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Earlier this summer, FatWire Software unveiled its new Content Integration Platform and EMC Documentum connector for its Content Server customers. This new addition to its product line offers an easy way to unlock information from internal data silos and publish it to the web.

FatWire Content Server is the company's flagship product. It is a full-fledged website content management system that allows business users to contribute and manage web content in real time. With the help of IT administrators, the entire cycle of design, publishing, management, optimization, and analytics can be handled from within Content Server.

Previously, in order for content to be deployed to the web via Content Server, business users wishing to publish content needed to put that content within the Content Server repository. With the release of the Content Integration Platform, publishing content from deep within varied information silos is now much easier, more distributed, and automated.

Customers can now use Content Server interfaces to access content from across existing business systems for use on the web -- internal or external. This means that regardless of how the existing silos of information is distributed -- by organization, geography, type, or other means, it can be managed centrally for web distribution.

The Content Integration Platform includes connectors to a number of major platforms including file systems, file shares, and EMC Documentum. Using Documentum as an example, what this means for business users is that they can choose content from directly within Documentum and simply "mark" it for publication on the web using a point-click interface within Documentum itself. These items then automatically become available "assets" (objects) within Content Server and it utilizes the metadata from within Documentum (example: title, description, etc.) to determine how the content will be rendered on the web. One of the benefits of this new integration is that it avoids duplication and outdated content. When a new final version of a document is available within Documentum, the distributed agent from within the Content Integration Platform automatically detects this new version and deploys it to the website without manual intervention.

The Content Integration Platform uses enterprise standards for maintaining version, access, and workflow controls so publishing information using the new interface is secure and scalable. The platform uses single sign on (LDAP or Active Directory) for unified security across all repositories.

About the Technology

FatWire Content Server is a directory of content which is built through the use of distributed agents which crawl each of the repositories within an organization. These distributed peer to peer agents pull this information from the repositories and publish it onto Content Server. Then, using pre-defined templates and protocols (set up typically by the IT staff responsible for Content Server) it is deployed to the web. Since the content is physically accessed from within Content Server as one of its assets, performance is not compromised by a reach to the back end repository.

Content Server consists of various web services that use SOAP and Enterprise Java. The distributed agents that make up the Content Integration Platform are written using a variety of different languages but C++ is preferred since it runs on many platforms and has a negligible impact on performance. They are architected using REST and SOAP API's.

When asked what differentiates the FatWire Content Server and Content Integration Platform from other tools, Dmitri Tcherevik, Chief Technology Officer at FatWire was quick to answer "The distributed service oriented architecture (SOA) of peer to peer gives it better performance, scalability, and security." Tcherevik compared this to other platforms that rely on a hub and spoke architecture which creates more of a bottleneck at the hub.

The Documentum integration is part of a planned series of interfaces enabled by the FatWire Content Integration Platform and more will be announced later this year.

About FatWire

Founded in 1996, FatWire Software provides industry-leading web experience management (WEM) solutions that enable organizations to deliver a rich online experience to users and to simplify management of their web presence. FatWire is headquartered in Mineola, N.Y. and serves over 500 customers from offices in 10 countries.

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