Open Text Brings in Social Media, More Web 2.0 Features, and SAP Integration
by Bill Ives
Open Text recently announced Open Text Web Solutions 10, the latest release of Open Text╒s Web Content Management (WCM) software. The new release allows “organizations to intelligently manage and deliver a broad set of corporate information to users over the Web, and features extensive usability upgrades, a new technology foundation, and deeper and more comprehensive integration with the Open Text ECM Suite and the SAP NetWeaver¿ Portal component.” They also offer Open Text Social Media that brings together many of the current social tools such as blog, micro-blogs, wikis, communities, profiles, and social search
I was especially interested in this as I was involved in an Open Text based knowledge management implementation at a major telecom provider in 1995. It was very poplar and spread across several divisions in the organization. Ironically, while working with a different firm, I came back to evaluate it in 2002 as part of a plan to upgrade the software. The knowledge management system remained quite popular, despite the aging software platform. We were able to look at instances were call center people sued the system versus times that they did not. Those who used the system performed significantly better on a whole array of metrics such as cross-selling success and reduction in repeat calls.
Now it is 2009 and social media is entering the enterprise. It is nice to see Open text keeping up with the times. As the note the role of web content management has expanded from a place to store and publish external-facing content to a helping support organizational business goals in such areas as sales and customer support. It is more deeply embedded in work processes. So Open Text is bringing in a “full Web 2.0 user interface to both the people editing content within the company and to the consumers of this content.”
Not only are they brining in social media components, but they are also offering tighter integration with legacy applications such as SAP. This will better support their work process integration. The new release allows editors to combine dynamic content from social media, the Open Text ECM Suite and rich media applications and reuse it across many target systems, including the SAP NetWeaver Portal. In addition because it is based on the Microsoft .Net technology, Open Text 10 offers support for Microsoft SQL 2008 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
Other enhancements in Open Text Web Solutions 10 include a new search integration API, extended tagging support, creation of memorable URLs, and dynamic aggregation of personal content in newsfeeds. Its editor now uses RIA technology to provide more Web 2.0 capabilities. All of these enhancements are bringing it into the current times.
