Irina Guseva: Random Thoughts on CMS, WCM, ECM and Other Acronyms

Open Source ECM vendor Nuxeo included several new features in the latest release of Nuxeo Document Management. Nuxeo DM 5.3 highlights include support for OpenSocial API, tagging, SharePoint and interoperability with CMIS Server as an add-on component.

On top of that, Nuxeo EP 5.3, the vendor’s enterprise content management system core, reached the RC stage.

Nuxeo DM 5.3

This time around, Nuxeo concentrated on the increasingly popular social applications support and a few other things that many DM users may find helpful and welcome.

Using Nuxeo’s support for OpenSocial — a common API for social apps access across various websites — users can add and/or build social networking gadgets, for example.

Nuxeo DM 5.3 serves as both the publisher of gadgets and the OpenSocial container. Just for comparison, other known OpenSocial containers include MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, iGoogle and many others.

CrownPeak, a SaaS Web CMS vendor, also did an OpenSocial integration back in early 2008.

Microsoft SharePoint can be accessed from Nuxeo DM 5.3 for basic library services and common file operations. For those die-hard fans of Windows Explorer, there’s a native integration, so they may not even know they’re working with another document management system.

There’s also a Microsoft Office integration that allows opening, saving, editing of files directly to/from Nuxeo DM.

It was about time Nuxeo put more effort into tagging and metadata capabilities of their DM system. The new tagging service is fairly easy to use and allows users to categorize content by applying existing or adding new tags. Tagging can then result in more ways for retrieval and display of content stored in Nuxeo DM.

Tagging recommendations and dynamic tag cloud are also part of the deal.

Nuxeo DM 5.3 Tag Cloud

The vendor also says they improved search and indexing, which should play in nicely into the tagging offering.

Having been longtime fans of CMIS, Nuxeo added interoperability into this release as well with their add-on CMIS Server, which is based on the CMIS draft 0.62. The most current (and the official OASIS Technical Committee) CMIS draft is 0.7.

The idea here is that organizations can use Nuxeo DM, while also being able to search across multiple ECM, ERP, DM and other systems.

Nuxeo EP 5.3

Currently an RC, the new version includes that same WSS (MS SharePoint), tagging and OpenSocial widgets support we’ve seen in DM 5.3. In addition to that, the import/export service was improved and performance is said to be enhanced following some benchmarking efforts.

The Nuxeo EP 5.3 RC also features a CMIS implementation based on Apache Chemistry that we discussed early spring — both with Nuxeo’s Florent Guillaume and Day Software’s David Nuescheler.

It would be unreasonable not to notice the wave of recent activity at this Paris-based open source ECM vendor. With new people on board and an aggressive product roadmap, Nuxeo (if not disrupting) is clearly starting to gain more traction in the global enterprise CMS market.

In the end, when it comes to open source, successes can be measured by the activeness of the community, as well as customer growth — among other metrics. In the U.S., for example, Nuxeo still has quite some space to spread its wings, if the vendor wants to. And we tend to think it will.

Cross-posted on CMSWire.com: Open Source Nuxeo EP and DM 5.3 Support OpenSocial

IBM announced fairly significant updates to its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) product families, including Business Process Management (BPM), eDiscovery and Archiving.

Apparently having heard the market scream for leaner, smarter product options and cost efficiency, the Big Blue has also introduced starter packs — licensing-wise slimmed-down product versions targeted for smaller or departmental deployments — for four of its ECM product lines.

More on CMSWire: IBM Updates ECM Portfolio, Introduces Starter Kits

CMIS, in its current state, seems to be best suited for document management scenarios. Hence, it was only a matter of time before a DMS vendor like KnowledgeTree jumped on the CMIS bandwagon (joining the many Web and Enterprise CMS players) and released its own implementation of the draft Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification.

Admittedly, quite a timely move, considering that the latest OASIS CMIS Technical Committee face-to-face meeting took place only two weeks ago, getting CMIS an inch closer to the actual standard level.

In the best spirit of interoperability, the CMIS implementation by open source document management systems (DMS) vendor KnowledgeTree is designed to follow the spec and allow ECM users to access enterprise document repositories that have a CMIS interface. The CMIS implementation for KnowledgeTree Community Edition Snapshot is available for download. The latest code can be found here.

Let’s not forget the recent CMIS Face-to-Face Meeting that took place in Colorado in the first week of August. According to Nuxeo’s Florent Guillaume, “…everybody is pretty happy with the spec as it is, and we’re nearly ready to start the OASIS review process that will first make it go through formal public review, and then open the OASIS vote for CMIS to become a standard.”

Guillaume hopes that CMIS “should be a 1.0 standard by the end of the year.” Read his Day 1 and Day 2 blogged observations.

More on CMSWire: Document Management Vendor KnowledgeTree Embraces CMIS

One of the final sessions at Gilbane SF yesterday was around content standards: CMIS, JSR-170 and JSR-283.

Many realize there are several challenges with CMIS in particular and efficiently working with content from disparate content repositories in general.

The session aimed at shedding light on some of these challenges and possible solutions in the standards space.

Too Much Content in Too Many Content Repositories

Chances are, if you’re in the enterprise content management space and you have an ECM system, this still doesn’t solve all your ECM problems. There are also document management and digital asset management systems, for example, you need to be able to “talk to.” Users of one ECM system often need to access and store documents in an entirely different content repository.

Scattered data repositories only add to the challenge. The majority of companies have an assortment of repositories, be it ERP, PLM, PDM, BI, KM, WCM, or DM systems. The problems we run into with multiple repositories are compliance, eDiscovery and business intelligence.

Add to that the fact that 80% of data is unstructured, and the enterprise world looks very gloom. Search gets harder as data sets grow. It takes longer to index. Thus, it takes longer to search.

ECM: CMIS or JSR-170/283?

Naresh Devnani, managing director at Lean Management Group, gave us a peek into real-life scenarios and impressions of implementing a standard’s wrapper, from the times when he was working for Vignette PS.

Devnani talked about implementing a JSR- 170 (the standard that was led by Day Software) level 1 functionality for an RDBMS-based web content management system.

Speaking of lessons learned, Devnani mentioned:

• Lack of ease in implementing a contained 1-n parent-child relationship
• Inefficient reference model in certain cases
• Node types not useful for WCM object wrapper
• No multidimensional view of repositories
• Big ramp-up

One of the examples at the session was quite shocking, actually. According to Devnani, some customers think of interoperability in terms of a content migration and moving things around from one repository to another. But there are still high hopes for CMIS.

Full story on CMSWire: Gilbane SF: Content Integration Standards — CMIS, JSR-170, JSR-283

Ask and you shall receive. I was curious to hear Nuxeo’s thoughts on CMIS and Chemistry, and (many thanks to Eric Barroca and Florent Guillaume) my wishes were granted. Now, I can go to my exile in Siberia

As a follow-up on my chat with Day’s David Nüscheler about Chemistry, here’s a very insightful interview with another major Chemistry contributor — open source ECM vendor Nuxeo via Florent Guillaume, head of R&D.

Full interview on CMSWire: Nuxeo’s Take on Apache CMIS Implementation aka Chemistry

So, following up on the initial post, as promised. Had a good chat with Day’s David Nüscheler and Kevin Cohrane yesterday. Thanks again, guys!

Nüscheler is one of Chemistry committers and had a lot of interesting info to share. Would be nice to hear from Nuxeo and Alfresco, too… Referring you to my post on CMSWire for the rest:

The CMIS specification is still in early stages, but the buzz around it is consistently loud. Most recently, the spec has piqued interest of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), as some saw a “reference implementation” ingredient missing from the CMIS recipe for success.

Meet Chemistry — a recently-proposed Apache Incubator Project with a goal of creating a generic, open-source, Java-language implementation of CMIS.

More on CMSWire: Apache CMIS Implementation: Is There Chemistry?