Nuxeo is a comprehensive architecture for content management applications, and the broad range of technical capabilities, features/functions, and packaged distributions make it a solid and reliable choice that meets many ECM needs. This new documentation section helps guide the responses with a clear, organized layout, that we'll update and refresh as we release new products, or get new commonly-asked questions from our prospects and partners.

We've organized the RFP Toolkit into 4 main sections:

1. Corporate and Company FAQ – who we are, how we're structured, where we're located and how to contact us.
2. Functional FAQ – key features of our packaged applications that are of interest to content management specialists and business managers
3. Technical FAQ – key elements of the Nuxeo platform architecture, system requirements, standards support and customization capabilities that developers and system administrators need to know
4. Pricing FAQ - an overview of our Connect support subscription packages, and information on our open source licensing, and our Cloud Editions.

Even though this RFP Toolkit is only a few weeks old, it's already been road-tested successfully with a consulting firm bidding Nuxeo in a public sector opportunity. About 80% of the response was taken directly from this new FAQ section – so it works, and will only continue to be improved.

Look forward to your feedback!

Alexandre Russel, one of the senior developers on the Nuxeo CMF project team did a fantastic session on the mainstage at Nuxeo World last month, talking about what we've done, answering the question "why a framework", and offering a sneak peek in to the roadmap for us. His presentation is posted on SlideShare.

When Nuxeo announced the new developer distributions – Nuxeo Core Server and Nuxeo Content Application Platform - with the EP/DM 5.4 release, it was about less "new" products, and more about enhancing the packaging of what many of our customers were already using as the base framework for application development. We've been doing some extensive customer interviews over the last few months, and this has been a great help as we strive to continually improve our message, differentiation, and communicate the use-cases where Nuxeo is a clear technology winner. 

Nuxeo CTO Thierry Delprat and our DevOps manager Julien Carsique presented this session on the new Nuxeo EP developer distributions as a closing session at Nuxeo World. Check out the slides for more information and better understand how and when these developer distributions of Nuxeo EP should be selected when an application builder knows they need to build a content- or case-centric app for their unique requirements.

What's Nuxeo Core Server?

Nuxeo Core Server is the repository and essential content management component services that power Nuxeo EP. If you're a Java developer who wants to build or embed content management storage services into your content application, or embed it in a third party software product, it's likely the right distribution to look at. Built for high performance, high volume environments, it also includes support for the CMIS interoperability standard, ensuring your app built with Nuxeo Core Server can play nicely with any number of information management products in the market today. 

What's Nuxeo Content Application Server?

Nuxeo CAP is the Nuxeo EP distribution that includes Nuxeo Core Server, but also a full range of UI frameworks, and the services platform to provide many independent yet interoperable ECM services. It's built to be flexible and modular so that a developer can choose to bundle the specific components and services needed for their application. This is the distribution recommended for Java developers who want to build a content application for a customer scenario, or to deliver a specific vertical or horizontal application beyond general purpose document management.

These developer distributions are one of the key differentiators of Nuxeo in the enterprise content management market. While many customers download, test drive and use our packaged applications for DM or DAM, increasingly we see that our most creative and innovative customers building applications on our open source platform architecture from the ground up. This is what makes the Nuxeo platform approach to ECM a new one in the market, one that's gaining traction, getting the attention of influencers, and most importantly, being used in some of the most fascinating content management applications in some of the coolest companies out there today.  

Both of the new developer distributions can be downloaded from nuxeo.com

Companies who value technology to innovate and stay ahead of their own competitors often see the value in having a stronger voice in their own ECM roadmap. Big companies and government agencies often have more developers and architects on staff than the traditional ECM suite vendors. Nuxeo is delivering a platform built for companies who know what they need from a content application and want to build something specific to their business. The customer knows their business better than a software vendor.

One of the unique aspects of Nuxeo is that we encourage the input, feedback and active contribution from our customer and partner community. Organizations that adopt our platform for mission critical apps are often willing to participate in its continuous improvement. Put some skin in the game to maximize their value and use of the platform.

One of the sessions I particularly enjoyed at Nuxeo World earlier this month was co-delivered by CTO Thierry Delprat and our DevOps manager Julien Carsique. "Contributing to Nuxeo EP" was a great overview of the guidelines, processes and tools a customer, partner or consultant should understand in order to be an active contributor and help drive the direction of the platform and packaged applications.

Highlights of the session include:

• How becoming a contributor benefits you: we can maintain your changes, ensure they're fully supported and moved ahead as new product releases are launched
• Different types of contributions: testing and logging issues, submitting translations to support more languages across our global user base, feedback on areas of improvement, building or enhancing modules, building packages for the new Nuxeo Marketplace
• Overview of cool customer/partner contribution examples: OpenSocial via Leroy Merlin (session slides), Theme Editor with Chalmers University, Scenari and SDS with Kelis, to name a few
• Overview of the tools to help you: Documentation, the Sandbox, JIRA, Mailing Lists, Discussion Forums, Maven for builds and dependency management

Take a look at the full session slide deck. We encourage your participation and contributions. It's our community that keeps the Nuxeo momentum strong and moving ahead of the pack as an ECM innovator.

My session "Market Trends in Enterprise Content Management" was the part of the morning keynote, along with CTO Thierry Delprat's session on the technical roadmap for 2011. CMSWire, our Nuxeo World media partner, covered the highlights in an article by Irina Guseva. Update: Nuxeo World keynote videos are now ready on our Nuxeo TV channel, including my Market Trends session.

I've been reading, writing and presenting on ECM trends for several years, but really do see 2010 as a turning point year. The historian in me sees too many converging trends and shifts to not recognize this as a transitional era between first generation ECM products and vendors, and the now-emergent second wave. Nuxeo, Sharepoint, SaaS vendors – these alternative delivery and license acquisition models are steadily gaining traction, often built on new, cohesive architectures: not assembled patchwork via acquired products and companies.

The Microsoft Sharepoint juggernaut continues to spread, solving the basic collaborative content management problems for an ever-wider range of enterprise, chewing into the traditional base of many of the ECM vendors established in the 1990s.  Interoperability and open standards became a hot issue this year, with the rapid adoption of CMIS and quick emergence of cool use cases, integrations and new apps built around this common ground of document management functionality. It means basic DM is truly a level playing field, forcing vendors to move up the application stack and compete more creatively. Open standards also help highlight the tragically neglected topic of digital preservation, and continuity of access to electronic artifacts. Open source and open standards combined present one of the very few realistic solutions to the looming crisis in electronic content preservation that will be a nasty surprise decades down the road. I explored this topic in more depth in a recent OpenSource.com article, "From Information Overload to Dark Ages 2.0".

But the biggest shift? Honestly, must be the move from viewing ECM through the lens of a "suite" to that of a "platform" on which to build content applications. Feature/function checklists drive the assembly of a suite. Often standalone applications for DM, RM, Workflow, Collaboration, DAM or WCM are built then integrated… or acquired then integrated. Regardless of product quality or usability, rarely is the sum as good as the individual parts to meet real, hairy, challenging content management use cases. 

As one of the few true 'platform' providers, Nuxeo has invested serious engineering and software development resources into the underlying end-to-end architecture that is Nuxeo EP. It's the palette of services, extension points, APIs delivered as packaged distributions for common business use cases – but perhaps even more importantly – application development use cases. This is the unique differentiator that we bring to the ECM market. And this is key to the amazing customer success stories we heard last week at Nuxeo World. Content Apps built for your enterprise's needs, because we've given you the platform and design tools, such as Nuxeo Studio, to do it. Fast, cost effectively, and covered by world-class support via Nuxeo Connect. 

Want to learn more about ECM trends and how Nuxeo is part of this next generation platform? Check out our new Resources page, with links to recent slides, white papers and videos. 

New generation architectures are ready, they've been battle-tested, been benchmarked, performance-tuned, and demonstrated measurable benefits in real-world content management deployments. The audience for this paper is technical and business decision-makers evaluating ECM and who want to ensure that they are considering the full range of systems available today. The paper does some direct comparisons of new ECM platforms to legacy offerings from Open Text and EMC, and provides solid guidance on when an open source ECM platform should be considered for production, mission-critical content apps inside an enterprise. 

"As the next generation of solutions takes hold across the ECM landscape, stakeholders are finding attractive options to expensive monolithic systems. The new ECM platforms are on par with the features, functions and capabilities that are available in first generation ECM solutions with proprietary architectures, and offer significant functionality, price and deployment advantages".

Unsure how an ECM platform such as Nuxeo EP stacks up against the bigger brand names? The paper ends with a detailed and thorough comparison of products across 14 major criteria. It's worth a look if your organization is considering a new ECM deployment, or are ready to move to a platform built in this century… not the last one.

Download the Gilbane Beacon Paper. In PDF – and no.. there's no need to register or sign in. Just go get it.

And don't forget… if you plan to be at the Boston Gilbane Conference November 30-December 2, please make sure you say Hi… I'll be on the panel discussion to kick off the Technology Trends Track on December 1.

Nuxeo released version 5.4 of both the platform architecture – Nuxeo EP – as well as the most popular packaged product – Nuxeo DM.  Congrats to the in-house Nuxeo development, documentation and product teams… but also to our customer and partner community who played an important part in our pre-release all-hands bug-squashing day, as well as testing and feedback via our mailing lists and discussion forums. Merci!

Online journal "ReadWriteWeb" published in their Enterprise section last week: "5 Trends to Watch in the Enterprise" … and it was cool to see at least 2 of those new trends directly reflected in what we did with the Nuxeo 5.4 launch.

#1 on their list? "Marketplaces Will Continue to Grow"

According to the article's author, Alex Williams, "Apps marketplaces provide buyers with the capability to buy stand alone apps or apps that fit within the context of a larger platform". Williams adds, "these marketplaces will become increasingly common as places for companies to purchase apps for specific business purposes." 

Sound familiar? Nuxeo Marketplace – what we believe is the first ECM app store, went into preview in August, and formally launched last week. The Marketplace is intended to be a one-stop shop for our customers and partners to upload, download and exchange (unpaid for now… paid options in the short-term roadmap…) packaged modules and apps built for the Nuxeo Enterprise Platform and its related packaged products – Nuxeo DM, DAM or Case Management Framework.  

Our own development team has been busy packaging and loading common enhancements and feature extensions that customers frequently ask for. In the spirit of efficiency, openness and our stated company goal of simplifying the entire content application acquisition, design and deployment process, we've bundled up common add-ons in a way that makes them easy to download, install, test and deploy. Partner modules are next… opening the door to our Galaxy partners and community members to share the cool widgets and apps they've built for Nuxeo solutions, helping customers meet their specific business goals faster and with less re-invention of the wheel.

(Get a look at Nuxeo Marketplace directly, or log-in to the Connect Portal with your customer ID to access it.  Not a Nuxeo Connect subscriber yet? Sign up for a 30-day trial account that includes access to Nuxeo Studio.)

#4 on the RWW Trends List? "Application Developer Platforms"

With Nuxeo EP 5.4, we've listened to the needs of our developers, integrators and clients who know what they need – content applications tailored specifically for their business and unique requirements.  The elegance of Nuxeo EP lends itself not only to be packaged and distributed as great DM or DAM products for mainstream business needs, but what differentiates Nuxeo even more from mainstream ECM vendors is the ability to start with the core architecture and build apps on demand. Two new distributions of Nuxeo EP were released with 5.4 – Nuxeo Core Server and Nuxeo Content Application Platform.  

Why promote these developer-centric downloads? Because our most innovative and interesting customer success stories often start here.  (Read up on the two newest customer stories posted by Product Marketing Manager Jane Zupan – cool interviews with Jeppesen (a Boeing subsidiary) and eHuman blogged this month). Whether the use case is a need to embed content management services into another software application, or to build a new content application for a specific customer or vertical market need, these two newly packaged distributions let the Java developer get to work.  

Our partners and customers have full access to the same flexibility, extensibility and documentation that our own Nuxeo core developers have.  That's how we've built Nuxeo DM and DAM; because of this, content application builders can create their own interpretation of DM, DAM or any other content app or service that relies on a foundation of technical excellence.

More on the Nuxeo EP and DM 5.4 release later this week as we kick off Nuxeo World.  See you there.

Spending time in Ottawa last week, I confess to leaving my old home town somewhat disappointed. The bright light is fading. The pace of rollout for enterprise content management has slowed and is fragmented. Even re-siloing. Decision-makers are worrying about trust in vendor roadmaps and licensing headaches rather than solving the persistent problems of information management in busy and resource-challenged public sector. 

Every government agency – regardless of nation or region – has unique challenges. But there are enough common, shared goals and mandates where true efficiencies CAN be found.  Correspondence control, contracts management, management of grants and funds, issues and agenda management, access to information/Freedom of information, one-stop citizen services portals, archives and records preservation: all of these are challenges common to any public sector organization.

So why the constant re-invention of the wheel? Why not 'truly' explore the concept of shared services? Why not bring a collaboration-centric "2.0" approach to application design and development? Build once, re-use many?  Without catching interference or flack from a vendor chasing the ambulance wagon of licenses.

Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca also built his ECM knowledge in public sector. His session at GOSCON in Portland Oregon last month highlighted many of the trends he's seen in Europe, but have direct relevance in North America as well.  As I left my multiple conversations last week – some with information management advocates I've known for 15+ years –  I felt a small glimmer of hope despite lamenting the squandered opportunity of 2004. 

New generation ECM platforms: built for builders, made for makers. With an open license and development model to let public sector experts control their own ECM roadmap.  That's what I want to see next year.

Nuxeo CTO Thierry Delprat and the dev team have collected the most essential elements of performance planning into a clear list of the elements that will (and also will not) affect performance of a Nuxeo EP or DM-based application.

This is an important read, because many of these factors are specific not only just to Nuxeo ECM deployments, but are the very same challenges and bottlenecks encountered by content management practitioners using many of the major products in the market.

Key Performance Considerations

• Security – the more complex the Access Control Lists (ACLs) on content, the more impact on overall performance.  Complex rules, multi-layer ACLs mean more calculation and verification needs to be done by the system before content is presented to a particular user after search or navigation.  Make sure there is good and sensible alignment with business rules and policies to make most efficient use of this very powerful content control capability.
• Presentation Layer – bottlenecks in the browser are possible if default templates or custom UIs are not designed correctly. The default templates provided by Nuxeo are very well-tested and optimized for high performance results to users, so ensure they are modified carefully.
• Document Types – the more complex the metadata for specific document types, the longer it could take to fetch, sort and retrieve content. Make sure the metadata added to the content capture process meets all the essential business needs, but isn't collected for the sake of collection, thereby potentially bogging down the system.
• Document Volume – very large repositories can impact performance due to ACL checks when searching, metadata complexity, and overall database size.  The good news is that Nuxeo does aggressive and regular benchmarks on test repositories in the 10s of millions of documents, ensuring tuning and continuous improvement is a constant focus.
• Concurrent Requests – performance is much less affected by the overall number of users in the system than concurrent activities.  So tune overall systems based on the number of concurrent transactions and requests, not just based on number of people with IDs in the system.

And what doesn't affect performance significantly? Factors like: 

• File size – big video or image files don't impact performance in a significant way. Other than upload/download times which is more dependent on overall network performance, large files will not adversely affect the ECM application.  For sites that are full-text indexing content, however, should be aware that very text-heavy files will contribute to overall larger indexing files.  Video, audio, digital photos, while large in size, have little text and thus minor impact on full-text indexes.
• Documents Per Folder – With the Nuxeo VCS (Virtual Content Store) architecture, there is little impact on performance even with hundreds or thousands of documents inside a single folder.  A more important consideration for performance is the complexity of the security ACLs of items inside the folder.

For the full discussion on Performance planning, visit the new Documentation Center.  Also don't forget that we'll be doing a deep dive into Performance optimization as part of our program at Nuxeo World, coming up Nov 17-18. To get the first hand knowledge from the gurus, make sure you sign up here.

The topic of "Social Media and the New World of Content Management" is one I've been researching and writing on for a couple of years. This is an essential topic and an area that is still very much in early stages for most organizations. 

As the world of work shifts into an increasingly electronic mode, and the rise of the participatory web makes it easy for companies to communicate in both a more social workplace and social marketplace, new challenges arise. Rethinking rules of engagement, customer communication practices, content capture and preservation requirements mean organizations need to consider what 'social compliance' might mean to their business.

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