XML in the Content Lifecycle

The process of creating content — information meant for human consumption — is almost always extremely effort-intensive. People must spend time organizing information prior to creation, constructing the content, and laying out the information so that it is easily read. With so much time, cost, and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible. Furthermore, content-oriented processes involve a complex set of interactions that progress in a “Content Lifecycle” consisting of five major stages: content creation, management, publishing, syndication, and protection. Each of these phases requires different technologies, processes, and resources.

By rearchitecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised to us by reusable and agile content. But first, we need to move from ad-hoc content creation to content componentization, and then to content services. XML and Web Services are the key to this transition that can help organizations maximize the value of their content.

XML in the Content Lifecycle

The process of creating content — information meant for human consumption — is almost always extremely effort-intensive. People must spend time organizing information prior to creation, constructing the content, and laying out the information so that it is easily read. With so much time, cost, and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible. Furthermore, content-oriented processes involve a complex set of interactions that progress in a “Content Lifecycle” consisting of five major stages: content creation, management, publishing, syndication, and protection. Each of these phases requires different technologies, processes, and resources.

By rearchitecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised to us by reusable and agile content. But first, we need to move from ad-hoc content creation to content componentization, and then to content services. XML and Web Services are the key to this transition that can help organizations maximize the value of their content.

ZapNote: Corel

In 2001, Corel began an aggressive campaign to add XML to their advanced publishing products line. They realized that XML could take content development and management to a new level. XML lets users create content that they can categorize, search, re-use, and format automatically. No one understood the power of XML better than SoftQuad, which Corel acquired in 2001. SoftQuad had long played an instrumental role in the development of document-centric technologies.

Corel recently shared with ZapThink its strategy for tying together its SoftQuad, Ventura Publisher, and other product lines into a cohesive mix applicable for content developers and publishers alike. The results offer a compelling set of solutions for the corporate enterprise looking to adopt XML as a component of its content development and delivery.

SOA Consulting

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) represent an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that promises a flexible IT environment that leads to business agility. As companies look to leverage the business advantages of Web Services to address strategic business needs, they are increasingly looking to build SOAs. However, SOAs require special skills and expertise. When companies do not have such skills in-house, they turn to consultants, system integrators, and other professional services organizations.

The movement to SOAs present both opportunities and threats to consulting firms: on the one hand, there will be an increased demand for architectural consulting, business process consulting and the implementation tasks associated with building SOAs. On the other hand, as SOAs take hold and Service-oriented process solutions supplant integration solutions, the market for system integration will dry up, requiring system integrators to change their business focus.

This report analyzes the market for SOA within professional services organizations from three perspectives: from the point of view of the consulting firm, who must understand how its business must change; from the perspective of the enterprise user, who must select and manage a consultant; and from the point of view of software vendors who wish to work with consultants to help them meet the needs of their customers.

ZapNote: Backstream

One of the biggest challenges for producers and publishers of content is the publication of that content onto multiple platforms: print, the Web, PDF, wireless, and other forms. The main challenge is that each of these forms carry their own inherent formatting capabilities, navigation structures, distribution characteristics, and rights management capabilities. BackStream provides software solutions that help businesses manage their content, deliver it to multiple devices, and track and trace usage. The system provides a single platform that takes care of content creation, storage, publishing, distribution, tracking and tracing content such as text, photos, images, PDF files, and audio and video files.

ZapNote: Percussion

Rhythmyx offers a low total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise-class content management system by using XML, standards, Rhythmyx Accelerators, extensible "engines" for core system function, and Active Assembly and Dynamic Workflow to control how content is entered and used on Web pages.

ZapNote: Epicentric

Portals are being used to provide access to content sources or applications such as Siebel and SAP, and enable a common composite application that is accessible via a web browser-based interface. There is a strong intersection with this application-centric use of portals and what is going on with Web Services. Portals provide a compelling means for application delivery of Web Services in a familiar development and management environment. Epicentric has produced a number of advanced products and services to address this capability, and has championed the development of XML-based formats for specification of presentation-layer interfaces for Web Services.

ZapNote: Userland

Userland has pioneered a variety of technologies that have all one thing in common — making it easier for users to create, manage, and share content in a Web environment. Their goal is embodied in Userland’s three main applications: Frontier, Radio, and Manila.

ZapNote: PRISM

As companies increasingly partner and syndicate their content to other locations, the need to locate, reuse, and repurpose content in different forms and in real-time is becoming increasingly important. Today, repurposing consists mostly of cutting and pasting different content components. This simplistic mechanism has been the main way of accomplishing this goal not out of efficiency but out of necessity — there simply are no reliable ways to automatically retrieve, aggregate, and reuse similar types of content. One of the efforts to solve these publishing issues is the Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM) Working Group, which seeks to provide an extensible XML metadata standard for syndicating, aggregating, post-processing and multi-purposing content in both traditional and electronic publishing contexts.

“Plug-and-Play Redefined”

“Many of the deep, vertical standards have gone a long way to finally establishing a common dialogue for the exchange of business-to-business processes, so in these instances, we have a resounding ‘yes’ to the issue of delivering on the promise to simplify business-to-business communication. However, these are few and far between,” says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink, an organization that specializes in XML reporting.

Read more at: InformationWeek