Day Software, one of the early players in the international content management space, is relaunching operations in the UK.
Content Wire catches up with Heather McCusker, UK MD
So what is happening to Day UK?
Day was founded in Switzerland 10 years ago and has, since then, expanded into Germany, the UK and the US and France. We have had a presence in the UK now for 4 years, but the decision was recently taken to relaunch the business over here. This decision was taken for a variety of reasons, but primarily due to the changing face of the marketplace - clients have different needs and priorities than they did,say, 3-4 years ago, and it was necessary to refocus the business over here to take account of that.
We see the UK content management marketplace as an increasingly mature one - many companies are now on their second or third implementation and the market is no longer about delivering a 'killer app' but about delivering rich functionality with a compelling ROI case.
The whole CM industry got caught up in the dotcom boom and the incredible promise of the Internet revolution - our re-launch is about the recognition that the marketplace is now very different and therefore we must change with it. In response to these changes we have completely changed the UK team, have revised our product offering and are approaching clients in a completely new way.
What kind of systems are clients buying, how are the requirements changing?
The systems that people are now buying from Day offer rich functionality out of the box, adherence to new industry standards, a compelling ROI case and a neat technology.
On of the key things that appeals to enterprise customers today is the fact that we can offer a standardised technology.
The fact that all of our products meet the JSR170 standard means that clients aren't locked into our products - if they have a need to replace the system, then standardisation means that it is a relatively simple matter. This is a huge issue for those clients that have had a bad experience with competing systems in the past that they have found expensive and difficult to replace due to the quantity of proprietary code that is behind these systems.
The other key aspect of our adherence to standards is that they no longer need specialist product experts. This means that installation and training costs are minimized in comparison to the competition.
Finally, the thing that we are finding has really changed in enterprise's approach to content management is their desire to empower the wider organisation through access to CM functionality. A lot of the implementations we are now undertaking are looking to offer the end users access to rich content editing functionality. This is key as it not only allows the relevant departments to have power over their own content, but it also removes a huge burden off the IT department.
Explain something about JSR170, and Day's approach to it
JSR170 is the new standard for content repositories. What it will essentially mean is that all JSR170 compliant systems will have standard APIs. This is important for a number of reasons, firstly it means that there will no longer be the problem of vendor lock-in. With standard APIs the job of ripping and replacing a CM system will become significantly easier.
Secondly, the fact that systems are increasingly standardised will mean that significantly less training of IT staff will be necessary - firms are no longer going to have to employ either product specialists or retain large service elements with their CM purchases.
The way to look at how JSR170 is going to impact on the content space is to look at how SQL impacted on the database market. Where SQL created a standard way to extract data from databases, JSR170 is creating a set of standard APIs whereby content can be extracted from a range of repositories.
This is about much more than basic CM - portals, business intelligence tools and knowledge management software will all be able to work together seamlessly and simply, meaning that all the information in a business can interface with all the other information. This not only means that employees will gain a single view of content across the enterprise but also that businesses will no longer need armies of IT experts in all of the many repositories that they have - from documents, to images, to digital assets and emails.
Day's CTO, David Nuscheler, is leading the JSR170 standard and we are the only company out there today with a JSR170 compliant system. The JSR 170 group includes manufacturers of CM systems such as Day, Interwoven, Vignette, Mediasurface and Documentum, repository suppliers such as Software AG, SAP, Oracle and IBM and integrators such as Hewlett Packard, Venetica and Softlab. Additionally, manufacturers of content-related applications such as Art Technology Group, BEA, SAP and Broadvision and providers of application servers such as BEA, IBM, Oracle, Silverstream and Sun Microsystems are all also on board.
