Into Thin Air
Every day, workers lose track of content shared through e-mail, instant messaging and other collaboration tools. Latch on to the good ideas with a unified content management approach.
August 2004

When the Music Stops, Collaboration Will Go Back to Basics
Opinion
August 2004

When Talk Is Cheap, Control Is Crucial
Collaboration is easy, what with e-mail, instant messaging and conferencing at our fingertips. The hard part is keeping track of the content we generate.
July 2004

Low-Cost Document Management: When 'Lite' is Right
Collaboration platforms from IBM, Microsoft and Oracle can also handle basic document management. Here's what you get for less than $100 per seat, with guidelines for meeting more demanding content-management needs.
July 2004

E-Learning For Short Attention Spans
On-demand training increases productivity by keeping employees on the job while they learn. Plus, advanced users offer tips on short-segment content that keeps students engaged.
July 2004

Share Content With Ease
Microsoft SharePoint 2.0
April 2004

Teamwork Without Borders
The benefits of collaboration are clear when it comes to product development, patient care, store management and decision-making in general. What isn't so clear is how to support collaboration across a far-flung organization with hundreds of locations across the country or around the world. Sentara Healthcare, Dow Corning and Giant Eagle Supermarkets share the secrets of their success.
April 2004

WSRP and JSR 168: Will These Portal Standards Matter to You?
It was hoped that Web Services for Remote Portlets Specification and the JSR 168 Java portlet API would make content and code more portable. But do vendors have more to gain from these standards than software users?
April 2004

AIIM 2004 New Product Preview
The biggest show in the world of content management, AIIM 2004 hits New York's Jacob Javits Center March 8-10. New products on view will include a document management system from IBM, a pen-based forms processing system from HP and scanner debuts from Kodak and Fujitsu.
March 2004

Stellent Unifies Its Platform
In recent years, Stellent has added collaboration and digital asset management tools to its core Web content and document management platform. The company's latest product, Universal Content Management 7.0, unifies the architecture, adds records management and offers workflow and repository enhancements. Now that a merger with Optika is in the offing, this ECM platform is one to watch.
February 2004

Are You Too Casual About E-mail?
Most organizations use e-mail to conduct business, and many of those messages are important business records that should be stored and managed as such. The trouble is, appropriate policies, procedures and technologies are too seldom in place. And because of its ubiquity and ease of use, e-mail is not that easy to get under control. Experts and users point to practices and technologies that will help you get a grip on the problem.
February 2004

Products of the Year 2003
It was a year for cautious investment in content and collaboration technologies in 2003. Corporate expenditures largely focused on integrating and extending existing applications rather than implementing new systems and technologies. In this challenging sales climate, many vendors focused on upgrades and add-ons, but there were still inovations and advances worthy of our annual awards program. In our estimation, all 24 products that made our list of finalists are outstanding, but a select group of 10 products are named as Products of the Year 2003 Winners.
January 2004

Content & Collaboration - Taking Stock, Looking Forward
In the world of content and collaboration technologies, 2003 ended much as it began, with compliance taking center stage in the end-user community, consolidation reshaping the enterprise content coming to the fore and business process management just emerging from its formative stages. That's not to say there wasn't progress. In fact, there were many important mergers, acquisition, product launches and pioneering uses of the latest technologies, yet the underlying market directions remained intact.
January 2004

Why Not Use the Portal For Content Integration?
One of the promises of portals is that they provide access to content from across the enterprise. But for true content integration, with the ability to use content as well as see it, portals often don't go far enough.
November 2003

Moving Closer to True ECM
Hummingbird Enterprise 5.1
November 2003

Scan & Capture From the Copier
More and more multifunction machines (MFPs) support scanning, but companies are just beginning to take advantage of basic features such as scan to e-mail. Obstacles remain on the usability and channel fronts, but MFP vendors are refining and improving their capture options. Predictions are that growing ranks of users will recognize the value and importance of scanning documents into workflow applications and content management systems.
November 2003

Readers Weigh In
"Why let the editors have all the fun?" asked our publisher. "Let the readers tell us what they like." Great idea, we thought, but we had to come up with a fair, one-reader-one-vote way to avoid ballot box stuffing. After selecting a technology to create an online ballot and subscriber ID-based security scheme, we invited readers to pick their favorite products. The results are in, with 39 winners in 19 categories.
October 2003

Should You Read Employee E-mail?
The surprising answer is yes. The risks of e-mail abuse include litigation, business interruptions, viruses and lost productivity. Companies need to establish written e-mail policies and then educate employees on the use and misuse of e-mail. E-mail monitoring software adds an extra proactive measure in enforcing corporate policy.
October 2003

Take Control of Confidential Content
How do you keep sensitive information out of the wrong hands? How do you control the use of content among authorized users? Digital rights management software offers answers.
September 2003

Can-Do Portals Turn Viewers Into Doers
Advanced portals offer more than just a window on information. As Limited Brands, Toshiba and MDS Capital have discovered, can-do portals give users the power to get the job done.
July 2003

WSRP: The Web Services Standard for Portals
Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) is expected to ease integration between portals and applications through a Web services approach. This emerging standard was created to cut portal development costs by standardizing the way remotely executed portlets integrate with the portal.
July 2003

Best of AIIM 2003
Despite challenging weather, challenging economic conditions and the war in Iraq, the AIIM 2003 Conference & Exposition, April 7-9 in New York, held its own in drawing exhibitors, new products and a sizeable crowd.
May 2003

To Collaborate or Control?
Control-oriented content management promises security, whereas collaboration software promises productivity.
May 2003

AIIM Product Preview
What's in store at the AIIM Exhibition and Conference, April 7-9 in New York? Here's a sampling of more than 40 content, document and imaging products that will be featured at the show.
April 2003

Clinical Trials: Another Case for XML Standards
Among the real-world uses of extensible markup language (XML) is the clinical drug trial. A new standard for XML-based data interchange promises to ease the flow of data among doctors, labs, clinics, patients and drug companies. Eli Lilly is one of the pharmaceutical giants leading the standards initiative.
April 2003

AIIM Embraces a Broader Venue
What to expect at this year's AIIM Exhibition and Conference, April 7-9 in New York City.
March 2003

Team Collaboration Unites the Workforce
Part repository, part collaborative tool, teamware applications help companies span geographic and organizational boundaries to support projects and ongoing initiatives.
February 2003

JSR 168 Opens the Portal
Java Specification Request 168 will create a standardized portal application programming interface. This API should ease the challenge and lower the cost of developing portal applications for multiple portal platforms. A follow-up effort is expected to add messaging and portal application communications provisions to the standards.
February 2003

Tech Trends (and Trendsetters) of the Times
Six trends that emerged in 2002 are already shaping 2003: the rise of business process management, the growth of enterprise content management, the extension of portals beyond intranets, the increased sophistication of search technology, the widespread adoption of collaboration technology and the early deployment of Web services. Transform examines how readers can benefit by sharing user case studies on trendsetters who have helped set these trends in motion.
January 2003

The Java Content API
JSR 170 is a standardized Java API that acts as an interface between content repositories and application servers, portals and other software. Developers will now be able to create Java applications that are repository agnostic.
January 2003

Products of the Year 2002
The theme of return, or payback, was a strong one for new technology implementation in 2002, and priorities aren't likely to change any time soon. In light of economic conditions in 2002, we took into account the need for return on investment as we made our Product of the Year selections. After reviewing the many new and revised products addressing content and collaboration, we chose a mix of leaders demonstrating either bold innovation or industry-leading value. The result is a list of 32 Product of the Year Finalists offering innovation, great value or both to the user community. Intensive research helped us differentiate clear Winners and Value Leaders from among these finalists.
January 2003

B2B Collaboration: Supporting Projects, Transactions and Processes
Enterprises are redefining the ways in which they interact in order to improve visibility and efficiency. Doculabs looks at collaboration tools and technologies supporting supply chains and procurement.
December 2002

XML Takes on a Documentation Nightmare
European pharmaceutical companies have been struggling with a long, drawn-out process that requires hundreds of separate documents to get the go-ahead before just one drug can reach the market. A new initiative spearheaded by GlaxoSmithKline and supported by industry and regulators may replace the paper with streams of XML data.
December 2002

Open Standards Bolster IM
While instant messaging (IM) networks such as AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft Instant Messenger are popular for personal use, there are drawbacks to using them for business applications.
November 2002

Context - Drive Beyond Dashboards
Words from the Editor
November 2002

Portal Products vs. Platforms
Portal vendors, platform vendors and application vendors all offer viable options for building portals. Doculabs sorts out the strengths and drawbacks of these different approaches.
October 2002

Find The Experts
How can organizations avoid making the same mistakes, solving the same problems and missing the same opportunities over and over again? By finding internal experts and leveraging their knowledge and experience. Search tools may help, but expertise management systems do a more comprehensive, yet selective job of finding the experts. These systems create and share expert profiles, and users can submit specific questions and get them answered by the pros.
September 2002

Choose the Right Tools for Content Editing
Templates, word processing integrations and sophisticated XML editors are all suitable for content contribution and editing, but which interfaces are right for your organization?
August 2002

Portals Open Doors to Processes
The latest generation of portals lets users do their work as well as see information.
August 2002

Collaboration: Beyond E-Mail
Instant Messaging, Web conferencing and team collaboration are changing the way global organizations do business. Gevity HR, Otis Elevator and Sikorsky are among the pioneers.
June 2002

Collaboration: 5 Lessons in Supply Chain Management
Businesses are turning to outsourcing to cut costs, but they also need better end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. Collaboration is bridging the gap.
May 2002

Take the Next Step Toward Electronic Signatures
Legal and technological questions persist, but experts offer a go-forward strategy for implementing electronic signatures.
April 2002

Electronic Signatures Begin to Make Their Mark
Organizations are taking advantage of the benefits of e-signatures. QuickenLoans, the University of Alabama and the Kansas Department of Transportation are e-signature pioneers.
April 2002

Best of AIIM 2002
We met with more than 100 vendors, talked to analysts, reviewed all the announcements and made follow-up calls to customers. Now here are our picks of the Best of AIIM 2002.
April 2002

How to Choose an E-Form System
Content management vendors, process management vendors, capture vendors and Web site tool vendors are all touting e-forms capabilities. How does the user decide which will work best?
April 2002

J2EE and .NET: Doculabs Assesses ECM Architectures
Scalability, reliability and integration are critical challenges for enterprise content management. Which vendors are using J2EE and which are looking to .NET to address these architectural issues?
March 2002

AIIM Product Preview
More than 200 exhibitors are expected at AIIM 2002, March 6-8 in San Francisco. Here's a sampling of what's in store.
March 2002

Content Goes Global
Businesses are increasingly embracing e-commerce on a global scale, so there has been a corresponding trend toward globalization of content management systems, portals and application software.
February 2002

AIIM 2002: Insight by the Bay
Web services, digital rights management, content management and e-process automation are among the topics to be explored at AIIM 2002, coming to San Francisco, March 5-8.
February 2002

What You Need to Know About Workflow
Make no mistake: E-process workflows and Web publishing workflows are two distinct entities, and never the twain shall meet. Here's why, along with insight on the evolution of workflow software.
February 2002

Analysts' Insights: Trends & Challenges 2002
Top analysts look ahead and share their insights on emerging content and collaboration tools and technologies.
January 2002

Report Management: ERP Helper
Enterprise resource planning often leads the way for IT, but when it comes to accessing crucial reports it often comes up short. That's where enterprise report management can give ERP a helping hand.
January 2002

2002 Technology Plans: What Users Want
Technology users outline their challenges and goals for the coming year. One common goal: better use of technologies already in place.
January 2002

Recovery in the Wake of Disaster
It's impossible to forget the staggering losses of September 11, but the companies at ground zero are getting back to business. For some, electronic documents and content management systems have been crucial to recovery.
December 2001

Instant Messaging For Corporate Collaboration
Instant messaging may be a hit with you, your kids and everybody on your 'buddy' list, but how can business leverage this powerful collaboration technology to improve performance?
November 2001

Keep Email Viruses At Bay
Viruses and worms continue to plague networks, but how do you keep from archiving them in content repositories? An ounce of prevention beats the few options available after an infection.
November 2001

Sharing Designs to Speed Time to Market
CAD and technical documents are often mired in paper-or CD-based distribution. Four companies close the digital gap with collaboration technologies.
October 2001