Summary of 'Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud' #spc12

Fresh from my first developer session at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, "Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud," I'm here to share a few of presenters Randy Drisgill and John Ross's tips for building a branded website in SharePoint 2013.

I was afraid entering the session that it would be code heavy, but was assured early on that there wasn't much code involved.

Agenda:

• Intro Branding On Premises and Online
• Low Effort branding
• Medium Effort branding
• High Effort branding
• SharePoint Online

Introduction

The talk begins with examples of branding, showing Microsoft logos that have changed over the years. Branding applies to all of your company's marketing and websites and can involve images, logos, CSS, etc.

Microsoft offers two plans, each with separate branding capabilities: small business plan and enterprise plan. It is interesting to see that Microsoft has different abilities on branding in the different plans.

The approach to branding is Low, Medium, High and apparently there is a fair amount of change beginning with the Medium Effort. When you reach the medium effort, it's time to bring in design manager.

Low Effort Branding

Page editor in SharePoint 2013 is pretty much the same as it was in SharePoint 2010: it still has the ribbon where you can add video, images, web parts, etc. I usually think that content publishing is important to get branding to look nice and create a good user experience.

Some of the new capabilities include composed looks — the themes have evolved and enable you to create themes with custom images and colors, master pages, etc.

My observation is that the default themes are pretty ugly. They actually looks a bit like editing a WordPress theme, but with less functionality, you choose your theme location, image url’s, master page url, and more. You can choose which fonts can be available in the editor, not sure that it's useful, but it's an option.

Medium Effort Branding

Medium effort branding brings the design manager into play. The design manager can be found in the site actions, but you need to have publishing activated on the site in order to locate it.

Basically you get your HTML and CSS uploaded to the design manager, then apply SharePoint objects like search. SharePoint designer is optional when using design manager, you are free to use whatever web tool to create your branding: notepad, Coda etc.

Both the master page and the page layouts can be edited with your web tools.

You can use the snippets gallery to get your navigation, breadcrumbs, search boxes, title, logo, etc. into the HTML design by copying the snippet code from the snippet gallery into the HTML code, then adding your own CSS and branding to it.

All of this can be done in a sandbox solution before publishing.

In your master page gallery folder you can create a subfolder to store all of your branding assets. Keep it nice and simple so that it is easy to understand and manage. A good practice is to document what you do as well; you may need it if your servers crash.

Before you start adding snippets, publish a version of the HTML file, this will give you a master page in the theme folder. When you've done this, you can go into the snippets gallery and change the options on the snippets you want, copy the snippets code and add to the HTML file in the place you want it. When you click save the HTML file will update the master file automatically. Pretty sweet!

Important to remember here is that you need to brand all of your site templates that you use, if you don’t you will get an unbranded page when you search or similar.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

OpenText Cloud Announced for Faster, Cheaper Information Management #OTEW2012

One of the really big announcements this week from OpenText’s customer conference in Orlando is the release of the OpenText Cloud, which according to OpenText CEO Mark J. Barrenechea in his keynote speech, is the only cloud on the market at the moment specifically for enterprise information management (EIM).

It’s hardly surprising that OpenText Cloud should focus on EIM — after all OpenText is an EIM vendor, if nothing else — but it is the breath of what it is being made available that is really surprising.

OpenText Cloud

From the word go, Barrenechea says, the new cloud will provide all OpenText’s offerings as cloud products and services that will run in parallel to its already extensive list of on-premises products. The result is, that as of this week enterprises will have access to more than 20 ready-to-use OpenText applications and services.

The difference with other cloud vendors, he says, is that the vast majority of them focus on providing infrastructure and applications in the cloud. OpenText, in contrast, is focusing on providing its full stack as well as specific knowledge and contextual support for deployment and maintenance, management, monitoring, security, optimization, upgrade and application management of all aspects of the cloud.

It also provides a service-level agreement on application availability, which we have seen in the past is one of the things that enterprises considering a cloud move need to look at from the very outset.

But the 20 applications and services are only the start, Barrenechea says:

The OpenText Cloud is purpose-built for EIM. Over the next two years, all OpenText software will be available both on-premises and in our Cloud. With over two million end users and 21,000 customers already in our cloud, we are making great progress."

OpenText EIM Stack

That’s a pretty impressive statement and probably the kind of thing that we’re going to be hearing a lot more of from vendors in the near future as enterprises take the advantages of cloud to heart and forget about concerns around security and the availability of applications.

For OpenText, the services it provides will be divided into four core areas:

• Infrastructure Services: It provides an infrastructure that runs the cloud from 10 data centers around the world along with storage, networking, backup, virtualization and monitoring abilities.
• Hosting Services: The provision of complete IT services that range from deployment to disaster recovery. Along with service-level agreements, current hosted offerings include: Tempo Social, Tempo Box, Content Server, Records Management, Content Lifecycle Management (CLM), Business Process Management (BPM), Web Content Management (WCM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM).
• Information Services: Information exchange from any device to any device and includes seamless business process integration across the entire global infrastructure of any data format. Current services include: fax, message archive, EDI VAN, capture and recognition, notifications and telex.
• Social Collaboration Services: Provides a pervasive layer of collaboration, social marketing, synching and sharing abilities across all applications through the OpenText cloud.

OpenText Cloud Financials

This is such a major project that there is really not a lot more to be said about it until it is actually running for clients. The initial offerings are available already, but the idea of a whole stack up in the cloud is a pretty interesting idea.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oracle Acquires Instantis For Cloud-Based Portfolio Project Management

Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire Instantis, a project portfolio management (PPM) technology vendor. Instantis offers both on-premises and cloud-based versions of its PPM solutions.

Instantis’ main product, known as Enterprise Track, is designed to ease the management of multiple corporate initiatives by providing a single interface for management of all projects for all players. The solution uses a “top-down” approach that approaches initiatives starting from high-level strategies, metrics and processes, and also offers financial reporting capabilities.

Oracle says it intends to combine Instantis functionality with its Primavera PPM toolset and Fusion middleware application. As a result, Oracle expects to offer a more comprehensive PPM package with both cloud-based and on-premises hosting options. The platform will connect executive leadership with departments including corporate, professional services, IT, R&D, manufacturing, operations and capital projects for the purposes of integrated PPM execution. Specific enabled PPM tasks will include capacity planning, business metrics tracking, ideation and contract execution.

Oracle ‘Bulks Up’ Cloud

In its coverage of today’s acquisition, the Wall Street Journal focused on the cloud computing aspect of the deal far more than the added PPM functionality Oracle will obtain. “The company is nevertheless aggressively targeting cloud-computing rivals like Salesforce.com and SAP AG with its own suite of products served up through the Internet,” stated the Journal. The Journal also commented that buying Instantis reflects Oracle’s “longstanding strategy of sucking in small (niche) software companies on a steady basis.”

Keeping It Small

The “longstanding strategy” of buying small niche players referred to in the Journal article appears to be sticking around for a while. As reported by CMSWire, about a month ago Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo that now that Oracle has moved into the cloud, the company will focus more on growing internally and less on buying up other vendors.

"I am just saying over the next couple of years, senior management down to individual programmers and sales people, are focused on one thing; selling applications in the cloud," said Ellison, who clarified in other remarks that Oracle in particular would not focus on large acquisitions. Instantis does offer Oracle new opportunities to sell niche PPM applications and services in the cloud, so this purchase appears to be right on track.

Let’s see if Ellison keeps his word about not pursuing earth-ratting acquisitions in 2013, especially as the economy is showing signs of a possible early recovery in the works.

The Instantis management team and employees are expected to join Oracle as part of the Oracle Primavera Global Business Unit. Notable Instantis clients include DuPont, Lilly and Verizon.The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and approvals and is expected to close this year. Terms have not been released.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Agility Launches Cloud-Based Web CMS Suite for Magazine Publishers

Having provided web content management solutions for major brands over ten years, Agility is now launching a new, cloud-based Magazine Publishing Suite that is optimized for online magazines and blogs. 

In February, Agility announced a template-based solution for online magazines that's strikingly familiar. It appears the suite was first announced at this time, but is now officially launching.

CEO Michael Assad said in a statement that the Suite “follows the success we’ve had with our CMS platform in the media and publishing space,” and that it “saves months of setup time and tens of thousands of dollars over traditional web publishing systems.” He added that the Magazine Publishing Suite is intended to help publishers who are “struggling to find their footing online” make the transition to digital versions of their properties.

Media-Heavy Sites

The Toronto-based company said its Suite was developed over five years, and has been built on its experience of working with large media companies and serving millions of page views.  

The system is oriented toward media-heavy sites that offer frequent updates of images and video, as well as text, and the company said it was the only online publishing suite specifically intended for media sites (we'd argue with that, pointing out Atex as another example). The company’s customers currently include Glow Magazine, Canadian Bride, Clean Eating, Oxygen, Oprah Winfrey Network and W Network.

The Suite is designed around nine areas that target website performance — layout and navigation, advertising and ad placement, search engine optimization, content merchandizing, social media integration, content syndication, mobile, community and performance.

Subscription Integration

The magazine-specific features include the ability to integrate the system with major magazine subscription systems, and a built-in module for showcasing magazine issues. The CMS is also oriented toward continuous content updates, has support for articles, blog posts, galleries and videos, and can import content from the publisher’s current Web CMS.

There are also such functions as Latest Articles, including an automatic update to the most recently published items, Popular Articles, Polls and Contributor Workflow to channel writers’ submission into the editing/publishing process.

Using the CMS, Agility said that a new site can be ready for business in as little as five weeks.

The delivery process, which is covered by a $1000 setup fee, involves consultation with Agility’s experts, design of a site skin, content deployment from a current site and training. The system is priced at $300/month, with additional charges for tech support by phone, support for external contributors and other add-ons.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Cloud Smart Meter Puts Amazon Web Services Analytics on Your iPad

 IT managers looking to keep a close eye on their businesses' AWS and S3 usage can now monitor the situation from the comfort of their executive iPad. 

The Cloud in Your Hands

With increased reliance on inexpensive cloud services, it can be easy to forget those cents mounting up, until you get the regular service bill. Newvem offers an iOS-based monitoring solution for those who want to watch the pennies.

Running on iPad or iPhone, the free, lightweight app can track your EC2, elastic storage and network costs, comparing them to previous periods and show graphical highlights and risks to your budget. With the ability to drill down into service costs or AWS instances, you can get an overview of pretty much everything that is going on with your enterprise account. 

As increasing numbers of managers and executives turn to the iPad as a super-dashboard, apps like Newvem's are useful in managing the raft of services that modern enterprises use. Newvem's main task is to help save users money on their cloud services usage, and this app could help provide scrutiny on IT's runaway use of cloud services. 

With all sorts of cloud-based services for Amazon popping up from third parties like Attunity's Cloud Service and RightScale, the wild west take-up of Amazon's services by trigger happy IT types might soon be a thing of the past. Perhaps these apps might also warn you when Amazon's AWS service suffers an outage too. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Huddle Security Measures Earns Company ISO 27001 Certification

Huddle, a provider of cloud-based content management and collaboration technology aimed at government agencies and large enterprises, has been awarded certification to ISO 27001, an international standard for information security management.

ISO 27001 covers areas including risk management and security, as well as business continuity management and compliance.

“ISO 27001 certification is part of our obsession with providing enterprise-class service,” Huddle VP of Enterprise Simon O’Kane told CMSWire during an interview. “It’s an emerging global standard as a benchmark for security processes, especially for delivery of services over the Internet.”

O’Kane said the British Standards Institution (BSI) certified “everything” in the Huddle organization, including customer-facing services as well as back-end development. Huddle determined about six months ago it wanted to achieve ISO 72001 certification and achieved it in about three months. “It was paramount for us,” he said. “Security is in our DNA.”

To that end, Huddle has also obtained pan-government accreditation in the UK.

ISO Certification Signals Security is Under Control 

According to Richard Edwards, principal analyst at Ovum, ISO 27001 certification sends a “clear signal that information security management is under control of management rather than an IT artifact.” Edwards said in a phone conversation with CMSWire that at many organizations, the IT department must shoulder the responsibility of maintaining IT security.

“That’s fine to a point, but IT security shouldn’t be an area exclusively handed off by senior management,” stated Edwards.

Edwards said that increasingly, major global players in the enterprise space such as Google Apps for Business, Microsoft Global Foundation Services and Yammer are obtaining ISO 27001 certification. In addition, many European companies, especially in the UK, and Japanese companies are seeking the certification. But US companies are lagging to their disadvantage.

“The US is slow to pick up ISO 27001, and the US will get blindsided,” said Edwards. 

Huddle Cuddles Feds

Huddle has been busy recently obtaining certifications that prove its dedication to security. In September, Huddle obtained certification by the Federal Information Security Management Act for a new cloud service for U.S. government agencies to communicate across the web.

Already widely used by western European governments, the secure Huddle platform is currently being developed for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). This achievement for Huddle is down to a strategic partnership and technology development agreement with In‐Q-­Tel (IQT), a non-­profit, strategic investment firm that identifies solutions to support U.S. intelligence.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Report Finds Enterprise Embracing Open Source WCM

Cloud services provider Acquia has commissioned a Forrester report on open source WCM, and while the results are not overwhelming, it does show more enterprise companies are employing open source systems.

Nearly 60 percent of the 160 companies surveyed said they had at least considered open source for their WCM programs. The report also found that executives who make these kind of decisions are also the ones who are least likely to be very satisfied with their choice. 

Open Source Successes

Acquia certainly has a stake in the findings in this report. As a cloud services provider specifically for the open source Drupal ecosystem, Acquia would love to see more large companies adopt the open source ethos. Forrester found several large vendors who have successfully adopted open source CMSs, and there were a few reasons why those companies enjoyed that success.

Company infighting seems to be what is holding enterprises back when it comes to successful WCM implementation.

Company culture and classic marketing versus IT fighting may be the biggest reasons businesses failed to implement a new Web CMS, but let's look more closely at the number two reason: lack of a company wide strategy. This obviously goes hand in hand with number one, but at least Forrester has some recommendations for how to build that strategy. They are, in order:

• Required a solution that allowed for more customization and flexibility.
• Prioritized integration between WCM and other solutions to support digital customer experiences.
• Focused on more than just cost reduction.
• Made specific plans for supporting the open source WCM deployment.
• Understood the myths and reality surrounding open source security concerns.

First, most companies agreed that open source allowed for more flexibility and customization. One survey respondant, a UK educational institution, told Forrester that when using a proprietary system, it took nine to 10 months to add a new feature. With open source, they were able to add functionality within days.

As for combining systems, the all-in-one solutions often offered by vendors does not seem to fit with those companies who had adopted open source. These companies preferred a best of breed approach, and often realized the power of the developer community to assemble system components.

How to Choose an Open Source Web CMS

If you've been skeptical of open source in the past, you have nothing to fear from what Forrester says:

Open source has by and large achieved a higher level of technology maturity over the past several years and have demonstrated some success in large-scale web deployments."

It's not just entertainment, media and traditional education that are finding success with open source, the report reads. Governments, pharma and retail are having success with it as well, a sure sign it should not be excluded when evaluating Web CMSs.

Because open source allows for downloading entire systems for test driving, this is a decided advantage when doing an evaluation. Be sure to try out those prospective systems and contact the developer community for extra insight and validation.

Open source is not perfect, of course, so areas like support and implementation should be explored carefully. There are developers and system experts out there who have built networks on top of open source software. That way, many IT aspects can be outsourced including core platform support, module support, module creation and enhancement, system upgrades, integrations and 24 x 7 x 365 infrastructure and uptime.

Acquia, of course, offers just these kinds of services for the Drupal-based platform. The company has even begun diving into digital marketing with its latest release, called OpenWEM. Tell us in the comments if you've had reservations about open source in the past or if there are some concrete reasons it simply won't work for your purposes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Attunity's Cloud Service for Amazon Web Services, CloudBeam, Enters Public Beta

Enterprise software solution-based company Attunity has announced that its cloud service CloudBeam has moved from a Private Beta into Public Beta and incorporates two data movement services: upload to cloud and replication between cloud regions.

Attunity, is a company that creates software solutions which focus on such subjects as data replication, change data capture (CDC), data connectivity. The partnership with Amazon isn't a new one, as it was initially announced upon the creation of the CloudBeam service in July.

What is Attunity CloudBeam?

Attunity CloudBeam is a service that helps business monitor certain initiatives such as big data, analytics, disaster recovery and content availability. The CloudBeam service, aims to make the transfer of large amounts data through the cloud system an easier and more convenient process for its users.

“Attunity CloudBeam helps users realize the promise of cloud computing by alleviating the Big Data bottleneck and infrastructure maintenance challenges,” said Matt Benati, VP Global Marketing at Attunity. “We are excited to move into public beta and offer Attunity CloudBeam to an even broader audience.”

What Does this Change Offer Users?

Attunity has added three services to  the public beta section CloudBeam that are only available from the private beta service: 

• the ability to manage file transfers from the cloud service
• the ability to upload a cloud automation application
• the ability to replicate files to the cloud

Other key features that are offered from Attunity CloudBeam include:

• Automation: Users not only have access to an application level automation, but can also schedule and synchronize data transfer processes on either in a particular pattern or in continuous synchronization.
• Acceleration: Users are able to move quickly and easily, large files to, from and between different clouds.
• Manageability: Users are able to manage when data is moved without having to worry about building or maintaining a cloud infrastructure.
• Reliability: File transfers are not only guaranteed to reach their destination, but are audited and easily recoverable.
• Security: To ensure a top-notch level of security, all transfer and subsequent data files are encrypted.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Acquia Introduces Open Web Experience Management For Drupal

Acquia, a provider of paid cloud services specifically designed to support the Drupal open source web content management platform, is introducing a new concept it calls “Open Web Experience Management” or OpenWEM. It looks like digital marketing has officially come to Drupal.

First, let’s examine exactly what Acquia is trying to accomplish with OpenWEM. The vendor says OpenWEM is a combination of Acquia cloud services, the Drupal platform and the Acquia app marketplace that allows users to “create immersive, digital content and campaigns [and] socialize them across multiple communities and channels,” based on an open standards web architecture.

OpenWEM also allows Drupal modules to integrate with most major marketing automation and social analytics solutions. Acquia says other WEM tools are based on proprietary third-party architectures that make them “slow to adapt to changing business needs and keep pace with the speed of the social web.”

Filling the OpenWEM Toolbox

In addition to offering the OpenWEM architecture, Acquia is also launching beta versions of two new tools supporting it: Drupal Commons 3.0 for Drupal 7 and Media Cloud. Drupal Commons 3.0 is designed to allow the creation of online communities for collaboration and content sharing. Acquia says the latest upgrade features enhanced mobile support, analytical capabilities and user experience improvements.

Meanwhile, Media Cloud is a new media management service designed to support native management and sharing of rich media content within the Drupal environment. Acquia is also partnering with gamification software provider Badgeville to include Badgeville for Drupal as a key supporting component of OpenWEM.

To further ease access to OpenWEM, Acquia is partnering with more than 400 digital agencies and developers and integrating APIs for the top Drupal development tools used most frequently by Acquia customers.

Acquia Opens Up to Developers

Through a combination of open source and free services, Acquia is angling to become the standard means of managing activities on the Drupal platform — the company refers to itself as the “enterprise guide to Drupal."

In addition to its new OpenWEM concept and supporting solutions, back in August, at DrupalCon Munich 2012, Acquia said its Dev Cloud will be permanently free for developing sites. The developer accounts will include all the features of Acquia Cloud: automated developer workflow, separate development, staging and production environments as well as backups, SSH access, Drush integration, Cloud API and Cloud Hooks for continuous integration and more.

Getting In the Digital Marketing Game

Acquia's introduction of OpenWEM, is the real opening of the door for companies to leverage Drupal as a complete customer experience platform. There's the Web CMS, Drupal Commons for Communities, Media Cloud for rich asset management and the ability to integrate digital marketing and social analytics solutions.

This is the kind of end-to-end platform story that many companies are looking for. It's what Sitecore does, Ektron does and a dozen other web content management (aka web experience or customer experience) vendors are doing.

Does the fact that Drupal is open source give them a leg up? These days selling the open source story isn't really a big thing. Some open source solutions can work just as well in an enterprise as proprietary solutions. With a community as large as Drupal's, an enterprise support company like Acquia, and this list of new capabilities, Drupal is well equipped to support the digital marketing needs of an enterprise.  

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

KiteDesk Creates Integrated 'Streams' of Your Cloud Services, Including FullContact

So many clouds, so little time. A new, free personal cloud application from Kitedesk is hoping to help users integrate what it calls “cloud-flipping” between various repositories of online information.

The application, also called KiteDesk and released in public beta by a company of the same name, allows users to view messages, contacts, calendar events and documents from social media services such as Facebook and Twitter — as well as from cloud services Google Apps and Dropbox — as customized news feeds.

Integrating All Your Data Feeds

KiteDeskers can also drill down to events or other details, such as Facebook posts from a specific client, and then create new, customized streams for that particular thread of information. The beta is intended for viewing on laptops and desktops, and a mobile device-optimized version is expected to be released soon.

The app helps deal with what KiteDesk describes as a lack of integration between data feeds, disconnected user experiences and frequent context switches.

Jack Kennedy, founder and CEO of Kitedesk, said in statement that cloud-based services and public APIs are a “huge opportunity” to provide personalized access to cloud-centered information. “When I look at my calendar, I want to see more than my next event,” he said. Kennedy also wants to see emails that were sent to and from event attendees, shared files connected to the event, and more — without having to open different apps and conduct a variety of searches.

Filtered Streams Keep Information Organized

The Tampa, Florida-based company gives the use case of a freelance writer who might have both personal and a business email accounts at Gmail, uses Google Drive for submitting expense reports and has Dropbox for transferring story photos. Additionally, the writer maintains Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote her writing practice, as well as personal accounts at each of those social networking sites. KiteDesk enables the writer to extract the information from each account into project-, person- or time-related streams.

In order to facilitate person-related information, KiteDesk has integrated with FullContact, a provider of contact consolidation and management APIs. Because KiteDesk automatically links contacts’ email addresses with their social profiles, a user can click the “from” link in an email and see a stream of messages, social media postings, files and other documents or communications from that individual. Custom streams can also be created through rules and tags that filter content according to a given project or other condition.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Gartner MQ for Enterprise CMS: EMC, Hyland, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle Lead

In our first look at Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management 2012 we saw that mobile, cloud and composite apps are increasingly important in the Enterprise CMS space. Now we will take a look at those vendors that made it into the Leader’s Quadrant.

Gartner’s MQ for ECM: Making the List

We'll begin with just a few words on the Quadrant itself. Every year, as Gartner draws up the research for this quadrant, the criteria change. Vendors get included or dropped according to those criteria.

When vendors are dropped, it doesn't necessarily mean that their offerings are less significant. Other factors can come into play: the market itself may have changed, the company may have been bought out by a larger vendor, or that the vendor’s focus may have changed over the course of the year. The same applies for those that have been added:

• Added: This year, Unisys extended its functionality to cover the entire range of criteria for inclusion in the Enterprise CMS market, while M-Files, as we have seen over the past few months, has emerged as a mid-market ECM vendor with a strong focus on vertical content-centric applications.
• Dropped: Adobe has been dropped, as its focus has shifted to WCM, customer engagement and digital marketing and it has not been actively developing or selling enough ECM components to deserve inclusion.

This year, Gartner's criteria for inclusion have shifted slightly, with scoring of functional capabilities as well as a focus on new combinations of technologies. This year’s inclusion criteria include:

• Revenues from content management licenses or maintenance of a least US$ 10 million, or customer subscriptions of at least US$ 10 million for open-source vendors.
• Active marketing of its product in two major geographical regions.
• Have ECM software commercially available, with references to back it up.
• Have an integrated content management suite with at least four of the components that we listed in our Magic Quadrant ECM overview.

Vendors are rated on how well they sell and support their ECM products and services on a global basis, along with installed base, pricing, customer support and satisfaction, and product migrations from one major release to another.

Gartner also assess the vendor’s vision of the market place. In practical terms, this means an assessment of how well vendors understand changing market needs, as well as their ability to adopt emerging functionality, and integrate with other content repositories.

Gartner’s MQ  ECM Leaders

Leaders in this MQ are those that are doing well, are prepared for the future with a clear vision of how they will progress into the future, have a strong set of channel partners, are present in multiple geographical regions, and are financially strong.

This year there are six Leaders (in alphabetical order): EMC, Hyland, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText and Oracle.

EMC

EMC has developed strategies that are aimed at improving the user experience and its industry solutions and cloud content management. Its acquisition of Syncplicity in May 2012 gave it the ability to share content across mobile devices.

• Strengths: EMC has refocused on its strengths in the life sciences and utilities space with new industry solutions like Documentum Quality & Manufacturing Solution for Life Sciences and Documentum EPFM. It has put a lot of work into developing cloud content management with EMC OnDemand, which provides cost-effective content management in the cloud, as well as a number of other cloud applications. It has a strong content management stack with a range of products that are highly complementary to each other and which can manage the whole content life cycle better than most of its competitors. It is particularly strong in capture, core repository, process management, archive and records management as well as document composition abilities.
• Cautions: It is still struggling to realize its full strengths in the storage hardware space to drive content management sales. It continues to see the erosion of its Documentum business because of its high cost and complexities in a market that is increasingly competitive. It also needs to develop its sales channels better. Its changing strategy on social content management has been confusing for customers.

Hyland Software

Hyland has a strong focus on vertical and horizontal solutions and strong history of execution across the midmarket, especially in the US and South America.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Mobile App of the Week: Organizing your Files with Box.net

It's time for the Mobile App of the Week and this week our focus is on Box.net's Android app. Box's cloud-based file sharing and document collaboration platform allows users to view, share and collaborate on files from wherever they are.

After signing up for a Box.net account (which only takes a few seconds and is free), users have access to both the app and Box website. With the Android app, users are able to add folders and files (which include photo, video, audio, documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoints) directly from their phone. Users also have the ability to view, edit and download files to your Android device for offline access.

The app also links users to Box OneCloud, which is a mobile framework that helps connect content to a number of apps. Box OneCloud has a variety of other apps that could be useful for those in need of a collaboration tool set. Document collaboration capabilities already exist within the app, with the ability to share documents and files with colleagues, to give and receive feedback on shared files and the ability to track changes made by installing an update tab widget. 

Requirements

Box is available from the Google Play store for Android users who have a version 2.1 or higher. It currently has a user rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars.

Note that if you aren't an Android user, Box also offers an iPhone and an iPad app and an app for Windows Phone.

Box Android App - Open Document Options 

The Pros of Box on Android

Making the claim that over 120,000 companies use Box, the app promises to provide enterprise-grade solutions for users. Some of these features include:

• A way for files to be encrypted and password protected.
• Compatibility with other OneCloud apps.
• Files can be saved to your phone or tablet’s SD card.
• Users can leave notes and comments on work for colleagues.
• Up to 5GB of data.
• The ability to add a widget or shortcut to the device that will allow the user to receive notifications of files that are updated.
• The option to open documents, spreadsheets and similar files with a variety of other apps that include iAnnoate, Annotate with qPDF, ThinkFree, Breezy or with another app installed on your phone.

Issues with Box on the Android

Box isn't a very complex document collaboration app, so there aren’t many flaws, but one is:

• When creating a document, the app directs you to download the ThinkOffice app — even if you already have this app or another word processing app installed on your device.

Final Thoughts

This is a very easy to navigate app for those who need to manage their files when away from the office. If you are someone who simply wants to store a few items there might be simpler apps to use (like DropBox), as Box seems to be directed at those who need multi-platform document collaboration capabilities.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Microsoft Buys StorSimple, Pursues Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy

Coming just a day before the announcement of its financial results for the first quarter, Microsoft has announced that it has bought cloud-storage provider StorSimple for an undisclosed sum.

Cloud Storage Market

There may not be any significance in the fact that this deal comes so close to the earnings announcement — except that IBM announced its third quarter results last night, and they weren’t good.

In fact, Mark Loughbridge, IBM’s CFO, said in the earnings call after the results were released that IBM would be looking at analytics, its Smarter Planet initiative (which is closely connected to Big Data) and cloud computing to add US$ 20 billion to its books by 2015.

Microsoft has come under some fire in the past about its cloud ambitions and functionality, but it has done a lot of running in the past year. With this buy, the company will be able to increase its ability send data into the Azure cloud, not to mention Google and Amazon Web Services.

Microsoft, StorSimple

And that’s the real functionality value of this deal. StorSimple was created nearly four years ago to provide cloud-integrated storage solutions and has worked with Microsoft in the past. In 2010, it optimized its products to work with Microsoft applications. This made it a sure target for Microsoft as it clawed back ground it lost to other cloud providers because it wasn't quick enough off the mark.

Microsoft is not saying how much it paid for StorSimple, but we have found in the past that this usually means that, relatively speaking, they haven’t paid a whole lot.

But strategically, when StorSimple is added into the Microsoft mix, it should produce a really heady brew — and that’s where Microsoft is going with this. Microsoft says that the addition of cloud-integrated storage systems will “advance Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision."

It may also be important to note here that StorSimple already works with Microsoft SharePoint (cloud storage is a great way to improve the performance of SharePoint).

Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy

In practical terms, what this means is that Microsoft is going into the hybrid cloud market in a big way. Combining primary storage, backup, archiving and disaster recovery with cloud integration, this will enable users decide to where their data should be stored.

Customers faced with explosive growth in data are looking to the cloud to help them store, manage and archive that data. But, to be effective, cloud storage needs to integrate with IT's current investments … StorSimple's approach helps customers seamlessly integrate on-premises storage with cloud storage through intelligent automation and management," said Michael Park, Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Division for Microsoft.

StorSimple solutions combine the data management functions of primary storage, backup, archive and disaster recovery with cloud integration, enabling customers to optimize storage costs, data protection and service agility.

With it, enterprises will be able to protect and restore production data using public clouds. Using encryption, cloud providers will be able to send data over the web securely, using compression technologies and de-duplication technologies to eliminate multiple copies of data.

StorSimple appliances currently have storage capacities ranging from 2TB to 20 TBs with prices starting at around US$ 40,000.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Cisco Takes WebEx to the Private Cloud, Expands Hosted Collaboration Solution

Cisco announces changes to its collaboration portfolio, with a strong focus on improving collaboration in the cloud.

WebEx Heads to the Cloud

Let's start with the web conferencing. Customers now have choices for how to support their meeting needs. Prior to this release, WebEx was an on premises solution for organizations. Many organizations also used the Cisco Public WebEx cloud offering (usage has increased 38 percent year over year according to Cisco). But for those who want to take advantage of the cost efficiencies of the cloud and keep control of their own content, something new was required.

Cisco has announced the Cisco WebEx Meeting Server built to run in private cloud environment where organizations can ensure data privacy. It's also a great solution for those who are still tied to a capital expenditures model as opposed to the new utility model that comes with cloud-based hosted solutions. This is a virtualized server solution that is designed for the Cisco Unified Computing System, so deployment and management is simplified.

If you also have Cisco Unifiied Communications Manager, you can extend IP telephony to your web conference. And this is a nice capability coming in January of 2013: if you are doing an IM session using Jabber, you can quickly turn that into a web conference directly from the Jabber interface.

Cisco Host Collaboration Solution

Whether you have the entire Suite of capability or only a couple of modules, there are some updates to the Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) that you will be interested in hearing about:

Telepresence capabilities have been enhanced: This includes enabling partners to conduct meetings at any time without a reservation, expanding intra- and inter-company collaboration with video experiences. The Cisco TelePresence Exchange (CTX) is now integrated into HCS which means partners can manage their infrastructure across all their customers. It also means that customers can now connect multiple locations at the same time.

HCS for Customer Collaboration (Contact Center): The workflows and management capabilities for each customer contact center can now be integrated together offering a more seamless way to support clients across the board. This includes a new Web 2.0 customizable desktop that supports call center agents.

Advancing Unified Communications: Enhancements for HCS here include supporting third party SIP endpoints and an expansion of the IMS Jabber integration to support third party phones in the Cisco UC environment.

Taking Collaboration to New Levels

Sometimes we talk about collaboration like it's something we've not been doing for years. The tools have changed though to support quicker ways to work together, often more efficient ways. And that's what we are seeing with much of the Cisco announcements today. This "collaboration" as Cisco clearly notes is not just internally focused, it's something we need to get better at with our partners, our suppliers and our own customers.

Much of the functionality announced today is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Aprimo Digital Messaging Center Provides a Single Location to Manage Cross-Channel Marketing

Marketing automation provider Aprimo has released its Digital Messaging Center, a cloud based hub for combining marketing tools with social media, analytics and CRM systems.

Aprimo announced the news at the DMA2012 conference in Las Vegas this week, and it offers real-time access to customer preferences and behavioral data from mobile, Web and integrated systems.

Another Step Toward Personalized Experience

Marketers want more information about potential customers, and putting disparate data together about the same person or company is getting easier. Harvesting tidbits from social media and using ever more powerful analytics systems is popular way of doing just that. Now companies like Teradata, Aprimo's parent company, are automating this tactic and pushing it out as an all in one, plug and play product.

The Digital Messaging Center provides automated processes for:

• Message Creation — Streamline content with an online library, functional messaging templates and display optimization.
• Deliverability — Increase inbox delivery rates for up to 10 million emails per hour with personalized rules, automatic bounce-back processing and list integration among others.
• Personalization — Tailor offers and other messages based on complex customer data.
• Recipient Management — Integrate big data/analytics.
• Tracking and Reporting — Break down what’s working for individuals and/or target groups.

The Digital Messaging Center is available as a standalone solution or as part of Aprimo's Integrated Marketing Management (IMM) Platform.

Aprimo News Recap

Teradata bought Aprimo in 2011, and earlier this year, bought up eCircle for its email and digital marketing expertise. The Digital Messaging Center is a culmination of that eCircle purchase. 

In August, Aprimo debuted its Real-Time Interaction Manager to improve customer experience. Then in September, Aprimo Service to Sales became available on the Salesforce.com AppExchange for better business intelligence.

The Digital Messaging Center is Aprimo's most robust integrated marketing management platform to date, and as Gartner pointed out in its eCircle buyout report, the move puts Aprimo in a good position among global digital marketing companies.

A Digital Marketer's Dream

There's a common theme running among vendors of digital marketing solutions, and that is the marketers want a single location to manage the cross-channel marketing they do and the information they have. We saw that with the acquisition of Pardot by ExactTarget last week, we saw it with Ektron's addition of HubSpot into its Digital Marketing Hub (DMH) and with Adobe's integration of AdLens with SiteCatalyst. Of course Adobe's integration is not a complete package, but it demonstrates the need for integrated solutions that make it easier for marketers to design, build and manage cross-channel campaigns. So we ask…who's next?

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Acquia Cloud Wins Government Approval with FISMA Certification for Secure Websites

Cloud services provider and major Drupal partner Acquia has won U.S. government certification for providing secure Web services, the company's latest step in its march toward giving customers a measured level of protection and control.

Acquia won SSAE 16 (SOC1) certification in June, and the latest move not only provides the company access to the lucrative world of increased government contracts, but also signals it is serious about standards. 

What is FISMA?

Acquia is now approved under the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 to provide secure Web services in the cloud, a key process for highly sensitive customers like the government. 

Specifically, Acquia is a FISMA Authorization to Operate (ATO) approved vendor, and that means federal agencies can more easily redesign their Drupal Websites while maintaining stringent security standards and cost efficiencies.

The White House uses Drupal for its Website, as does NASA and the FCC. 

Acquia says it is the first provider to offer an enterprise class Drupal hosting service that is FISMA moderate certified. Acquia Cloud uses Amazon EC2, and that system had already won FISMA Moderate ATO certification. 

“This effort demonstrates Acquia’s commitment to exceeding our Federal customers high expectations for security and availability in the cloud," Mike Lemire, Acquia’s director of information security said.

The Importance of Standards

Cloud provider Huddle also recently won FISMA approval, but the company had already been popular among European governments. IBM's SmartCloud for Government is FISMA approved, as is Google's Apps for Government.

FISMA provides a framework for government IT purchasing and security protocols, but it also gives potential customers a chance to see how rigorous a company's products are. It might be painful for companies like Huddle and Acquia to go through the certification process, but once they are through it, potential new customers have a new window into those companies' internal processes. 

However, FISMA and SSAE 16 are narrow standards with somewhat limited applicability. IT buyers of all stripes really need more broad based standards to avoid combing through the virtually endless world of Web based apps now available. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Quark Unveils HTML5 Based Digital Publishing with Latest App Studio

With HTML5 all the rage, Quark has announced that the next generation of its App Studio will enable cloud-based, HTML5-based app development for Apple and Android mobile devices, or for Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

The latest App Studio combines technology from Quark’s acquisition of PressRun and its parent company, Mobile IQ earlier this year, with Quark’s existing digital publishing technology, QuarkXPress and InDesign. PressRun is being retired as a brand. The previous App Studio, included with QuarkXPress 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3, will be renamed Quark AVE Publishing, and will continue to support existing App Studio customers.

Smaller File Size

The company said that the hosted App Studio is the only digital publishing solution for creating customized apps with HTML5, QuarkXPress, InDesign and XML.

App Studio-created apps feature searchable and selectable text, can be bookmarked or shared, and the company said the apps are often a quarter of the file size of apps created with other solutions — potentially saving time for users during downloading. QuarkXPress and InDesign, the company’s flagship products, can be utilized for content creation in the apps.

Shaun Barriball, Vice President of Mobile Products for Quark, said in statement that the intent of App Studio is to “remove the complexity around creating and delivering the best app experiences,” while allowing content creators to employ their favorite design tools and to work within a cloud environment.

App Studio focuses on creating hybrid apps, which occupy the space between native mobile apps and web apps.

Native Apps

Native apps are designed and developed for a specific mobile device platform, so as to optimize performance and access such on-board device capabilities as a camera. Web-based apps are server-based, accessed through a browser, and offer device independence but have a limited ability to utilize the specific capabilities of a device and often provide slower performance.

Hybrid apps, however, use web technologies such as HTML5 and run inside a native container, with a web-to-native layer that provides access to a device’s resources.

A recent report by Forrester noted that native apps offer the highest performance for mobile devices, but that hybrid apps “offer an inexpensive alternative to native apps,” especially for apps where content is frequently modified.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

NewBrandAnalytics Targets Hospitality Industry with Social Monitering Tool nBA 3.0

Social media monitoring has become social listening — which has, in turn, become social market intelligence. There is so much being said online and in the cloud about restaurants and hotels that companies like newBrandAnalytics are sweeping in with digital tools to help businesses make sense (and cents) of it all.

The company's nBA 3.0 social monitoring tool listens to what people are saying (or complaining) about restaurants. The software boils this information down into mission-critical insights that help managers and marketers make decisions to improve the customer experience.

Hospitality Industry Benefits

While newBrandAnalytics nBA 3.0 could be used for any type of business, the company is pushing it as a way to help service industry types get a handle on social media. Making data-driven decisions is hard when your main focus is on the customers sitting at your tables. 

NBA 3.0 lets businesses to see what people are saying on review sites and social media. This lets them figure out what their customers like and — most often — what they're complaining about. (We all know how easy it is for people to go off on Yelp or Twitter about their lunch.) The company says that by using nBA 3.0, restaurant groups and hospitality managers would be able to:

• Uncover and fix product, pricing and value issues
• Measure service effectiveness and identify training opportunities
• Pinpoint trouble spots with equipment, suppliers, internal processes and delivery
• Understand competitive benchmarks and discover ways to win new customers
• Connect directly with reviewers to increase customer loyalty

Now that this level of social media saturation is getting down to the restaurant level, it provides a good opportunity for service establishments not only to connect with their customers — but also to see what the competition is up to.

Track engagement, get feedback, and make decisions based on location or brand.

The Importance of Customer Experience

In the retail and hospitality industries, those companies focused on repeat business need to get busy finding their biggest fans online. Whatever value people may put into online reviews, there's no harm in reaching out to those influencers and connecting with them. It shouldn't be difficult to see what complaints people are posting on Facebook and Twitter, and then measure which areas those complaints are focused on.

Using an nBA 3.0 tool called Instant, companies can set up alerts to notify managers about problems as they come up. That way, the right person can contact that person in real time. NBA Advantage is a tool that can lay out metrics like sentiment for understanding what makes customers happy. Let us know in the comments what businesses have ever contacted you because of something you tweeted or wrote on their Facebook.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

EU Issues Cloud Strategy, Aims to Add 2.5 Million New Jobs

The European Commission (EC) has its collective heads in the clouds — and sees millions of new jobs there — thanks to a new strategy designed to help increase the adoption of cloud computing across the continent.

The strategy,  "Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe" aims to create 2.5 million new jobs for the European Union (EU) member nations — through greater adoption of cloud computing technologies. The agency says that the increase could lead to an annual boost of EUR 10 billion, or about 1 percent of the EU GDP, by 2020.

Cloud Partnership

In order to reach that promised land in the sky, the strategy recommends several actions. These include the identification of technical standards that help cut through the current mishmash related to interoperability, data portability and reversibility.

It also calls for EU-wide certification for “trustworthy” cloud providers, development of model “safe and fair” cloud computing contracts with Service Level Agreements and the creation of what it calls a European Cloud Partnership.

The Cloud Partnership would be between EU member countries and leading companies in the industry, and it would use the public sector’s buying power to boost the European cloud market. The strategy notes that 20 percent of all IT spending in the EU runs through the public sector, and recommends that focusing this market power could “boost the chances for European cloud providers to grow to achieve a competitive scale, and deliver cheaper and better eGovernment.”

Cyber Security Next

In a statement accompanying the strategy, EU Vice President Neelie Kroes described cloud computing  as “a game changer for our economy.” Without a concerted action by the EU, she said, “we will stay stuck in national fortresses and miss out on billions in economic gains.”

The cloud strategy is part of a series of efforts by the EU to stimulate the digital economy and create a digital single market for member nations. In January, the EU proposed a comprehensive reform of the 1995 data protection rules, in order to strengthen online privacy rights and decrease the administrative costs of different privacy implementations among the 27 member states.

In the next few months, the EU is expected to propose a European Strategy for Cyber Security. In 2010, the U.S. federal government, in a move to promote cloud computing in the government, issued a “cloud-first” policy that directed its agencies to use cloud-based solutions whenever feasible.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Movable Type Unveils Version 5.2: An Improved Rich Text Editor, Cloud Support Top the Updates

Movable Type, the popular blog software, has released version 5.2, with added support for cloud computing environments.

Movable Type is a popular open source content management and online publishing platform for creating blogs and websites, and it is free for redistribution, use or modification.

Revised Rich Text Editor

First released in 2001, Movable Type was designated as free software under the GNU General Public License in 2007. There are now more than a thousand plugins available for the platform, and it is used by such sites as BarackObama.com, Oracle’s blogs, NBC Universal and BritneySpears.com.

New features in version 5.2 include a revised rich text editor for web pages and blogs, which is designed to be more customizable, browser-friendly and AJAX-friendly.

Version 5.2 can be used under the nginx+PSGI environment, providing support across a range of server environments, including cloud computing virtual servers, CMS servers or content servers. The update also enables collections of blogs to be managed in a multi-blog environment, such as combining data from multiple blogs via the enhanced template language.

A user dashboard now helps to centralize functions commonly used by admins, authors and moderators. There is a new revision history of such CMS objects as blog templates or entries, improved AJAX-based sorting and searching features, and an enhanced list management framework for dealing with large amounts of data.

Authenticated SMTP, Browser Support

With new sitepath restriction, a System Admin can limit the publishing of content to the part of a given file system that is used by the Movable Type server. Email notifications can be sent with authenticated SMTP, and custom fields’ performance has been improved in order to provide faster rebuilds of custom field data.

The update officially supports the Google Chrome browser, starting with the latest version, Internet Explorer 8 and 9, and the latest versions of Safari and Firefox.

Other changes include a mandatory requirement that a system email setting be defined and, if it hasn’t been, the system will prompt for a system email address. A starting day of the week can be set for the calendar by the user, so that each week starts with that day. If none is set, Sunday is used as the default.

Six Apart's acquisition in 2010 left many wondering what would happen to Movable Type where it didn't really seem to fit into the plan, but it has remained an active open source solution with an active community. Japanese subsidiary Six Apart KK has taken over complete responsibility for the web content management system and we are finally seeing more updates as a result.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com