Smart Content in the Enterprise
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Research Report Smart Content in the Enterprise How Next Generation XML Applications Deliver New Value to Multiple Stakeholders August 2010 by Geoffrey Bock, Dale Waldt, and Mary Laplante Smart Content in the Enterprise The Gilbane Group gratefully acknowledges the support of the sponsors of the research informing this report. This work would not have been possible without them. Please see the Sponsor Acknowledgement section for descriptions of providers. 2010 Gilbane Group, a Division of Outsell, Inc. 83 Gilbane Group A Division of Outsell, Inc. 763 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Tel: 617.497.9443 Fax: 617.497.5256 [email protected] http://gilbane.com 2010 Gilbane Group, a Division of Outsell, Inc. ii Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................... iv Study Highlights................................................................................................. 2 Why “Smart” Content? ....................................................................................... 3 Using This Report .............................................................................................. 4 New Value Propositions for Content .................................................................. 6 Connecting Content with Business Levers ......................................................... 6 Characterizing Smart Content ........................................................................... 8 The Business Value of “Smart” .......................................................................... 9 Focusing on the Customer Experience ..............................................................10 Smart Content in Action ................................................................................... 12 Designing Smart Content .................................................................................. 12 Enriching Content with Tags and Metadata ...................................................... 14 Smart Content Application Landscape .............................................................. 17 Smart Content Capabilities ............................................................................... 18 A Functional View of Smart Content Applications ............................................ 19 Social Publishing Processes .............................................................................. 21 Conclusion and Gilbane Perspectives .............................................................. 23 Evolving Content Capabilities .......................................................................... 23 Managing the Organizational Change .............................................................. 26 Business Prospects for Smart Content .............................................................. 27 Appendix A: Developing a Roadmap to Smart Content .................................... 28 Defining Content Components ......................................................................... 28 A Little Bit of Semantics Goes a Long Way ....................................................... 29 Distributed Authoring and Collaboration ........................................................ 30 New Roles and Enhanced Governance .............................................................. 31 Appendix B: A Guide to Smart Content Concepts ............................................. 33 Componentization............................................................................................ 33 Content Enrichment ......................................................................................... 36 Enrichment Through Crowd Sourcing ............................................................. 40 Dynamic Publishing .......................................................................................... 41 Smart Content In Practice ............................................................................... 44 Optimizing the Customer Experience: Facing the Challenge of the Web ........... 46 Documenting Semiconductor Devices at IBM: Addressing Design Complexity . 50 Towards Smart Publishing at IBM: Facing the Challenges of Technical Documentation .................................................................................................. 56 Single Source Publishing at NetApp: Adopting an Infrastructure for Content Reuse ................................................................................................................. 63 Symitar Solutions for Credit Union Management: Documenting Software Modules ............................................................................................................. 69 The Warrior Gateway and the Power of Social Publishing: Supporting the Military Community .......................................................................................... 74 Sponsor Acknowledgement ............................................................................. 80 Smart Content in the Enterprise List of Figures and Tables Figure 1. Evolutionary capabilities for content .................................................... 8 Table 1. Design activities for smart content scenarios…………………………………. 14 Figure 2. Enrichment activities as integral to the publishing process ................. 16 Figure 3. Technology landscape for smart content ............................................. 18 Figure 4. Shared repositories as the functional model ...................................... 20 Figure 5. A functional view of social content processes ..................................... 22 Table 2. Core capabilities for different content technologies ............................. 24 Figure 6. Component reuse for different views ................................................. 35 Figure 7. Sample of descriptive tag names ......................................................... 38 Figure 8. Sample metadata element .................................................................. 39 Figure 9. Assigning metadata explicitly ............................................................. 40 Figure 10. Content variables and versions ......................................................... 43 Figure 11. IBM FileNet P8 as shared repository ................................................. 52 Figure 12. IDCMS with FileNet P8 as a shared respository for DITA content..... 59 Figure 13: Social publishing web dialog .............................................................. 77 2010 Gilbane Group, a Division of Outsell, Inc. iv Executive Summary XML applications have long proven their significant value — reducing costs, growing revenue, expediting business processes, mitigating risk, improving customer service, and increasing customer satisfaction. XML-based solutions driven by reusable, componentized content have brought true innovation to production processes, partnership enablement, and customer interactions. For all the benefits, however, managers of successful XML implementations have struggled with attempts to bring XML content and applications out of their documentation departments and into their larger enterprises. Even the most articulate champions find it challenging to communicate XML value propositions to broader audiences. Yet at the same time, companies are beginning to understand how to capture metrics to make business cases, such as cost savings from reuse. Technologies for XML content processes have matured and are widely available at a variety of price points and delivery models. Service providers have developed knowledge and process expertise that can offload much of the work that distracts enterprise users from focusing on their core businesses. But for all this market readiness, so much XML content value remains untapped. Why is this so? Why do XML applications that have performed well at the departmental level fail to be adopted in other areas of the organization where they can also deliver business benefits? What does it take to break out of the XML application silo? What is the magic formula for an enterprise business case that captures and keeps the attention of senior management? To answer these fundamental questions and issues related to them, analysts in the XML practice at the Gilbane Group (a division of Outsell, Inc.) set out to investigate the current and emerging landscape of XML applications, looking for insights into where the true obstacles to broader enterprise adoption are rooted. The primary objective of our research was to find out where the common points of failure have been, and why. More importantly, where there have been successes with moving beyond an initial application, we wanted to know why, how, and to what benefit. Finally, we wanted to understand how that experience could be abstracted and universalized so that other companies could learn from it and start mining the value of XML content and applications throughout the enterprise. Our primary research comprised extended conversations with business and technology leaders within organizations that have deployed at least one XML application in new and innovative ways. Through a series of open-ended questions, we discussed business objectives, development activities, and outcomes. (We are publishing the results of these conversations as a series of case studies that accompany this report.) We combined the knowledge and insight from this research with our industry and implementation expertise as well as our deep knowledge of the XML markets and technologies, drawing on our roles as industry