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

Vyre On Brand 2.4 Supports HTML5 Video, Multi-Brand Asset Management

Vyre has announced the launch of On Brand 2.4, the newest version of their Brand Asset Management (BAM) Solution.  This updated version of On Brand, which started as a tool used to help users manage digital content on mobile devices, has a variety of new features designed to make the SaaS based system more efficient and easier to use.

Vyre, whose marketing automation solution product, Unify, is being used to improve content management has brought a variety of new features to On Brand, its brand management solution. These new features include, advanced reporting, more support for devices that have HTML5 video, such as tablets and mobile devices, streamlining and UI enhancements, documentation and updated help guides.

Reporting

As with other versions of Vyre On Brand, version 2.4 provides users with the ability to configure reports and comment on how digital assets are being used and to export the information to other places, like Excel. Now, users can also base their reports around  their creative workflow projects. These projects can be filtered by type, date, users, activity and brand, while users can also also choose what information can be displayed to themselves and other users.

HTML5 Video

Vyre recognizes that there are more users who use iOS and Android devices, such as smartphones and tablets. With this new update, it’s easier for users to play video (in all of the major web browsers) on devices that use HTML5.

Creative Workflow

With On Brand 2.4 the Creative Workflow module has be updated to allow users to manage their projects more easily and efficiently. Updates include:

• More administrator rights for administrating projects.
• Filtering by brand to add users to projects.
• User profiles can be linked project members.
• Revisions no longer need a project manager’s approval.
• General efficiency updates to project overviews, activity listings, brief management and the viewing and filtering of projects.

Multi-brand Enhancements

Users are now able to manage brands more easily, with a simpler system that provides more brand support. Clients now have a choice between single branded On Brand, multi brand and tailored On Brand, with customizations.

• Users can create sub-domains, which can be managed and used within the system by both clients and partners.
• Products and clients can have their own sub-page (for example: brandname.company.com).
• Sub-brands, including individual brand users, assets, articles, taxonomy and permissions can now be quickly created within the system.

Help Guides

An online help site has been added to On Brand to help with users problems and questions about the system. Help Guides include both short videos, on each area of the system and text guides.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Snapplify Offers One-Stop Digital Publishing for Mobile Content Providers

With mobile devices blossoming, how can content publishers best distribute their wares? A South Africa-based company, Snapplify, is providing one solution. 

The company enables publishers, authors and other mobile content providers to package their offerings into digital publications that become available within a branded mobile app. Content providers can create, manage and distribute multiple publications — and handle subscription and other revenue streams — through a single app.

Custimization for iOS, Android

The app, which is customized to the owner’s requirements, is then distributed by Snapplify globally through app stores. Currently, Snapplify is working through Apple’s App Store and the Google Play app store.

App development, submission and approval are handled by Snapplify, and its platform can handle a variety of file formats, including PDF, ePDF, ePUB, maps, embedded websites, HTML 5 and common audio and video formats. The client receives analytical data about downloads and sales, and payment collection and disbursement is handled by Snapplify.

Apps can be made available for iOS or Android smartphones or tablets, depending on the client’s needs, although Snapplify points out that many kinds of digital publications are best viewed on tablets.

No Upfront Cost for Publishers

Snapplify gives several use case examples, such as Africa’s first tablet-only interactive daily newspaper, called iMaverick. The publication needed a solution that would offer mass distribution to both Apple and Android devices, integration with a large database of existing subscribers, a reliable and engaging interface, and options such as in-app subscriptions.

With Snapplify, publishers can upload mobile-optinimzed pdf files and produce a digital newspaper with multimedia content.

Snapplify’s solution utilized the existing PDF files that had been optimized for mobile, and resulted in a Digital News app for iMaverick that offers the digital newspaper with embedded video, interactive ads and other multimedia content. iMaverick staff employ the Snapplify platform to manage content in the app.

The platform was launched a year ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair. While a variety of publishing solutions for mobile devices have emerged, including WoodWing’s collaboration with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite and small vendors such as 955 Dreams, a potential strength to Snapplify’s approach is a soup-to-nuts solution that takes care of distribution. Additionally, pricing is based on a commission of sales, so the lack of upfront costs could appeal to small publishers.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Accellion's Mobile Document Sharing Solution Adds An Outlook Plug-In, Kerberos Security

Accellion is updating its mobile file sharing solution. The Palo Alto, California-based company is enhancing its offering to increase ease-of-use and flexibility, and to provide more security controls. 

The Accellion Mobile File Sharing solution, which works with a wide variety of files and offers collaboration via commenting, is targeted at businesses that are nervous about using mobile document sharing in the age of Bring Your Own Device. Accellion, which says it has 10 million users among 1600 of the world’s leading corporation and governmental agencies, offers an audit trail for file tracking and 128- or 256-bit data encryption for files during transfer and at rest.

Reducing Risk in Mobile File Sharing

Accellion's updated solution provides drag-and-drop of files into Accellion for sharing, and Kerberos single sign-on which, in addition to the existing SAML and OAuth protocols, reduces the list of passwords a user must otherwise remember. Kerberos is a M.I.T.-originated network authentication protocol.

Accellion’s senior vice president of products Jon Pincus said in a statement that, without an enterprise-sanctioned solution, employees who want file sharing and collaboration tools must “adopt consumer-grade technology that puts an enterprise at risk.” The company’s file sharing solution, which Pincus said is focused on the enterprise, integrates with mobile device management solutions, including BoxTone, MobileIron and Good.

The company’s mobile file sharing is also available as part of its Mobile Apps, which now supports iOS5 and iPhone 5, and the Microsoft Productivity Suite.

Outlook Plugin Allows 2GB File Transfers

The Mobile Apps updates include Application Whitelisting, where IT administrators can gain control over which external editors and viewers users can employ to open files. There’s also Secure Workspaces, to which users can upload email attachments. The workspaces are designed to streamline projects’ workflow, and to allow team members to review, comment, update, synchronize, share and send files that are located in workspaces.

The updates for use with the Microsoft Productivity Suite include a plugin for Outlook, allowing users to securely send files up to 2GB from within Outlook — compared to attachment limitations in Outlook that are typically set by companies at 10MB or less. In addition, users can control file access and file expiration dates.

For Microsoft Lync users, the Plugin offers the ability to share files within an instant message, VoIP, video conferencing or a shared desktop.

A Leg on the Competition

You may not hear as much about Accellion when it comes to document sharing as you do about DropBox, Box.net, even Salesforce's new ChatterBox, but it does offer some enterprise level features that these big names don't - and that's the security. We aren't saying the document sharing apps mentioned here aren't secure, because they are. But the level of security that comes with Accellion (i.e. the Kerberos Single Sign-on) issomething we haven't seen yet — something enterprises may find compelling if the information they are sharing is of a highly confidential nature.

Is the security, along with the Outlook integration enough to give Accellion a leg up?

 

 

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

Jahia Wise Preview: Versatile, Streamlined Document and Social Collaboration

At the end of this month Jahia will introduce a new open source solution called Jahia Wise that combines document management and social collaboration. Easy to use, it has all the functionality required to enable workers to integrate all their information sources and populate their websites or intranets with enterprise content.

Jahia already offers a number of solutions for working with data (including documents), but this solution is designed to make it easy for business users to share documents, exchange them, work on them collectively, and ultimately publish them in a controlled and ordered fashion.

Jahia Wise has been doing the rounds of some of the tech shows, particularly in France. Recently, Elie Auvray CEO of Jahia and Anne de Forsan, director of Communications, sat down with CMSWire and gave us a look at the new product.

Jahia Wise: Gallery View
 

Jahia Unity, Jahia Wise

Jahia is keeping some of the functionality under its hat until the product launch, because, Auvray says, some things are unique and well, why give competitors a chance to pre-empt you?

But that’s all by-the-by. When Jahia Wise is released it will have been in the works for about a year, according to Auvray. The driving principal behind it, he says, is the same principal that drives all Jahia’s other products — notably, unity.

Expanding on the concept of unity, he pointed out that Jahia has, as its driving principal, the delivery of agile open source technologies. This delivery pushes enterprise application convergence as far as it can possibly go by pulling together web, search, document, social and portal technologies.

And Jahia has already managed to achieve this, he says, with some of their other products — like their content management system eXtended Content Management (xCM), their visual experience builder Jahia Studio, their content core platform and a number of other JahiApps (Jahia applications).

When it comes to enterprise collaboration and document exchange, companies expect more and more integration with the information they share online on their intranet or website. Many solutions on the market are cumbersome, complex and costly — especially in terms of integration.

Jahia Wise: Secure Collaboration

Jahia Wise Evolution

Jahia Wise offers an alternative to this complexity, Auvray says. It is the first time that Jahia has produced a product focused entirely on the document, file sharing and social collaboration market. It is a completely new product, based on the same underlying platform as xCM is, but has evolved to ensure that the distribution of content across the enterprise is easy and intuitive. To do that it comes with numerous modules and packages.

While Jahia Wise can work as a complementary product to the core platform, it does have a separate installer, which means that it can also be set up and run independently of the core platform for enterprises that are looking for a distribution platform on its own.

It evolved in this way, Auvray says, because when they went looking at distribution management systems they saw a wide range of products that can manage a wide range of content. However, they also found that once an enterprise started building an intranet based on existing company information, located in different silos, the nightmare of integration began.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Why HBO, NBC, and Comcast Are Betting On A Startup To Power Their Second Screens

Mobile devices are moving audiences and advertisers away from the television set. But can they also help bring them back? Zeebox's second screen solution makes live programming more fun and potentially more profitable.

Let’s say you’re the television industry. A Nielsen study says that says 88% of tablet owners and 86% of smartphone owners are using mobile devices while they watch your shows. Some of them are playing Angry Birds, but some of them are Shazaming to get more information, checking into content with GetGlue and tweeting about plots in real-time.

This is the point that likely stands out to you: Bad Piggies, Shazam, GetGlue and Twitter are all making money by capturing your viewers attention on mobile devices. You, the television industry titan, are likely not. At least not directly.

So what are you going to do about it? You might try to make apps that provide a second-screen environment for each show. But those are expensive to develop, and they don’t deliver a great experience for channel surfers who don’t want to app surf simultaneously. You might promote the existing social media conversation around your shows, but that won’t directly promote increases to your bottom line.

Anthony Rose and Ernesto Schmitt

Perhaps it’s time to partner up.

That's what NBCUniversal, Comcast (which owns a controlling interest in NBCUniversal) and HBO have decided. On Thursday, the companies announced partnerships with Zeebox, a startup app designed to play sidekick to any television show. NBC and Comcast have invested an undisclosed amount in the startup. British Sky Broadcasting has previously taken a 10% stake.

Launched in the UK last January, Zeebox has been downloaded by 1.5 million people there. It launches in the U.S. Thursday.

The app isn't an alternative venue for shows the way Hulu and Netflix are. Instead, it aims to enhance programs as they're watched on a television set. The free app not only acts as a program guide--telling users, for instance, which shows are being most discussed or watched by their friends--but also as a remote. Meanwhile, it allows any broadcaster to add additional content like videos, games and polls to their shows' digital hub. Even if a show’s producers don’t participate, users will find a dedicated page for it with relevant twitter chatter, additional information and a chatroom on Zeebox.

Zeebox has no specific killer feature. Its biggest advantage is an appeal to broadcasters.

Like Shazam, it will extend its second-screen experience to advertisements. Unlike Shazam, it will share revenue from enhanced commercials with all broadcasters (Shazam says it does share revenue with some broadcasters, but declined to provide information about the circumstances in which it does so). Adding a mobile component to a commercial can nudge consumers toward action (think “buy this now” buttons) in a way that television ads can’t. You don't have to be an advertising executive to realize the potential for profit. Zeebox has also invented television’s first form of keyword advertisingby pulling important terms from shows' closed captioning data as they air. Users can click on each term within the app to see more information about it. Zeebox plans to sell sponsored versions of the terms the same way Google sells promoted links in your search results.

For HBO, which relies on subscriptions rather than advertising, Zeebox could provide an incentive for watching programming on cable rather than through iTunes or your parent’s HBO Go account.

If you’re still pretending to be the television industry, this probably all sounds awesome. But if you’ve lapsed back into average viewer mode, you might be feeling left out. What does Zeebox give you that you don’t already have? Short answer: Everything. At once.

Want to tweet about the show you're watching? Zeebox has a chatroom for group discussion with strangers. Want to share what you watch with friends? You won’t need GetGlue when you have Zeebox. Looking for what to watch next? There's a guide built in. More info on that celebrity the host just mentioned? Use Zeetags instead of Google. Games? Got those, too. Put your Bad Piggies away.

None of Zeebox's many features is the most likely source of new users. That would be HBO, Comcast and NBC, which will all help promote the app. NBCUniversal EVP of Strategic Integration Page Thompson declined to comment on the scale of the network's planned marketing effort, but Zeebox co-founder and CTO Anthony Rose said it “will be hard to watch NBC without noticing Zeebox.”

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Document Management Roll-up: Kodak SharePoint Capture, Lexmark's New Strategy

It may have been Labor Day week, but still a few interesting items to note in the document management world. Kodak has just announced the release of a capture solution built on SharePoint, OpenText targets Tempo Express at legal industry, Lexmark points to a new hardware strategy and the Document Foundation joins OASIS.

Kodak’s SharePoint Capture

If anyone thought Kodak was just going to roll over and die, they were wrong. Financial difficulties aside, and selling of patents aside, Kodak is still working away. This week’s document capture release demonstrates that.

The new software, which comes with what Kodak describes as a radically simplified interface, is built using SharePoint 2010, which is going to make it attractive for all those companies that have installed SharePoint, and we know how many companies that actually is.

With Kodak’s Info Activate Solution, which is an enterprise-wide distributed system, users will be able to digitize documents and start business processes at the same time. This means that by the time you have your document in the system, the process of treating that document is already underway.

The real kicker here, though, is the SharePoint element. Because it has built Info Activate on top of SharePoint, users will also be able to use SharePoint technologies including content libraries, business connectivity services, dashboards as well as all the modules and third-party products that can be integrated into SharePoint.

The bottom line here is that with it, enterprises are being offered a new solution that can take documents into SharePoint directly and easily and start processes within SharePoint automatically. It also requires little or no training to use.

While Info Activate Solution functions inside SharePoint 2010 for tight integration, it can also provide file output for enterprises that are using other enterprise CMS platforms too, and can produce documents in pretty much any format you can think of. The new solution is available now.

OpenText’s Legal Tempo Express

Though it may have been a holiday weekend, OpenText was busy during the week. If you missed it earlier, it has released OpenText Tempo Express specifically for the legal industry.

It enables enterprises to set up a private solution of sharing and syncing content form inside the company with third-parties outside the firewall, all done through the cloud.

Tempo has been around for a while with the general release last November. That release centered on making document sharing quicker and mobile, with users also able to synchronize data across all computers and data. In March, that release was bolstered by a Tempo Express Edition. Interested in more on this?

Lexmark’s New Hardware Strategy?

If you’ve been following the MFP space at all over the past few weeks, you couldn’t but be aware that Lexmark has announced a massive shake-up that will see 1,700 jobs going worldwide as it exits the inkjet space to focus on what it considers more profitable technologies.

The announcement was greeted with some shock from a number of places, particularly Perceptive, which was acquired by the printing giant in May 2010 for US$ 280 million as Lexmark published its ambitions in the enterprise CMS and document management space.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

IBM Acquires Kenexa for Social Business Boost

IBM is acquiring Kenexa, a publicly-held recruiting/talent management solution provider, in an effort to bolster its social and HR business initiatives. Kenexa offers cloud-based front office applications and consulting services.

Making Recruitment Social

In its announcement of the acquisition, IBM says Kenexa, “complements IBM's strategy of bringing relevant data and expertise into the hands of business leaders.” More specifically, IBM intends to integrate Kenexa recruitment and talent management functionality into its existing and well-developed social business technology offering.

Although IBM has not released any significant detail about exactly how Kenexa’s technology will fit into the larger social business strategy, presumably IBM will leverage its capabilities to enable clients to perform tasks such as evaluating, recruiting and training employees via social networks. IBM did state that “As a result of this synergy, clients will be able to attract and develop the right skills to build the right teams, for the right projects, the first time.”

IBM Attempts to Build on Social Biz Lead

By acquiring Kenexa, IBM is demonstrating that it is not content to simply sit back and rest on its laurels as the de facto leader in the still evolving social business market. In June 2012, IDC named IBM the worldwide marketshare leader in enterprise social software for the third year in a row. IBM achieved this ranking on the basis of 2011 revenue. According to an IDC study, IBM’s social enterprise software revenue grew faster than any competitor, and nearly twice as fast as the market overall.

This is a considerable feat, given that the market for business social software grew almost 40 percent between 2010 and 2011. IDC said that the market is expected to continue at this level of growth for each of the next four years, reaching US$ 4.5 billion by 2016. IBM Connections is the company’s social networking platform, available in either cloud-based or on-premises versions, and it allows one-click collaboration and the functionality to create social communities both inside and outside a company.

IBM customers for Connections include Lowe’s Home Improvement, TD Bank, Electrolux, Bayer Material Science, The Ottawa Hospital and Earthwatch. One-third of Fortune 100 companies use IBM’s social software, as do 80 percent of the top 10 retailers and banks.

Expanding Social Footprints The Fast Way

According to commentary in the Dealbook section of the New York Times, IBM buying Kenexa is part of a larger trend of “tech giants” snapping up smaller enterprise social networking companies to quickly expand their social footprints. The article cites recent high-profile acquisitions such as Microsoft’s purchase of Yammer and Salesforce.com’s purchase of Buddy Media. Stating “the flurry of acquisitions underscores the increasing importance of social media in the workplace,” the New York Times concludes IBM has made a good decision with this purchase.

IBM expects the $1.26 billion cash transaction to close in Q4 2012, subject to Kenexa shareholder and regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. With operations in 21 countries, Kenexa has approximately 2,800 employees and supports 8,900 customers across a wide range of verticals.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint Projects: Ant Clay on the Importance of Vision

Everyone wants to believe that there is a single bullet solution to solve all SharePoint problems. While the answers are never that simple, the starting point is: asking the question "why?"

Ant Clay, Founder and CEO of Soulsailor Consulting Ltd, is one of a new breed of SharePoint business technology consultants. Known to ask clients repeatedly “Why?” until they breakdown and admit “they just don’t know,” we thought we'd turn the tables on him to ask a few questions about SharePoint, governance and the upcoming release of SharePoint 2013.

Question: What do think is SharePoint 2010’s strongest capability? Why?

Ant Clay: SharePoint 2010’s strongest capability is probably its downfall for most organizations and that is its “flexibility.” With a good SharePoint business consultant, developer, designer and architect you can create pretty much any awesome business functionality you want.

Being more specific, what I love about SharePoint 2010 when compared to previous versions and other platforms is Managed Metadata. I love having the ability to use both a formal structured taxonomy as well as a folksonomy and even promote items from the folksonomy into the structured taxonomy.

The real benefits for customers I think is that this opens up a world of being able to present contextual information (knowledge, people, content and actionable activities) based on who you are, preferences, where you are in the solution and what you are doing. Definitely an area that can deliver significant business value to both organizations and individuals alike.

Q: When it comes to implementing SharePoint, where do most organizations go wrong? Is it more about a good Info Architecture or a strong governance strategy?

AC: I think, actually that’s not true, I know that most organizations go wrong with SharePoint by focusing their time and efforts on what is complicated, but not truly complex and that is the technology implementation. There is a common tendency to not consider the following four areas which I see as being of utmost importance for success and business value:

• SharePoint Vision/Strategy
• Business Alignment
• Holistic Governance Approach
• Change Management.

The reality is that SharePoint projects are in essence people projects and therefore are not straightforward — we need to deal with this complexity and best practices just don’t cut it.

I see Information Architecture as a small but very important part of Information Governance which again is just a single “wave” in what I refer to as “The Waves of SharePoint Governance” which covers a range of areas key to good governance.

So to answer your question I see that Governance is most important, but that contains a number of elements that all need to be addressed holistically.

Q: Speaking of governance, what is the first thing an organization should consider when creating their SharePoint governance strategy? Is there a one size fits all approach to SharePoint governance?

AC: The first thing is not to kill too many trees! :) Seriously the amount of governance documents that are 10’s if not 100’s of pages long that get printed, never read and left gathering dust is amazing.

The first thing to consider about SharePoint Governance has nothing to do with governance at all, it’s understanding the platform or project's vision, its “why?” or the difference it is going to make for the organization. If you have within the project team and across the organization a shared understanding and shared commitment to that “why” then governance becomes that much easier.

There isn’t a one-size fits all approach to SharePoint Governance in my mind, but there are two focal points:

• What it is
• How to apply it

“What it is” refers to the governance framework that you adopt. There are lots out there, but I would recommend people adopt one that isn’t technology focused and leads with the business; I’ve developed a framework “Waves of SharePoint Governance” which I’ll be writing about in more detail soon (and will form the basis of the book I am currently writing!).

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Got Java? Oracle Has Some Updates for You!

Oracle is providing a lot of updated and new Java functionality in one fell swoop with today’s multi pronged release. Let’s dig into a few highlights of each individual solution.

Oracle Wakes Up Java Market

In a nutshell:

Enterprise technology provider Oracle is releasing new versions of Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 Update 6 (Java SE 7 Update 6) and JavaFX 2.2, as well as the first release of JavaFX Scene Builder. With this release, Oracle is providing full availability of Java SE 7 Update 6 on Mac OS X, including the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java Development Kit (JDK), as well as the JavaFX 2.2 rich client platform and JavaFX Scene Builder.

A little more detail:

Java SE 7 Update 6: The latest version of Java SE introduces a Java Developer Kit (JDK) for Linux on versions 6 and 7 of the ARM architecture to address what Oracle calls “general purpose” ARM and for development platforms such as Raspberry Pi. This new JDK for Linux on ARM is made available under the Oracle Binary Code License and is available for download at no cost for development and production use on general-purpose platforms.

The latest version of Java SE also offers default inclusion of Java Access Bridge on Windows to provide direct communication with assistive technology applications, full integration with Oracle's Java SE implementation and full support and recommendation for use with Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Java FX 2.2: This upgrade introduces full Linux support for both x86 and x64 systems. The new application packager allows developers to bundle the JRE and JavaFX runtime libraries with JavaFX applications, which Oracle says enables end users to experience a traditional native installation process on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In addition, multi-touch support that allows for advanced application functionality from two or more points of contact on touch screen displays and touch pads.

Java FX Scene Builder 1.0: The new JavaFX Scene Builder is a visual layout tool for the JavaFX platform that enables users to design user interface (UI) screens by dragging and positioning components from a palette onto a scene. It has integrated development workflow with the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE), as well as compatibility with other Java IDEs and is currently available for Mac OS X and Windows.

Oracle Extends Java Value

Oracle has committed itself in the past year or so to extending the value of Java. In a February 2011 webcast, Oracle Java Evangelist Ajay Patel promised that the company is going to be more aggressive, "driving the pace of change" of Java, while understanding that customers want choice, from light open source all the way up to heavy application server platforms and enterprise products. Since then, Oracle’s Java-related activities have included the release of the the subscription-based Oracle Java Cloud Service, offering user-controlled virtual machines for individual customers, in June 2012.

Oracle Takes Java Over

With these latest Java upgrades, Ars Technica says Apple has “effectively ceded responsibility for Java to Oracle, which had begun taking over support of Java on OS X with the release of Java SE 7 Update 4 in April.” Although Apple has been distributing its own updates to Java and releasing security patches in cooperation with Oracle, Ars Technica predicts that Java users will receive updates only from Oracle moving forward. In addition, Ars Technica blames Apple for a “continuing inability to stay on top of updating Java” that resulted in the Flashback trojan attack that infected as many as 500,000 Mac-based Java users.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy: An Overview

Many portals, intranets, public websites and other solutions fail to deliver objectives and ROI within 6 months to a year because no one governs the solution. This series will share my high level SharePoint Business Governance strategy to help your company turn those success rates around.

The series will include: Introduction and Governance Strategy Overview, Governance Documents, Human Forces (Organization) and Project Governance. I will follow up with an additional post on Automated Governance and "From Strategy to Business Value.”

Introduction

In the SharePoint business there is a lot of buzz around governance today. Most of it is technical and involves how to automate governance with scripts and 3rd party applications. You can often read about how to script setups, manage sites, databases and security, etc.

Suppliers often say that they have a governance strategy to help your organization with governance planning, but what they really mean is that they can help you manage the solution they provide. Most often you get left all alone with a new “space shuttle” and a service contract to help out when the fire starts.

In the past 16 years I have worked in global organizations and had many roles where I have set requirements for projects and ordered solutions. I have too many times seen IT projects fail the organization's requirements, goals and objectives because of bad IT management. I have asked myself why we don’t learn from our mistakes, instead we make the same mistakes again and again.

Many products fail because a solution goes live before it is completed: that results in bad user adoption and usage. The end users get frustrated and IT tries to rescue the project by pumping in enormous amounts of recourses. This often ends up in the purchase of a new system.

Whatever it is that makes the projects fail, there is very seldom a supplier who can help the customer rescue a project or an already running solution. My belief is that many projects could have been saved if a supplier had intervened to help the organizations with knowledge, skills and experience.

To many, the word governance is the same as manage, but that’s not how I see it.

The word governance derives from the Greek verb κυβερνάω [kubernáo] which means to steer. To put it in context with SharePoint — it is about how one steers to reach one’s goals and objectives year after year, time and again. Business value should be the focus and the technology should be there to support that.

Governance is continuous in an organization, new needs and objectives will come along the way. The governance begins when the first thought/idea of a new solution arrives and it ends when that solution no longer helps you to reach business goals, or delivers a return of investment.

To govern a SharePoint solution requires organization, not only “Automated governance” but also human forces working together to reach common goals and objectives to deliver business value.

You are doomed to fail if you don’t have both. This is not easy in any way, but a very complex task. That is the reason I take on this challenge to help organizations reach their goals and objectives. Not as a one time occurrence, but continuously.

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy

Governance models often have the same name, but the content and the strategy within are very much different.

Based on my 16 years of experience in IT governance and many months of research I have put together a SharePoint Governance strategy that works.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Stop Before You Overhaul: 5 Ways Testing Can Maximize Impact with Minimal Changes

An overarching site overhaul is often a marketer's go-to solution when online sales and conversion rates are sinking. After all, if bounce rates are high, average order values aren’t up to snuff, and one-time-buyers are the norm, it must be the website's fault … right? 

Right, but … when solving issues that are isolated to specific points of interaction or achieving certain tangible outcomes, it's usually not the whole website that needs attention. More often than not, all that’s needed is some strategic testing and targeting, followed by a few powerful modifications based on the results.

If you’re seriously considering making global site changes in the name of improving sales and conversions — or already took the plunge and need to regain lost ground — consider the following minimal changes to make a big impact on key website pages:

1. Homepage: First Impressions Count

The homepage is usually the first page visitors see and the first one marketers want to modify. Before making big changes, consider the top objectives of an e-commerce homepage: to display products/services, to encourage navigation to other parts of the site, and to allow visitors to search directly and easily for what they’re looking for.

Testing results of hundreds of retail sites consistently reveal that keeping the visual display clean and compelling attracts more engagement. A cluttered, busy collage of products, on the other hand, is likely to overwhelm visitors and drive them away.

Is your navigation bar also clear and intuitive? Make sure that category and product navigation options are especially prominent, well positioned and easy to identify. Lowes.com does a good job of using icons with rollover text to engage visitors and direct them to the desired product or category.

Finally, if you’re trying to attract attention to a new product, consider using a contrasting color for the section of the navigation bar that links to that product, so that it stands out from the other categories.

2. Category Pages: Sorting Things Out

Because category pages revolve around visitors’ need to search for and sort through products or service types, any updates to this section should enhance the visitor’s ability to filter and find. It’s easy to fall into the trap of ignoring category pages or writing them off as a vehicle that simply exists to transport visitors to the pages that really count, but testing shows otherwise.

For instance, multivariate testing results for Harry and David revealed that simply increasing the number of products displayed from 3 to 4 in a row of category results, and adding an “Add to Cart” button underneath each of those products resulted in dramatic lifts in conversion and overall revenue generation.

Clear calls-to-action for featured or sales items also assist in transforming browsers into buyers. And quick view functionality allows for visual inspection and comparison with other products, without forcing a visitor to commit to a click-through before they’re ready. Finally, allowing customers to save searches for later provides visitors convenience and therefore creates loyalty.

Zappos.com’s “Save This Search” function allows visitors to save a particular category search with a relevant name, so they can return at a later time, choose their products and complete the purchase. After all, you can’t always control whether a customer leaves, but you can certainly make it easier for them to find their way back.

3. Product Pages: The Big Display

Since product pages are all about encouraging visitors to make the purchase, a retailer’s job here is to inform, make customers comfortable with the product and simplify buying.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

ADAM Cross-Media Collaboration Tool Enhances Digital Asset Management Platform

ADAM Software has released Teamwork, a new solution for managing cross-media marketing campaigns. Teamwork addresses many of the workflow and tracking weaknesses that customers have long complained about in ADAM’s digital asset management (DAM) platform.

It’s All About Teamwork

Modern marketing efforts now include an increasingly diverse mix of content types from video to audio and images, but many traditional DAM tools really only manage text. This forces organizations to manage other assets offline using a complex mix of difficult to track manual processes. These shortcomings are exactly what ADAM’s Teamwork addresses.

The solution is a direct result of ADAM’s three-month-old partnership with ConceptShare, a collaboration platform provider that has also partnered with other DAM vendors like OpenText. Teamwork integrates with other ADAM products and allows users to review, proof and approve campaign media. The platform includes workflow that enable organizations to orchestrate everything from simple to complex approval cycles with multiple teams, parallel activities and sophisticate rules.

ADAM Teamwork annotations

In addition to workflow, Teamwork provides an audit trail of all annotations and approvals and allows organizations to configure permissions so that users only have access to content they are approved to see. The product also has several other key features:

• Compare the altered to the unaltered version of a file
• Current and archived campaign overviews
• Approver and reviewer management
• Designed for use by non-technical users

Additional details about Teamwork are available on the ADAM product page.

Getting More Information

Teamwork is available now. ADAM is offering 30-minute webinars to demonstrate the features Teamwork. The webinars are free, but registration is required.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com