (SaaS) product. From an end users usage point of view, the products are indistinguishable (the SaaS version costs significantly less and deploys in weeks rather than years, but that’s a separate argument). Assuming that Adobe want to transition their application set into the cloud, an interim step could be to provide a seamless integration into a SaaS CMS that is optimized to deal with rich media applications. This enables re-use across the enterprise (create once, re-use lots of times) and would allow them to jump their conversion process forward by years, at least from the perspective of the majority of users of the application’s output.

Rich Media, Social Networks, Dynamic Content, and On-Demand

2007-10-26T21:47:47Z

There’s an interesting confluence that’s just starting to gain traction in the enterprise. This is the intersection of rich media, social networking, dynamic content management and the on-demand business model.

Rich media applications are already in play on some level in nearly every corporation, and although rich media has already made good inroads, its use is still siloed due to the way sophisticated rich media creation tools are used. The biggest footprint here is probably Adobe. Right now most of their apps are installed on a PC/Mac, and while they are good at sharing information between Adobe applications, they still lack an effective integration strategy into production workflow systems. Because of this, most of their deployment remains at the desktop. They have announced a move to SaaS over the next 10(!) years, so at least they’re moving in the right direction.

We’re also starting to see large corporations moving into the social networking sites, primarily as a means to gain due diligence on a prospective employee, as well as to reach into a demographic target for sales, recruitment, etc.

What I’m not seeing a lot of (yet) is thinking about how to design and implement the corporate equivalent of a social networking site. Social networking sites exist for information and entertainment, they have great collaboration tools, and millions of people who aren’t geeky enough to build their own website can create something quickly, easily, and for free. The same type of rich media and collaboration tools applied to a large group of people with a specific objective, e.g launching a new product, could have a huge impact on how manufacturers build, ship and support their products.

The true gating factor is how all of this fast changing information is going to be created, managed, and delivered across multiple media types. Rich, dynamic media is well-suited toward management by an object-based Content Management System (CMS). All data elements, regardless of media type, can be stored as objects accessed through pointers. Unlike a relational-based CMS, there are no referential integrity limitations, the system scales seamlessly, and it is designed for constantly changing content. The fact that rich media content is created in a silo becomes a non-issue once it hits the CMS.

What ties this all together is on-demand delivery. Any product going through a complex production lifecycle requires component-level integration of information across multiple functional groups, and ongoing distribution of updated information across internal and external touch points. This is an ideal business model for an on-demand environment. Functional groups that are spread out or outsourced can easily collaborate on specific objectives, providing detailed information (across any media type) into a repository that becomes the single source of truth. The repository subsequently assembles rich media information on the fly to employees in support, training, sales, and marketing, as well as to channel partners and customers. This way, the company speaks to its customers and channel partners with a unified voice, ensuring information is always current and consistent, regardless of touchpoint.

Adobe gets SaaSy

2007-10-19T19:57:20Z

Adobe recently announced the availability of a browser based authoring tool through the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and the release of a beta version of Share, an on-line documentation collaboration tool. This seems like an odd foray for Adobe, particularly on the heels on the launch of their Technical Communications Suite. In an earlier blog I had commented on the fact that even though Adobe has delivered a very robust and efficient set of tools targeting the technical communications market they still failed to deliver a set of tools that addresses the need of a technical communicator to integrate their information into a production workflow. The acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and the release of the share product is clearly not aimed at the needs of the technical communicator. In fact, it appears it is not geared towards business requirements at all. The issue is that Adobe is touting this as an on-demand offering for content creation and content collaboration. Content creation and collaboration are two of the critical elements required for a fully integrated solution for technical communicators; however these products do not even come close to addressing these needs and are likely to be light even for a consumer offering.

Adobe appears to understand the concept of an on-demand product offering but fails to connect at an operational level with the process requirements of their constituency. It was presumed that this was a shot across Microsoft’s bow, targeting the Office Suite, but as others have pointed out, it is highly unlikely someone is going to ditch Word and go with Buzzword. However, if their target is the Facebook crowd, this then starts to look like a headfake. Feint towards Microsoft (the obvious target), while sneaking up behind Google, and make a move towards the consumer market.

Magic or Illusion?

2007-10-05T17:13:36Z

The folks at Gartner have come up with another iteration of their “Magic” quadrant for ECM vendors, with what appears to be a very short-sighted perspective—an intentional exclusion of SaaS vendors as part of the market for content management software. This naturally begs the question, why not include them? A big part of an analysts firm’s focus should be on what’s coming, as opposed to what has already happened. We routinely brief a wide variety of analysts on what trends we see in development and why, and nearly all of them 1) see the compelling value of SaaS as a delivery model and 2) understand that this is the direction in which the market for technology services is headed.

While the market for SaaS-based content management is smaller than the traditional (that is, rack-mounted, behind the firewall, “supported” by IT) CMS system, the overall trend we see is that the SaaS model is growing very quickly, while the traditional model has slowed down significantly. More importantly, the growth we’re seeing is not only in the historical SaaS buyer market (small and medium business), but in Fortune 500 companies; 90% of our SaaS customers are in the Fortune 500, which clearly indicates this is an enterprise-grade play. It also indicates that SaaS as a delivery model has come of age, companies in the F500 are all multi-billion global players, and the decision to switch to this model is not made lightly.

Information on market trends and players can be filtered and categorized any way you want, but the bottom line is the one with a dollar figure on it, and in that context, SaaS-based content management has definitely arrived.

Adobe's Technical Communication Suite--Getting Closer

2007-09-25T20:54:58Z

This morning Adobe announced the availability of their Technical Communication Suite. While the offering is broad and appears to be tightly integrated, its still just shy of where it needs to be in terms of addressing critical requirements for true enterprise deployment.

After years of evolution, growth, and major acquisitions, Adobe still appears to be focused on a desktop paradigm. The Technical Communication Suite press announcement references FrameMaker 8, RoboHelp 7, Captivate 3, and Acrobat 3-D v8, however, when they reference workflow, they refer to workflow integration between the products in the TC Suite. This is not to be confused with documentation workflow integration that tracks the production lifecycle that is found in most major manufacturing companies.

For example, all of Astoria’s customers are heavy users of technical documentation products, and a significant percentage of them are FrameMaker users. The problem for FrameMaker users is that they work in isolated silos, which is one of the characteristics of a desktop solution. They may have workflow integration with other Adobe products, but they lack integration into the broader production workflow.

Astoria’s customers are Forbes Global 2000 companies, and these companies routinely deal with global manufacturing issues. The technical documentation team for any product line produced by any of these companies is typically spread out across the world. What is required is full visibility into the documentation production process for teams that may be spread out across 24 time zones, operating in 30 languages, and delivering documentation to over 100 countries. The desktop-centric model just doesn't work in this context.

If Adobe plans to succeed in the enterprise, they have to take a much broader view of how technical documentation teams work by moving beyond the creation perspective. They need to adopt a perspective that encompasses the entire production cycle, which by default means they need to incorporate a robust, muscular content management system that is delivered on-demand and optimized for rich media. Once they make this leap, they will move from ruling the desktop to ruling the documentation production flow.

Demanding On-Demand

2007-09-24T20:49:11Z

I’ve gotten some comments on the last several rich media postings, and the conversation always moves into the specifics of what people are doing now, and what they plan to do in the near future in terms of how they handle product-centric information, regardless of media type. People are intrigued by the concept of integrating full-motion video with text, or 3D images with Flash, but the conversation often runs into a delivery method filter.

A number of large companies with reputations for being otherwise innovative in terms of their products are hard-wired to the notion that the application that manages all the rich media content needs to be rack-mounted, behind the firewall, supported by IT, blah, blah, blah. A very 90s view of how technology should be deployed.

Considering that most product information for large corporations is produced by teams that operate all over the world, how could they not adopt an on-demand model? In the old world, ten people working on a document would work sequentially (make my edits, attach the document to a e-mail, on to the next person in the chain, etc). In the on-demand version, all ten people are working simultaneously on the same document (which can include all the cool rich media input), everyone sees what the others are doing, as a result they all arrive at the end-point at the same time and in a much shorter period of time.

On-demand delivery of a rich media content management system can also increase consistency in terms of how a company communicates with their customers. Everyone agrees on the need for a corporation to deliver a consistent customer experience. What information is available at the point of contact and how effectively it’s delivered define that customer experience. If all customer touchpoints have the same, constantly updated and integrated information source this synchs up Training, Field Services Support, Customer Support, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, etc.

On-Demand makes this model possible. Six key reasons to look at this:

- End-users get a steady stream of upgrades, delivered invisibly
- No more being held hostage to the whims of IT
- Expand or contract usage as needed, no more shelfware
- WAY lower cost of ownership, like 75% lower
- The entire industry is moving in this direction, whether they realize it or not
- Deployment time is measured in days, not months

The bottom line is that the entire market is already moving in this direction and it’s a huge upgrade no matter how you look at it. This will also allow companies to focus on their core competencies rather than on infrastructure interactions.