A Quick Sitecore Roadmap Looking at the Next Year #sitecoresym

Sitecore's Senior VP of Product Marketing, Darren Guarnaccia provided an updated Roadmap for Sitecore's stable of product offerings during the Sitecore Symposium 2012 North America in Las Vegas. There's quite a few interesting improvements and additions that will be of interest to both business and technical users.

Here's the highlights of the Roadmap Darren discussed. 

Near Term Additions for Q4 2012

• Version 6.6 of Sitecore CMS will be released
• Good news for Mobile developers as this will include Sitecore's Mobile SDK and a very sophisticated system for simulation of content on many mobile device classes
• Updates to Sitecore's DMS system, adding Engagement Intelligence features that will be of great use to business and marketing users
• A refresh to the Foundry product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6 and an update to their Social Connected tool

First Quarter 2013

• A big, much-anticipated update to Sitecore CMS with the release of Sitecore 7, which includes large scale item storage support
• For business users there's some new and very powerful additions to DMS with the Visual Path Analysis tool which allows marketing folks to dig deeply into how users are reaching (or not) various content
• Email Campaign Manager 2.0 will also be released

Second Quarter 2013

A lot of technical and infrastructure goodies come in Q2 2013, including:

• A refresh to the new SPEAK UI platform
• Updates to DMS to support the CRM Service Layer
• A refresh of the Sitecore Intranet Portal product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6
• Sitecore's DMS will integrate with Sitecore eCommerce, and DMS will become available on Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform
• The Sitecore Adaptive Print Studio will gain ability to interact directly with files produced by Adobe InDesign

Second Half of 2013

• Some significant updates to the core CMS functionality with updates to Sitecore CMS workflow, new features for content reuse, and finally the beginnings of some usability improvements to the administrative interface which will accelerate in the future
• Launch of Big Data for Sitecore's DMS. With all the tracking and analytic requirements of Sitecore's Customer Engagement features, the ability to manage the data requirements of the system has been a concern from Day 1. With this update the DMS system should be able to handle many terabytes of analytic data with the option of storing that data in a variety of locations both locally and in the cloud

… and Beyond

• Significant enhancements to the existing Sitecore Personalization features, including the ability to personalize down to the field level within the CMS

About the Author

Ryan Bennett is a certified Sitecore developer and Principal Solutions Architect at San Francisco-based consulting firm Cylogy, Inc.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Is it Comeback Time for Movable Type?

Movable Type celebrated its 11th birthday on October 8. But with the milestone came a challenge: how to regain its standing in North America, a position that has declined since 2010, when the Web CMS and web publishing software provider moved to Japan following acquisition by Six Apart.  

While Movable Type continued to provide the backend for some substantial websites, questions on the future of the platform persisted in North America. The community that remained found themselves overwhelmed with demands for support and understaffed to keep up with the demand. 

While the community struggled in North America, development work continued in Japan, but due to language barriers, the advancements literally and figuratively did not translate overseas. Following the release of Movable Type 5.2 in September, the release of 42 new plugins to the North American market at a community meeting on October 18, a promise to follow up with more solutions from the Japanese community and some other interesting developments, Movable Type looks to be taking the first steps towards what will be a challenging comeback.

The Plugins

The plugins range from complex to simple solutions, all of which work towards a goal of making the platform more user friendly. They include solutions built by 601am and After6 Services, two U.S. based companies, as well as 37 from the Japanese MT developer community.

Both Aaron Bailey, 601AM principal and Dave Aiello, CEO of After6 Services were on hand to demonstrate their plugins. Aaron Bailey presented first, introducing the Navigation plugin, which allows the technically challenged to edit navigation within a WYSIWYG interface, removing the need to enter such changes directly into the templates. This will be a boon for sites that update their content regularly, but don't have the dedicated developers to keep up with changes. 

A CloudAssets plugin enables users to push files to both Rackspace and AWS environments, creating separate urls for local and cloud assets.   

The SuperAssets trio of plugins by After6 allow simple and seamless integration of YouTube, Flickr and SoundCloud assets into Movable Type posts. Instead of needing to embed in the source code, the assets fall under the rubric of the MT asset manager, allowing a clear view of all media assets in one place. 

Next Steps

Following the presentation of the After6 plugins, Dave Aiello made an impassioned call to action to the North American Movable Type community. Saying that it was time to change the way the community worked, he challenged the four North American development firms present to form a consortium of sorts, a Movable Type partner community to share resources and common knowledge to speed the creation of solutions and to avoid recreating work.

If this plan goes through, it could spell a boon to the development community and to Movable Type end users, in speeding solutions to the public and in solving problems with the combined knowledge and experience of the group.

Takeshi Osanai, product manager of Movable Type, had earlier in the day shared the following goals:

• English translations of all available Japanese plugins
• English translation of Japanese documents relating to MT
• A renovated plugin directory
• Share knowledge on github wiki with English speaking MT community.

Robert Minton, vice president of sales and marketing in North America, is tasked with seeing these goals come to fruition. Hired this past June, Minton knows the challenges ahead and is aware of mistakes made in the past. He is also aware of the level of competition that exists in today's market as opposed to when Movable Type was the only game in town. Minton acknowledged that design and customer service are two areas where Movable Type needs to step up its game in North America.  

Will all of this add up to Movable Type regaining market share in North America? Only time will tell for sure, but if the company and the community deliver on all of the plans they have for the future, it might just have a chance.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Facebook Passes the Billion User Mark, But Where Will Revenue Growth Come From?

 User growth will come from new territories as the social media giant continues to eat up users' time and Likes, with almost half of all North Americans using the Facebook service to keep in touch online. But where will it see new revenue growth?

All Around the World

While the stock price might be on the way down, the user numbers are going up and up for Facebook. With almost 45% of North Americans and Australasians now on board, a third of South America, nearly as many in Europe with only Africa and Asia lagging behind in single figures. That led the company over the 1 billion mark, which he discussed in an interview on NBC. 

They are the key growth markets for the company, and it will be aiming aggressively at signing them up. Of the existing users, over 600 million now use Facebook on a smartphone or other mobile device, up from 552 million users measured in June this year.

Mobile will be key in emerging markets where they are more common than computers. Facebook is trying to adapt the service to the feature phones prevalent in Africa but will need to use marketing muscle in China and Russia where local services dominate. 

On the Face Of It

Facebook recently broke into the physical gifts market in an attempt to move on from the virtual gifts that helped boost its early growth. With long-time revenue partner Zynga also suffering, it will also be looking for the next big thing in revenue generation, with better targeted advertising already on the radar.

Gambling could  become one natural focus, with real money gambling having started in the United Kingdom via a Bingo game, and virtual sports betting being trialled in America. These and other initiatives should see revenue rising to keep the stock holders happy.

However, it may face more defections from users over the latest claim on weak privacy with private messages claimed to be publicly visible. Similarly, further attempts to monetize the service's vast user database could lead to collisions with irate users suffering growing "intrusion" into their News Feeds. 

While still in a very strong position, and dominating the social media scene, Facebook still has plenty of time to find its feet as a traded company, but every move and misstep will come under increasing focus and scrutiny. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com