September 2013

There was a time when marketing firms had to treat everyone like generic off-brand mac & cheese. Sure, they could make certain assumptions based upon average consumers, but real, personalized customer offers and promotions just weren't possible. That time, however, has passed. These days, brands are able to gather data about individual customers from before any sort of interaction even begins to take place. Through information sources such as web browsers, social media, surveys, customer reward programs, transaction data, etc., it is possible to gather massive amounts of data regarding the personal preferences of millions of potential customers.

Businesses have seen the value of data for years. Thus, businesses have collected survey, transaction and marketing data all with the hope that by analysing it they can improve their business processes and become more profitable. The problem is that some companies end up paying more than the data is actually worth, due to poor business practices or relying on a data warehouse that simply can't keep up with today’s influx of data. For business leaders who find the following five signs familiar, it may be time to switch to big data as a service, such as Qubole, to get the most out of the data they collect and the money they spend.

Telerik has announced the availability of Salesforce.com and Marketo connectors for the 70,000 users of its web content management solution, Sitefinity. The release of these connectors come at a time when software vendors and service providers are increasingly supporting the development of websites that offer features in web experience management and visitor personalization. Telerik hopes that with these two products, Sitefinity customers can provide more exacting and personalized customer experiences to their website visitors with "ease, creating more targeted product, messaging and revenue possibilities".

Integrating third party applications into Documentum has become easy with the CARA Hub.  Integrate information or UI components of external systems (including data updates) using a mixture of ExtGWT components, RESTful Web Services or simply JSP - enabling users to use CARA as the single UI to access multiple applications which form part of a business process.  Also leverage full CARA customization through the same mechanisms.

"There's no right way to do it, but there are wrong ways, trust me, I know, I've done them all. Doing it wrong can harm people and it can really hurt the community. What you all have built together is remarkable and it's worth considering how you extend it further and find ways to continue to collaborate, both as Drupal, and maybe even more importantly as a broader PHP community."

- Amy Stephen, Molajo Developer and Consultant, Comment to "Backdrop: Forking Drupal" by Laura Scott, Pingv.com, September 11, 2013

Those who dismissed cloud computing a couple years ago as a passing fad are quickly learning that the cloud is here to stay. Just like Twitter and Facebook evolved from a college student “fad” to key marketing tools, cloud computing is a viable business solution. CIOs and CTOs who embrace the cloud and create a plan for their company’s transition to the cloud will provide a valuable asset to their company. Those who don't will soon fall behind and find themselves replaced by someone who knows how to incorporate the cloud.

The new versions provide an exceptional level of performance for strategic digital portals of large organizations.

Jahia, the open source vendor of new generation Java CMS solutions, today announces the availability of Jahia xCM 6.6.2 in Community and Enterprise distributions, and of Jahia Wise 1.8, its social and collaborative document sharing solution (Enterprise distribution).

These new versions are services packs resulting from continued collaboration with the community, which makes it possible to constantly enhance the user experience, performances and stability.

The development team for CMS Made Simple recently announced the latest version in its CMSMS 1.11 series. This release brings a few minor features, some performance improvements, documentation improvements, a Smarty upgrade, and a number of bug fixes (including a minor security issue). 

Some of the more significant new features and improvements found in CMSMS 1.11.8 include:

It doesn't matter how much data you can store or process if your analysis isn't yielding valuable business insights. Yet it seems many businesses tend to put all of their time and resources into storing and maintaining their data rather than improving their analysis process. These are seven warning signs that you may have fallen into the data collection trap and are not gaining the insights that you need and want.