Intranet Journal
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Day Software Beefs Up Web Content Management Tools
1/8/2009
Late last year, Day Software released Version 5.1 of its Communiqué software (CQ5), which boasts major transformations to its enterprise content management and web content management products.
Day's suite of products relies on their CRX (Content Repository Extreme) platform. CRX is the content infrastructure component upon which everything else is built. It is a commercial implementation of open source Java Content Repository standard elements, including items such as Apache Jackrabbit, Felix, and Sling. It is a JCR compliant platform that provides key infrastructure components upon which IT staff can build their own custom applications.
The audiences for CRX are information technology departments and developers of web applications. It provides developers a way to rapidly build web applications. The framework is based on the REST architecture for Rapid Application Development for Java Content Repositories that can be used with any programming language. It supports popular APIs and protocols: JCR API, the JCR API over RMI (Remote Method Invocation), HTTP, WebDAV (web-based distributed authoring and versioning), and CIFS / SMB (Common Internet File System/Server Message Block). Developers have access to the CRX source code for learning, support, and debugging.
Day also targets CIO's who might wish to use CRX to standardize enterprise wide on a content repository for internal and external web applications using Java centric technology. Support for single sign on, granular security, and enterprise performance make it a worthy choice for architecture. The CRX Connector Architecture allows applications to easily combine and use content stored in Day CRX with content residing in 3rd party repositories. As a result, CRX can pull together custom built applications as well as Day applications that capitalize on existing repositories into one cohesive whole.
The CQ5 product bundles CQ WCM, Digital Asset Management (CQ DAM), and a social collaboration application (CQ Social Collab) with the CRX infrastructure. This product targets the chief marketing officer and marketing managers within a company who need to build and deploy Web 2.0 experiences for customers and employees.
The CQ WCM product has a number of features you would expect from a product in this class, and you can read them all at their site. After speaking with Kevin Cochrane, chief marketing officer for Day, what stands out most about this product is its easy and fun user interface that is equally powerful on the backend.
The upgrade to CQ5 was three years in the making, according to Cochrane, as existing users contributed feedback and Day made those requests a reality. When I asked if this fun and easy to use user interface can scale for many users and thousands upon thousands of assets, Cochrane explained, "The key to the UI is identifying what a user is looking for and giving them constrained, relevant results." At any given time someone is only looking at a subset of information available to them.
Relevancy is of utmost importance, and the tagging built into the product is essential to making it all work. This metadata drives everything from the front-end user experience while visiting the website to the backend content and asset manager's ease of creating and updating information. Because everything within CQ5 is a "one click," "drag and drop" type interface which uses only the browser (no plugins or add-ons) users see the results (and thus the benefits) of tagging with everything they do. This implicitly encourages users to actually create and use the metadata that makes personalization possible.
Personalization is also generated dynamically using the click stream cloud. What that means is that the system grabs the tags from all the pages a user visits and puts them in her click stream cloud. The user can edit this cloud by adding tags to content (and thus categorizing it better). It is a constant process of users being able to enhance their own experience with the websites by contributing to its value (tagging, etc.) thereby increasing their sense of ownership in the system. A teaser is also built into the top of each page, and it changes based on a user's behavior. This implicit personalization is a key feature of the product. A user can also explicitly personalize their experience by adding one of over 40,000 Google gadgets made available to them.
The point-and-click paradigm is not limited to "light" users who manage content. It also applies to the IT folks behind the scenes with features such as: "60 second installation," Point-and-Click Hot Backup, and Point-and-Click Disaster Recovery.
The CQ DAM adds full digital asset management to the mix including copyright, digital rights management, and watermarking for all images, audio, video, and business content. It too is fully integrated with the powerful tagging as metadata.
CQ Social Collab brings wikis, blogs, calendaring, forums, chat, and similar applications to the bundle. It extends the core web experience and provides more Web 2.0 interactivity to the sites.
Pricing for the whole CQ5 stack (CRX plus WCM) begins at $50,000. Cost is based solely on server instances versus users or processors. For more information you can contact Day.
Day is a leading provider of global content management software, providing content management, digital asset management, and social collaboration in a single integrated platform based on open standards and a modular, enterprise-ready architecture.
Day is an international company, founded in 1993, and listed on the SWX Swiss Exchange (SWX:DAYN) since April 2000. Day's customers are some of the largest global corporations and include Audi, Daimler, Deutsche Post World Net, InterContinental Hotels Group, McDonald's and Volkswagen.
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