New Contenders in the Editorial Systems Market - Impressed

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above, and as a standalone system for customers who don’t need the full functionality of Concerto, such as advertising agencies that need the interactive remote client functionality. Modulo didn’t exhibit the Quasar system at Nexpo, saying it would take six months to get it ready for the market. One of Quasar’s two customers, PSA Peugeot Citroën, is planning to use it to create and produce 15 corporate magazines. Editors and reporters at locations inside and outside France will connect to a server to access a page template database, graphics and photos, as well as an automated production system running InDesign. Initially, the system will be used for internal communication among 15 industrial sites in France. Later, it will be adapted for producing the magazines of technical departments, third parties and industries based in France and elsewhere. Quasar will continue to sell GetReady through its own channels and retains the rights to deal with other integrators. Modulo said it has no plans for Quasar to sell the Concerto products that result from the integration of the two technologies. Tools from Ixiasoft, Siftology. Modulo also has signed two deals relating to text storage and searching. First, Modulo has obtained the rights to resell and distribute Ixiasoft’s TextML XML Server and search engine. TextML Server, which Modulo is integrating with Concerto and Symphony, as well as selling separately, indexes XML documents and XMP-tagged photos and manages content without altering the native files. Most notable is its fast retrieval, based on its advanced indexing and query language. It also controls backup versions of files, complementing Concerto’s own capabilities. Modulo is working to make the user interface more like Concerto’s. The second deal is with Siftology, the developer of search technology that locates stories that resemble a target story. The product from Modulo, called Amadeus, starts by analyzing and indexing all articles as they enter the database. Siftology won’t disclose how it works, but said the engine has been “pretrained” with 10 years’ worth of newspaper stories to aid in establishing relationships based on the meaning of the content. In operation, a reporter or editor typically performs a keyword search to find a story that is representative of the type of content that is sought. Amadeus then finds all the articles that are similar to the reference article, taking into account both the analytical data and additional search parameters, such as dates of publication, bylines, etc. Modulo and the market. It might seem that the arrival of Concerto would spell the end of the Modulo-QPS relationship. After all, Concerto was designed to cater to the needs of QPS users wanting to upgrade their systems, and Quark has a reputation for making it diffi- cult for companies both to work with Quark and compete with it. But there might be more to the situation than meets the eye. Modulo wants to offer QPS upgrades to companies currently using QPS that aren’t ready to add a complete new system like Concerto, so offering QPS upgrades as an alternative to Concerto makes business sense for Modulo. And Quark, to the surprise of many, has made changes in top management that appear to open the way to partnerships that might have been unthinkable not long ago. One new development is the formation of an OEM group that has HP as its first customer, creating a potentially significant new market. If Quark is serious about broadening its approach, a similar arrangement with Modulo, once the nurturer of 863 QPS customers, could make sense. It might help Quark retain more QPS customers than would remain without Modulo’s involvement. In any event, we haven’t been told of any impending changes in the Quark-Modulo relationship. (In fact, for this article, Modulo didn’t state anything about its past, current or future business relationship with Quark, suggesting that the two companies might be discussing a new agreement.) Such a scenario would give Modulo a product line that includes the following: • QPS Classic 3, primarily for customers that want to upgrade from Version 2 but are not ready to purchase a completely new system. • Concerto, which is expected to cost somewhat more than QPS and offer substantially greater functionality. By supporting CopyDesk and Xpress, as well as InCopy and InDesign, Modulo smoothes the transition between QPS and Concerto by allowing customers to buy Concerto, use it with CopyDesk and Xpress initially, and later Editorial Systems Query results. Remote users of the Concerto system can use the Harmony browser client to query the database and get this view of the results. Below the photos are color-coded statuses, e.g., New, Used, Edit, Final to layout and Archive to XML. Volume 4, Number 13 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies 9
Editorial Systems Article property sheet. This article, being created, has the properties shown here in this customizable dialog. Many of these items are pulldown menus that can be used to change a property, such as changing a state to “ready” and moving the article to the next basket. It is also possible to change the state of an article without opening it. switch to InCopy and InDesign. (In Europe, Modulo will sell various “flavors” of Concerto.) • GetReady, the Quasar system with interactive remote composition for remote ad design and some other applications suited to this functionality. • Modulo also has a range of advertising products that aren’t the subject of this discussion. Modulo said its goal is to combine the Quasar products with its own offerings into a single line “that covers the full spectrum of publishing from concept to print and the Internet,” from newspapers and magazines to catalogs, advertising agencies and corporate publishing. A few questions remain before that strategy can move forward. First, we haven’t heard Quark bless the idea of Modulo handling both QPS and Concerto. Second, it’s too soon to predict the future of QPS, not only the Version 3 upgrade, which has just been introduced, but also another version, possibly coming later (see Quark, below, for more on QPS). Third, we haven’t seen the integration of the Quasar technology with Concerto, which is needed for newspaper planning and scheduling, as well as remote client technology with InDesign, all of which could have a significant impact on Modulo’s success. In addition, many other system suppliers have their eyes on the QPS market, including Woodwing, which debuted its attractively priced Smart Connection Enterprise at Nexpo, and a host of suppliers of newspaper systems, any of which would love to have a small piece of the QPS market. Woodwing Moves Up-Market with SC Enterprise Woodwing Software, whose Smart Connection technology has played a critical role in InDesign’s successful penetration of the newspaper and magazine markets, has taken an important step forward with the release of a database-driven editorial system that is scalable to support large workgroups. Called Smart Connection Enterprise, it is an open-source, upscale version of the company’s earlier Smart Connection systems, which have been installed in more than 200 sites, typically ranging up to 30 seats. Woodwing now offers three Smart Connection systems (Light, Pro and Enterprise) in addition to supplying Smart Connection technology on an OEM basis. The Enterprise system is targeted at a variety of applications, including magazine and newspaper publishers, as well as ad agencies and book publishers — about the same market as Quark’s QPS, Modulo’s Concerto and Softcare’s K4. Key characteristics of Smart Connection Enterprise include its low cost, open architecture, customizability, and use of InCopy and InDesign (but not Xpress) for its core publishing functionality. Like those competitors, Enterprise is being sold through a global network of resellers and integrators. Marketing and support are handled by Woodwing, which has its headquarters in The Netherlands and a U.S. office in Detroit. Architecture. Smart Connection Enterprise is designed around a three-tier architecture (client, application server and database). The default database is open-source MySQL, but SC Enterprise also supports Microsoft SQL and other common SQL databases. (Non-SQL databases can be connected via PHP scripting.) The server runs under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. XML is the communication protocol, enabling integration with back-end or content management systems using SC Enterprise’s SOAP interface, which can work with other content management systems’ APIs. Woodwing said one of its early Enterprise customers has integrated the system with Documentum in this fashion. A distinguishing feature of the architecture is that the business logic (which determines which actions are allowed, which actions trigger other actions, etc.) is centralized on the application server and can be customized using PHP scripting. (In contrast, many systems encapsulate part of the business logic in the client where it can’t be customized.) SC Enterprise is also flexible in its handling of metadata. It supports Adobe’s XMP and enables the user to create new metadata fields. It’s possible to define which fields are used in system dialogs (including whether they are mandatory or not), which ones are shown in database views, etc. Workflow. SC Enterprise works on the basis of a publication hierarchy encompassing issues, sections and articles (or whatever terms the user chooses to substitute), with a customizable workflow aimed to accommodate 10 October 6, 2004 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies
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