Rich Media Drivers for Content Management
The primary focus of this blog will be the rapidly evolving market for rich media applications, and what new opportunities and dynamics will result as traditional content management companies begin to deliver a fully integrated rich media experience.
Technology dependent products have always had a development and release cycle that is faster than the market’s ability to absorb new features and capabilities. Example? For years millions of VCRs blinked “12:00” because no one could get through the user manuals (particularly Volume I-Setting the Clock). Products today are infinitely more complex and sophisticated, yet end users continue to demand a simple, intuitive, and localized user interface. This bipolar requirement for sophistication/simplicity in products affects not only manufacturers ranging from consumer electronics to medical devices to transportation equipment (General Electric hits all three of these), but it also affects vendors who build enabling technologies, including companies like Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Google, EMC/Documentum, and many others.
Like it or not, user documentation is an integral component of any technology dependent product, and (as most of us would agree), it is rarely done correctly. That limitation, with complex roots (which I’ll address in upcoming blogs) is finally starting to change, and this change is about to undergo a huge acceleration as rich media reaches a critical point in terms of fully integrating into a production workflow.
The implications of this change are pervasive; a number of both large and small companies are likely to tank or completely shift their business models (want a good example? EMC’s recent acquisition of XHive indicates a fundamental architectural shift), and a new crop of Rich Media zillionaires are in the making. The specifics of this shift and how it will force change across the vendor ecosystem is one of the areas I’lll be covering in upcoming blogs.
By way of background, I’m the VP of Marketing with an on-demand content management software company in San Mateo called Astoria Software. This is my second stint working with a content management start-up (the first one, Metacode Technologies, was wildly successful). This is a great space to work in; the market is very dynamic, the technology is very cool, and we touch the lives of millions of people every day, even though most of them don’t realize it.