KnowledgeForward

I was having breakfast this morning before going to work to prepare for my telebriefing tomorrow on The Role of Enterprise Content Management in Content Globalization/Localization when I opened my Wall St. Journal (4/28/08 page A1; link) to read that nationalism may be thwarting globalization.  The article by Bob Davis points out that while globalization was supposed to be inevitable (hence the WSJ’s reference to Thomas Friedman’s famous globalization manifesto), nationalism and protectionism seem to be on the rise.

Trade talks are shelved.  Barriers to foreign investment are rising around the world. State-owned companies are expanding, particularly in oil and gas. Public support of immigration restriction is growing in countries from the U.S. to India.

So what do I say tomorrow about the need for IT organizations to get involved in content globalization and localization efforts?  I think I’m still on track in saying that there is a sharp increase in content globalization occurring and that IT can help.  It’s possible that some expansion plans in industries that could be brought under state control (energy and foodstuffs in particular) could be put on hold.  But for other industries, the drivers of IT involvement in globalization efforts that I discuss in my telebriefing are still very relevant.  These include:

• Containing or reducing costs: Whatever degree of globalization occurs, there will be a need to contain globalization costs
• Clarification of central and local control through governance: If power shifts are occurring and barriers are rising between central and local branches, governance takes on increasing importance
• Timing/responsiveness: The uncertainty of the globalization landscape places even more emphasis on an organizations ability to react quickly to changes
• Safeguarding brand image: Increased nationalism means increased attention must be paid to local culture and customs, so proper translation and QA processes become more important for a deeper swath of content
• Improving consistency: As with safeguarding brand image, inconsistent translations will have increased risk of harming the brand
• Need to handle increased complexity: Potential increases in regulation will increase the need for complex workflow that can handle documents based upon content typing

I’m not a politician or economist, so I’m (way) out of my element in predicting what effecting nationalism, protectionism, and a global backlash may have on international relations.  The article isn’t saying the slowdown is definite, but a possibility when certain threads in the news are connected.  But from an enterprise content management perspective I think the globalization storm is looking even more vicious than before.

Note: This is a cross-posting from the Collaboration and Content Strategies blog

I have a telebriefing coming up on content globalization next week that I wanted to alert you to.  I’m focusing mostly on the role of enterprise content management in globalization and have put in a slide on Web 2.0 impacts on globalization.  It’s for clients only, but non-clients can get an introduction through my podcast series on this topic.

The Role of Enterprise Content Management in Content Globalization/Localization
Globalization is profound, it’s irrefutable, and it’s irreversible.” These words, spoken by General Electric CEO Jeffery Immelt, are a clear signal that the business world acknowledges a globalization wave that is unlikely to subside. But how has this wave impacted information technology (IT)? The authors and owners of content have often been insulated from this storm, but a stark increase in globalization demands is pulling IT in. In this TeleBriefing, Service Director Craig Roth describes how enterprise content management (ECM) processes and technology, from authoring to analytics, can reduce the cost, cycle times, and inconsistencies of localization efforts.

4/29/2008 at 2:00 PM EDT / 11:00 AM PDT / 18:00 UTC/GMT / 20:00 CEST
OR
4/30/2008 at 9:00 AM EDT / 6:00 AM PDT / 13:00 UTC/GMT / 15:00 CEST

Here’s the link to register for this TeleBriefing.

I’m happy to report that response has been strong for my podcast series on content globalization (well over 600 downloads in less than 2 weeks!), which confirms for me that there is real interest in IT for learning more about the intersection of enterprise content management and globalization/localization.

There was also a curious finding in the download stats.  I looked at downloads by part and had assumed part 1 would have the most downloads since people start there and then get distracted, busy, or bored and don’t continue.  On the contrary, part 2 had the highest hit rate (about a third of all downloads).  That’s the “globalization 101 in twenty minutes” one – kind of the quick primer without any real opinions thrown in.  To me this shows the content globalization market is at a very early stage and IT folks are hungry just to get their hands around it and figure out what it is.  And before you smart-aleks say it really shows that no one wants my opinion, the next most popular podcast was #4 (26% of downloads), which is “what IT can and should do …”.

If you didn’t see my previous posting about the podcast series, here’s a link to my blog entry that has links to the podcast pages that have links to the podcasts.  Luckily I don’t pay by the link.  Seriously though, sorry about all the linking but each step provides a bit of additional detail for you.

I’m happy to say that after a whole lot of interviewing, writing, and document reviews in the fall/winter of 2007 my report ECM for Translation and Localization: Raising IT’s Globalization Fluency was finally published at the end of January.  I’d like to thank all the clients and vendors that gave me their time to tell me about what they are seeing from their vantage point on the globalization market and, along with my teammates, gave me their comments during peer review. 

The report is only available to clients of the Collaboration and Content Strategies service, but I’ve also done a series of podcasts and accompanying blog entries that summarize the report.  The podcasts/blog is available for free.  I’ve attached the details and links below.  Please let me know what you think by commenting here or in the blog companion entries.  Enjoy!

What IT needs to know about content globalization, localization, and translation

Part 1: Repeatable content globalization: Ignore it at your peril

The first part of this podcast series describes why globalization, and in particular its impact on content management, is going to be so important for organizations and why information technology and IT departments have a role to play.

     Download: [mp3]   [blog companion]

Part 2: Content Globalization 101 in twenty minutes

In part 2 Craig Roth discusses background information on globalization to assist people coming up to speed on globalization or looking for rationale for our analysis. Part 2 gives a quick overview of topics such as globalization terms, where to find linguistic trend data for a particular region, some important standards for content globalization, and a brief overview of code internationalization.

     Download: [mp3]   [blog companion]

Part 3: Content globalization: Do the big vendors care?

In part 3, Craig Roth dives into what big vendors are doing concerning content globalization and where they really care. And what does vendor support mean to the software market and how will buyers be impacted.

     Download: [mp3]   [blog companion]

Part 4: What IT can and should do

Part 4 describes five things that IT can do about content globalization.

     Download: [mp3]   [blog companion]

 eWeek reports that Salesforce.com is rolling out new innovation and content capabilities.

The SAAS (software as a service) specialist trotted out Salesforce Ideas and Salesforce Content as part of its Spring ‘08 software release, which also includes some upgrades to its Force.com suite.

(This upgrade didn’t go without a hitch, as U.S. customers suffered an outage when a key server went down.)

Salesforce Ideas will let customer, partner or employee communities post, discuss and vote on ideas.

…

For $35 per user, per month, Salesforce Content lets users share and manage documents, spreadsheets, multimedia clips, HTML files and more. Users post content online and define the group of people with whom they want to share their documents and display preferred sales-related content as Featured Content.

Somewhere at their headquarters in San Francisco I’m sure there is a big conceptual model of all the pieces of software an organization needs to run and different colored pins on what is done and prioritization of what is still left.  I’m not surprised about content management, especially since the Koral acquisition last year.  But I do find the choice of innovation to be an interesting one to tackle next since it isn’t something most organizations have today (although they probably need it), so some selling is involved in getting across its importance.  I’d be very curious to see what color the rest of those pins are. 

CMS Watch reported that

Translation and Content Management vendor SDL has taken a minority stake in privately held Trisoft N.V., a Belgian-based vendor of InfoShare, a component content management system (CCM). There was no fanfare, and in fact no announcement; evidently because it wasn’t a full acquisition, the two companies dispensed with any press release. However, I think it’s a significant move. When it comes to translation information management, XML; and in this case DITA-based XML, can matter. SDL had previously acquired Tridion, a Web CMS that can be used for component content management, early last year.

I think this is a good move by SDL, which has become quite a consolidator of globalization technology.  I haven’t looked at InfoShare before, but buying into the XML-based content management market is prescient of SDL since component-oriented content is very useful for creating content that is going to be translated.

Four factors are compounded to increase the value of component-oriented content:

1. The number of localized variants that the content will be translated into

2. The number of formats that the content will be distributed in

3. The locality of the translation (e.g., needing to retranslate only one section of a document)

4. The frequency with which the content will be changed (thus necessitating retranslation)

When any of these four factors increase, component-oriented content creation starts looking better for any organization creating content that will be localized.  That means translation activities will be easier to track, take less time, make better use of translation memory, and be more consistent.

I just got back from a business trip last night to find that a storm had hit.  My house is fine, but my e-mail inbox is wrecked.  The storm was caused by a document recently published by the Burton Group called “What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications”.  A small minority of the comments address technical issues with the document, but the vast majority are mudslinging that call everything from our objectivity to our parental heritage into question.

This document was published in the Collaboration and Content Strategies service at Burton Group.  I am the manager of that service and the analysts (Guy Creese and Peter O’Kelly) that wrote the document are in CCS.  I stand behind the document, Guy and Peter, and Burton Group fully. 

In seeing this reaction to the document I am not entirely surprised.  My blog entry from September called Microsoft Loses Open XML Vote noted that much of the furor about the OOXML vs. ODF battle was not based on technical merit, but politics and techno-religion. That’s how it seems to have played out too.  It seems the majority of the negative comments in the blogosphere were written by people that haven’t read the report and are responding to a simple summary that they read somewhere.  Please folks - this report is free and available on the Burton Group website under “Free Research”. 

Microsoft had nothing to do with this document other than providing information and vendor review just like IBM, Sun, and others did.  If Microsoft was trying to buy or influence the writing of this document they would have to be pretty annoyed at how balanced it is.  Here is the entire conclusion of the document.  Does this sound like the fiery rhetoric of someone preaching for Microsoft?

The OpenDocument Format (ODF)/Office Open XML (OOXML) debate is part of a significant phase in the evolution of productivity application, with the shift to Extensible Markup Language (XML) file formats displacing traditional binary and proprietary file formats. The stakes are huge, with compelling new opportunities for content management, as well as both opportunities and challenges for software vendors. Organizations will gain important benefits by exploiting opportunities to improve information management and reduce vendor dependencies by shifting to XML file formats.

The articles on this debate like to pick up phrases from within the 37 page document or pro-OOXML recommendations (stripped of nuance of course), but they are doing a disservice to their readers.  Here’s the beginning of the analysis section.  The full doc has a lot more nuance and detail, but this gives the opening “attack”.  Is this a blustery, one-sided viewpoint? 

The recent industry debate about OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) often comes down to the blunt question, “Which one will lead?” There are three answers. The first answer is, “It depends on who you are.” {description of applicability by industry given here … The second answer is, “Within the larger market, OOXML will lead,” for three reasons {the three reasons are detailed here} … The third answer is, “In the long run, perhaps neither.” {description of how OOXML and ODF may both be irrelevent as documents become more hypertext oriented}

Someone attacking our vendor independence pointed out a blog post I wrote about our SharePoint workshops.  This person seemed to believe that if we do workshops on SharePoint strategy we profit from SharePoint’s popularity and would therefore sell our soul to perpetuate it.  This isn’t a direct quote - this person was much less eloquent.  This assertion is flatly wrong.  Our workshop points out the flaws of SharePoint as well as the better parts.  It goes through the offerings of competing products from IBM, Oracle, Google, and more and points out where those products are better and where they are worse.  It points out that organizations have been unsuccessful with SharePoint and that if you fit the same profile, you might be better off with something else from another vendor.  If someone leaves that workshop deciding SharePoint isn’t for them, fine - I don’t lose a penny since we don’t do implementation and we offer the same objective advice about whatever other product they choose too.  And if SharePoint starts losing out in popularity to something like IBM’s Quickr/Connections products, then expect to see an IBM workshop from us that points out strategies, high points, and pitfalls there too. 

I have no trouble attacking SharePoint when it’s warranted.  One of the most popular documents I wrote when I was at Meta Group was called “Sharepoint: Why Not”. If anything, I’ve found Burton Group’s independence to be even higher.  We will not write a vendor document for hire (even for the vendor’s own internal use) or accept any money for a document we are writing.  We do present at vendor’s conferences (we are presenting at Lotusphere next week for example) and we do webinars and other events, but we give the same presentation we would at our own Catalyst conference. 

As stated by our vendor independence policy more than 80% of our customers are enterprise customers.  There are no catches hidden there (our split by revenue is approximately the same, we don’t count Microsoft as an enterprise customer, etc.).  We play to our base, and our base is large organizations and enterprises, not vendors. 

For more information, your first resource should be the document itself.  Go to the source and let us know where you agree or disagree.  If you want a summary of resources on the technologies themselves rather than the debate (good for you!) jump to the end of the report  and it links to information on the relevant standards.

• The document itself can be found here under CCS.
• Peter O’Kelly postings here and here
• Posting on our service blog by Guy Creese here

Well, it’s that time of the year when the top 10 lists take over the front pages.  Those of you who read this blog regularly (yes, both of you) know that I tend to focus on communication, collaboration, and content technology and, sure enough, I’ll be bringing this all around to that at the end. 

A quick scan shows that Time magazine published 50 (fifty!) top 10 lists here: 50 Top 10 Lists of 2007.  Hmmm - that’s just a categorized top 500 list, isn’t it?  I don’t have time to get through that much - let me know if they publish a “top 10 ’top 10 lists’ ” and I’ll take a look.  Wired’s homepage today has The Top 10 Heartbreaking Gadgets of 2007, The 10 Best Gadget Ads of 2007, and Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2007. Perhaps the best of all is The Onion’s What the Hell Just Happened?

I think there are two kinds of readers who enjoy these lists.  The first is people that follow the subject in question and want to see how the author’s list (supposedly some kind of expert) jibes with theirs to validate their views, give them something to gripe about, or point out a few things they may have missed.  Movie buffs love to see the “top 10 films of the year” list to see if they should brag to their friends about their good taste or slam the critic as obviously out of touch.

I want to focus on the second kind of reader doesn’t follow this subject and likes the top 10 lists because it provides a year’s worth of news in a handy capsule.  For these readers the top 10 list acts as a filter to all the noise that occurs during the year.  If you are stuck in with kids all day and don’t get out to the movies, the list is a handy way to fill up your Netflix queue for next year (after a 6 month lag or so for the DVD to come out). 

Now, wouldn’t it be handy if, rather than once a year, that filter was always in place?  I could subscribe to this filter and instruct it to alert me only when a top-10-worthy film, or classical CD, or news story comes out?  And to remove the noise by not bothering me with the lesser films, CDs, or news in the meantime?  It’s hard to guess what will exactly equal 10 by the end of the year, but I’d accept say 15-25 items and a dial to increase or decrease the sensitivity if I’m getting too many/few each year.

I’m bringing this up because I see the “top 10 list” phenomenon as a good analogy to what a slew of technologies at the intersection of portals, RSS, and social software are trying to do: filter out all the noise and just bring me the important information, encapsulated, all in one handy spot.  It is a commonly recognizable form of attention management.

The process for assembling this is the same whether it’s Time coming up with a top 10 list, a blogger filtering news to find just the important stuff worth posting about, or the rules engine for an enterprise attention management system that is trying to find important events and pull them forward into the user’s focus.  The process consists of:

Integration: Connecting up with all the event streams, information sources, and data

Categorization: Determining what subject the event falls into

Rating: Prioritizing this bit of news.  This is probably the toughest part of the process at the moment, but attempts have been made in the form of social ratings engines (Digg) and attention profiling (APML).

Personalization: Lining up the category against the set of subjects that you are personally interested in, either through explicit declaration or implicitly. 

Display: A UI that presents the user with capsules on each of the items and allows the user to notice, track, and manage the information

This process is even more important in the enterprise, where the stakes are higher than missing a good opera CD.  How do you create your own “competitive news critic”, “financial event critic”, or “sales critic” to pick the most important information for you and how do they encapsulate this information and display it for you?  It could be the head of each of these departments flagging important news and alerting others to it (hopefully not just through email).  It could be through social ratings of important events.  It could be through automated alerting mechanisms that work off of triggers or rules.  No matter how it’s done, having an enterprise Roger Ebert to pick the best (and worst) as it happens and a good display channel (like Roger Ebert’s newspaper column) to present the information is as useful in a noisy enterprise environment as it is in a noisy entertainment environment. 

With everyone focusing on top 10 lists, I’m hoping this “angle” helps an evangelist for RSS, portals, social software, or attention management to make their case in a way that will resonate with business partners and executives during the New Year’s season. 

Happy New Year!

John Yunker points out a driver for content globalization (web in particular) that I hadn’t glommed onto:

The weak US dollar is helping companies weather a poor local economy by selling their goods abroad. And this year I’ve noticed a number of companies boosting their Web globalization budgets to expand into new markets or improve their current localized Web sites. All signs point to 2008 being a very busy year for translators and Web localization teams.

I agree and, in addition, I don’t see why this has to be limited to web globalization. I believe all types of content (printed manuals, books, packaging, etc.) will see a similar increase in globalization.

This quote came from John’s top 10 Web Globalization predictions. From my point of view, there’s a key one missing from this list - a shift wherein enterprise IT (often clueless on content globalization until now) becomes part of the solution. John mentions this in a November blog post however, where he says

I believe the changes are due to the simple fact that the translation agencies are no longer leading the industry. The technologists have taken over, and they have a different vision for the future.

By technologists, I’m referring to software vendors, such as Idiom and Language Weaver and Clay Tablet. I’m also referring to the buyers of translation services, buyers who have seen how technology can make their lives easier and want to see their vendors make full use of this technology – from hosted project management software to machine translation.

While linguists focus on the “art” of translation, technologists focus on the “science” of translation.

John feels the machine translation vendors will make out very well due to this trend. True, but I think vendors in all stages of the enterprise content management (ECM) lifecycle will benefit from content creation to content management to analytics.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of recognizing how a lot of the communication, collaboration, and content technology that is implicitly seen as an application is really infrastructure (Everything’s Now Infrastructure! Where’s My App?).  Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is infrastructure in application clothing - which can be just as dangerous.

The implications of the special nature of application infrastructure (as opposed to pure infrastructure or pure applications) became even more clear when a client asked about doing a risk assessment on Microsoft Office.  Remember that Office is more than Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.  It also includes InfoPath, Access, SharePoint, and many other products.  There’s a lot more variability to what end-user facing collaboration and content creation/management tools can be used for than there is for back end infrastructure such as a router.  Or even pure applications like an accounting system where the application is known.  There’s a level of indirection introduced by application infrastructure in that you first have to determine what the user will create with it, then the risk of that.  Think of the enormous span of artifacts that can be created by these systems:

• End user databases and end user db applications with Microsoft Access
• Portals and all kinds of extranet and Internet websites
• All types documents that may contain sensitive data or macros
• Workflow that can kick off automated transactions (such as approving invoices or links to payment systems

Then consider that the scope of users who can create applications, websites, and content with these systems is pretty much all encompassing (all information workers have access to Office in most organizations), and the idea of assessing the risks is daunting to say the least!

I have no answer or even framework for addressing the problem at this point.  I’ll be involved in some ongoing research into this topic and will post a summary of findings when ready.  Until then, if any readers have encountered this issue - particularly in regards to a risk assessment - please drop me a line.