September 7, 2007, Glasgow, UK - web site, intranet and document store analysis and migration company Vamosa (http://www.vamosa.com) is now offering free webinars for customers wanting to learn more about analysis and migration tools for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The ‘Migration to SharePoint 2007’ webinars start in September 2007 and consist of online demonstrations of Vamosa’s content and document store analysis and migration products, and are currently set to run throughout the rest of the year.

Presented by Nic Archer, Senior Vice President of Vamosa, the webinar will show customers the benefits of automated intranet and document migration, and of providing SharePoint 2007 customers with a quick start using Vamosa tools.

The webinars, which may be found at www.vamosa.com, cover everything from how to analyse your existing document stores and intranets, to how to transform and migrate content to SharePoint 2007. The online demonstrations also give customers tips and insights on what to consider when planning a document or web content migration project.

Using screen sharing inside a web browser, customers are able to watch live as key features of Vamosa Content Analyser and Vamosa Content Migrator are demonstrated. The simultaneous toll-free telephone conference allows customers to listen to the presentation and to ask questions in real time.

“Vamosa helps drive innovation for competitive edge by enabling faster team collaboration with automatic content transformation and migration tools,” explains Chris Parkhouse, Head of Marketing for Vamosa. “Vamosa tools reduce the time, cost and risk of moving to any new Enterprise Content Management system, including SharePoint 2007.”

“Webinars provide an ideal way for customers to learn about Vamosa’s software tools in the comfort of their own home or office.” concludes Parkhouse.

For further information please contact Vamosa by telephone on +44 (0)141 574 2500 or +1 617 621 3041. Alternatively email marketing@vamosa.com.

About Vamosa

Vamosa is the market leader in delivering software solutions for document and content analysis, transformation and migration. Using Vamosa’s automated tools – Vamosa Content Analyser and Vamosa Content Migrator – in a migration project can produce savings of up to 80% in cost and time over manual alternatives. With offices in Cambridge, MA, USA, and Glasgow, UK, Vamosa has attracted clients including The Club (a consortium of UK Government departments), Cable & Wireless, Vodafone, AXA, Statoil, Volkswagen North America, Alltel and Bank of America.

For more information visit www.vamosa.com

We're looking for an intelligent, self-motivated, adaptable technical author with experience of Java, Python, or C#.

In particular, we’re looking for candidates with some of the following:

• Experience in on- or off-line documentation authoring or technical illustration, using relevant tools.
• An understanding of the software development and technical publications processes.
• Ability and inclination to write your own sample code.
• Ability to read source code in languages such as Java, C# and Python.
• Logical and analytical approach to problem-solving.
• Exceptional communication skills.

The role involves working within the development team developing new and maintaining existing end-user documentation for our product range, including “How To” guides, reference manuals, user guides, and more. The successful applicant will also be an integral part of the Vamosa user community. We strongly believe in writing all our documentation in plain English and value the ability to explain complex subjects in simple language.

If you've got what it takes to work in a hectic environment like ours, we would love to hear from you. Please send your CV to jobs@vamosa.com, putting "Tech Author 2007" in the subject line.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The swan song of Tsunami Ken's tenure as social convener for Vamosa Inc was held on Saturday 9th December 2006. 

In dramatic fashion, Kenny Boy organised a politically correct, religiously neutral Holiday Extravaganza in the imaginatively named 'Felt' (oo err Missus!) - a combination of restaurant/nite spot/pool venue.  A great time was had by all (thanks Kenny Boy!) and here are a couple of snaps showing some of the highlights. 

Other, more incriminating, pictures are available for $10/£5 if you want to some cheap gossip. 

Kenny, Eric, and Johnny; if you give me $20/£10 each, then the pictures will never see the light of day.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM US ALL IN BOSTON!

Grace is said before scoff: Johnny prays for forgiveness while David snaps the sleazy fun

Steve O Gets Down to Business: Steve has to pot this one to get his tie back

Hadrian Gets Excited: Calm down Mr Engel, your eyes give away what you are thinking!

Recently there has been a lot of activity in and around Vamosa. Most notably this week we launched Vamosa Community Edition, however we have also attended a lot of events (Gartner PCC, Shared Insights PCC, Interwoven GearUp and a Butler Group WCM Strategy Briefing to name but a few) and in general tried to talk to as many people as we can.

Sometimes it can appear an uphill struggle however slowly but surely the message of content migration is filtering through and we are seeing some interesting feedback on the web and in the blogosphere. For those of you interested I thought I would take just a few moments to give a snapshot of some of this coverage:

VCE  has popped up in a number of places:

EContent Mag gives a brief overview of the launch of the product. As it is a website with a large amount of traffic (mainly CM Professionals) this is extremely good coverage.

CMS Wire - have also published a rather interesting article on VCE and I think hit the nail on the head in conveying the reasoning behind VCE. It is actually the most recent of a number of articles on Vamosa / Vamosa Products that cms wire have published recently - another one dealing with the recent Butler Group Technology Audit

Also in the blogosphere more and more people are picking up the name Vamosa and talking about our abilities, and our content migration toolset.

Seth Gottlieb, a specialist consultant in the Open Souorce arena, talks about Vamosa and the area of content migration as a whole in a recent and interesting post.

As a sign that the events we attend are paying off Deb Wiley posted a brief review of the recent Shared Insights PCC event we attended in Boston last week. This was the first time Deb had met Vamosa and for us to make it into her blog about the event means that we must be doing something right!

Anyway guys, I just wanted to keep you all abreast of the going on with Vamosa and some of the return we are seeing on the world wide web. I hope you find it interesting!

Today we launched our latest product - Vamosa Community Edition. As you know Community Edition is a combination of Content Analyser and Content Migrator. The tool has been built specifically to allow the wider content management community to experience the benefits an automated content analysis and migration / manipulation product has to offer. For this reason interested users will be able to download Community Edition for free from www.vamosa.com.

Everyone who downloads Community Edition will be actively encouraged to participate in the dedicated forums on Vamosa Groups as we try to do as the name suggests and build a community around content analysis and migration.

Finally I would just like to thank the team for all your help and efforts in getting this off the ground!

This is the second time I have started writing this blog. The first post I had just completed and was reasonably impressed with it.Then as I went to click the submit button I was logged off by the system and lost everything. Therefore I am going to keep this short and sweet. 

The conference continues to be extremely interesting with a wealth of information and knowledge on display. I have learned a lot from the analysts but also from fellow delegates who as I said in a previous post hail from some of the worlds largest organisations. Yesterday however was the first day of the Expo floor and so I spent much of the day speaking to vendors at the event. To my surprise there is only one ECM vendor actively promoting ECM software - Interwoven. Others like EMC, IBM and Microsoft have decided to concentrate on other areas (Microsoft have even decided that they are not promtoing MOSS 2007 on their stand or distributing any information whatsoever on this much talked about product. EMC - leading the ECM Magic Quadrant with Documentum have only a poster advertising their ECM capabilities, nothing else). This said at least they have a presence - there is no sign of Oracle (or Stellent), and Vignette seem to be absent as well.

 I have attended a number of interesting presentations, namely the PCC magic quadrant analysis by Roger Fulton and then this morning Debra Logan presented on ECM do's, don'ts and things to consider. Unfortunately we didnt get a mention this time but the presentation was focussed more on products and policies - still it was a very interesting presentation, made even more enjoyable by Debra's trememdous presentation skills.

This afternoon I am attending another session on Sharepoint and Google in the enterprise - Debra will again be presenting and I am fairly excited about what is going to be said! (The last comment surprised even me - it must be the Vamosa effect taking hold either that or Cannes has the ability to make anything exciting).

Anyway for now I'll sign off because I have honestly spent far too long trying repeatedly to send post this. The last one truely was a work of art and I'm very dissapointed I didn't get to post it.

I need a timemachine. I need a timemachine so I can go live 5-10 years in the future, so I can live in a world without 2000 different CMSs. I mean really ? Are they all different ? I don't think there were ever 2000 database vendors, 2000 CRM vendors, or 2000 ERP vendors selling packaged software. Where is the competitive edge ? Where are differentiating factors ? 

• They all provide a template-based authoring experience.
• They all provide a workflow process (some better than others, but big deal)
• They all provide some kind of content lifecycle management, metadata, user management, yada yada yada yada.....

So I propose we stop building content management systems and put our effort in to building a time machine and go live in an era where users/buyers aren't dumb-founded by the massive choice and complexity involved in implementing theses systems.

Seems like this week, the Glasgow-side of the company is spread to the winds. George is Boston, Owen's in Cannes (read his post here). I'm currently in Aarhus, Denmark at the cmf2006 convention, a convention without sales, without product demos, and without endless hours of hovering around a stand. Instead, I've found a 300 likeminded people who are willing to discuss the issues of web content management in all its forms. 

Being based in Glasgow its often difficult to find the right people to discuss the good & bad practices surrounding content management. Although you can have the most amazing lifestyle in Glasgow, its not the epicentre of the world regarding CM. We always talked internally within Vamosa, that we need to go out and meet people and hear new ideas, debunk old ones, and listen to the doubts that people have with regards to our product set. With the lack of commerciality, this has turned out to be an excellent forum.

Yesterday (at breakfast), I found out that my friend Tony Wood from VisionWT was staying at the same hotel. Good start to the day, we both sat in on Tony Byrne's session on Portal & CMS architectures - a good session that we're not barking up the wrong tree at Vamosa with regards to Portals, i.e. they are difficult & costly beasts and out of the box offer little more than a web development environment.

The afternoon session was with Nick Carr on the general topic of IT and IT innovation in particular. I struggled with this session, not because it was bad, quite the opposite. I struggled with it because for Vamosa it had so many aspects to it. Although the audience was mostly made up of people with in-house CMS implementations, I think it suited Vamosa and the other 2 vendors more. As small vendors (Vamosa has 40 staff) in a big pond, we are under a lot of pressure to continuously innovate. The points Nick Carr made were good, i.e. you can either innovate process or innovate product, doing both is risky and expensive, something Vamosa cannot afford to do. So I came away from that session "struggling", but that's good. It will take me a few days to digest.

Some of you may have noticed my absence from the office these past few days. Some of you may even be enjoying it, but there wil be those of you who are missing me exceedingly, so I thought that I would just drop you a quick line to let you all know what I have been up to and ease all those worries. 

 I am at this moment in Cannes, sitting in the world fanmous Palais des Festivales where many a film star has walked the red carpet at the annual festival. Unfortunately though the film festival is not on this time of year and the closest I have come to a film star lifestyle is walking out the arrivals gate to meet a guy holding a sign for the Gartner IT Symposium 2006 (he didn't even have my name on it - but still it made me feel important along with the other 20 guys they piled onto the waiting coach).

Anyway, I left on Sunday to come to Cannes for this annual symposium where Gartner discusses the latest trends and technologies in the information world, makes some predictions for the future, and influences the decisions of almost 2000 CIO's in some of the largest corporations Europe and the World has to offer. Booking up late meant I had to struggle for flights (6 in the morning departure from Edinburgh - ideal time) and saw me struggle even more for hotels. On speaking with some of the other delegates here everyone seems to be staying in the Hilton, the Carlton etc etc etc. I on the other hand am staying at the lesser known Hotel Atlas. To be fair to this humble offering it is pretty central with good transport links (right across the road from the local train station) and is a lot better than I expected.

Leaving so early on Sunday meant I arrived at a reasonable time on Sunday afternoon (after traversing Paris mid-journey as I had to change from Charles de Gaul to Orly airport to get the connecting flight). On the plane down I was sat next to the Nordic Sales Manager for Autonomy. We had a great chat about our respective technologies and he discussed past events and colleagues including a guy who was employed to act as a giant contact directory - it would seem he knew everyone and as I was told seemingly won a challenge / bet that he couldn't arrange a meeting with the King of Spain. Apparently he was reasonbaly well acquainted with King Juan Carlos and after a quick speed dial phone call was on his way to Spain for a chinwag.

Sunday was spent looking around Cannes and the symposium. I did have a beer watching the sun go down from a restaurant on the beach. I highly recommend it if you get the chance. At first glance the sympsoium seemed massive, and it is. There are so many sessions on absolutely everything IT, some more interesting than others.  On the sunday night Gartner put on a welcome drinks reception for all the delegates which was great. I met some of the other guys here and had some good chats about where they think the IT world is headed and what they are doing in their organisation - of course I also explained a little about Vamosa and philosiphised on the movers and the shakers of the Enterpise Content Management Marketplace. In the end we all agreed that these are exciting times to be doing what we are doing and that the future does indeed look bright for a blossoming Vamosa.

That night I had dinner with several of the Gartner salesteam and some of the other delegates in the old part of Cannes (had to walk along the harbour and stare in awe at some of the dingy's on display - one such dingy had 5 floors and would probably put the Titanic to shame. I did see one for sale though so if anyone is interested let me know and I'll make a note of the number). After dinner we headed back to the Carlton (hotel of choice) for a few drinks and more chat - between myself, some CIO's and Analysts we put the world bang to rights and solved the age old problem of World Peace.

The next day I arose bright and breezy and decided that today was going to be spent networking, chatting with all those willing to listen. I attended several sessions the most interesting of which was on the Web 2.0 phenomenon and how it is going to impact on business. I rather smugly considered our current activities and this blog is testament to the fact that we are slightly ahead of the game in the Web 2.0 stakes - a fast moving, free flowing ,innovative organisation.

Again that night I had dinner with a couple of delegates - these guys are in charge of some fairly sizeable IT departments and it is interesting to speak with them and find out their views. The power of Gartner lies in the fact that what they say more often than not goes, and it can often be used as decision to buy software / services and a justification for doing so - simply because "Gartner said...." The fact that we are so highly spoken of in this influential organisation bodes well for the future. After dinner we mingled with the locals in an Irish bar which was overtaken by Gartner - all in all an enjoyable evening.

I will finsh now and hopefully update you on todays goings on tomorrow morning if I get the chance - my PC seems to want to take about 25 minutes to start up and when it does is extremely slow to connect to anything - I would ask at the helpdesk if they could do anything but I decided that I would just use one of the compliemntary Gartner PC's that are dotted around the complex.

I hope you have enjoyed my musings and ramblings. Any questions just ask - and if you are missing the sound of my voice I am only a phone call away. Ciao for now!

The Butler Group recently carried out a technology audit on Vamosa Content Migrator 2.7. The document discusses the potential of Vamosa's Content Migration toolset and how Vamosa are best placed to service the growing issue of content analysis and migration in the ECM marketplace. To view the document abstract and download the complete document please click here.