GeoFluent for Telligent Enables Multilingual Social Communities

Social communities are great for communication, but what if they span several countries and different language zones? Social software provider Telligent is now offering a new integrated translation solution for its products.

Called GeoFluent for Telligent, the software combines Lionbridge Technologies’ software-as-a-service, customized real-time translation technology with Telligent’s enterprise social suite of applications.

IBM Machine Translation Engine

GeoFluent utilizes an IBM-developed machine translation engine with a proprietary Lionbridge customization. In addition to translation solutions, the Waltham, Mass.-based Lionbridge also offers online marketing, global content management and application testing. Dallas-based Telligent provides an enterprise-grade social platform, as well as community applications and social intelligence tools for employee networking, customer-driven support communities and interactive marketing communities.

The companies said one benefit of the solution is that expensive support calls in the country of origin can instead be handled through online forums, blogs and wikis, where information can be obtained regardless of language.

According to Lionbridge, over 90 percent of enterprise content does not reach non-English speaking audiences because of time and cost requirements. GeoFluent allows an organization to create a global online community, instead of separate communities for each language environment. The companies noted that administrative costs can be reduced by combing language-specific forums into one common space, where visitors can read and post in their own language.

All Content, All the Time

Utilizing multilingual support from major search engines, the companies said, such communities can now provide access to all relevant content on an 24 x 7 basis. All public-facing community content, in whatever language, becomes available when a visitor searches in any language.

Telligent Founder and CTO Rob Howard said in a statement that GeoFluent for Telligent “removes geographic and language barriers and ensures that marketing, customer service and key stakeholders are at the forefront of customer engagement.”

Lionbridge CEO Rory Cowan noted that “the next growth wave for enterprise social software is global market adoption with local-market relevance.” He added that, by breaking the language barrier in social communities, organizations can increase revenue conversions and expedite time-to-market, as well as boost the quality of customer experience.
 

 

 

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

Mzinga Debuts OmniSocial Engaged for Deeper Social Intelligence

Social intelligence provider Mzinga has debuted a customizable platform for addressing targeted audiences at a deeper social level called OmniSocial Engaged.

It's a suite of features that can integrate into existing systems or be a standalone product for better search and meaningful experiences with analytics and reporting for better insight.

Engage with Customers

Creating better customer experiences is about how people feel. Can they find what they are looking for on your website? Do they get rewarded for being involved and even helping others? Online groups like enthusiasts, for example, will benefit from these kinds of features, but they are also good for improving customer support. 

Retailers or service providers need as many ways as they can get to make support less painful, and one of those ways is to offer a self-service solution. This can include things like Facebook Page integrations, website widgets or full blown customized websites.

Multiple solutions are included with OmniSocial Engaged, and that means better targeting and happier customers.

OmniSocial Features

OmniSocial combines multiple solutions to meet these customer engagement challenges. Community managers and moderators can take advantage of things like banned and watch word filters, user permissions and a moderation queue dashboard. Additionally, managing content can be automated for removing harmful content and enforcing Terms of Service.

The product includes gamification elements, allowing companies to assign badges and reward icons for top contributors, engaged members or influential members to give customers incentives. Mzinga has been going down this road for some time now, and offering more personalized experiences is what the company is all about. That's important because at least one recent study has found companies see a lack of quality social business analytic products in the market. 

That is particularly true of hard to measure things like ROI, sentiment analysis and identifying influencers. However companies are engaging customers, making support and search less painful are always welcome, even if the entire industry sill needs more fine tuning.

OmniSocial Engaged is available now, and pricing is available on request.

 

 

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

Cisco Sees and Hears Social Media at New Listening Center

Networking technology provider Cisco has opened a Social Media Listening Center where interactive touchscreens offer visual data about the social media conversations Cisco “listens” to in real time.

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

The center, which Cisco says will be open to employees, partners, customers and visitors, features six large interactive touchscreens displaying a wide variety of data about social media conversations around Cisco and its brands, services and products. The Linux- and cloud-based proprietary Cisco Interactive Experience Solution creates the data visualizations and loads them onto the screens via an enterprise-grade browser. The data itself is generated by Cisco SocialMiner and Radian6 analytical solutions.

Specific visualizations include social conversations and engagement developing around various CiscoLive events, a global heat map displaying geographic dispersal of tweets about Cisco in real time, tracking of tweets about Cisco by identified “social influencers,” social conversations about Cisco products and services, and a social media word cloud that shows how popular certain relevant topics are in social media at any given moment.

The Tip of the Iceberg

The new center, which is located in the Cisco Executive Briefing Center in San Jose, CA, serves as a customer-facing example of Cisco’s ability to track relevant social media conversations in real-time. Behind the scenes, Cisco operates a center to monitor Cisco and competitor social conversations and identify opportunities for customer engagement such as answering product questions and offering live support. Cisco has also deployed targeted social media listening centers for clients such as the London Olympics. 

Breaking Down the Dedicated Social Media Listening Center

In an August 2012 blog post, noted technology analyst and commentator Jeremiah Owyang offered a breakdown of what he sees as the increasingly popular trend of major brands and consulting firms opening dedicated social media listening centers. He defines a social media listening center as “a physical space where companies coordinate to listen and engage their market in social channels to achieve business use cases in marketing engagement, customer care, risk management, or operational efficiency of coordination and contact center deflection.”

According to Owyang, a properly deployed social media listening center serves as a tactic in a larger social media strategy, rather than as a strategy in and of itself. Unless there are clear business goals and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) in place, the center will simply serve as a “shiny Twitter room.” In addition, the center must be properly staffed, fully integrated with other parts of the business, have support from key executives and use leading-edge social listening and analytical technologies. Without all these factors in place, Owyang warns the social media listening center will likely wind up being a case of “cart before horse.”

 

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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

pTools Goes All in on Saas Model, Goes Live at Web Summit 2012 #websummit

Longtime enterprise web content management provider pTools went live with its Saas model this week at the Dublin Web Summit, and it's the culmination of years of methodical work.

WCM is a crowded segment, but we always welcome simple tools that provide tons of functionality in an easy to understand way. pTools specializes in the finance, government, security and utility sectors, so simplicity is one thing those folks need in spades.

Cloud Lifting IT to New Heights

Gartner researchers have estimated WCM Saas revenue will reach US $22.1 billion by 2015, and pTools is now in position to take advantage of that. It helps that the company was listed in Gartner's long-list of vendors in the Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management 2012 report for the first time.

Furthermore, as the Dublin Web Summit is one of Europe's top IT conferences, the timing of pTools' launch should help the company as well. pTools is based in Dublin, so the team is no doubt riding high now. 

"It’s the realization of what CMS has always promised," Tom Skinner, pTools founder said in a blog post.

"CMS has offered customers the Martini idea; that is the idea of being able to manipulate and consume content anytime any place anywhere. Cloud and SaaS does just that in way that is simple and obvious but also revolutionary."

pTools lives in the cloud now.

pTools Saas Features

All of pTools functionality is now cloud based, and that means quick easy sign up, disaster recovery, Microsoft SharePoint access, enterprise class security and yearly or monthly subscription fees.

In the last two years, pTools has increasingly embraced social media capabilities, and is now looking for a more global footprint. Additionally, all the WCM functions one would expect from an enterprise ready vendor — from workflow, document management and forms to content management and learning content management — are there.

Pricing is dependent on customer needs, but fully customized, scalable services are available, as is the magic of the Saas model. 

 

 

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

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

Jive's New iPad 'Present' App Keeps Sales Professionals Up to Date

Enterprise social software provider Jive Software is introducing Jive Present, a tablet application designed to assist sales presentation and training efforts. The company is also releasing new enhancements to its core platform.

There's reason we constantly see Jive in the leader position of reports like Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social CRM and for Social Software. It's because the social business software provider is constantly updating their platform to include features necessary for a social enterprise.

Making Tablets More Social

Jive Present extends the Jive social business platform to sales professionals who use iPads and gives corporate managers the ability to monitor how end-users consume data, comply with best practices and regulations and follow educational programs.

Jive Present

The app can:

• Distribute data including rich multimedia, audio and visual content
• Centrally manage the distribution of customized data to individual end users
• Mark up and distribute specific sales content to customers and prospects in the field in real time
• Enable real-time mobile collaboration among end users 

Essentially this iPad application gives sales professionals who are on the go, direct access to the most recent content they need for sales presentations. There are automatic notifications of updates and the app is integrated with the Jive network so you can share and get information from other team members or departments quickly.

Jive Present Notifications

Jive Beefs Up Platform

Jive is also making what it says are “hundreds” of enhancements to its core platform (including updates to many apps we talked about back in May). Some of the more noteworthy upgrades include Jive Anywhere, which provides platform access from any website or app, Jive App Experience, a feature that enables app integration into Jive with one keystroke, the Jive Edge social intelligence engine, which offers customizable “attention streams” that allow focus on specific processes and people within activity streams, the Jive for Teams group collaboration solution and a redesigned user experience. 

Jive Drives Engagement

Jive’s new tablet app and platform features, such as Jive App Experience, are part of what appears to be a larger strategy of driving higher engagement with the Jive platform. Earlier this week, we learned about partnership between Jive and gamification software maker Badgeville. The new Badgeville for Jive integrates game mechanics into the Jive Software social collaboration platform as a method to increase engagement and encourage adoption for those using the system on a daily basis.

 

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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

FirstSpirit Web CMS 5.0: Focus on Connectivity, Integrated Search, Translation

German company e-Spirit, the provider of the FirstSpirit CMS, is on its way up. In the last year, the company has opened an office in the U.S, been named to the Gartner Web CMS Magic Quadrant (niche level) and now released a major new update called FirstSpirit 5.0. 

Ease of Use and Connectivity are Key

Large enterprises in many industries are using the smooth looking system, the Java-based FirstSpirit might be worth a look if your company needs things like:

• Simple in-browser dashboard access for occasional editors, called WebClient.
• A Java Client for more in-depth editing and accessing legacy systems and portals.
• Intuitive tools like menus and report areas for fast access to content and quick updating.
• Complete integration of the FirstSpirit AppCenter for connecting to databases and other services (APIs, etc).
• Integrated search with auto-complete and the ability to drag and drop search results right into entry components, including videos and images.

WebClient in-browser editor in action. Note the Undo button at the upper left.

e-Spirit has been in business for over a decade, and after working for many years on the core components of FirstSpirit, the company is now more focused on adding new features and expanding its connectivity via the AppCenter. In fact, the AppCenter was one of the strengths highlighted in Gartner's Web CMS Magic Quadrant featuring e-Spirit as a Niche player. For large companies, this extensibility is key, and e-Spirit seems to take this part of its business very seriously. 

Popular portals like SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere, Liferay and Microsoft SharePoint fully integrate with FirstSpirit and offer a unified feel to the entire system for easier onboarding and maintenance of use.

Content Reuse and Web Apps

Reusing content is a great time-saver, but is also key for cross-channel publishing. FirstSpirit even helps with publishing across languages with tools like automated distribution of content in any number of languages, change tracking and localization workflows. It even offers fallback strategies for untranslated content.

For combining content with Web apps like Google, the tools can be pulled right into FirstSpirit to maintain a consistent feel but with added features.

Google maps functions right in the FirstSpirit CMS. This makes content localization super easy.

Other features we like are the drag-and-drop elements that work within clients or from external systems. Tutorials are always welcome, and FirstSpirit indeed makes use of wizards for guiding content management. Dynamic forms are used to make complex content easy to insert, and there's a URL generator for maximizing SEO or making short URLs for landing pages.

FirstSpirit 5.0 is available now.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

WoodWing Software Adds DAM Capabilities to Portfolio with Elvis DAM Purchase

Elvis DAM has a new owner. WoodWing Software, provider of multi-channel publishing solutions, has purchased Dutchsoftware, maker of Elvis DAM.

The digital asset management solution, developed in 2008, is powered by the Lucene search engine, best known for its use in Wikipedia, and is extensible through integrations with other apps and through plug-ins. The product, available for local installation or as a software-as-a-service, is intended to be open, scalable and easy to install and administer.

Working in Tandem

Hans Janssen, WoodWing Software CEO, said in a statement that publishers and corporations “are looking for solutions that support their increasing multi-channel publishing activities,” most notably rich media. He said that Elvis DAM “makes digital assets such as images and videos easily accessible and manageable,” and that its addition to the WoodWing portfolio strengthens his company’s market position.

The two companies’ main products have been working in tandem for some time. WoodWing’s flagship publishing system, Enterprise, is used as part of an integrated solution with Elvis DAM for a number of mutual customers worldwide. Moving forward, the companies said that Enterprise’s channel of over 90 partners will now also be offered Elvis DAM.

WoodWing President Erik Schut told news media that the two products are “very much complementary.” He noted that Enterprise provides a workflow for publishing to multiple channels in a collaborative environment, while Elvis “is all about securely storing a quickly growing amount of media assets,” classified with metadata for fast access and re-use.

Separate Product

Schut added that Elvis’ media assets can be accessed directly from Enterprise, and WoodWing intends to “bring the integration to an even higher level.”

Elvis will continue as a separate product, as will Enterprise’s ability to integrate with other, third-party DAM providers. Schut said the company was committed to open systems so that customers can pick the most suitable components.

Dutchsoftware staff will move to WoodWing’s headquarters, which is only a few kilometers away in Zaandam, The Netherlands. Founded in 2000, WoodWing’s products began with the line of Smart productivity and efficiency plug-ins. Its Enterprise Digital Publishing Solution, designed to publish content to multiple channels, includes the content management application Content Station.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Smarsh Launches Compliance Archiving for Salesforce Chatter

How can the explosion in social media communications conform to compliance requirements? Compliance solution provider Smarsh has launched Archiving & Compliance for Salesforce Chatter, that might just make it a little easier for companies to meet those standards.

The service, offered on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace, allows organizations to capture, preserve or search Chatter files, so that they can be used for compliance, recordkeeping and e-Discovery initiatives.

Uses Salesforce Platform

The Portland, Oregon-based Smarsh offers hosted solutions for archiving electronic communications for compliance and record retention. The archived communications include email, IMs and such social media platforms as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Chatter. Founded in 2001, the company was originally a financial technology solutions and consulting company that turned to email archiving as financial firms had to meet regulatory mandates from federal agencies.

The Archiving & Compliance service for Chatter is built on Salesforce’s cloud-based app platform. All data can be captured in real-time, thus minimizing the risk of lost data from the communication streams, and the service also archives Chatter attachments. Customers are not charged for storage or disk space.

Communication is stored in non-erasable, non-rewriteable media (write once, read many optical storage) in the native format, it’s available worldwide through the Web-based Smarsh Management Console, and it’s redundantly preserved in geographically-dispersed data centers.

Review Hierarchy

Search can be conducted across all objects in the Chatter communities, and results allow searchers to review communication threads. Repeated searches can be saved, and searches can be customized with company-approved lexicons of keywords or phrases — or Smarsh’s default list can be used.

There’s also a permission-based review hierarchy, which can be structured so that it emulates the review structure of a given organization. Message supervision roles can be assigned to specific users and groups with appropriate access and functionalities, and temporary permissions or access can be granted, such as for outside legal counsel. Every administrator session and action is documented.

Messages can be annotated, flagged or escalated, and those actions themselves become searchable. A Reporting Center provides analytics reports on usage, system audit history and message archive data, and message data can be exported in the EDRM XML Interchange Format Schema or other popular e-Discovery vendor “load file” formats.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oracle CXM Strategy Progresses with [x+1] Origin Digital Marketing Hub Integration #oow

Digital marketing/data management software provider [x+1] is integrating its Origin Digital Marketing Hub solution with the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service.

Origin Digital Marketing Hub from [x+1]  is a platform designed to allow individual management of customer touchpoints. Using a real-time Predictive Optimization Engine (POETM), marketers can identify and respond to individual customer experiences with channel-specific messages optimized for certain results, such as conversion or cross-selling. The platform also offers web services APIs and analytics.

The integration allows the connection of Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service’s cross-channel customer service capabilities to Origin Digital Marketing Hub’s decisioning and business rules.

Integration Fits into Oracle’s Master CX Plan

Allowing the Origin Digital Marketing Hub to integrate with RightNow CX Cloud Service appears to fit in well with Oracle’s broader customer experience (CXM) strategy. In June 2012,  Oracle SVP for Oracle CRM Anthony Lye told CMSWire that CXM strategy is a combination of two years of work — both organic development and through acquisitions to put together a solution footprint that “you won't see anywhere else.”

Lye sees customer experience as the single biggest transformation that is affecting business — the experience is the only substantial differentiator that companies have. According to Lye, today’s customer experiences are built, maintained and managed outside of CRM and organizations need a vendor who can bring all these things together into a cohesive strategy, while supporting the CRM investments they have. Lye said this includes things such as “experience-based apps that are multi-channel and cross channel,” which seems to line up nicely with the functionality of Origin Digital Marketing Hub. 

Origin Digital Marketing Hub – A Closer Look

[x+1] is not among the better known digital marketing solutions providers, so it may be helpful to take a brief closer look at what the Origin Digital Marketing Hub is all about. In January 2012, Internet advertising publication Adotas examined some of the details of Origin. The platform performs activities such as matching data based on a first-party key, eliminating the possibility of having third-party cookies rejected and simplifying the implementation of data.

In addition, customer eligibility to receive messages can be individually tailored, so for example a customer can be set as ineligible to see a certain offer if they’ve bought a particular product. Other features include automatic dashboard alerts set against changes in data.

[x+1] has attained Gold Partner status in the Oracle Partner Network (OPN).

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Cirtix Podio Extends Collaboration App to Android Devices

Collaborative work platform provider Podio is releasing a new app for the Android platform. The app, available for download on Google Play, enables Android users to employ the full range of Cirtix Podio features on their devices.

“The Podio collaborative work platform is designed to let you live and work anywhere,” Podio co-founder Kasper Hulthin said during a recent sit-down interview with CMSWire. “It’s a social work process repository. You can share a file or data everywhere.”

Podio works through apps based on the Podio platform which can either be developed or acquired free through the Podio app market. Any third-party app is fully customizable, and development templates allow non-technical professionals to develop and customize apps.

Hulthin thinks that having users develop and customize their own unique apps is more effective than using standardized apps.

“There is a contentment and pride the individual gets from building their own apps,” he said.

Use Web-Built Apps on Mobile

With the new Android app, Android device users will have access to the same apps through their mobile devices as they do through their desktops. Web-built apps can be used via mobile device with no additional coding or development.

In addition, Android users can perform collaborative tasks such as posting status messages in shared Podio workstreams, managing and assigning workflow tasks, and accessing company contact directories.

“We want to create new ways of people working,” said Hulthin. “Now you have your work with you everywhere.”

The Email Alternative

While Hulthin made it clear his company is not out to replace traditional collaboration technologies (as evidenced by email integrations with the platform), Benzinga describes the Android app as providing “more powerful, collaborative and social alternatives to spreadsheets, documents and email.”

A Benzinga article on the new Podio Android app release gives the example of project managers using Podio's Simple Project Management app on Android to “track the progress of projects and deliverables, edit content and add comments in the right workspace, keeping everyone on the same page whether they're in the office or on the road.”

Citrix Reaches Out with Podio

Collaboration technology provider Citrix purchased three-year-old Podio in April of this year with the aim of integrating the platform into its GoTo cloud services portfolio. In July, Citrix made its first major effort at extending the reach of Podio by rolling out two new platform integrations with Outlook Exchange Calendar and Google Calendar.

Since the purchase, Citrix has also integrated Podio with YouSendIt, ShareFile, SugarSync, Microsoft SkyDrive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Google Docs. Podio also provides an app for users of iOS-based mobile devices.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Hootsuite Conversation: Real-Time Chat for Community Managers

Enterprise social media management technology provider HootSuite is launching Conversations, an internal communications tool.

HootSuite Conversations is designed to allow real-time internal communications among individuals and teams from the HootSuite social media dashboard. Users can also rebroadcast Conversations comments and threads across other social networks, as well as import commentary from other social networks into Conversations.

Contacts can be imported from Gmail and Yahoo accounts, and the application automatically recognizes when a contact is online. In addition, anyone with an email account can be invited to join a conversation — HootSuite membership is not required.

Community Management Eased

According to BetaBeat, the new Conversations tool is a “community manager’s dream.” BetaBeat notes that Conversations will be “useful for corporate communications teams who collaborate on building content for various social channels on Hootsuite … [it] can streamline a lot of the work that happens on other platforms into one dedicated place.”

BetaBeat mentions specific community management benefits such giving community and brand managers the ability to collaborate and provide feedback on content (like tweets and status updates) before publishing it. In addition, BetaBeat says customer service reps handling social media accounts can benefit from having “conversations surrounding specific tweets or updates.”

HootSuite Makes Team Effort for Business Users

Conversations gives HootSuite users an extension of the enterprise collaborative capabilities provided by the Teams tool. With Teams, HootSuite Pro users can integrate with Conversations to enable real-time communication among members of a specific internal group. This will allow organizations to govern content and manage access to social networks.

Administrators can configure the platform with their organizational structure and assign permissions at organization, team or social profile levels to ensure only appropriate users can post messages or respond to comments. HootSuite Teams also supports review-and-approval workflows.

In addition to the governance features, Teams users can perform group-focused tasks such as:

• Assigning messages for follow-up
• Adding multiple social networks to a team
• Connecting team members to multiple teams

As businesses continue to migrate to social media for both internal and external communication, HootSuite continues to add new features and applications that make it easier for enterprises to connect their members. HootSuite Conversations is currently available in free beta. Basic HootSuite users can engage any individual in conversation, while HootSuite Pro users can engage in specific team conversations.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

VMware's Socialcast Integration Engine Brings Social Media Benefits to Business Apps

Virtualization/cloud infrastructure provider VMware is introducing a new set of social integration capabilities known as the Socialcast Integration Engine. VMware says the engine will help users deliver social media benefits to apps and business systems.

Three Components, One Goal

The VMware Socialcast Integration Engine combines Version 3 of the Socialcast Reach integration tool, a new Community App Manager solution and a set of RESTful developer APIs. Here is a brief review of each component:

• Socialcast Reach — The Reach tool is designed to allow integration with business solutions that accept HTML/Javascript snippets. Information is shared in real time between Socialcast Reach and the external system. Version 3 includes improvements such as the ability to dynamically pull data from the host pages of integrated solutions and the ability to share into a specific Socialcast group.
• Community App Manager — The Community App Manager enables the development of Socialcast-based apps and enables management of app access and an internal app store.
• Socialcast REST API — A REST API is built into the Socialcast platform.

Social Media as Enterprise Business Network

The new Socialcast Integration Engine appears to be a continuation of a VMware strategy outlined in a June 2012 CMSWire article. Chuck Dietrich, VP of VMware Apps, said in a phone interview with CMSWire that, “Just as consumer social networks provide an 'underlying communication and collaboration framework' in the consumer world, where users can do things like share photos and videos or discuss how they spent their weekends, enterprise social networks provide the same type of framework for businesses.

“You can ask a question in an activity stream and make sure it gets to the people who might know the answer,” said Dietrich. “Every user has an ID and an algorithm knows what they’re working on. It’s an underlying network that connects people to people, apps to apps, and people to apps.”

More recently, Dietrich spoke with Information Week to explain how having contextual conversations about what were once binary tasks is one of the key benefits of enterprise social applications. Dietrich gave an example using the Socialcast Integration Engine to bring social capabilities into an expense management system. "A manager gets an expense report for approval," Dietrich said. “There are two choices (with the binary model): You either say cancel or submit. The interesting thing with enterprise social is that it gives you another choice: discuss."

The Socialcast Integration Engine is accessible via Socialcast FREE (for communities up to 50 users) or for a cost for larger numbers of users.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Osmek Shifts From Framework Web CMS to Content API Solution

Hosted cloud-based Web CMS provider Osmek claims to have “rethought” the Web CMS model by shifting focus from the framework to the actual content being published.

Becoming a ‘Content API’

On its site, Osmek says it has transformed itself into a “content API,” rather than a traditional Web CMS provider. What this means is the Osmek CMS is platform-agnostic. Developers have their choice of programming language, framework, etc. and can also distribute content to an unlimited number of sites and in formats such as content templates and XML.

Through the use of “content bins” that replace frameworks, Osmek also says its CMS (or content API, if you prefer) developers can pick from a variety of back-end models including photo gallery and podcasting. The Osmek API allows remote access from any location and managers can set different levels of permission controls for different users.

Osmek – The Old Days

Osmek has always presented itself as a lightweight publishing system that gives the users multiple options for formatting content, but has not always used the content API model. In May 2010, CMSWire covered the introduction of Osmek into the hosted Web CMS marketplace. Osmek, the brainchild of Matthew McCloskey, founder and Principal at Kemso, LLC, was presented as a Web-based content management system that leverages the cloud for content storage.

Osmek did offer a language-neutral development API, a series of section modules and templates and system wide core functionality that enabled site features such as comments and tags. The system targeted the same customer base as Squarespace and LightCMS. Specifically, Web developers and designers who are looking for a content management solution for their clients.

However, although Osmek always offered a high degree of individual choice and language-neutrality, it still followed the typical framework CMS model. By completely eliminating frameworks and turning the whole CMS into an API, Osmek is maximizing the flexibility and scalability of the developer environment. Will it be stable enough for widespread use? If this proves to be the case, look for other CMS vendors to start ditching frameworks in favor of flexibility.

A Friend of the Developer

A friend of the developer is a friend of mine, but is the revamped Osmek CMS a true “friend” to developers? AppStorm recently asked this question, noting that the traditional “PHP-based application installed on your server that lets you log in and add/edit pages” works well, but “the way these websites work can make it difficult to customize your website, leaving the back end dictating how the front end works.”

In comparison, AppStorm deems Osmek’s user interface to be “a little clunky and convoluted.” However, overall Osmek gets a “very good” rating, with specific praise for the ease of using content bins, customizable data fields and quality of the developer API. On a scale of one to 10, Osmek receives an 8. Sounds pretty friendly.

Osmek pricing ranges across five basic levels from US$ 9 to US$ 149 per month, depending on number of content bins, users and servers.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Mindjet Integrates Destop, Mobile, Web Products to Streamline Collaboration

Mindjet is consolidating itself. On Thursday, the San Francisco-based collaborative work provider announced that it was integrating all of its desktop, web, mobile and on-premise products into one collaborative work management service.

The integration combines Mindjet’s brainstorming/mapping tool MindManager, the social task manager Mindjet Connect, and Mindjet Mobile into one brand for brainstorming, planning and managing.

A Single Collaboration Space

CEO Scott Raskin said in a statement that Mindjet "is changing the way people work" by providing a “single collaboration space for professionals to work inspired and generate real results.” (see: Social Task Management: A View of the Future).

Mindjet’s service, which the company says is designed to help people "work smarter, faster and better" provides a visual interface and collaborative environment for idea generation and project/task management. The company said that over two million individuals, thousands of small businesses, and 83 of the Fortune 100 companies currently use the service to create ideas, organize and share info, and manage workflow.

Better Synchronization Across Apps

Links, notes and documents can be attached to provide content and context or content can be imported into the service. The service also integrates with Google, LinkedIn, Evernote, Twitter, Microsoft Office and Yammer.

The release offers some new Mindjet features. These include the ability to auto-calculate project costs in the planning and budgeting functions, and synchronization of tasks and assignments across desktop, web, mobile and on-premises apps. Additionally, the menus and ribbons in the workspace can be customized to reflect a user’s particular work patterns.

In its announcement of the new, expanded integration, Mindjet cited voltage sensor maker Sensorlink’s C.E.O. Gary Hielkema, who praised the software’s team-based brainstorming and progress tracking. “Mindjet is the first thing our team looks at in the morning, even before checking email,” he said.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com