Cheryl's Nuxeo Blog

Nuxeo Studio - New How-To Video - Content Automation - Create a Validation Button

We've just published the second in our ongoing Nuxeo Studio "How-To" quick start series. Haven't heard about Nuxeo Studio yet? It's been the hottest thing we've done this year (so far...)  

As a hosted design environment for our Connect subscribers and Galaxy Partners, we've now got hundreds of companies signed up and actively building content management apps & feature enhancements specifically for their own business needs.  When we talk about "ECM as a Platform"... Nuxeo Studio is where we put our money where our mouth is: we give you the simple, graphical, wizard-like tools to build the apps and extensions you need - with minimal need for custom coding.  

This week's tip is how to build Actionable Buttons that trigger a custom chain of operations to handle or manage your electronic content in the context of your common business processes.  In this scenario (just over 2 minutes...) we step you through the complete process to design, create and implement an approval/validation custom button to fast-track the content review activities commonly done by your busy knowledge workers.  No coding, no hassle, fully backwards compatible with future Nuxeo releases, link key approval activities with metadata, status and lifecycle actions and deliver it to your end-users in one easy click.  

 

Still not using Nuxeo Studio? Well... try or buy by contacting us here. 

And September is "Back to Studio" month here at Nuxeo. Our weekly Wednesday webinars are back on track - weekly sessions highlighting the key features of Nuxeo Studio in an online, live, interactive forum where our experts can answer your questions and provide real-world tips. Join us by registering here.

We're Excited! New Sessions Added - Update on Nuxeo World 2010

 

We've been really busy in 2010 with product launches and updates - not only for the flagship Nuxeo EP and DM, but Nuxeo DAM 1.0/1.1 and Cloud Edition... Case Management Framework, Correspondence Management, metaLogic's Lotus IMT for Nuxeo ECM... Nuxeo Studio... and most recently our preview of the Nuxeo Marketplace and Admin Centre. Not bad considering it's only August!

We're pleased to announce that additional sessions have been added to the Nuxeo World 2010 roster.  New sessions for developers, partners, system administrators, and information management professionals with either a business or technical interest.  

Cool new sessions include:  

Nuxeo Studio - Hands-on Workshop: We've had a few people tell us that Nuxeo Studio is the secret sauce to their ECM success.  Since we launched it early in 2010, this has been one of the hottest topics for our customers and partners.  See it live and help workshop some content application development scenarios.  (and until November... remember you can register for one of our weekly Webinar Wednesday Nuxeo Studio overview sessions...)

Nuxeo RM - What's New?  Many of you know we're actively working to enhance our current content lifecycle feature set to better meet international RM standards and the needs of enterprise customers with strict content management retention and disposal requirements.  This session will be one of the first opportunities to see what we're currently working on.

Building Packages for the Nuxeo Marketplace: In preview mode today, we've asked our customer and partner community to test drive our new (and according to some of the industry pundits... unique in ECM) online solution exchange site.  Share your work, find new markets, even generate new sources of revenue... the Marketplace is evolving to be the hub for creative and useful Nuxeo solution templates and plug-ins. This session will teach you how to use the new packaging system successfully.

Becoming a Contributor: How to Get Started: Nuxeo is a social marketplace in action - we can innovate and evolve faster, stronger, more efficiently when we get input from our customers, partners and developer community.  We are always open to more engagement and this session will tell you how to get started.  Be a first hand contributor to the next generation of ECM.

Nuxeo & CMIS - What's Next? Hear about our ongoing involvement in this important standards work, and how we've implemented CMIS 1.0 in Nuxeo EP and related packaged applications.  Share your CMIS experience with the community!

Lots more great sessions - the updated program is listed here. 

Early bird registration rates are still open until August 31. So see you in Paris!

LinuxCon Boston 2010 - Has Open Source "Crossed the Chasm"?

LinuxCon was held in Boston last week. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the event attracted open source luminaries and advocates from around the globe.  Nuxeo was pleased to be able to speak on the topic of "ECM Meets Open Source" during the Birds of a Feather track on Wednesday.  One of the highlights for me last week was a keynote delivered by Forrester Principal Analyst Jeff Hammond. The slides for his presentation on "Open Source Software Adoption Patterns in Enterprise IT", can be found on the conference site here in PDF.Key points that I took away from Hammond's session?

• Integration and innovation were top of mind for software decision makers in 2009, and for 2010 improvements to business process execution speed and supporting company growth were listed. Businesses are looking to IT to compete and grow. This point correlates nicely with the May 2010 AIIM Market Intelligence report on ECM - businesses looking to use content management technology for "improving efficiency and optimizing business processes..." Businesses that want to thrive and compete in their own markets are looking at technology to help them differentiate.

• There is still massive room for expansion of open source ECM.  Slide 11 of Hammond's presentation lists a wide range of infrastructure tools, and compares management vs. developer acceptance/adoption for each category.  Without a doubt, infrastructure tools (operating systems, database, application servers, programming languages) have high degrees of use and sanction. But tools that are inherently end-user facing, i.e. used by typical information workers, still have relatively low open source usage. ECM, WCM, business intelligence, CRM, portals: typically less than 10% usage inside enterprise. This does not surprise me. It has only been in recent years that open source alternatives have emerged as realistic for business applications. There's a level of maturity that has only recently emerged regarding user experience, attention to design, ease-of-use for non-technical roles, focus on documentation and training. But with this new maturity comes real opportunity for adoption growth.

• North America is catching up to Europe with respect to open source adoption. France and Germany are ahead of the pack - both at approximately 18% adoption for open source content management, followed by US and UK at approx 11% (Slide 13)

• Hammond's analysis includes several observations (Slide 24) that coincide with what the Nuxeo team has seen in its market.  First - that while economic uncertainty and cost savings have driven the rise of open source adoption in recent years, now the goal is shifting to "speed and innovation".  Second - "the enterprise software market and the OSS market are set for an inevitable collision, and then a convergence".  We at Nuxeo see this starting in ECM.  Third - "to win you must drive adoption and affirmation through developers, and purchases through management". Bingo. This is the path to nearly all of the key Nuxeo customer wins. When the information and enterprise architects are at the decision-making table and understand the power and extensibility of our ECM platform to build content applications, it is easy to justify the time and support contract investments when working prototypes and apps can be rolled out in days or weeks.

• Hammond's keynote concluded with some very practical guidance with the 10 Best Practices used by successful Enterprise Open Source Software Adopters.  A must read list for companies wanting to expand their adoption of open source and be confident of their decision. Key points on stewardship, policies, acquisition processes, contribution policies - a good checklist to help build an enterprise grade open source adoption program. (Slide 32)

The slide deck from the Nuxeo session "ECM Meets Open Source" is available here on Slideshare - as always comments and feedback appreciated!Enterprise content management meets open source

View more presentations from Nuxeo - Open Source ECM.

Finding the Best Roadmap for Your Lotus Notes / Domino Doc Applications

 

 

One of the success stories in the Nuxeo Galaxy partner program is metaLogic - a many year veteran of content management applications with roots in the IBM/Lotus community.  Earlier this year, Nuxeo and metaLogic did some joint marketing activities in support of the launch of metaLogic's "Lotus Integration and Migration Toolkit (Lotus IMT) for Nuxeo ECM".

Lotus Notes customers - particularly those on the Dom Doc platform for content applications - are thinking long and hard about their plans - stay on the Lotus platform? adopt other IBM tools? or look at alternatives?

Recently Tom Austin (Gartner VP and Fellow) blogged about this issue and also published a comprehensive research piece describing the conditions under which Lotus customers could/should consider a shift. Entitled "Migrating Off Notes/Domino E-Mail May Make Sense in Some Circumstances", this research piece is available for purchase or under a Gartner subscription.  A bit of controversy is swirling, but this makes for some good and thoughtful reading and debate.

metaLogic's Lotus IMT is an important contribution to the discussion about whether an organization can meet its technology and business goals most effectively by migrating its Lotus installation fully, partially, or simply on an as needed basis. 

There is no one right answer to the if/when migration debate. Cultural, business and overall corporate content management goals need to be assessed when considering the future of a Lotus Domino application.  The good news?  There are alternatives available today via the metaLogic Lotus IMT that address a full spectrum of application enhancements or migration requirements.

We'll be doing a joint webinar with metaLogic on this very topic on September 21 at 11am ET.  In the meantime, we encourage current Lotus customers to take a look at the solution overview slide deck we've shared on SlideShare, and contact us here if you have questions about your Lotus application roadmap.

Quality, Reliability and Speed - Accenture on Open Source Adoption Trends

Accenture published its 2010 open source software market survey today and wanted to highlight a few points that may be of interest to the ECM community:  Full Report and Supplementary Slides Available Here

First surprise was a pleasant one - of the 600 US, UK and Irish respondents, the top benefits their enterprises have derived from the use of open source were Quality (76%), Improved Reliability (71%) and Better Security/Bug Fixing (70%).  

In other words - while perceived cost savings has been a key driver to consider or test open source software, the realized benefits are far more strategic to continuity of operations and innovation. 

Accenture's chief technology architect, Paul Daugherty is quoted in the piece, "What we are seeing is the coming of age of open source, ...seeing an increase in demand for open source based on quality, reliability and speed, ... This is a significant change from just two years ago when uptake was mainly by cost savings". Accenture sees more and more business critical functions moving to open source platforms as this trend develops. 

Nuxeo agrees with this first observation.  Increasingly customers and partners who adopt Nuxeo Enterprise Platform (or one of our packaged applications) as their ECM application foundation do so NOT because of the zero-license cost (though it is zero-cost...), but because the technology stack is rock solid, built with a strong commitment to standards, and can be extended incredibly quickly with plug-ins, or our Nuxeo Studio design environment.   Cost may be an initial driver for considering an open source ECM alternative vs. the leading vendors of the old guard... but it's not what typically drives the final choice when a technical or information architect is at the table.

The second interesting point in the report is the influence that open source is affecting business culture and IT operations - particularly in government and production companies. 75% of product companies and 67% of public sector organizations believe that the use of open source is changing their business culture for the better.... the first and second benefit named respectively.   The use of open source changing culture? This was indeed a surprise.  

But if you think about it, perhaps this is a natural and logical expression of adopting tools and platforms that DO encourage innovation, collaboration, information sharing and that help keep a focus on core business.  Open source, open standards, open APIs, exchange of information for mutual benefit, ability to design applications based on the needs of the Enterprise... not around the release quirks and closed door agendas of proprietary vendors.   

My own move into the world of open source was directly influenced by a 2-year deep dive into the world of Enterprise 2.0 - collaboration for business, by business, with purpose. The flat and open exchange between vendor, customer and partner. Open Source ECM vendors like Nuxeo walk that talk. Journalist Ron Miller and I chatted about this in 2009... and it's still worth discussion. 

But of course nothing is ever completely rosy.  The Accenture survey calls out an important area that is near to our hearts:  need for ongoing and persistent education.  For those organizations who cannot adopt or are stalled in adopting open source for essential applications, the main barrier is "lack of senior management support".  Helping communicate to the C-levels, demonstrating stability, quality and value to decision-makers up the food chain is where the Nuxeo management team plans to invest time and energy. This is talk that we also intend to walk this year.

Read the full report here: http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=5045

 

 

The One Minute Digital Asset Manager? New Nuxeo Appliances - Virtual Machines on Ubuntu

 

Read a couple of fun and concise blog posts over the weekend from open source consultant/Linux guru Robert P.J. Day at CrashCourse.  Getting Nuxeo DAM 1.1 up and running on Ubuntu 10.04 - in 60 Seconds!

One of the items I didn't blog about during our Nuxeo DAM 1.1 launch last week was the availability of new appliances that are specifically made for rapid ramp up on virtualization platforms such as VMware, VirtualBox, and others. Nuxeo DAM (as well as Nuxeo DM) now include download options in both OVF and VMX formats.  Built on Ubuntu 10.04, these pre-configured virtual images are fully loaded with everything needed to kick start a Nuxeo DAM or DM environment (Ubuntu OS, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice, JBoss, etc). The CrashCourse blog outlines some tips for getting the Oracle VirtualBox environment downloaded and installed, ready for the Nuxeo appliance.

So if you have a minute to invest (literally...) to get moving on a content management project with one of the most technologically advanced ECM platforms in the market today, take a look at the new Ubuntu-based Nuxeo appliances.  Time is money. Get started now.

Nuxeo DAM Cloud Edition - Now Available

Yes... we at Nuxeo see the future as DAM Cloudy. But that's a good thing... 

Along with the release of Nuxeo DAM 1.1, we've also expanded our digital asset management offering to include a SaaS version - what we've called Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition.

Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition uses the same backend trusted cloud services as Nuxeo DM - Cloud Edition, Amazon AWS.  We're offering digital asset management in a SaaS delivery model to better serve the needs of small/medium business who have the same DAM requirements as large enterprise, but with a smaller budget and fewer in-house IT resources.  It is a clearly-priced user and volume based subscription that can scale easily and economically as usage expands.  

Rich media - video, digital photos, graphic files, logos, audio clips are often costly to produce, have a big storage footprint, and takes time to get right.  Collaborating with clients, suppliers and a distributed team is essential for small and medium-sized business just like large enterprise. Traditional DAM products start in the 6-figure price range... not an investment that a small or growing company can easily make. Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition provides a competitive and feature-comparable alternative.

Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition is ideally suited for organizations of any size who want an easy-to-use rich media collaboration environment to share work-in-progress and approved assets with external agencies, partners, clients or any trusted organization in their supply chain.  Rapid, secure, easily tagged/categorized video, digital photo or image/graphic content can be shared for joint projects not only for marketing purposes but research projects, evidence review, or institutional memory preservation.

Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition is based on the newly released Nuxeo DAM 1.1 product, and includes all of the cool new enhancements we've done for video management, storyboarding, and batch tagging/import. A quick overview of the new features are shown in this screencast:

The Nuxeo DAM - Cloud Edition is available now. Curious? A test drive site is available here: Try it!  And of course we're always happy to respond to questions, just Contact Us.

Fun with Nuxeo Studio

One of the cooler launches we've done this year was the introduction of Nuxeo Studio. Officially we describe it as "the configuration and customization environment" for Nuxeo EP and related packaged applications like Nuxeo DM or Nuxeo Case Management Framework. It's a hosted design environment that is delivered as part of the Nuxeo Connect support package for application builders/developers. Because it is a hosted service, we are able to quickly enhance the feature set on an ongoing basis, including the recent introduction of Content Automation services, without ever needing our customers to reinstall, upgrade or disrupt their ongoing application design work. 

Most ECM products on the market today have some level of customization tools that allow some screen modification, metadata modification, or forms design... but Nuxeo Studio is perhaps the richest end-to-end design environment that I've personally seen in my 16+ years in the business. 

We're working on a series of educational videos - quick 2-3 minute snippets to highlight some of the more interesting features of Nuxeo Studio. This first clip highlights the "application branding" options, that let your application designers create a look and feel to match any corporate identity or branding guidelines for corporate solutions.

More to come! Want to get your hands on Nuxeo Studio? We have a 30-day trial program available as a test drive for those of you who haven't yet become Nuxeo Connect subscribers. Check it out.. and have some fun with it.

Ovum Technology Audit of Nuxeo Enterprise Platform 5.3.x - Available for Download

Nuxeo EP will help organizations to build ECM applications to enable them to manage growing volumes of content and ensure that they are compliant. This solution will benefit organizations that have a need for transactional or content-centric processes

Recently Ovum (part of the Datamonitor Group) published a detailed technology audit of Nuxeo's flagship open source ECM offering - Nuxeo Enterprise Platform.  Nuxeo has licensed this research note, and is pleased to offer it to our prospects, clients, partner and ECM community at no charge. Download the PDF report here.

Key points noted by Ovum:

• Licensing costs are much lower than for a proprietary ECM platform [in fact - there are none...]

• Nuxeo EP provides a foundation on which organizations can build and deploy content applications

• A modular product that comprises a range of ECM features which are delivered as services.

• Solution architecture uses a component-based framework that offers specific pieces of functionality, that can be activated or deactivated as needed

• Nuxeo charges for its support on a per-application [meaning 'per-repository'] basis and offers three Service Level Agreement tiers

• Key areas of functionality include basic library services, document management, digital asset management, case management

• Currently lacking full RM functionality, but slated for DoD 5015.2 before the end of 2010.

We encourage you to download the full report, read what the analysts have to say about our flagship open source ECM platform, and of course Contact Us if you have any further questions about our ECM product offering or to sign up for an upcoming webinar or in-person event.

Correspondence Management - Keeping Communication Open between Citizen and Government

In late June, Nuxeo launched its Case Management Framework - the first such framework from an open source ECM provider, available for no-charge download under the LGPL license agreement, and fully supported by Nuxeo Connect support and maintenance subscriptions.

Three weeks after the release of Nuxeo CMF, we've delivered the first of several template sets to extend the framework, and bring the power of Nuxeo ECM to specific content challenges faced by our customers. This first application is Nuxeo Correspondence Management. 

Several years ago I worked very closely with a set of government clients, consultants and colleagues to design an end-to-end Correspondence Management application to meet the rigorous needs of high-profile, highly-pressured executives in multi-lingual and security conscious organizations. Adapting rapidly to user feedback, customization requests, and feature requirements was a stumbling block - extensibility and flexibility of that legacy platform was limited.

The world of ECM, thankfully, has evolved over the last 5-6 years.  Nuxeo is at the forefront of nimble, modern, next generation ECM providers, who can deliver both platforms and solutions to clients and integrators to just get things done. We can now dispense with the endless debate over license acquisitions or maintenance contracts that punish organizations as they grow and want to expand application adoption to more and more information workers, while respecting and encouraging the use of open standards for interoperability, metadata management and digital preservation.

Nuxeo's Correspondence Management application  has been designed by aggregating the collected experience from numerous public sector and regulated agency deployments.  The feature set has been driven by requirements that have been consistently articulated as essential for secure, timely and streamlined processing of incoming correspondence.  But when the requirements change, new ones emerge, or the format of what is considered 'correspondence' shifts (from paper to fax to email to web and social media), the solution architecture needs to be flexible enough to keep up with new demands quickly and with minimal disruption to end user day to day activities.

Citizens, the press and other external stakeholders are entitled to timely and accurate responses to their questions from their elected representatives and government officials. Applications such as Nuxeo Correspondence Management helps keep the flow of information from government to the public moving quickly and consistently. And an open source platform assures this opportunity is open to institutions regardless of mandate, size or budget.