Grid computing and virtualisation - are they money savers? (FT)

Five years ago it was a laboratory wonder, a new-fangled way of data processing that only boffins and rocket scientists understood or could use.

Today, grid computing is making its way steadily into the mainstream as senior managements seek new ways of extracting more and better value from their computing resources.

Its progress is being smoothed by a string of positive examples of the way it can boost efficiency and cut costs. Higo Bank in Japan, for example, was concerned that its loan processing system was taking an inordinately long time to service current and potential customers.

The answer was to integrate three important databases – risk assessment, customer credit scoring and customer profile – using grid technology. The result was a 50 per cent reduction in the number of steps, the amount of time and the volume of paperwork needed to process a loan.
The consequence? Instant competitive advantage compared with rival lenders.

A company in Europe was able to improve one of its business processes as well as its overall systems efficiency as a consequence of the grid phenomenon.

The company, Magna Steyr, a leading European automobile parts supplier, built an application called “Clash”, a three dimensional simulator it uses in the design process to ensure that a new part does not interfere physically with existing fittings.

It took 72 hours to run, however, and was therefore slotted in at the end of the design process. If a problem was found, the designers had to go back to the beginning and start again.

Run on a grid system, it took four hours. “By reducing the time to four hours,” says Ken King, IBM’s head of grid computing, “the company was able to run the application nightly, changing the nature of the process from serial to iterative: it was able to make changes to designs on the fly, saving time and money.”

Charles Schwab, the US financial services group and a pioneer in the use of grid, had a portfolio management application that their customer service representatives used when their customers phoned up.

It ran an algorithm capable of spotting changes in the market and predicting the likely impact and risks. It was running on a Sun computer but not running fast enough. Customers could be left on the phone for four minutes or more – an unacceptable period in banking terms.

Run in a Linux-based grid environment, the system was providing answers in 15 seconds. As a consequence, Schwab was able to provide better customer service leading to better customer retention.

These examples of grid in action, all developed by IBM, illustrate the power of grid to improve the utilisation of computing resources, to accelerate response rates and give users better insights into the meaning of their data. IBM claims to have built between 300 and 500 grid systems.

Oracle, Sun and Dell are among other hardware and software manufacturers to have espoused grid principles. Grid computing, therefore, looks like the remedy par excellence for the computing ills of the 21st century.

But is it silver bullet or snake oil? How and why is it growing in popularity?

Thirty years ago, grid would have been described as “distributed computing”: the notion of computers and storage systems of different sizes and manufacture linked together to solve computing problems collaboratively.

At that time, neither hardware nor software were up to the task and so distributed computing remained an unrealised ideal. The advent of the internet, falling hardware costs and software advances laid the foundation for grid computing in the 1990s.

It first achieved success in tackling massive computational problems that were defeating conventional supercomputers – protein folding, financial modelling, earthquake simulation and the like.
But as pressures on data processing budgets grew through the 1990s and early part of this decade, it began to be seen as a way of enabling businesses to maximise flexibility while minimising hardware and software costs.

Companies today often own a motley collection of computing hardware and software: when budgets were looser it was not unusual to find companies buying a new computer simply to run a new, discrete application. In consequence, many companies today possess vast amounts of under-utilised computer power and storage capability. Some estimates suggest average utilisation is no greater than 10 to 15 per cent. A lot of companies have no idea how little they use the power of their computer systems.

This is expensive in capital utilisation, in efficiency and in power. Computation requires power; keeping machines on standby requires power; and keeping the machines cool requires even more power. Clive Longbottom of the IT consultancy Quocirca, points out that some years ago, a large company might have 100 servers (the modern equivalent of mainframe computers).

“Today the average is 1,200 and some companies have 12,000,” he says. “When the power failed and all you had was 100 servers it was hard enough trying to find an uninterruptible power supply which would keep you going for 15 minutes until the generator kicked in.”

Now with 12,000 servers you can’t keep them all alive. There’s no generator big enough unless you are next door to Sizewell B [the UK’s most modern nuclear power station].”

Mr Longbottom argues that the answer is to run the business on 5,000 servers, keep another 5,000 on standby and close the rest down.

This sets the rationale for grid: in simple terms, a company links all or some of its computers together using the internet or similar network so that it appears to the user as a single machine.

Specialised and highly complex software breaks applications down into units that are processed on the most suitable parts of what has become a “virtual” computer.

The company therefore keeps what resources it has and makes the best use of them.
It sounds simple. But in practice the software – developed by companies such as Platform Computing and Data Synapse – is complex and there are serious data management issues, especially where large grids are concerned.

And while the grid concept is understood more widely than a few years ago, there are still questions about the level of its acceptance.

This year, the pan European systems integrator Morse published a survey among UK IT directors that suggested most firms have no plans to try grid computing, claiming the technology is too costly, too complicated and too insecure. Quocirca, however, which has been following the growth of grid since 2003, argued in an analysis of the technology this year that: “We are seeing grid coming through its first incarnation as a high-performance computing platform for scientific and research areas, through highly specific computer grids for number crunching, to an acceptance by businesses that grid can be an architecture for business flexibility.”

Quocirca makes the important point that knowledge of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), which many see as the answer to the increasing complexity of software creation, is poor among business computer users, while grid-type technologies are critical to the success of SOAs: “Without driving knowledge of SOA to a much higher level,” it argues, “we do not believe that enterprise grid computing can take off to the extent we believe it could.”

Today’s grids need not be overly complicated. Ken King of IBM pours cold water on the notion that a grid warrants the name only if different kinds of computer are involved and if open standards are employed throughout: “That’s a vision of where grid is going,” he scoffs.

“You can implement a simple grid as long as you take application workloads, and these can be single applications or multiple applications, and distribute them across multiple resources. These could be multiple blade nodes [blades are self-contained computer circuit boards that slot into servers] or multiple heterogeneous systems.”

“The workloads have to be scheduled according to your business requirements and your computing resources have to be adequately provisioned. You have continually to check to be sure you have the right resources to achieve the service level agreement associated with that workload. Processing a workload balanced across multiple resources is what I define as a grid,” he says.

To meet all these demands, IBM marshalls a battery of highly specialised software, much of it underpinned by Platform Computing and derived from its purchase of Tivoli Systems.

These include Tivoli provision manager, Tivoli intelligent orchestrator and Tivoli workload scheduler and the eWorkload manager that provides ene-to-end management and control.

Of course, none of this should be visible to the customer. But Mr King says grid automation is still a way off: “We are only in the first stages of customers getting comfortable with autonomic computing,” he says wryly.

“It is going to take two, three, four years before they are willing and able to yield up their data centre decision-making to the intelligence of the grid environment. But the more enterprises that implement grid and create competitive advantage from it, the more it will create a domino effect for other companies who will see they have to do the same thing. We are just starting to see that roll out.”

Virtualisation can bring an end to ‘server sprawl’

Virtualisation is, in principle, a simple concept. It is another way of getting multiple benefits from new technology: power-saving, efficiency, smaller physical footprint, flexibility.

It means taking advantage of the power of modern computers to run a number of operating systems – or multiple images of the same operating system – and the applications associated with them separately and securely.

But ask a virtualisation specialist for a definition, however, and you’ll get something like this: “It’s a base layer of capability that allows you to separate the hardware from the software. The idea is to be able to start to view servers and networking and storage as computing capacity, communications capacity and storage capacity. It’s the core underpinning of technology necessary to build any real utility computing environment.”

Even Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, makes a slippery fist of it: “The process of presenting computer resources in ways that users and applications can easily get value out of them, rather than presenting them in a way dictated by their implementation, geographic location or physical packaging.”

It is accurate enough but is it clear?

To cut through the jargon that seems to cling to this topic like runny honey, here is an example of virtualisation at work.

Standard Life, the financial services company that floated on the London stock market this year, had been, over a 20-year period, adding to its battery of Intel-based servers in the time-honoured way. Every time a new application was required, a server was purchased.

By the beginning of 2005, according to Ewan Ferguson, the company’s technical project manager, it was running 370 physical Intel servers, each running a separate, individual application. Most of the servers were under-utilised; while a variety of operating systems were in use, including Linux, it was predominantly a Microsoft house – Windows 2000, 2003 and XP Desktop.

The company decided to go the virtualisation route using software from VMware, a wholly owned (but very independent) subsidiary of EMC Corporation, the world’s largest storage system vendor. VMWare, with its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, virtually (if you’ll excuse the pun) pioneered the concept. As a competitor accepted: “VMware built the virtualisation market place.”

By January 2006, Standard Life had increased the number of applications running on its systems to 550: the number of physical servers, however, had decreased by 20 to 350.
But why use virtualisation? Why not simply load up the underutilised machines?

Mr Ferguson explains: “If you are running a business-critical application and you introduce a second application on the same physical machine there are potential co-existence issues. Both applications may want full access to the processor at the same time. They may not have been programmed to avoid using the same memory space so they could crash the machine.

“What virtualisation enabled us to do was to make the best use of the physical hardware but without the technology headache of co-existing applications.”

And the benefits? Mr Ferguson points to faster delivery of service – a virtual machine is already in place when a new application is requested – better disaster recovery capability and less need for manual control of the systems: “By default now, any new application we install will be a virtual machine unless there is a very good reason why it has to be on dedicated hardware,” Mr Ferguson says.

While adoption of virtual solutions is still at an early stage, manufacturers of all levels of data processing equipment are increasingly placing their bets on the technology.

AMD, for example, the US-based processor manufacturer fighting to take market share from Intel, the market leader, has built virtualisation features into its next generation of “Opteron” processor chips.

Margaret Lewis, an AMD director, explains: “We have added some new instructions to the x86 instruction set [the hardwired commands built into the industry standard microprocessors] specifically for virtualisation sofware. And we have made some modifications to the underlying memory-handling system that makes it more efficient. Virtualisation is very memory intensive. We’re tuning the x86 to be a very effective virtualisation processor.”

Intel, of course, has its own virtualisation technology that enables PCs to run multiple operating systems in separate “containers”.

And virtualisation is not limited to the idea of running multiple operating systems on a single physical machine. SWsoft, an eight-year-old software house with headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, and 520 development staff in Russia, has developed a system it calls “Virtuozzo” that virtualises the operating system.

This means that within a single physical server the system creates a number of identical virtual operating systems: “It’s a way of curbing operating system ‘sprawl’,” says Colin Wright, SWsoft enterprise director, comparing it with “server sprawl”, which is one of the targets of VMware.

Worldwide, 100,000 physical servers are running 400,000 virtual operating systems under Virtuozzo. Each of the virtual operating systems behaves like a stand-alone server.

Mr Wright points out that with hardware virtualisation, a separate licence has to be bought for each operating system. With Virtuozzo, it seems only a single licence need be bought.

This does raise questions about licensing, especially where proprietary software such as Windows is involved. Mr Wright complains that clarification from Microsoft is slow in coming. “It’s a grey area,” he says, “the licensing bodies are dragging their heels.”

In fact, the growth of virtualisation seems certain to open can after can of of legal worms. Hard experience shows vendors are likely to blame each other for the failure of a multi-vendor project.

So who takes responsibility when applications are running on a virtual operating system in a virtual environment? The big fear is that it will be virtually no one.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

They are the future – and they’re coming to a workplace near you (FT)

They are the future – and they’re coming to a workplace near you
By Lee Rainie
Published: September 19 2006 18:20 Last updated: September 19 2006 18:20

As consultant Marc Prensky calculates it, the life arc of a typical 21-year-old entering the workforce today has, on average, included 5,000 hours of video game playing, exchange of 250,000 e-mails, instant messages, and phone text messages, 10,000 hours of mobile phone use. To that you can add 3,500 hours of time online.

Open Text: Swimming With the Big Fish (AMR)

Open Text’s final results were in line with its July 5 preannouncement. Total 4Q06 revenue fell 3.8% to $105.2M year to year, and earnings per share were 16 cents on a GAAP basis. Open Text is among the top four enterprise content management (ECM) players, alongside EMC Documentum, FileNet, and IBM.

BEA WebLogic Real Time in neuer Version verfügbar - Java in höchster Performance für die Finanzwelt (contentmanager.de)

BEA Systems hat die Version WebLogic Real Time Core Edition 1.1 veröffentlicht. Dieses Produkt ermöglicht Java-Echtzeit-Anwendungen. Die vorhersehbare Antwortzeit ist jetzt dreifach schneller, die Lösung bietet in der Benchmark-Applikation eine Latenzzeit von höchstens 30 Millisekunden. Damit werden Java-Programme für Live-Umgebungen geeignet. Das Release steht unter http://www.bea.com/realtime zum Download zur Verfügung.

Community-Plattformen und Content Management – Teil 1/3 (contentmanager.de)

Teil 1: Communities und User-generated-Content Das Schlagwort "WEB 2.0" steht für technische als auch inhaltliche Trends. "Communities" und "User-generated-Content (UGC) sind dabei nicht nur eine Herausforderung für Portalbetreiber, sondern ebenso für Hersteller von CMS und Community-Software: Es gilt, beide Systeme zu einer homogenen Einheit zu formen. Anhand des schwedischen Portals http://www.contentmanager.de/_tools/urltracker.php?url=www.expressen.se wird in drei Teilen dargestellt, wie sich Communities und UGC auf Content Management auswirken.

Hummingbird Enterprise und RedDot XCMS werden als "Trend-Setting Products of 2006" ausgezeichnet (contentmanager.de)

Hummingbird wurde damit zum vierten Mal in Folge von Analysten, Anwendern und Redakteuren des KMWorld Magazin auf die Gewinnerliste der besten Produkte gewählt

Enterprise Applications Offer a Glimpse of Google's Ambitions (Gartner)

Google will introduce communications applications intended for use within enterprises. Service-level agreements, security and support will determine whether these applications will catch on within their target market.

Enterprise Applications Offer a Glimpse of Google's Ambitions (Gartner)

Google will introduce communications applications intended for use within enterprises. Service-level agreements, security and support will determine whether these applications will catch on within their target market.

E-Forms Technology (Line56/PortalsMagazine)

The various benefits of electronic forms; get rid of paper and reap
the benefits

IBM erweitert sein Speichersysteme-Portfolio (contentmanager.de)

Neue Turbo-Modelle der IBM System Storage DS8000-Serie und der Enterprise-Class N Series / Höhere Leistung, vereinfachtes System Management und preisattraktive Lösungen

Web Content Management: Tridion Named A Global Content Management Leader By Globalization Research Firm (ECM Connection)

Tridion, a leading global provider of web content management solutions, today announced that Common Sense Advisory Inc., an independent business globalization research and consulting firm, has named it a category leader among web content management (WCM) platforms for global and multilingual support. The report, entitled "Global Content Management Technology: A Buyer’s Guide," listed Tridion as one of the leading global content management technology vendors.

Research firm interviews 16 content management suppliers, provides SWOT assessment for each, and offers best practices, case studies, and technology recommendations for GCM read

The Value-Added Wiki (Line56)

The wiki concept is still new; JotSpot demonstrates one way of adding value

IBM Looks to FileNet Buy for Content, Process and Compliance (Gartner)

By buying its rival in the enterprise content management market, IBM gains content-centric business process management capabilities. We believe IBM's recent acquisitions point to a deeper strategy focused on service-oriented architecture.

The Hidden Flaw in Web 2.0 (FTD)

New-generation web-driven applications make it easy for users to build sites - but also for virus writers to attack. While the technology and tools may bring new freedoms, they also represent virgin territory for virus writers and identity thieves. A dark side to the shiny new world of Web 2.0 is being exposed by virus writers and the internet security companies that counter them. The linked-up, sharing, live-updating melting pot of web technologies that has been dubbed the second version of the web is proving fertile ground for infiltrators seeking to inject malicious code into the mix.

Open Text/Hummingbird Deal May Cause Concern Among Customers (Gartner)

Hummingbird has accepted a takeover bid from its rival Open Text. The deal will change the competitive landscape in the enterprise content management market. Hummingbird customers could face decisions on migration.

Weblog-Marketing: Verschenken Sie Potential? (contentmanager.de)

Schöpfen Sie das Onlinemarketing-Potential Ihres Blogs voll aus? (Gute) Weblogs bieten die besten Voraussetzungen für gute Suchmaschinenpositionen, da sie von anderen Bloggern verlinkt und häufig aktualisiert werden. Hinzu kommt ein suchmaschinenfreundlicher HTML-Code, denn Weblog-Layouts werden in der Regel mittels CSS realisiert – für Suchmaschinen nichts sagende Layoutangaben im HTML-Code werden auf diesem Weg "ausgelagert". Um dauerhaft gute Positionen auch in hart umkämpften Keywordbereichen zu erlangen, bedarf es jedoch ein wenig mehr ...

IBM Snaps Up FileNet for $1.6B (AMR)

IBM has announced plans to acquire FileNet in an all cash deal valued at $1.6B. The deal is expected to close sometime in the fourth quarter of 2006.

FileNet is one of the leaders in the enterprise content management (ECM) market. In business since 1984, FileNet predated the Internet boom and has been vital in helping companies digitize their document-intensive processes. Over the course of time, FileNet has expanded its core document repository capabilities, most prominently promoting business process management (BPM) in recent years.

In the ECM space, IBM has been one of FileNet’s most frequent competitors. While it has made numerous acquisitions related to content management in the past, including a July 2003 acquisition of web content management (WCM) vendor Aptrix and an August 2004 acquisition of content integrator Venetica (see “When Little Acquisitions Mean a Lot: IBM Acquires Venetica”), this is by far IBM’s most significant acquisition. In fact, it’s the most significant event in ECM since EMC acquired Documentum in October 2003 (see “Hindsight on Documentum’s Content Management Leadership; Foresight on EMC’s Direction”).

In IBM’s view, content management is becoming more vital as a component of an enterprise IT strategy to support decision making, information analysis and response, and to address issues like compliance, which encompasses every form of information and documentation an organization employs.

The FileNet side

To some extent, this is a far longer story than people think—one about FileNet finding a buyer—sparked by EMC’s Documentum acquisition.
Like its traditional competitors, FileNet has been under pressure to differentiate itself in a market under serious threat of commoditization, especially with the encroachment of the infrastructure heavyweights, Oracle, Microsoft, and of course, IBM, on its market. While its competitors gobbled each other up by amassing loosely related content management categories, FileNet’s growth has been conservative and organic. With a couple of minor distractions, FileNet kept close to its core document management capability, building its own BPM and records management systems to suit customers’ developing needs.

But the constant pressure to differentiate its products to suit specific customer and industry needs against its behemoth competitors may have been forcing FileNet into less fruitful niches. Undoubtedly, FileNet also found it had to embrace rather than work against new competitors like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM itself, meaning it had to support various infrastructure platforms.

The IBM side

Despite FileNet’s worthy product developments over the past few years, the acquisition is hardly about technology. With the exception of some industry-specific applications built on the FileNet platform, IBM already has all the technology pieces. The motivation for the move is more likely acquiring customers and gaining a better competitive position relative to the ECM market and the enterprise IT market as a whole.

FileNet has a very strong position within its 4,700 customers, treated as a system of record almost as central to the success of document-intensive organizations and industries—banking, insurance, financial services, government, telecommunications, and utilities—as the ERP backbone. IBM will get these valuable customers.

As for the competitive factors within the ECM market, IBM has increasingly found itself vying for deals against FileNet, EMC, and Open Text on the content management front. Taking on FileNet means taking out one of the competitors and gaining an immediate market share boost—to No. 1 by a considerable distance over EMC and Open Text. Moreover, more customers are establishing company-wide standards on ECM, most often on a provider among many providers that they already use in house. So, IBM ensures that it’s called to the table far more often when such a standards decision happens.

As for the broader market, IBM’s competitive focus is on Oracle and Microsoft, both of which have expressed late interest in the ECM market. Simply put, they all realize that their success depends on being able to manage more of your information, with more of it needing to be managed because of compliance regulations and other concerns, and that more of it is not in databases. Moreover, being treated as a central source of information allows IBM to sell additional products and services, to remain entrenched in the business, and to adapt and respond to market demand as it occurs.

Oracle’s approach to content management was only recently rearticulated when it announced, along with numerous complementary content management partners, its newly positioned Oracle Content Database and Oracle Records Database products. While it’s a more definitive and realistic position in the ECM market than Oracle has ever had before, it won’t likely be aggressive enough in light of IBM’s move. An acquisition—think Open Text, Interwoven, or Vignette—is an even more distinct possibility.

While IBM and Oracle have been battling it out at the database or repository level, Microsoft is working the desktop. Introducing ECM to the masses through the Microsoft Office System, and specifically SharePoint, could be the most compelling angle of all.

The customer side

The most loyal and longstanding FileNet customers may feel a sense of relief, or they may feel a sense of fear. Those most fully invested in FileNet as the backbone for vital business processes, and those that have gone through considerable effort to upgrade to FileNet’s modernized P8 architecture, will undoubtedly be worried about the prospect of a rip and replace. IBM has so far been mum on the topic of product rationalization and consolidation, and we won’t hear about specific plans until after the acquisition is complete.

But to speculate on that topic despite the considerable overlap, IBM won’t likely try to merge the product lines for the foreseeable future. A development effort to combine the products would be too expensive for IBM and too disruptive for customers. In the meantime, both companies’ conformance to emerging content management standards and IBM’s Venetica acquisition (remember—“content integration”) should make integration and extension, rather than rip and replace, the direction for the future.

IBM buys FileNet for $1.6bn (FT)

IBM threw down a challenge to database rival Oracle on Thursday with a $1.6bn acquisition that marks its biggest software purchase in three years.

The acquisition of FileNet, a company that sells the content management systems that companies use to capture and manage many different types of digital documents, will also push IBM deeper into the software business at a time when its bigger hardware and services divisions have been struggling to grow.

The deal is set to double IBM’s share of the content management business and put it ahead of current industry leader Documentum, which was bought three years ago by storage company EMC.

Between them, IBM and FileNet accounted for about 18 per cent of the $3.2bn content management business last year, compared with 11 per cent for EMC, according to figures compiled by IDC.

That will put further pressure on Oracle to respond with an acquisition of its own, said Jim Murphy, a research director at AMR Research.

By helping to organise the many different types of “unstructured” data that companies amass, companies such as FileNet have become a critical part of the broader information management software that companies like IBM and Oracle are looking to sell. Shares in Open Text, the largest remaining independent company in the sector, climbed 3 per cent on news of the FileNet acquisition.

While FileNet “does not have any capabilities they don’t already have themselves,” the purchase of a company that last year had total revenues of $423m and net income of $40m will bulk up IBM’s presence in a corner of the software business that is likely to continue to see solid growth, said Mr Murphy.

The acquisition comes at a time when Oracle threatens to overtake IBM as the world’s second-largest software company, thanks to faster growth in its core database business and a string of big acquisitions of its own.

Last year Oracle’s revenues jumped to $14.4bn, while IBM’s revenues from software edged up by 4.4 per cent, to $15.7bn.

Sam Palmisano, IBM’s chief executive, has recently accelerated its push into the infrastructure software and middleware on which large corporate IT systems are built. IBM has made more than 50 software acquisitions in the past 10 years.

By comparison other big hardware companies, moving later than IBM into a business with greater profit and growth potential than their traditional businesses, have responded with more sizeable deals.

HP’s planned acquisition of Mercury Interactive, announced last month, will double its software revenues to around $2bn, putting it among the top dozen software companies, alongside EMC, which has also mounted a series of big purchases.

In the most recent quarter, IBM’s software division accounted for 19 per cent of the group’s overall revenues but 40 per cent of its gross profits.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Stellent's Acquisitions Seek to Boost Content Security (Gartner)

SealedMedia and Bitform will provide complementary technologies for Stellent's content management platform. To succeed, Stellent must quickly integrate these with its compliance and Web content and records management applications.

Forbes sells stake to Bono buy-out fund (FT)

The Forbes family has agreed to sell a large minority stake in its media empire to Elevation, the buy-out fund of rock star Bono, in a deal worth about $300m. The move highlights how private investors are seeking bargains in the struggling business of print journalism.

Stellent Makes Acquisitions (Line56)

Addressing metadata security and DRM with acquisitions of SealedMedia and Bitform

Enterprise content management (ECM) company Stellent has acquired SealedMedia and Bitform. SealedMedia's purchase price was $10 million while Bitform went for $1.2 million in cash and $1.3 million in potential incentive-based payments.

Interwoven WorkSite löst bestehende Dokumenten-Management-Lösung ab (contentmanager.de)

Interwoven WorkSite löst bestehende Dokumenten-Management-Lösung ab

Interwoven, Inc. (Nasdaq: IWOV), Anbieter von Enterprise Content Management-Lösungen (ECM) für Unternehmen, zählt die renommierte deutsche Anwaltskanzlei Gleiss Lutz zu seinen neuen Kunden. Die Kanzlei hat die Dokumenten-Management-Lösung Interwoven WorkSite für ihre europaweit sieben Büros erworben, um die Effizienz ihrer täglichen Mandatsarbeit weiter zu erhöhen. Der neue Kunde ist eine der führenden international tätigen Anwaltskanzleien Deutschlands. Mit über 220 Anwälten berät die Kanzlei Unternehmen und Konzerne im In- und Ausland sowie Körperschaften und Institutionen des öffentlichen Rechts.

Die Tätigkeit erstreckt sich auf alle Bereiche des Wirtschaftsrechts. Die Kanzlei verfügt unter anderem über Büros in Berlin, Frankfurt, München und Stuttgart. Seit dem Jahr 2000 hat Gleiss Lutz eine Allianz mit den Top-Kanzleien Herbert Smith LLP in England und Stibbe in den Niederlanden/Belgien. Mit insgesamt 1.500 Anwälten in über 20 Büros in Europa, Asien und den USA arbeiten die Kanzleien in grenzüberschreitenden Mandaten zusammen, vor allem in internationalen Transaktionen, im Banking- und Finance-Bereich sowie bei internationalen Schiedsgerichtsverfahren und Prozessen.

Barrierefreies Web 2.0 (contentmanager.de)

Was war eigentlich Web 1.0, wenn jetzt alle von Web 2.0 sprechen und schreiben? Vermutlich sind wir schon bei Web 9.4. Sehen wir es einfach pragmatsich: Web 2.0 ist eine Art Sammelbegriff für das nochmalige Aufbegehren der Neuen Medien, sozusagen der zweite Anlauf mit zum Teil neuen Technologien und alten Ideen.

Die Speerspitze bildet wohl AJAX, das mittlerweile vielen Menschen ein Begriff ist, allerdings eher, wenn man es an praktischen Beispielen, wie Google Maps festmacht. Einen echten Unterschied zu einer herkömmlichen Webanwendung wird vielen Menschen wohl auch nicht auffallen und doch schickt sich AJAX an, das Internet nachhaltig zu reformieren: Von der Auto-Vervollständigung beim Eintippen von Suchbegriffen oder der Korrektur von Tippfehlern nach dem Motto "Meinten Sie vielleicht ..." bis hin zu Google Maps und WYSIWYG-Editoren mit AJAX-Unterstützung reicht die Bandbreite der dynamischen Helferlein.

Wissensaustausch mit Wikis: Einfach loslegen (contentmanager.de)

Wissensbasen lassen sich nicht nur mit teuren Werkzeugen realisieren, sondern auch mit Wikis. Die wichtigsten Vorteile solcher Implementierungen sind die kostenlose Verwaltung und eine einfache Verlinkung. Auch im Bereich der Technischen Dokumentation sind Wikis für so manche Anwendung die beste Lösung.

Wiki-Plattformen

• MediaWiki: http://Wikipedia.sourceforge.net
• TWiki: http://www.twiki.org
• PhpWiki: http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net
• Übersicht über Wikis: http://www.wiki.org

Wiki-Anwendungen

• Enzyklopädie: http://de.wikipedia.org
• Infos über Wiki: http://meta.wikimedia.org
• Die Erste: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
• Doku-Wiki von Comet: http://www.dokupedia.de
  
  07/2006, Prof. Sissi Closs
  Prof. Sissi Closs gehört zu den führenden Experten für Online-Dokumentation und XML in Deutschland. Sie ist Mitinhaberin und Geschäftsführerin der Firmen Comet Computer und Comet Communication.

Autonomy search reaps success (FT)

Autonomy has recorded a sharp increase in profits on the back of growth in the multi-media search market that it dominates.
The $500m (£270m) acquisition in November of Verity, a US rival, and rising demand for companies wanting to sort through unstructured data has given the Cambridge-based company a market share of about 70 per cent, it said yesterday.
Such is Autonomy's grip on the high end of enterprise search that it would struggle to make acquisitions, according to Mike Lynch, chief executive. "I think it's unlikely that we'll do another large transaction because there's not a lot out there," he said.
Mr Lynch said the etalk product - which sorts phone calls into searchable data and is used in call centres - was seeing fast growth. He also highlighted video searching as one focus for development.
Revenues in the first half of the year rose from $39m to $117.1m as Autonomy added companies such as Whirlpool and Rio Tinto to a customer base that already spans the BBC and Nasa.
Pre-tax profit rose in the first-half from $8.2m to $28m; earnings per share doubled from 4 cents to 8 cents.
Technology shares including Autonomy have had a tumultuous time in recent weeks, but Mr Lynch said: "The business hasn't seen any deterioration."
Autonomy's shares - which closed up 6p yesterday at 415p - have now clawed back most of their recent losses. Shore Capital, which has a 425p target price, upgraded its full-year pre-tax profit forecast from $52.4m to $52.9m.
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd

Autonomy achieves 70% market share (FT)

Autonomy has recorded a sharp increase in profits on the back of growth in the multimedia search market that it dominates.

The $500m acquisition in November of Verity, a US rival, and growing demand for companies wanting to sort through unstructured data, has given the UK group a market share of about 70 per cent, it said yesterday. Such is Autonomy's grip on the high end of enterprise search that it would struggle to make acquisitions, according to Mike Lynch, chief executive. "It's unlikely that we'll do another large transaction," he said.

Revenues in the first half of the year rose from $39m to $117.1m as Autonomy added companies such as Whirlpool and RioTinto to a customer base that already spans the BBC and Nasa.

Pre-tax profit rose in the first half from $8.2m to $28m. Earnings per share doubled from $0.04 to $0.08. Tom Braithwaite, London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Ajax scores for web users (FT)

A simple change in how browsers load web pages is heralding a fundamental shift in the way we interact with the internet.

What is a community of practice? (Tomoye)

Communities of practice are changing the way organizations manage knowledge. Rather than top-down, communities take a peer-driven approach by horizontally connecting all the people, knowledge and conversations that matter to your organization.

Communities of practice are distributed groups of people who share a common concern, problem, mandate, or sense of purpose. The concept of community binds them together.

Communities of practice connect individuals with expert peers and promote collaboration, information exchange, and the sharing of best practices across boundaries of time, distance, and organizational silos.

A Tomoye Community of Practice fosters dynamic, productive communities and therefore enables leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations make the most of their collective know-how.

Rapid deployment, ease of use, decentralized publishing, and cross-referenced knowledge bases are just a few of the advantages of a Tomoye Community of Practice solution.

Beyond technology, Tomoye builds a partnership with every customer. Customer expertise is paired with Tomoye services to create thriving, self-sustaining communities of practice.

What value can your organization expect from a community of practice?

• You can provide access to relevant, high-quality information and people from both inside and outside of your organization.
• You can capture valuable intellectual capital and offer an environment that stimulates idea-generation.
• You can solve problems and nurture organization-wide learning.
• You can help your people make better, faster decisions.
• You will increase overall efficiency since the availability of best practices leads to cost savings.

How will your community members benefit?

• Community members will be able to connect and build relationships with people who have expertise in a particular domain.
• They can develop best practices by participating in online discussions where they can share ideas.
• They will be able to find out how others have actually solved problems, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel themselves.
• New community members can use it to get up to speed on their own terms and at their own pace.
• They can unlock the knowledge and experience of retired subject matter experts.
  They will discover that their Tomoye Community of Practice helps foster a genuine sense of community spirit.

Forrester Research - FirstLook Archive

Forrester Research - FirstLook Archive

Companies learn value of blogging (FT)

BT is preparing to launch its own blog in a marketing move that is also a riposte to Carphone Warehouse, its smaller rival.

Corporate blogging is increasingly used by companies to improve both internal and external communications, as well as for sheer promotional reasons.

It can also be a risky strategy – if uncensored comments are allowed – that gives individual employees and customers a new level of influence over a brand.

John Petter, BT’s chief operating officer, will start blogging in the next few weeks. He believes keeping an online journal offers a way to reach customers who are increasingly disillusioned with traditional public relations methods.

“They are suspicious of ‘corporate speak’ and they want it straight from the horse’s mouth,” he says. “Especially in a big company they want to know that someone is taking responsibility.”

Mr Petter’s blog is partly inspired by that of Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, who started blogging to promote the launch of his company’s new “free” broadband package for TalkTalk, its consumer brand.

Since April, Mr Dunstone has given an account of the struggle to respond to the interest the new product generated.

Sometimes frank but mainly promotional, he tells readers about floods that disrupted his Mumbai call centre and does not pass up the opportunity to takes a pop at his rival.

“We have already had the inevitable grumblings from BT, suggesting to people that it isn’t really free, and to check the small print,” he wrote. “My response is: ‘do the maths, BT.’ ”

BT, which has recently launched a new high-end broadband package, insists its blog will be an authentic personal account. “If it reads like something that had a whole department manufacturing it then it simply wouldn’t work,” Mr Petter says.

Corporate blogging can be a marketing tool, a new approach to collaborative working or simply a way to free computer resources.

Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan, the publisher, has been blogging since December after his IT department complained that his e-mail newsletter was slowing the company’s system.

Switching to a web-based blog let him solve this problem and try to establish Macmillan as a publisher embracing the digital world.

“I think it’s important for a company to have an image which is forward-looking rather than backward-looking,” he says.

Mr Charkin now claims a readership of more than 20,000 and his insights on the difficulty of marketing non-fiction books and tales of burglars urinating in one of his bookshops are eagerly read in the publishing world.

Even the most secretive professions are embracing blogs, if only for internal communications. JP Rangaswami was instrumental in introducing blogging to Dresdner Kleinwort, the investment bank, where he is head of alternative market models, to give different teams the possibility to share ideas.

“There are still a number of objectors,” he says. “It didn’t sound like work.”
But Mr Rangaswami claims that the introduction of blogs and “wikis” – tools that allow collaboration on writing online – have replaced much of the bank’s corporate intranet and increased efficiency.

He now advises other companies on starting blogs and wikis. “The first fear factor seems to be about loss of control; and my claim is what they perceive as their form of control has already been lost,” he says.

“The relationship genie has got out of the bottle. Twenty years ago somebody might have been [protesting] in front of a bank with a placard – that’s quite expensive in terms of human time and effort. Now you can reach 100,000 people [with a blog].”

Lawyers have also started to embrace online journals in spite of the dangers of breaching client confidentiality. Ruth Ward, head of knowledge systems at Allen & Overy, has introduced internal blogs to the law firm and next month will launch a wiki for collaboration with small groups of external clients.

“It really seems to speak to people very powerfully . . . people who found traditional computer systems such as intranets quite hard work both bureaucratically and in terms of technology,” she says.

But she acknowledges that – like banking – not everyone in the legal profession is comfortable with more open access to information.

“In other law firms where it’s very much dog-eat-dog, the last thing people would want to do is post something that could allow someone else to steal their clients,” she says.
The riskiest area to companies harnessing the power of the internet involves “user-generated content”.

In March, General Motors, the US carmaker, invited users of its website to produce 30-second video adverts for the Chevy Tahoe, its new sports utility vehicle.

Companies that have enjoyed the success of such “viral marketing” have seen positive, often humorous, commercials for their product spread around the internet at no cost to their brand or balance sheet.

But GM’s openness led to thousands of ads attacking the company’s SUVs for their impact on the environment.
In the UK, a spoof blog set up last year by “Barry Scott”, a fictional character created to sell Reckitt Benckiser’s Cillit Bang household cleaner, backfired after the top web searches for “Cillit Bang” produced only bloggers attacking the campaign.

Manipulation of a medium that is seen as inherently authentic is a risky step.
“I’m sure people will try but I think very often they will be found out,” says Ms Ward. “There seem to be an awful lot of people who police the internet.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

EMC cuts outlook for year (FT)

EMC, the world’s biggest maker of corporate data storage equipment and software, cut its full-year outlook on Friday in the wake of a profits warning earler in the week.

Open Text Bids for Hummingbird as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP Target ECM (AMR)

Open Text is acquiring enterprise content management (ECM) rival Hummingbird, in a rapid response to an earlier bid by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. At $1 per share above the Symphony offer, the Open Text bid is valued at $483.5M and will likely get the support of Hummingbird shareholders, though the board recommendations so far advise them to “take no action.”

A New Perspective On Information Management (Forrester)

Information management is becoming a hot topic as firms struggle to deal with disparate databases and content repositories spread throughout their organizations. While technologies like database management systems, data warehousing, data integration, and enterprise content management have assisted firms in bringing some semblance of order to the information throughout their organizations, most enterprises struggle to use that information efficiently to optimize their operations. To leverage the benefits that information can provide, firms must manage both data and content in such a way that business processes and functions can consume data, content, or a combination of both as needed.

Microsoft Shrewdly Funds Open XML Translator Project (Gartner)

Microsoft is taking an unusual approach to OpenDocument support for Office by enabling other companies and the open-source community to do the work. This is a good move that will help diffuse criticism of Office 2007.

Autonomy predicts record results with increasing demand for data searching (FT)

The challenge faced by companies in dealing with a growing deluge of digitally formatted information has prompted Autonomy, the world's biggest search software company, to predict record results.

The upbeat trading update sent shares in Autonomy 19¾p higher at 428½p.

Some analysts ascribed the positive update to a successful integration of Verity, a US rival bought for $500m last December.

But Mike Lynch, founder and chief executive of Autonomy, said the most important factor was an increased need for companies to sort through a growing amount of unstructured data such as e-mails, video and phone calls.

"They're being forced to deal with it because of regulation and compliance," he said. "Our area is growing much faster than the background IT [market]."

Autonomy said second-quarter revenue would be in line with analysts' estimates of $60.7m (£32.8m) and pre-tax profit would be above a consensus of $15.1m.

George O'Connor, an analyst at Shore Capital, said: "This is the sixth consecutive quarter of record results and, in our opinion, Autonomy, post-Verity, has entered a halcyon trading period." He added that Autonomy now had "gorilla status" compared with smaller competitors in its specialist sector.

The Cambridge-based company, which includes IBM, Boeing, the US Army and Britain's Metropolitan Police among its clients, supplies software that conducts searches based on themes. It works with images and videos as well as text.

Google, the market leader in internet-based search, is turning its attention to the enterprise market that Autonomy serves with a hardware device that can search through swathes of companies' data.

But Mr O'Connor said he saw commoditisation of search tools as the key business risk to Autonomy rather than the challenge from Google. Mr Lynchsaid Google's push into the enterprise market "makes almost no difference" as it was offering a lower-end product.
Autonomy is due to post results for the six months to the end of June on July 26.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Chris Nuttall: To boldly go beyond search (FT)

What has Google done for the enterprise lately?

Sadly, not a lot – its mission seems more aligned with the Starship Enterprise than business needs. It is interested in space – Google Mars for instance – the final frontier of capturing all the world’s information and boldly going where no search engine company has gone before.

Audio files: no longer too big to store nor too hard to search (FT)

We talk far more than we type. Podcasts, online video, internet radio, recordings of meetings and phone conversations – so much information today is contained in audio files. But how to index it, search it and access it?

Far from perfect, voice recognition is good enough to make audio searching a possibility.
The Blinkx search engine uses technology developed by Autonomy to index audio and video from podcasts, internet sites, broadcast television and radio; more than 4m hours of audio. As well as generating a phonetic transcript, it uses information including metadata (like the page title), words already recognised and other contextual details to improve the index. The search engine can also take the context of your search terms into account, to see if they suggest a new interpretation of a recording.

According to Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx chief executive, accuracy varies: “It’s anything from 60 per cent to 95 per cent depending less on the accent and more on the quality of the signal. Background music is bad, fuzzy recordings are bad. Our best results are from professionally recorded, professional speakers in a studio (for example, a newscaster on bbc.co.uk), our worst from amateurs with poor audio quality and music playing in the background.”

Microsoft’s OneNote application already records audio and synchronises it with typed or handwritten notes, so users can click on what they have written to hear what was going on when they wrote it (ideal for checking whether they wrote something down correctly).

OneNote 2007, due out early next year, allows searching of audio recordings directly. It does not do voice recognition, although the speech recognition built into Windows XP Tablet Edition can be used to transcribe recordings into OneNote. Instead it converts audio to phonemes, converts search terms into phoneme equivalents and looks for a match.

The technology is not perfect, especially with low-fidelity recordings, but lead program manager Owen Braun believes it is good enough to be useful. “People have meetings and conversations every day where having an exact record would be hugely valuable, but most assume audio is too hard to capture, too big to store, and too hard to mine later for the valuable bits. With OneNote 2007 and a recent-model computer, these things simply aren’t true anymore.”

As well as making recordings in OneNote, people can import existing audio. All they need to record phone conversations is a cheap cable (and the permission of the people they are talking to). They can add call recording to a company PBX for around £2,000 with a system such as Storacall’s Intro. And if they use Skype they can record calls as MP3 files that are stored in Outlook folders with an add-in called Skylook (http://www.skylook.biz/).

Recording in OneNote means carrying a laptop or tablet PC (although Braun hopes to be able to search audio recorded on mobile phones in a future release). Luis Elizalde, a design engineer with IBM Design Consulting Services, thinks users will want much more portable devices to record almost everything.

“With all the information I have to keep up with every day, with e-mail and meetings, my social life is shrinking. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go back in time and replay what somebody said in a meeting, replay that telephone number somebody gave me at the club the other night that I didn’t write down.”

His concept audio recorder, Magic Block, would record weeks or months of conversations on to flash memory and recognise it with IBM’s ViaVoice software. On top of that, it can learn individual voices to search for who was speaking, Elizalde suggests: “You could ask it to find everything that Jane said between June 3 and July 5, then look for keywords and keep dissecting that information.” Recordings would also preserve the emphasis and emotions lost in transcriptions.

Such a device would raise issues of privacy and confidentiality, so the Magic Block concept has a fingerprint scanner to keep recordings secure. IBM does not currently plan to manufacture the Magic Block, but Elizalde believes recording, playback, recognition and search technologies are mature enough to produce a record or to add recording and recognition features to something we already carry: the mobile phone.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

The leading windows on the web receive a fresh polish (FT)

Remember the web browser wars? In the mid-1990s Microsoft and Netscape raced to add features to their respective browsers. Their rivalry and the race to attract "user eyeballs" led to rapid-fire advances in both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

Microsoft triumphed by bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system but prompted the US government's landmark antitrust suit against the software giant.

A decade later an ageing Internet Explorer 6 still dominates but has seen its market share slip by about 10 points in the face of new competition from Mozilla's Firefox, an "open source" browser, and an updated version of Opera, another free rival browser.

Firefox in particular has won plaudits for its innovative approach to browsing, including a new "tabbed page" interface and built-in features such as search window, pop-up blockers and improved security.

These features helped Firefox capture about 9 per cent of the browser market - quite an achievement when nearly every personal computer sold comes with Internet Explorer installed along with Windows and users must download and install Firefox. The current version of Firefox - version 1.5.0.1 - is solid, fast and reliable. My favourite so far, it comes in versions that run on Windows-based PCs, Apple Macs and Linux machines.

However, the latest version of Opera's browser (Opera 9) comes with several advanced features only available in Firefox as add-ons and missing from the current version of Internet Explorer.
Now, almost five years after Internet Explorer 6 became available, Microsoft is readying its successor - the third beta (test) version of Internet Explorer (IE 7) was released last week and is available for download.

In fact, all the leading browsers - including Firefox - are due for facelifts over the next few months. These are designed to make them more flexible, secure and better able to handle the expanding range of business transactions and software applications over the internet. So I decided to take a closer look at the latest batch of browsers and how they compare.

Microsoft's update is the most eagerly awaited (www.microsoft.com). While its new browser has already been criticised by some who characterise it as a "catch-up exercise", it still represents a significant and worthwhile upgrade that will be built into Microsoft's next generation Vista operating system, due for launch later this year.

Among the new features, IE 7 includes tabbed browsing (address-book style tabs to help switch between web pages) for the first time, support for RSS (really simple syndication) technology, which delivers news feeds directly to the user's desktop, and a built-in search box on a much more attractive and streamlined toolbar. Perhaps most important, IE 7 boasts improved security including new anti-phishing technology that visually alerts users when they visit dubious "spoofed" websites.

I found the beta software easy to download and install. It imports settings, including favourites, automatically from previous versions of Internet Explorer. I would not recommend installing beta software on any mission-critical PC, but I encountered no problems with this latest "feature complete" trial version on my IBM ThinkPad portable. Note, however, that the PC must be running a valid version of Windows XP with SP2 (Service Pack 2) installed (downloads are also available for the 64-bit versions of Windows and versions of Windows Server 2003). IE 7 allows users to change the order of open page tabs just by dragging and dropping and to view thumbnail previews of open tabbed web pages. RSS feeds can now be updated all in one go.

Overall, IE 7 does a good job of catching up with its rivals and, while it lacks truly innovative features, it meets the requirements of the evolving dynamic and transaction-intensive web.
The new Opera 9 browser (www.opera.com) goes a step further by integrating Apple Mac and Yahoo-style "widgets" - small web-based applications that run within the browser but appear detached as standalone tools. Aside from standard features such as built-in search box and tabbed pages, the new browser also supports a file-sharing download technology called BitTorrent and lets users customise a wide range of personal preferences.

BitTorrent support enables savvy P2P (peer-to-peer) users who do not want to launch a separate external application to search for files on the BitTorrent network through integrated search functionality, and then use Opera's built-in transfer manager software to handle the download.

My favourite new features include the ability to delete individual cookies - bits of code that identify users when they revisit websites - and a single click option called "delete private data" that makes it easier to protect your identity while surfing the web.

Other features include integrated e-mail technology that lets users quickly send and receive e-mail without leaving the browser, and built-in support for RSS and Atom 1.0 (a newer protocol similar to RSS) newsfeeds. Another plus: Opera 9 supports 25 languages and runs on a wide range of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X-based machines where it poses a challenge to Apple's beautifully crafted Safari browser. Overall, Opera 9 is impressive and a worthy challenger for both Internet Explorer and the current version of Firefox. A beta version of Firefox 2 is due soon with a full version expected later this year.

Among its new features will be anti-phishing technology and tools that will automatically restore web pages should the browser crash or require a restart. Other features are expected to include a more advanced search box that will suggest queries as users type.

Mozilla's open source developers are already working on Firefox 3, which is due to launch next year and will enable users to run online applications without a live internet connection.

Such developments could enable Firefox to remain one step ahead of the rivals and continue to eat into Internet Explorer's dominant market position.

For most users the new IE 7 will meet most of their requirements. If not, both Firefox and Opera 9 are worth a look.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

The Web Grows Up: What It Means for Your Enterprise (AMR)

Not so long ago, companies around the world flung open their traditional IT budgets to take advantage of the burgeoning web. This money was not always well spent. Along comes Web 2.0, and companies, jaded with the experience of the last several years, are understandably suspicious about the hype and skeptical about the impact to their business. There’s no question, though, that change has been happening under our noses. Businesses have to find fruitful ways to take advantage.

State of the Portal Market 2006 (BEA)

IBM Targets Microsoft Office Users With Sametime (Gartner)

IBM seeks to attract Microsoft Office users by broadening the target market for Sametime instant messaging and Web conferencing beyond the base of Lotus users.

State of the Portal Market 2006 - Part III (Line56/Portals.Mag.com/BEA)

Portals and the New Wisdom of the Enterprise - A Synthesis of New Original Survey Results and Recent Analyst Research on the Portal Market

Wirtschaft ist "heiß" auf Onlinenachrichten (contentmanager.de)

Es ist nie gut, zu sehr im eigenen Saft zu schmoren. Der Blick von außen kann einem oft die Augen für Dinge öffnen, die man nicht mehr wahrnimmt, da man zu sehr mit der eigenen Nabelschau beschäftigt ist. Auch der Journalismus in Deutschland ist vor dieser Gefahr nicht gefeit. Fernsehmoderatoren laden sich gegenseitig ein, eine große Tageszeitung kooperiert bei bestimmten Themen mit einem montags erscheinenden Nachrichtenmagazin und so weiter. Man kennt es von den Medizinern, wenn es um Kunstfehler geht: Eine Krähe hackt der anderen kein Auge aus. Im Handelsblatt hat der Publizist Frank A. Meyer, der für den Schweizer Ringier-Verlag tätig ist, jetzt mit dieser Routine gebrochen.

Meyer ist der Ansicht, dass die deutschen Journalisten immer recherchefauler werden und lieber am Bildschirm ihr Urteil abgeben, ohne noch in direkten Kontakt mit Bürgern, Politikern, Beamten, Arbeitern, Angestellten, Künstlern und Forschern zu treten. "Mehr und mehr lebt unser Berufsstand vom Copy & Paste. Die Journalisten kopieren sich fortwährend selbst", so Meyer. Die Medienvertreter seien zu lieb zueinander. Man kenne sich, verhelfe sich zur Prominenz, interviewe sich gegenseitig und ignoriere die Bücher der Kollegen, die aus der Reihe tanzen. Seinen negativen Eindruck vom derzeitigen Zustand der deutschen Publizistik kleidet der Autor in die Form einer Frage: "Erliege ich einer Sinnestäuschung, wenn ich mich beim Lesen deutscher Zeitungen, beim Konsum deutscher Fernseh- und Radioprogramme des Eindrucks frappierender Gleichförmigkeit nicht erwehren kann?"

Doch insbesondere die Printmedien haben noch mit ganz anderen Problemen zu kämpfen. Die Lesegewohnheiten haben sich durch den Siegeszug des Internet stark gewandelt. "Gerade junge Menschen und die so genannten Leistungsträger, die immer gut informiert seien wollen, warten nicht mehr 24 Stunden, bis sie beim morgendlichen Kaffee und Brötchen die aktuellen Nachrichten lesen können. Denn so aktuell sind die Nachrichten dann schon gar nicht mehr. Es ist der Nachteil der gedruckten Tageszeitungen, dass sie immer etwas hinterherhinken", weiß die Kommunikationsexpertin Sabine Sohn, Geschäftsführerin der Bonner PR-Agentur nic.pr. "In Zukunft werden die Printmedien mit besonders gut geschriebenen Texten und Artikeln punkten, in denen sie ein bestimmtes Problem grundsätzlicher angehen können als dies im Internet der Fall sein kann."

"Jemand, der in der Wirtschaft arbeitet und zum Beispiel die aktuellen Finanzmeldungen berücksichtigen muss, kann nicht mehr nur mit der FAZ, FTD oder dem Handelsblatt leben. Diese Medien werden nicht überflüssig, aber sie verlieren an Einfluss und Bedeutung. Der Chefredakteur des britischen Guardian sprach zurecht davon, dass die Leute beispielsweise in der Londoner City regelrecht heiß auf Onlinenachrichten seien", so Sohn. Alan Rusbridger heißt der Chefredakteur des Guardian, und in einem Essay, der im Spiegel abgedruckt wurde, erläuterte er vor kurzem seine publizistischen Vorstellungen. Der Hintergrund: Da Print mit der Aktualität des Webs nicht mithalten kann, verordnete sich der Guardian jetzt einen radikalen Schnitt. Ab sofort kommen Artikel zuerst ins Netz, dann in die Zeitung. Bisher waren die Nachrichten auf einen 24-Stunden-Zyklus zugeschnitten.Sohn hält diesen Schritt für richtig, da Rusbridger nicht in kulturkritische Larmoyanz verfalle, sondern die Chancen der neuen Entwicklung sehe und sie steuern wolle. Die Fakten sp

rächen für diese Strategie. So berichtete Silicon.de, dass die amerikanischen Unternehmen in den ersten drei Monaten dieses Jahres 38 Prozent mehr Geld für Online-Werbung ausgegeben haben als noch vor einem Jahr. Auch in Großbritannien boomten virtuelle Anzeigen. Dort werde in diesem Jahr vermutlich erstmals mehr Geld für Werbung im Internet ausgegeben als für Werbung in den nationalen Tageszeitungen.

In der Wirtschaftsberichterstattung läuft Online Print zunehmend den Rang ab, meint der Guardian-Chef: "Die wirkliche Konkurrenz für den Wirtschaftsteil einer Zeitung sind daher Online-Nachrichtenquellen wie Bloomberg und große internationale Internetseiten wie die der BBC, des Wall Street Journal und der Financial Times. Viele Wirtschaftsnachrichten erreichen die Londoner Börse in Form von Kurzmeldungen bereits um sieben Uhr morgens, so dass es zunehmend absurd ist, mit der Veröffentlichung dieser Informationen 24 Stunden zu warten." Bis zum nächsten Morgen zu warten, während andere Internetseiten diese Nachrichten bereits im Laufe des Tages veröffentlichen, bedeute, sich dem Risiko der Belanglosigkeit auszusetzen.

30.06.2006, NeueNachricht

The Demise of the Digital Economy (Line56)

How emerging global trends favor the ultimate decline and demise of the digital economy as we understand it

Americans are global consumers. Everything from the gasoline in our cars (and the cars themselves!) to our clothes and electronics comes from somewhere else, typically very far from where we live.

Turks, and most of the rest of the world, are local consumers.

In Istanbul, where I currently find myself, most goods available to me have been produced within a few hundred miles of the city. These goods are brought in to central locations, like the Grand Bazaar, where people shop for them. But shopping nodes are spread throughout the entire city. In Gungoren, my neighborhood, there is a weekly street bazaar that brings a vast selection of goods right to my doorstep. On bazaar days I can get everything from food to clothing right from my local street.

State of the Portal Market 2006 - Part II (Line56/PortalsMag.com/BEA)

Portals and the New Wisdom of the Enterprise - A Synthesis of New Original Survey Results and Recent Analyst Research on the Portal Market

EMC acquires RSA for $2.1bn (FT)

EMC, the world’s biggest maker of data storage equipment and software, on Thursday unveiled its latest acquisition when it agreed to pay $2.1bn in cash for RSA Security, a Boston-based internet security company.

Oracle's Content Management Plans (Line56)

Plenty of potential in a booming segment; other nuggets from Oracle's past quarter

State of the Portal Market 2006 - Part I (Line56/BEA)

Portals and the New Wisdom of the Enterprise - A Synthesis of New Original Survey Results and Recent Analyst Research on the Portal Market

Tomoye Becomes Microsoft Certified Partner, Achieves ISV/Software Solutions Competency (Tomoye)

Tomoye, the Community of Practice Company, today announced that it has achieved Microsoft Certified Partner status with an ISV/Software Solutions Competency, which certifies Tomoye Ecco to run on Microsoft-based infrastructure. Tomoye community of practice solutions enable organizations to integrate and extend existing investments in Microsoft productivity and collaboration tools including the Microsoft Office System and Windows SharePoint Portal Server. The company's latest offering, Tomoye Ecco was developed on the .NET platform to ensure rapid integration with Microsoft-based solutions.

Ozzie's Ascendancy at Microsoft Signals Shift to Web Focus (Gartner)

The shift in Microsoft's leadership from Bill Gates to Ray Ozzie is another sign that Microsoft is reinventing itself to respond to the challenge posed by the new Web-centric reality of the IT industry.

Microsoft TechEd: Office as Business Platform (AMR)

A few themes coming out of Microsoft’s TechEd user conference strike us as remarkable:

• Our long-held contention that Microsoft Office is evolving into a platform is coming to fruition. And for the first time, Microsoft is acknowledging this strategy.
• SharePoint, sitting at the center of Microsoft’s platform strategy, is also its route to capturing market share in numerous, formerly distinct, enterprise software markets. As such, it’s an undeniable consideration for customers of those products, and an undeniable threat to vendors specializing in those areas.

Bill Gates calls time on career at Microsoft (FT)

Bill Gates on Thursday announced his intention to leave his full-time role at Microsoft, drawing the curtain on a controversial business career that more than any other shaped the first half-century of the information age and turned him into the world’s richest man.

Oracle Adds Data Capabilities (Red Herring)

Database giant announces products for content management.

Google Signals Real Goals With Spreadsheet Offering (Gartner)

Google has added an online spreadsheet application to its portfolio of Web-based applications. Such services don't yet offer the functionality of desktop suites, but Google's short-term target is consumers.

Microsoft and Google must keep distance (FT)

Amid the fuss about competition between Microsoft and Google, it is easy to forget what sets them apart. Sometimes they seem to forget the differences themselves. That is dangerous: as Microsoft takes the next step in trying to export its personal computer-era dominance to the internet and Google races to take advantage of its search engine’s early success, both must watch where they are heading.

At heart, Microsoft is a platform software company – though Bill Gates, chairman, and Steve Ballmer, chief executive, sometimes seem unwilling to accept such limitations. Mr Ballmer said last month: “The core soul of our upbringing is really in doing great end-user experiences.” Try telling that to anyone who has marvelled at the ineptitude of its consumer software compared with the slick work of a Google, Apple or TiVo.

Rather, software “plumbing” is where Microsoft has made its mark. The Windows operating system, and the tools independent developers use to create programs to run on it, have made it the de facto standard for personal computing. Microsoft has spent six years trying to extend its platform to the internet, through a strategy dubbed .Net (pronounced “dotnet”) – technology “glue” that will bind PCs, servers and all the other computing devices connected over the internet into a coherent whole. To give Mr Ballmer his due, he concedes that building a software platform for the web remains Microsoft’s “number one investment area”.

Google is different. As a consumer services company and a digital-age advertising concern, its early success clearly stems from “great end-user experiences”. It has built one of the world’s most powerful computing bases, but this is largely a closed system, constructed to deliver an ever-widening array of Google services to Google consumers.

Yet sometimes it looks as though Google is trying to become the next Microsoft. Today, software developers will descend on Google’s headquarters to discuss ways of building applications on top of the Google Maps service. Known as “mash-ups”, these are the latest trendy idea in Silicon Valley, a way to assemble online applications out of piece-parts of other services. Meanwhile, Google last week released a test version of an online spreadsheet, the latest in a series of products that look like web-based versions of Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. At least Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, seems aware of the risks of rushing into new areas. Last month he turned Google’s development effort back more towards its search engine: to lose sight of that would be to risk dissipating the company’s early lead.

To some extent, the growing overlaps are understandable. Consumer internet companies such as Google can profit from limited platform-like strategies. Take Ebay, which started down this road in 2000, before most others: some 30,000 independent developers now write software that runs on top of its site, creating new ways for sellers to list their goods on Ebay and for buyers to search for its products from other websites. This sort of limited platform approach could extend the reach of Google’s services. That is different, though, from the sort of all-purpose internet platform Microsoft is trying to build. At the same time, it helps platform companies such as Microsoft if they can create successful applications or services to run on top of the computing foundations they are laying. The symbiotic relationship between the Office suite of software applications and the Windows PC operating system lay at the heart of Microsoft’s success in the 1990s. However, as the name suggests, Office is mainly a tool for workers, and Microsoft has shown little aptitude as a true consumer services company.

As advertising becomes a more significant way to profit from internet audiences, and as search becomes a core part of online behaviour, Microsoft has no choice but to build its own algorithmic search engine and online advertising network. These are important parts of the future platform on which online businesses will seek to draw. Whatever Mr Ballmer says, though, it is unlikely to be Microsoft that creates the most successful consumer interfaces for these services.

easyWCM für das SAP NetWeaver Portal (btexx.de)

btexx easyWCM ist das perfekte Ergänzungspaket für ein spielend leichtes Web Content Management im SAP NetWeaver Portal: Texte und Bilder lassen sich schnell, unkompliziert und übersichtlich entlang der gewünschten Website-Struktur darstellen, aktualisieren und verwalten.

Die Basis: SAP NetWeaver PortalDas SAP NetWeaver Portal bildet die technologische Speerspitze für Wissenstransfer in Unternehmen: Als starke Knowledge-Management-Plattform zielt es punktgenau auf die Bedürfnisse umfangreicher interner Informations- und Applikationsverwaltung.

Google to release online spreadsheet (FT)

Google is set to launch a test version of an online spreadsheet, further extending the range of internet-based alternatives it offers to elements of the widely-used Microsoft Office suite of desktop software.

However, the internet search company said it believed its latest service would be “complementary” to Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet, which is included in Office, rather than a rival.

“We think we’re solving a different problem,” said Jonathan Rochelle, product manager for the Google spreadsheet project. Users would turn to online spreadsheets mainly so they could share the information with other people on the web, or let others edit the information, he said.

Google’s steady move into server-based applications, accessible over the internet, has raised the prospect of growing conflict with arch-rival Microsoft, whose Office desktop applications generated nearly $8bn of operating profits on revenues of $11bn last year. One recent acquisition, of online word processing company Writely, appeared to take direct aim at Word.

Like other independent providers of online applications, Google has maintained that its services are designed to let people share information over the internet more easily rather than to act as full-featured desktop alternatives.

Open Text hat laut Gartner den größten ECM-Marktanteil (contentmanager.de)

Open Text (Nasdaq: OTEX, TSX: OTC), Anbieter von Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Software, hat bekannt gegeben, dass das Unternehmen laut einer am 18. Mai vom Analystenhaus Gartner veröffentlichten Studie den weltweit größten Marktanteil im Bereich Enterprise Content Management (ECM) hat. In der Studie von Tom Eid "Market Share: Enterprise Content Management Software Worldwide, 2003-2005" belegt Open Text mit einem Marktanteil von 13,2 % die Spitzenposition vor elf weiteren führenden ECM-Anbietern und einer großen Anzahl kleinerer Hersteller. Gartner identifiziert mehr als 60 Anbieter auf dem ECM-Markt.

Die umfassende Studie hebt die tiefgreifenden Veränderungen hervor, die in den letzten Jahren in der ECM-Branche stattgefunden haben, und geht dabei insbesondere auf die Marktkonsolidierung ein. Des Weiteren stellt die Analyse fest, dass 51 % des Marktes, gemessen am Gesamtumsatz aus dem Softwareverkauf, von nur vier Anbietern beherrscht werden - einer davon ist Open Text. "Der ECM Markt wächst dynamisch und ist gekennzeichnet durch technologische Konsolidierung, sich stetig verbessernde Performance und Funktionalitäten sowie durch eine Veränderung der Anwender-Präferenzen von ‚best-of-breed’-Lösungen hin zu Produktsuiten", so die Studie.

Darüber hinaus sieht die Studie für einige Technologien wie Records Management, Digital Asset Management, Web Content Management und elektronische Formulare (e-forms) ein großes Wachstumspotenzial. Dasselbe gilt auch für Content Archiving, weil die Archivierung aufgrund von regulatorischen Auflagen immer mehr an Bedeutung gewinnt. Nach der Studie von Gartner "machen Unternehmen heute die Erfahrung, dass aufgrund von e-Discovery Initiativen die Anforderungen in Sachen Compliance sowie bei der Produktion von Inhalten immer komplexer werden. Content Archiving bietet ECM-Anbietern große Wachstumsmöglichkeiten. Es wird als integrative Architektur zur Verwaltung der unterschiedlichen Arten von Content in einem Unternehmen fungieren und dabei einen Großteil der bereits bestehenden Content Management-Infrastruktur verwenden.

"Dem allgemeinen Trend entsprechend, die Wertschöpfung aus dem Content zu erhöhen, unterstreicht die Studie auch die große Bedeutung von Lösungen für bestimmte Geschäftszweige und Branchen."Durch das Angebot von ECM-Lösungen für spezielle Branchen sowie für vertikal spezialisierte Prozesse erhöht sich der Gesamtwert der ECM-Software und ihre Fähigkeit, Geschäftsprozesse zu unterstützen und Inhalte einfacher an die Prozessanforderungen anzupassen."

"Wir glauben, dass die Studie von Gartner die starke Marktposition, die wir als führender Anbieter im weltweiten ECM-Markt aufgebaut haben, unterstreicht", so Kirk Roberts, Executive Vice President of Products, Solutions & Marketing bei Open Text. "Die Schlüsseltrends, die in der Studie aufgezeigt werden, decken sich mit unserer strategischen Ausrichtung. Wir konzentrieren uns auf das Angebot von ECM-Lösungen für spezielle Branchen und Geschäftszweige, um unsere Kunden bei den zunehmend komplexeren Prozess- und Compliance-Anforderungen zu unterstützen.

"Zusätzlich zum Ranking der Marktanteile, positioniert Gartner Open Text im "Leaders Quadrant" in seiner aktuellsten Studie "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2005", veröffentlicht am 7. November 2005, von James Lundy und anderen. Die allgemein bekannten "Magic Quadrants" von Gartner sind grafische Darstellungen der Untersuchungsergebnisse des Analystenhauses. Dargestellt wird die Leistung von Software- und Lösungsanbietern in einem bestimmten Marktsegment, basierend auf der Vision der Anbieter und auf ihrer Fähigkeit, diese umzusetzen.

Die vollständige Studie zum ECM Markt kann unter www.gartner.com bezogen werden.

01.06.2006, Susanna Nordström, Open Text GmbH

Open Text hat laut Gartner den größten ECM-Marktanteil (contentmanager.de)

Open Text (Nasdaq: OTEX, TSX: OTC), Anbieter von Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Software, hat bekannt gegeben, dass das Unternehmen laut einer am 18. Mai vom Analystenhaus Gartner veröffentlichten Studie den weltweit größten Marktanteil im Bereich Enterprise Content Management (ECM) hat. In der Studie von Tom Eid "Market Share: Enterprise Content Management Software Worldwide, 2003-2005" belegt Open Text mit einem Marktanteil von 13,2 % die Spitzenposition vor elf weiteren führenden ECM-Anbietern und einer großen Anzahl kleinerer Hersteller. Gartner identifiziert mehr als 60 Anbieter auf dem ECM-Markt.

BEA Systems bietet Seminare zu Portal Solutions (contentmanager.de)

Veranstaltungsreihe "Die neue Rolle von Portalen" zeigt, wie strategische Portale die Geschäftsagilität und -profitabilität steigern Unter dem Titel "Die neue Rolle von Portalen" lädt BEA Systems zu einer Seminarreihe in 14 europäischen Städten ein.

Die Veranstaltung richtet sich an Kunden, Interessenten und Partner und erklärt, wie Plattformen und Services zusammenarbeiten, um bisherige Dateninseln aufzulösen. Keynotes und Kundenberichte veranschaulichen Portalinfrastrukturen auf Basis der BEA Technologie. Diese Lösungen ermöglichen die Kollaboration in Unternehmen und erhöhen die Agilität und Profitabilität.

ECM Market Shifts With Symphony's Planned Hummingbird Buy (Gartner)

Hummingbird has agreed in principle to sell itself to Symphony Technology Group, a privately held company with no experience in the enterprise content management market. Hummingbird customers should stay alert to changes that might affect them.

Wikis, Blogs Won't Survive (Line56)

Mark Harrison of Kineo makes brave prediction; why it won't play out

Is Microsoft bad for business? (FT)

Microsoft is unquestionably the most influential player in the IT industry. Simply uttering the word Microsoft can trigger emotionally charged – and often stock – outbursts from the most sedate people.

Google’s rise and rise frightens web giants (FT)

Silicon Valley has been rife with speculation about potential mergers among the handful of companies that dominate the internet.

Behind all the talk is the rise of Google, which has used the cash thrown off by its fast-growing search advertising network to finance a push into other online activities ranging from the Froogle comparison shopping site to a new online video store.

Gartner Says Shift IT Mission from Cutting Costs to Creating High Performance Workplaces (Tekrati)

Competitive advantage will come from IT projects that enable business growth by augmenting the behaviour of key knowledge workers, according to Gartner presentations during its Symposium/ITxpo in Barcelona this week. Web 2.0 adoption will play a critical role in improving knowledge worker performance and moving towards a high performance workplace.

Web 2.0: Gemeinsam statt einsam - Gartner Symposium/ITxpo ortet Nachholbedarf für Unternehmen (contentmanager.de)

Web 2.0 als Chance für Unternehmen

Use Beta 2 to Get to Know Windows Vista and 2007 Office System (Gartner)

Microsoft's beta 2 products will give you a chance to learn about new features. If you are standardized on Windows 2000, especially, start working with Windows Vista now.

Key Microsoft products on target (FT)

Microsoft on Tuesday moved to restore faith in its ability to launch key products on schedule, releasing second test versions of its Windows Vista operating system, Office 2007 programs suite and Windows Longhorn Server software.

Stellent untermauert Führungsposition im Multi-site Management mit neuem Release von Site Studio (contentmanager.de)

Stellent stellt auf der AIIM 2006 Konferenz eine neue Version seiner preisgekrönten Multi-site Management-Applikation Stellent® Site Studio vor. Site Studio - eine Applikations-komponente der Stellent ECM-Suite - ist die Infrastruktur für Erstellung, Pflege und Publikation von Multi-Site Web-Projekten, bei denen mehrere interne und externe Websites bei einer optimalen Aufgabenverteilung innerhalb einer Organisation implementiert werden sollen.

Die neue Version von Site Studio gibt Website-Verantwortlichen - oftmals der "Zielgruppenexperte" innerhalb eines Geschäftsbereichs oder einer Abteilung- neue Möglichkeiten bei der "in-context" Erstellung und Gliederung der Website durch den neuen Site Studio Manager. Weitere Verbesserungen in Site Studio sind integrierte Nutzungsanalysen und Statistiken sowie erweiterte Suchfunktionen.

Tridion präsentiert gute finanzielle Ergebnisse über 2005 (contentmanager.de)

Gutes Umsatzwachstum durch fortlaufende Erfolge in Europa und zunehmende Nachfrage in den USA

Tridion, Anbieter von Content Management-Lösungen, hat heute seine hervorragenden Ergebnisse über 2005 bekannt gegeben. Die Verkaufszunahme hat sich seit 2004 fortgesetzt; das Unternehmen hat über das Jahr 2005 einen Rekordgewinn erzielt. Mit einem Nettogewinn von 3,6 Millionen bei einem Umsatz von 18,6 Millionen Euro konnte Tridion eine Netto-Gewinnspanne von 19 % verzeichnen. Die Bilanzen des Unternehmens bleiben mit einem Umlaufvermögen von 9,2 Millionen Euro am Ende des Jahres 2005 weiterhin stabil.

IBM Updates Lotus Notes (Line56)

Support for Open Document Format (ODF) strengthens alternative to Microsoft Office

Yahoo harnesses users’ collective knowledge (FT)

Yahoo will on Wednesday set out plans to harness the collective knowledge and interests of its 400m regular users to develop the next generation of search technology and narrow the gap with internet juggernaut Google.

The vision, to be outlined at the company’s analyst day in San Francisco, comes as Google’s growing lead in search and its steady encroachment in e-commerce and other forms of internet activity have touched off a scramble among rivals.

Terry Semel, Yahoo’s chairman, revealed last week that the company had discussed merging at least part of its search business with Microsoft, though those talks were abandoned.

But in an effort to leap ahead of Google, Yahoo has been experimenting with tapping into the collective wisdom of its users.

read the article

Gates outlines SharePoint strategy, hammers IBM (InfoWorld)

Microsoft anoints SharePoint Server 2007 as key to its collaboration future

Microsoft's Bill Gates Monday opened the first ever SharePoint Conference by anointing SharePoint Server 2007 the key to the company's collaboration future and ripping rival IBM/Lotus.

Content and Learning (Line56)

Easier access to more content complicates, not resolves, the learning problem; someone still has to do the training

ASG stellt vor: Das umfassendste Content-Managementsystem der Welt (contentmanager.de)

Total-Information-Ownership-Konzept vereint Funktionen für Business Intelligence mit dem Management von strukturierten und unstrukturierten Daten sowie von Informationen aus ERP-, CRM- und anderen Unternehmenssystemen

Untersuchungen zufolge verbringen Geschäftsleute bis zu 35 Prozent ihrer Zeit alleine mit der Suche nach den richtigen Informationen. ASG, Anbieter von Unternehmenssoftware für Global 5000-Unternehmen, bringt in Europa eine Lösung auf den Markt, die dieses Schlüsselproblem auf effektivere Weise adressiert: die "Total-Information-Ownership" (TIO)-Suite.

Microsoft joins hunt for next big thing (FT)

Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, has joined a growing list of technology and media company bosses who have taken to trawling Silicon Valley in person in search of the next hot start-ups.

Softricity Buy Could Serve Microsoft's Strategy in Many Ways (Gartner)

Microsoft plans to buy Softricity and offer its virtualization technology to address application compatibility issues. But the technology could eventually support Windows Live, server virtualization and consumer markets.

The World Wide Web: Going Mobile? - Week of 05/11/2006 (Analyst Views)

The World Wide Web: Going Mobile? - Week of 05/11/2006

That cell phone use is on the rise is obvious; a recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the Associated Press, and AOL shows this in detail. From the report, "For some, the cell phone has become so central to their communications needs that they lose track of the expenses associated with their phones. Some 36 percent of cell owners say that they have been shocked from time to time at the size of their monthly bills." Along with their increased usage the application of cell phones has also expanded; cell phones now interface smoothly with Microsoft Outlook and other productivity products, allow users to send text messages, and provide access to the Internet. This last feature is one that has gotten at least its fair share of press recently, much of it in response the release of a report from Ipsos Insight.

The annual Ipsos Insight report entitled the Face of the Web, has suggested that mobile phones are poised to take over the PC as the medium for accessing the Web. Brian Cruikshank, senior vice president and managing director of Ipsos Insight's Technology and Communications practice says that, "Accessing the Internet on a wireless handheld device is no longer a novelty for consumers in the major global economies. It's becoming a common, everyday occurrence for many people." Though this may be the case on a global scale, according to Forrester Research it is far from true in North America; Forrester reports that most users in North America do not use cell phones willingly or frequently for this purpose.

However, just the fact that such an action is possible, when combined with the shear number of mobile phones in circulation, has major players in both the cell phone service and online content service arenas, sometimes hand in hand, responding. Given the money to be made this is not a surprise; according to eMarketer Inc., Internet related advertising generated $5.1 billion in 2005. The $100 million cell phone advertising in the same period may only be a fraction of the total, but according to a Wall Street Journal article, "The companies contend that even though only a small number of people currently use their phones to search for information online, there is a huge potential market with twice as many cellphones in use globally as PCs." Though mobile phones are now being used more than ever to access the Web may true, Forrester does report that even in North America more people are accessing the Web via their phones, the move from being shocked by a bill to regularly using a phone to access the Web may be more of a leap than a step. What is clear is that the first steps have been taken.

AOL is one of the players trying to position itself for the mobile Web. In July of last year AOL launched mobile search services that were similar to those available on their PC oriented site. Just last month they followed this release up with a "Surf the Web" option which reportedly removes many of the challenges encountered when trying to access the Web on a mobile device. "Surf the Web" not only returns search results formatted for the mobile device, but will perform this action for most web sites. Microsoft is also making moves; they recently purchased Paris-based MotionBridge, a company that provides search services for mobile phones. According to the Wall Street Journal, MotionBridge, "specializes in software that searches within a service provider's own branded cellphone portal." Further, at their Silicon Valley Road Show this month Microsoft unveiled a new technology named "Wild Thing" which limits the number of characters users need to enter in a search when the search is conducted on a mobile device; the software inserts 'wild cards' in an effort to lessen the aggravation of users. Yahoo! and Google are also on board with mobile services; Yahoo! has partnered with Cingular Wireless and Google is working with both Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom. Even with all they are putting into it, getting users to frequent the mobile Web may not be the end-game for the online players involved; they may have other motives for providing the services. The Wall Street Journal article mentions that, "Success on cellphones could potentially translate into increased market share for Internet services accessed from PCs."

The increased use of the mobile Web may have implications beyond just the development of business plans to capitalize on it. For example, of mobile search it has been said that it will pave the way for better search across the board. The limitations encountered when using a mobile device to search, chief among them text entry and results display, require providers to improve their service; these improvements will then be incorporated into the standard product. In addition, with technologies such as AJAX allowing what were once desktop based applications to migrate to the Web, users may be able to access and operate these applications on their phones. A case in point is Microsoft's Windows Live which offers Web-based versions of many of Microsoft's office products; according to Matt Champagne, director of MSN Mobile, "Most mobile services will be on Windows Live."

The mobile Web is here, its use is increasing, the major players are working on its development, and with the amount of money to be had in the market it is unlikely to disappear. Whether it is accessed via a phone or other portable device may not be as important to note as what it suggests, true mobile convergence is well on its way and it will incorporate and change the way information is presented and the technology used to retrieve it.

Google refocuses on search business (FT)

Google has refocused its development activities in an attempt to channel more of its resources into its core search engine, Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer, said on Wednesday.

The move is part of what the Google head described as an effort to introduce a more “systematic” approach to the company’s management as it tries to deal with headlong growth.

The shift in emphasis to put more resources into search follows a period of rapid diversification that has seen Google launch a wide range of initiatives beyond its core business, from the Google Talk instant messaging service to a WiFi service in San Francisco. The company recently carried out its first systematic analysis of its development efforts and discovered that the proportion of work dedicated to search had fallen below its long-running 70 per cent target, according to executives.

It also comes at a time when Microsoft and Yahoo! are redoubling their own efforts to claim a bigger share of the search market.

Google executives denied that the realignment of their development work had not been prompted by the threat of growing competition in their core search business. However, commenting on the Microsoft and Yahoo, Mr Schmidt said: “None of the other competitors are emphasising the 70 per cent, which is search.”

By allowing all of its development staff one day a week to work on their own projects – something known inside the company as “20 per cent cent time” – Google has become a model for other technology companies looking for ways to become more innovative. While saying that they still aimed to give engineers free reign to promote new ideas, however, company executives said that they had shifted the balance somewhat in favour of a more centralised direction.

“We’re now taking the steps to encourage people – not telling them – to focus on the 70 per cent,” Mr Schmidt said.

The realignment was part of a broader initiative to build more coherent processes into Google’s operations as it gets bigger without at the same time burdening it with a new layer of bureaucracy, he added. “The goal this year is to systematise everything at Google,” said Mr Schmidt.

The company’s earlier system of encouraging engineers to develop new products and submit these for review by more senior executives had resulted in a “traffic jam” of projects as the number of initiatives multiplied, he added. As a result, Google has shifted the balance towards a more centralised approach to product development.

“We really did a full re-ordering around not what the engineers were doing but around product investment,” Mr Schmidt said. “It’s a different model and I think it works very well.”

Portal + Database (Line56)

If you're planning an information-rich portal, don't forget the database; the case of the American Osteopathic Association

Maßgeschneiderte Enterprise CMS-Lösungen zu Konfektionspreisen (contentmanager.de)

Mit der "AxCMS.net Express Solution" bietet der Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Axinom als exklusives Angebot für seine Partner die Erstellung kompletter Enterprise CMS-Lösungen nach Kundenanforderungen an - angepasst an das vorgegebene Layout, fertig implementiert, konfiguriert und auf dem Kundenserver für die Weiterbearbeitung oder den produktiven Betrieb installiert.

Open Text ist Gründungsmitglied der SAP® Enterprise Services Community (contentmanager.de)

Open Text (Nasdaq: OTEX, TSX: OTC) ist Gründungsmitglied der neuen Enterprise Services (ES) Community von SAP. Das hat der führende Anbieter von Enterprise Content Management (ECM)-Software auf seiner Kundenkonferenz LiveLinkUp Central Europe 2006 bekannt gegeben, die heute in Köln stattfindet. Das Unternehmen ist damit einer der ersten ECM-Anbieter, die der Community beigetreten sind."

Die Enterprise Services Community ist ein einzigartiges Forum, das Partnern und Kunden die Möglichkeit bietet, Ideen auszutauschen und die Entwicklung von Enterprise Services zu beeinflussen - all dies mit dem Ziel, Unternehmen zu helfen, ihre Profitabilität zu erhöhen", sagt Zia Yusuf, Executive Vice President for SAP’s Platform Ecosystem. "Als Anbieter von ECM-Lösungen und wichtiger SAP-Partner wird Open Text eine Schlüsselrolle spielen, wenn es um die Verbindung der beiden Welten von strukturierten und unstrukturierten Inhalten in den Unternehmen geht."

Die ES Community entwickelt Ideen und Innovationen zu Enterprise Services, mit denen Unternehmen Geschäftsprozesse über einzelne Softwareanwendungen und Infrastrukturprodukte sowie über Unternehmensgrenzen hinweg modellieren können. Die Grundlage bilden die Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), das SAP-Konzept einer Geschäftsprozesse unterstützenden, serviceorientierten Architektur (SOA), sowie die Business-orientierte, universelle Semantik der Enterprise Services. Dadurch können Softwarelösungen und Infrastrukturprodukte, die auf unterschiedlichen Systemen laufen, innerhalb ESA miteinander reibungslos kommunizieren.

Für allgemein gültige Qualitätsstandards sorgt ein spezielles Zertifizierungsprogramm. Die Community-Mitglieder können an unterschiedlichen Arbeitsgruppen teilnehmen; die so genannten Advisory Groups identifizieren die wichtigen Herausforderungen, denen sich Unternehmen heute gegenüber sehen, während die Definition Groups Enterprise Services und Best-Practice-Geschäftsprozesse festlegen, mit denen sich diese Herausforderungen meistern lassen.

"Durch die Definition von Enterprise Services übernimmt SAP eine Führungsrolle in der IT-Branche. Denn mit diesen Services lassen sich alle Geschäftsprozesse unterstützen, die von der überwiegenden Mehrzahl der Unternehmen auf der Welt angewandt werden", sagte Kirk Roberts, Executive Vice President, Products, Solutions & Marketing bei Open Text.

"Open Text verfügt über jahrelange Erfahrung mit der Bereitstellung von Lösungen, mit denen Unternehmen ihre Informationen so managen können, dass sie Compliance-Anforderungen genügen. Wir sind deshalb hoch erfreut über die Gelegenheit, zusammen mit unseren gemeinsamen Kunden sowie Systemintegratoren und Storage-Partnern SAP bei der Definition von Enterprise Services für ECM unterstützen zu können."

Open Text bietet eine komplette Suite an ECM-Funktionalitäten als Ergänzung der Lösungen von SAP. Mit der "Livelink ECM Suite for SAP® Solutions" von Open Text können Kunden Inhalte aus SAP-Systemen managen und dadurch Schüsselprozesse effizienter gestalten, Compliance-Anforderungen einhalten und IT-Kosten senken. Die Suite enthält Lösungen für die Bearbeitung von Eingangs- und Ausgangsrechnungen, Kundeninformationsmanagement, Dokumentenmanagement und Vertragsmanagement. Mit diesen Lösungen können Unternehmen SAP-Inhalte sicher und langfristig archivieren und damit komplexe Prozess- und Compliance-Anforderungen erfüllen. Die Lösungen erlauben darüber hinaus die Konsolidierung und Archivierung der Inhalte von verschiedenen SAP- und Legacy-Systemen.

Weitere Informationen zur ES Community von SAP sind unter http://esc.sap.com abrufbar.

The Active Network Acquires Content Management Provider IronPoint (DMReview)

The Active Network, Inc., a provider of application services technology and marketing services to community service organizations, has acquired Vancouver, B.C.-based IronPoint Technology, Inc.. The acquisition of IronPoint, a content management software solutions provider, will enable The Active Network to offer an integrated solution for operations management software, content management, marketing services and online technologies. Organizations will also have access to a suite of content tools to efficiently create online channels to improve internal communications, enhance customer service, and drive promotion and awareness of their services.

IronPoint's content management technology helps organizations capture, manage, store, archive and communicate information and documents critical to their operations. IronPoint serves organizations across multiple vertical markets with a government and educational customer base that includes City of San Rafael, California; University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Province of Ontario, Canada; and Loyola Maramount University, Los Angeles, among others.

Pondering the future for Microsoft (FT UK)

It is hardly surprising that Wall Street's heart sank at the end of last week, after the world’s largest software company revealed plans to increase its spending drastically in the coming quarters.

Microsoft takes on Google with targeted ads (FT)

Microsoft on Wednesday outlined a broad new offensive against Google as it laid out plans to insert the targeted advertising generated by its new AdCenter system into a range of digital services beyond internet search.

Windows Vista Unlikely to Ship Before 2Q07 (Gartner)

Microsoft's track record is clear; it consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases. We don't expect broad availability of Windows Vista until at least 2Q07, which is nine to 12 months after Beta 2.