VamosaGroups - Editorial, Site Update, Company News

It isn't a case of quality versus quantity

Nic Archer — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:34:06 +0100

Whenever a potential customer asks me about what it is that differentiates Vamosa from the rest of our competitors, I have to stop and think hard about the definition of 'competitor'. If by competitor, you mean somebody who says they do what Vamosa does, then there is plenty of competition out there. When we started the Vamosa concept 6 years ago, the concept of content migration was abstract and avoided at all costs by the ECM vendors.

Now that we have made a lot of inroads into the area of content - analyzing it, structuring and then deploying it , we now find that everybody says they do it - and they seem to think they always have. In my humble opinion, impersonation is the sincerest form of flattery. But that is only when the impersonator is a good impressionist.

To this end, I have to say that we are asked to help out a lot of companies which have used one of our 'competitors', and we have had to pick up the pieces and show it how it is really done.

This brought me round to the concept of quality versus quantity. I think that is where we really differ from the other guys out there who attempt to replicate what we say, and what we do. Some of the guys can 'migrate 2,000 web pages' - and that is the best that they can come up with as a reference. When I look at the number of Vamosa customers who live in the 100,000 plus page space, or the 1,000,000 document plus space, then I have to think, we handle quantity very very well.

But at the end of the day, we still live in a 'garbage in - garbage out' sort of world, so quantity is not the ultimate measure. To the teams of Vamosa guys working out in the field with our customers, the real qualifier of success is quality. But not quality in the authoring sort of way - that is handled pretty well by the vendors of content management systems. I am talking about content quality in the same way we talk about TQM - total quality management. TQM was all about ensuring that quality was built in across all processes and by all stakeholders. TQM for quality means that when the content is published it adheres to the quality principles of the business - all of the metadata is meaningful, and the naming conventions and storage mechanisms all work ins the corporate environment. TQM for quality is like applying data management principles to content and knowledge. And the other thing about TQM is that it is a continuous process, it doesn’t just happen when you initially build and populate, it also applies to every change, update, deletion or modification. The great thing about web content and document management systems is that they are infinitely flexible; the worst thing about them is that they are infinitely flexible.

So no when I look at what we do in Vamosa, with our built in high volume capabilities, and our connectors to lots of technologies, I think we can tick the box for quantity. And when I think of our “analysis, structure, deploy and then analysis” content quality cycle; I think of quality. That is when I get the clarity of thought - some of our competitors will talk about quantity, some (not many) will talk about quality, but only Vamosa leads its marketing propositions with quantity AND quality - that's why I get a headache when I'm asked about competition!

Migration to SharePoint 2007 Webinars

Chris Parkhouse — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:32:42 +0100

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 hiring!

Per Hammer — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:07:01 +0100

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.

Web 2.0 Top 100

Hadrian Engel — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:32:02 +0100

After reading Ijonas' post about the death of Microsoft Office and the rise of Google's new online Spreadsheets (The end of Office as we know it), I have to admit I am a big fan of Webware... hence the reason I regularly check the blog Webware.com.

On that note the site is having what some may call a 'Crowning of the King of the Web', a contest to weed out the websites that try too hard and praise those worthy few. The contest is split into 10 categories with each having 25 contestants. The entries were all submitted by readers of the blog a couple months ago and now the voting has begun...

Yesterday I spent some time just browsing the different nominees, some are worthless and others are quite interesting. Although I haven't had the time to go through the whole list, I found a couple that I thought might be pretty useful.

http://www.askx.com/ is a version of the popular Ask search engine that uses all of the newest
Ajax technologies or http://www.chacha.com/ another search engine with a live person to help you search. Let me tell you talking to someone about search for Hadrian Engel return nothing but an upstanding young gentleman.

As for productivity, I have been swindled by 411 directory fees for too long! Google just recently created a FREE 411 number for those of use that need directory listings on the fly. http://www.zoho.com/ is an online productivity suite (Word Processor, Spreadsheets and Presentations etc) that boasts it has a plugin for MS Office!

Lastly the site http://www.farecast.com/ seemed to be relevant to all of us travelers out there. It stores tons of data on the price fluctuation of online airline ticket stores and finds trends in ticket prices. Most of all it tells you that you are buying a ticket when the price is a record high and waiting a day or so might save you some money!

There are more sites that I didn't have the time to try, online storage, databases, social networking, office tools, etc... But I invite you to browse some of these, most of these sites are just starting out and offer their services for free!

The Need for Metadata

Ijonas Kisselbach — Tue, 08 May 2007 10:47:54 +0100

Metadata has a bad name. People find it a necessary evil that they need to deal with when they're dealing with content. These days you can't just stick a file in folder. When it comes to content management systems, authors need provide a variety document and version history details before a document can be placed in the correct location and the right document lifecycle workflows can kick-in.

If its so bad, why do we need metadata ? Search engines do an excellent job of providing accurate, secure, and fast access to massive volumes of content held in many disparate stores. Isn't that enough ? What more would you want ? Unfortunately the world of content and unstructured information grows ever bigger, is more regulated, and becomes more important to organisations day-by-day, which means that single scenario of the knowledge worker using the search engine to access content doesn't describe accurately the world we live in anymore.

The world of keeping documents on file systems and emailing them to colleagues is fast disappearing. Governments are introducing new regulations on how we conduct business with each other, and this affects how emails, documents, and other unstructured content is created, accessed, maintained, and ultimately disposed of.

The large volumes of content we deal with means vendors such as IBM, Stellent etc. develop content and records management systems to allow organisations to implement these new regulations. The policies that run on top of these systems are driven by metadata. Metadata is required to decide where a document is to be stored or when documents should be disposed of. Its unavoidable, we need metadata, unless we build artificial intelligence into our records management systems and teach the AI how to read.

Metadata has a bad name, because organisations treat it as transactional data, like a unit price on an order line item.

Metadata is different from content and its different from transactional data.

Metadata describes content in a given context or series of contexts, some of these are user-generated, some machine-generated and potentially interpreted differently across consuming systems.

Metadata needs to changes over time, to reflect the changing contexts in which it is used.

Therefore we need to start to think about metadata in a new light and consider what some people are calling a metadata lifecycle model.

The Secret Utopian World of Search

Ijonas Kisselbach — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:24:40 +0100

Search is a magical thing. You type in a few keywords into the little box at the top right-hand corner of your screen or into your web browser and a world of relevant information unfolds itself right in front of your eyes.

Search is a half-baked truth. You type in a few keywords into that same little box and that lists comes back. You have no idea whether or not that list of results is "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Take look at the screenshot taken from my MacBook Pro's Spotlight desktop search for "trip to London". God knows what email message about swimsuits has to do with my trip to London this week. I dare not open that email for fear of embarrassment.

I have no way of knowing whether or not the results in my Spotlight search is an exhaustive list or merely a subset. It probably isn't and without a shadow of a doubt there are better search engines out there, but for me its good enough. The "top hit" was the right document I was looking for.

Search engine vendors have a hard time. They find themselves in a continuous war of words with one and another. Rocket-scientist generals explaining to their foot soldiers in the marketing departments why their rocket-science algorithms are better, more accurate, faster, and more truthful than the next guy.

You the user/buyer get bombarded by all sorts of messages such as "multi-axial guided navigation" (no wonder the military funds this stuff, its got the word 'guided'), "smart previews" (for the dumb user), "information transformation layers" and (my personal favourite) "meaning based computing". Selling complex solutions to complex problems. Yet in software design terms all these products pretty much only deal with one single use case: the information overloaded knowledge worker sitting in front of their search box wondering what to type in next. Sure some vendors take matters a step further by screen-scraping your screen for text and using that to "guide" your search by "understanding your current context", but its just more of the same, saving you a few keyboard strokes.

The problem with the typical search engine vendor is that they need to convince you that more complexity is better not worse, which goes completely against anything we've ever learned from Mother Nature.

Take Autonomy, pretty much top-of-the-heap king-of-the-hill in search vendor terms. I like Autonomy. Yes its expensive, yes its complex, it hits all of my geeky-techy buttons. I wish I had designed & built their software. I wish I was that smart.

Autonomy's message is typical: complexity complexity complexity. They're the "meaning based computing" guys. They even provide a page explaining why other current popular approaches are unworkable and what they say is pretty much correct, but in doing so only reinforce the perception that their own sector consists of a bunch of snake oil vendors.

How do you, the corporate buyer, measure "meaning based computing"? How do you know that when you type in "trip to london" into that little box you are getting the whole truth? Unfortunately you can't.

It's magic, it's a secret and they won't tell you.

Content Migrator's toolbox (pt. 2)

Per Hammer — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:42:46 +0000

Following on from the previous installment where I discussed the Mozilla Firefox browser and it's various plug-ins and extensions, this time I thought I'd give a quick run-down of the other tools I frequently use in debugging content and migration issues.

First of all, there's trusty old Textpad. Textpad is a plain-text editor and really excels at performing regular expression search as well as find-and-replace. And, with the appropriate syntax files in place, it will also do syntax highlighting of HTML, JSP, JavaScript, Python, Java files and others. (On a side note, my personal preference is to set the Textpad editor "keystroke compatability" to "Microsoft applications", but you can also select others. No vi or emacs bindings as far as I can see, though!)

Speaking of regular expressions, you can't get much better than RegexBuddy. This tool lets to edit and test your regular expressions, and even provides a visual builder to create new expressions. With it instant feedback through highlighting your test-data to match your regular expression, RegexBuddy is an invaluable tool in both teaching yourself regular expressions as well as a tweaking guide for the more experienced user.

To solve character set issues, I use SC UniPad. This allows you to quickly and easily identify the encoding type of a file as well as the Unicode id for any character contained within it. This is useful to detecting content where the encoding header doesn't match the content.

For XML and XSL work, I use Altova XMLSpy. This is a powerful XSL editor with a full XSLT Engine built in so you can perform your transformations with a simple key-press.

For comparing files (and folders) I prefer CS Diff. This visual diff tool has a handy single-pane view of the differences between the files which I find much easier to read than the traditional diff/patch output.

And finally, for viewing the Vamosa log-files while the program is running, I use BareMetalSoft BareTail. (BareMetalSoft site appears to be down at the moment, alternative download site is here.) This is a powerful Windows implementation of the standard Unix 'tail' utility, with added functionality for highlighting based on simple searches.

And there you have it - my Content Migrator's Toolbox.

Now over to you - have I misses any of your favourite tools? Do you disagree with my choices? Please add your comments below.

Content Migrator's toolbox (pt. 1)

Per Hammer — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:45:23 +0000

Sometimes we come across content that resists migration for some reason or another. I've tried to pull together a list of the tools I frequently use to view and check content whenever I see a problem. I hope this list is useful, and hope everybody will post links to THEIR favourite tools below. But for now - here's my starter for ten (all links open in a new window).

First of all, check out the excellent Content Migrator's Cookbook for "recipes" for performing common tasks on content already added to Vamosa. This includes useful Jython scripts and XSL transforms as well as suggestions on connecting to external datasources and more.

Secondly, for viewing content before it's added to Vamosa, consider using the Firefox browser (along with the extensions below). Use Firefox's browser tabs to view and compare pages.

To determine potential Identify issues, use a Firefox User Agent Switcher extension to retrieve pages under a different guise. This allows you to quickly determine if the source server is returning different content based on the connecting browser. (Vamosa identifies itself as "Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/2.0", but we may allow this to be set as a Project setting in the future).

To determine potential content issues, use Firefox Web Developer and Firebug extensions to inspect the content. Also consider using the Firefox HTML Validator extension to review the content, and try the Firefox View Source Chart extension to quickly review the structure of the content. The Live HTTP Headers extension lets you view the headers returned by the server, which is useful for determining character set issues and so on.

Vamosa Inc Holiday Extravaganza - December 9th 2006

Nic Archer — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:58:47 +0000

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!

What really drives software innovation?

Nic Archer — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:36:45 +0000

I have just spent a few days at the Gilbane Conference on Content Management here in Boston. It was a well attended event and (as is the norm), there was a very healthy bunch of commercial sponsors - companies who shell out a lot of money to get the chance to show their wares, talk to delegates and generally showcase their latest and greatest innovations. So all is good in the world of software - but is it?

My cynicism radar was definitely working overtime. Having attended some of the sessions - and I thoroughly enjoyed some of them - I have to say that there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in some for vendors. If you believed some of the self proclaimed 'industry watchers', 'demand side analysts' and 'CMS experts' you would think that the commercial software vendors are a cabal of evil, hell bent on relieving all those poor unsuspecting organisations of their software budgets, and delivering very little in return.

Now I have worked in software for 20 years, and in IT for 23 years, so I have seen my share of this view from customers, but I have to say I am getting a little bit tired of this view. We all know what bankers do - they bank; retailers retail and defence contractors help to defend. The software industry is a very dynamic and fast changing sector. The level of talent and the level of innovation that exists within the sector is second to none. With innovation comes risk. Thousands of software companies are formed every year. The amount of risk sustained by the software sector is unbelievably high. Software as a sector really does punch way above its weight when it comes to its attitude to risk. With risk comes reward to some, but a lot of strife to the majority of software startups.

So the next time somebody turns round and questions the motives of the software industry, ask them if they realise the level and speed of innovation that is produced every year. The ability to bring products to market which really address true real world problems. The ability to make things faster, or cheaper, or easier to use. This comes from innovation and from a healthy and positive attitude to risk. This does not come cheap. Not in monetary terms, nor in the blood sweat and toil shed each and every day by the small guys, the innovators, the risk takers.

The end of Office as we know it.

Ijonas Kisselbach — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:38:15 +0000

I have a confession to make: I am a Power User. (GGGGGWWAAARRRRR!) That means I spend all day geeking out over technology and software. In fact this blog entry is a perfect example of "me".

If you listen to Microsoft's marketing machine you'll hear that the forthcoming Office 12 or 2007 is a neccessary upgrade for hungry power users such as myself. I'm told I need the upgraded features and the new UI layouts will make me even more productive. Microsoft used to be right and I used to believe them. Their Office software is great but is quickly running out of steam.

Here's why...

I spend my day interacting with fellow colleagues in our offices and Glasgow and increasingly in Boston too. Together we work on projects that span the globe. We're all power users because we're a technically minded IT company that uses IT all day to do what we do, i.e. develop software and take it to market. We're not in agriculture or manufacturing or even a services business such as selling insurance. We're a software company and therefore... power users.

We're currently in the process of outsourcing our email servers to an email hosting company. This process involves coordinating the movement of mailboxes from two locations to our hosting partner's servers, across timezones 5 hours apart.

The one piece of software which makes this whole process easy is Google spreadsheets. We've got a sheet set up with each row corresponding to a staff member or mailbox, whereby the columns represent that mailbox's different stages throughout the migration. Something that you can do in Excel today. But with a twist, we're currently able to edit those details in real time. Four members of staff are editing these details continuously. There's no sending of "updated spreadsheets", no versioning, no conflicts. It works seamlessly, to the point that we can invite the support staff from the hosting partner into "gang of four" and have them involved in the migration.

One spreadsheet. 5 authors. Realtime. 2 timezones. 3 locations.... a scenario that will happen with increasing frequency.

Office is dead. Long live the new Office.

Vamosa Marketing Update

Owen Lovelock — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:35:21 +0000

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!

Vamosa Community Edition Launch

Owen Lovelock — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:44:26 +0000

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!

An imperfect state of affairs

Ijonas Kisselbach — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 08:05:10 +0000

The final day of cmf2006 and I think I've got a fairly good impression on where the CMS industry is at in 2006. Yesterday I was an audience member at a Web Idol competition (think Pop Idol but with content management systems). Each of the 5 vendors (ez Systems, Sitecore, TERMINAL FOUR, FatWire, and tridion) choose to demonstrate their goods around the topic of content authoring and ease-of-use with mixed results. I left feeling a bit cynical and dissappointed. Its 2006 and vendors still competing on how good their content authoring features are compared to the next guy.

Earlier in the day, I sat into Ted Nelson's keynote, which was as interesing as it was entertaining. We spend all year trying to get web technology to work in 1000s of different situations and environments, and he's decided: nope, we need a fresh start, we need a new model. His project Xanadu has clearly defined but limited scope and it will be interesting to see how far he gets with it. The web is far from perfect and the issues discussed over the last couple of days show that, but on reflection I came away thinking Ted Nelson's project, if his aspiration is to 'reinvent the web', is comparable to reinventing the industrial revolution after it reached critical mass.

The afternoon leading up to the Web Idol competition saw me sitting on Erik Hartman's session on 'real world taxonomies', JoAnn Hackos' presentation on navigation, search, and DITA, before being royally entertained but also seriously warned about text mining in Stephen Arnold.

The thread that ran through all of yesterday and I think this whole conference is that fundementally we're all trying to solve a individuals facets of very complex and difficult problem: making content manageable - be it through search, information architecture, or ease-of-use.

I think I'll come away today with more questions then answers, which basically guarantees my attendance next year.

No sign of the promised land just yet.

Ijonas Kisselbach — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:25:57 +0000

No sign of the promised land just yet. Nope, we're still too busy selling 2000 CMSs to unsuspecting buyers. As they say... there's one born every minute.... a CMS buyer, that is....

Just sat in a session presented by Thomas Vogel and Travis Wissink. Travis' half-hour was of more interest to me than Thomas', due to subject matter. Travis' highlighted two near-future (I suspect next 2-3 years) directions for ECM implementations, namely Content Bridges and Enterprise Service Busses. All great stuff, and much of it confirming what we've already suspected: integration is available today, but much of it is pointless unless you can easily (read cost-effectively) integrate content & metadata stores uniformly, specifically tackling the 80% of unstructured & semi-structured content. And yes, using XML examples is cheating... 80% of content is not XML!

Right, I think I need a new CMS.... but first lunch.

Gartner continued although much shorter

Owen Lovelock — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:01:54 +0000

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.

Sigh... another CMS...

Ijonas Kisselbach — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:00:32 +0000

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.

Likeminded People

Ijonas Kisselbach — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:35:36 +0000

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.

Gartner IT Symposium in Cannes

Owen Lovelock — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:58:42 +0000

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!

Butler Group Technology Audit - VCM 2.7

Owen Lovelock — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:27:17 +0100

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.