Good governance is on everyone’s minds these days. It’s a concern that extends well beyond the Washington Beltway. As applied to managing your enterprise content, including taxonomies, it is not just an abstraction.
Good governance drives the overall performance of your content program, including:
–How easy it is for users to find information
–How users look for information
–How users store and retrieve information
–How to clean up redundant content
–What metadata is available
–What templates are used
The need for a well-planned and well-run governance program will only increase. The growth of unstructured information, demands for greater efficiency and cost savings, and privacy concerns are all motivations.
Are you wondering how to set up a governance program? Are you questioning whether your existing content governance is right? Avalon and our partner PPC are sponsoring a free webinar series that will help you Cultivate Content Management Success through Planned, Managed, and Implemented Taxonomies. For more information and to register, click here.
It is no secret we here at Avalon are enamored with MarkLogic technology. Our consultants have regular discussions that involve topics like the best way to use Java code with XQuery or how to integrate HTML5 with WebSockets to create a multi-publisher capability for MarkLogic (and no, we do not use pocket-protectors or wear hats with propellers). Now I understand these are important topics that yield very cool applications but they don’t really resonate with a business user. The typical business user (IMHO) who is being introduced to MarkLogic sometimes has a hard time wrapping his or her head around what the heck it is. When I encounter this confusion I point them to a simple analogy:
I do love old-school SNL.
So how is this analogous to MarkLogic?… very simple. Business users typically understand technology on a 1 to 1 basis. They understand that the search engine is used for searching documents and the content management system is used to change content on their web site and the database is used to store, well… data. MarkLogic simply does not fit the 1 to 1 model in the way most business users have been trained to understand technology, it is a “disruptive technology”. MarkLogic is really a platform to build countless applications to leverage any unstructured content. So what does that mean? Think about all the content/”stuff” you have that is valuable but would not naturally be a fit to be managed in a spreadsheet/database (e.g. it would probably not make sense to put your meeting notes, videos, mp3s, family photos, or this blog into a spreadsheet/database). So lets take a look at some practical MarkLogic use case examples:
Publishing - This is clearly MarkLogic’s sweet spot. After all… who has more unstructured content than a publisher? Now publishers not only have a good way to store and manage their books/magazines/journals/etc. but they can now easily create content “mashups”. What is a content mashup? Think of a student being able to buy individual chapters (or paragraphs for that matter) across multiple books instead of wasting money on content that he/she doesn’t need.
The “S” word - If you go to the MarkLogic website, you will not (at least at the time of this blog post) see Search as one of the categories under their solutions tab. This is really too bad as MarkLogic is an extremely powerful search engine. For instance, we were engaged by a large Association recently that was already using MarkLogic for publishing. This Association realized the power of MarkLogic’s search capabilities and asked us to develop a roadmap for replacing their Lucene/Solr search implementation with MarkLogic (I called it Lucene bypass surgery). They not only saw the value of using MarkLogic for search but how they could reduce costs from collapsing a layer of infrastructure, reducing support and training costs, and eliminating risk from an overly complex system. If MarkLogic ever takes on the other search vendors head to head – watch out Endeca, Autonomy, Fast, etc., etc.
Web Content Management (WCM) - WCM on MarkLogic is simply a natural extension of how to leverage your content and software investment. Avalon has been working with MarkLogic on developing a simple WCM interface to abstract all of the technical mumbo jumbo and put a straight-forward WYSIWYG interface to manage a web site with content stored in MarkLogic. More info here: http://avalonconsult.com/solutions/tools/wcm_for_marklogic
If I told you I would have to kill you - Life would be much more simple for our security agencies if al-Queda and the Mexican drug cartels would establish data centers, we could just hack into them and know what they were up to. It seems the bad guys tend to shy away from structured data (can’t imagine why). Now I don’t claim to know the exact use case(s) of how the US “three letter agencies” use MarkLogic but it is obviously valuable to be able to manage and analyze a ton of unstructured “intel”.
This is just a small sample of the applications MarkLogic can power. Geospatial, mobile, and metadata applications are just a few others that deserve attention for a MarkLogic solution.
So for all you business users out there. Don’t stress when someone in your organization comes up to you and says “I have an idea for a product that will serve our (insert your unstructured content need here) and it might also work as a (insert your other unstructured content need here). MarkLogic is the “New Shimmer” of technology… it simply works well for multiple applications.
My formal introduction to Vignette Content Management began with this statement: ”Vignette has three hierarchical organizations for content.” Put another way, you need three taxonomies to make Vignette work its best.
So what does that mean? One definition of taxonomy is: “A defined hierarchy of categories; a tree-like structure of terminology that defines how categories relate to one another. Taxonomy provides a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or information retrieval.”
Vignette uses taxonomic structures for organizing where content is stored and managed, how it is navigated on websites, and how it is categorized or classified for a variety of uses. Other content platforms leverage taxonomies. The facets in a faceted search experience are another example of a taxonomy.
A taxonomy is a powerful model for organizing information. In the vast sea of information found inside every enterprise, the correct use of taxonomies can make content findable and ultimately help you, your employees, partners, and customers become more productive.
Interested in learning more? Avalon and our partner PPC are sponsoring a free webinar series that will help you Cultivate Content Management Success through Planned, Managed, and Implemented Taxonomies. For more information and to register, click here.
I think it was the editor of Wired magazine who said something like “Designing for the iPad is liberating, because users have no pre-conceived expectations for the user experience”. He hit the nail on the head, because right now many of the most exciting user experience innovations are occurring on mobile. I wanted to share a few:
1) Do@ is an iPhone app which does search better by replacing text search results with apps* pre-filled with result sets, and a WebOS-style flick left or right between the apps. By “outsourcing” the results display to 3rd-party apps, Do@ leaves plenty of room for innovation, without losing value as an aggregator of all apps appropriate for each category (e.g. @movies, @news, @music).
2) Siri has the theory & user experience right for voice search. In my testing, the app isn’t ready for prime time because it makes too many mistakes. But with Apple’s purchase, we’ll likely see pieces of the technology built right into future releases of iOS.
3) Windows Phone 7 Mango has added Google-Goggles-style “Bing Vision” search built right into the OS. Also, they’re building closer integration between Bing search results and results within apps like IMDB.
You’ll notice a trend here: I’m showing examples of innovations for search. As you may have noticed in my blog, I’m passionate about the synergy offered by combining mobile innovations and search innovations. Since our focus at Avalon Consulting, LLC. is content, specifically leveraging your content to improve your users’ experiences, our mobile focus is naturally around delivering your content to more people more often using the most effective mobile user experiences. I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of how the combination of mobile devices and search technologies will make valuable content more accessible.
* term used loosely here since they’re HTML5 and not independently installed on the device