Content Management Software

Gone are the days of folders with “Confidential” stamped across the front or handcuffed briefcases on men in sunglasses and black suits. Open Text released Rights Management Services (RMS) for the Open Text ECM Suite which allows enterprises to safeguard confidential and sensitive information from unauthorized uses of content even after it leaves the secure vault of the content repository.

High-profile public and private sector cases of information misuse, IP theft and privacy leaks over the past few years have been due in part to the ease of distributing electronic information via email, flash drives and other means. Even though the content may be stored in a secure repository, once users have the right to read a document and save it on their locals drives, the content becomes vulnerable to misuse and theft. Open Text Rights Management Services lets organizations augment their security strategies by providing persistent protection that remains with the information or data no matter where it goes. RMS gives users control over who accesses their content and how, ensuring that the right version is being used.

Permissions-based security in an enterprise repository alone is not sufficient especially with the speed that information travels. It’s all too easy for sensitive documents to get forwarded or downloaded to a USB drive and land in the wrong hands. By integrating Rights Management Services into the Open Text ECM Suite, it will be easier for users to layer persistent content-based security on top of their current protection policies and procedures.

Rights Management Services works by enforcing content protection constraints for documents and other content based on business rules such as “do not email”, “do not print” or “do not save locally”. The application then encrypts the content and publishing license together. The content and rights remain encrypted during transport, extending security to wherever the content travels. When the rights-protected content is opened by the recipient, a request goes to a rights management server to validate the user’s credentials and usage rights. Similarly, round-trip scenarios are also supported allowing editing and uploading of new versions that retain the rights management constraints.

As a shared service in the ECM Suite, Rights Management Services protection spans Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 applications as well as virtually all other file formats including PDF, HTML, engineering drawing file formats, image files, ZIP, archives and more. The protected content can also be viewed on BlackBerry smartphones. Open Text has partnered with GigaTrust and Liquid Machines to add support for specialty content types such as computer-aided design (CAD) files, Visio, Adobe PDF, graphics and many more. Open Text Rights Management Services for the Open Text ECM Suite is available now.

No matter which brand you’re patronizing—Apple, Motorola, etc.—smartphones are revolutionizing the way we do things, and in many respects have only begun to change our daily practices. Every company selling mobile devices is trying to get a leg up among enterprise users, and corollary to that, every company selling business productivity applications is trying to go mobile.

The content management software market is not impervious to the demands of mobile users. Last month, CrownPeak released a mobile component for the iPhone and Android phones, and this month, Open Text announced plans to take their Enterprise Content Management platform to smartphones with the release of Open Text Everywhere. Open Text’s native mobile application is predicated on the idea that smartphones are actually replacing laptops among mobile workforces, and their mobile applications will initially be for the RIM’s BlackBerry, and for other mobile devices thereafter.

Despite the inherent limitations of smartphones, Open Text Everywhere has a lengthy list of features. The underlying goal is to provide a comprehensive view of business processes, content, and offer workplace social collaboration tools. Users will be able to review documents, approve expense reports, and sign off on vacation requests from the application. (Complex editing are currently difficult from any mobile device, but we’ll likely here about amendments to the application when tablets proliferate in enterprise.) Per seat licensing is expected to be around $5-$15, depending on the application.

One interesting bit about Open Text Everywhere is that Open Text has begun in the space CrownPeak neglected: the BlackBerry. However, the reason for this is plain: BlackBerry’s operating system is far more secure, and therefore more amenable to enterprise email and data. It is likely Open Text will eventually take Everywhere to other smartphones, but those devices will have to promise better security first.

Open Text announced today it will be expanding its content management solution with a new acquisition: Nstein Techonologies, a content analysis company.

Nstein’s technology is a powerful addition to the Open Text arsenal, as it allows businesses to centralize, understand, and manage content through semantic and text analysis. The future leaders in the web content management market will surely be those with the most extensive semantics analysis in their offerings—many hope for full semantic dictionaries in different languages—so it’s no surprise Open Text picked up Nstein.

Nstein is positioned as a provider of “next-generation” content management solutions, offering information-rich enterprise content support. Those using Nstein’s web content management platform can leverage their patented Text Mining Engine semantically analyzes and sorts content—this specific tool is undoubtedly what Open Text was after. Nstein also has some pretty big clients to boast, including The Financial Times’ semantic search engine—Nstein technology powered the backend, and the engine indexes some 4,000 business news sources.

Last year, Open Text purchased two other established CMS providers, Vignette and RedDot, but is known for buying revenue streams rather than items intended to become part of a greater product. Nstein is a definite leader in the text analysis market, and Open Text is certainly a CMS giant, but considering their reputation with integrations, it’ll be interesting to see what they make of Nstein. Especially considering their competitors will want a piece of the semantics analysis pie—and can potentially integrate these services faster.