The promise of WebCenter Sites (formerly FatWire) is a very high-performance website delivery platform along with a business-focused WYSIWYG Web Content Management (WCM) solution. The main benefit of Sites is high-performance site delivery. High-performance, dynamic content sites require a caching layer between visitors and the content management system. With some solutions, this requires (potentially) endless meetings to figure out how to balance business needs for content/publishing timeliness against website and proxy limitations and finessing time-to-live settings on the cache server(s). However, the WebCenter Sites’ Content Server can communicate with tightly-coupled caching server(s) when any content asset has been updated and the caching server retrieves the updates. This dynamic “edge caching” model results in highly-efficient caching and allows for lower hardware costs compared to less-aware caching models.

Website types that are the best fit for WebCenter Sites include consumer websites where page-response time is a premium. Consumers won’t wait for your site to download when the competition’s site is responding more quickly. Site types include brochureware sites; product and services marketing websites; news/media websites; eCommerce sites (Sites is frequently used as the product catalog “behind” the shopping cart) and financial services sites. This technology works best when implemented for clients who can express the financial value of site traffic and performance and are willing to invest in improving site response times and the content editor experience.

If none of the use cases we’ve described apply to your website needs, then Oracle WebCenter Sites may not be the right technology for your environment. Each use case is different, and realistic implementation timeframes exceed three months with significant investment required. We have other tools available to meet the range of website needs, including portal and WCM tools for intranet, extranet and public-facing websites all leveraging the Oracle WebCenter platform. Contact us for more information on which strategy is right for you.

Microsoft SharePoint is one of the fastest growing software products of all time, far outpacing other ECM systems. Users find it very easy and intuitive to use for collaboration and basic ECM, while providing a rich user experience. These characteristics have truly empowered the business user to utilize SharePoint pretty much at their whim. Users can easily set up SharePoint sites, upload documents and other content, and begin collaborating on any in-process project or task.

It is also these characteristics that cause SharePoint to spiral out of control within organizations. Users find it so easy to use and available that before organizations have a chance to properly manage it, they instead find themselves burdened with 100s if not 1000s of unmanaged sites containing orphaned content. This poses many risks for an organization, including non-compliance with content retention policies. Without the proper amount of SharePoint governance and oversight, organizations will be challenged with managing the system so that maximum return and benefits can be realized.

Proper SharePoint use and site management can be achieved by pairing SharePoint with a true, enterprise content management system like Oracle WebCenter. Doing so can satisfy user requests for easy collaboration with IT’s requirements around governance, scalability, and security. Fishbowl Solutions has made this possible with our SharePoint Connector for Oracle WebCenter Content. Fishbowl’s SharePoint Connector provides the ability for SharePoint and WebCenter to co-exist, allowing organizations using both systems to fully exploit the benefits of each without having to ultimately pick one over the other.  In doing this, organizations are able to harmonize user needs for easy and intuitive collaboration with best-in-class content management paired with industry leading infrastructure. Highlights of the connector include:

• Manage all content resulting from SharePoint collaboration: For any Word Doc, Excel Spreadsheet, form, image, etc., that was used as part of the collaboration process for a new product design, marketing brainstorm, content creation, or executive planning, the content created would ultimately reside and be managed in Oracle WebCenter.
• Maintain SharePoint user experience: Ensure that SharePoint users can continue to create and contribute content while in SharePoint and use it as the primary system for collaboration.
• Configurable, yet transparent content storage: Provide organizations with flexible rules for which content that resides in SharePoint gets moved to WebCenter.  This includes the ability to holistically manage all content or select content based on characteristics, such as file size.
• End-to-End content lifecycle management: Enable organizations to effectively manage content through its lifecycle, and in turn, reduce the amount of orphaned content and ungoverned SharePoint sites that could lead to security and accessibility risks.

Please join Fishbowl Solutions during our webinar on Wednesday, December 14^th at 12 PM CST as we further discuss the ways in which our SharePoint Connector for Oracle WebCenter can harmonize users wants with IT requirements.

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The WebCenter Rebrand is Resonating

A major catalyst behind all the excitement was the rebrand of Oracle Enterprise 2.0, or Oracle Content Management and Oracle WebCenter, to just Oracle WebCenter. This has definitely resonated with customers. Prior to the rebrand, there seemed to be a lot of confusion due to the sheer number of products that existed under Oracle Enterprise 2.0. From acquisition to acquisition and name change to name change, customers were challenged with understanding product direction. Wrapping the products all under the WebCenter name, and bucketing them within Content, Portal, Connect and Sites, has gone a long way in conveying a product that is truly integrated and not fragmented. Please let us know if you feel the same or disagree.

The Excitement around Web Experience Management

Speaking of Sites, from Fishbowl’s point of view, this seemed to be the WebCenter product that had the most interest at OpenWorld. Every session we attended was nearly packed, so it seems that organizations have been anxiously awaiting a web experience management offering from Oracle. The reason is pretty simple. Organizations understand the value of their websites for customer acquisition and retention. However, a lot of organizations struggle with providing an engaging experience for visitors, so that when they do come to their website, they can’t get them to stay long enough or even entice them to return. Enter Fatwire, or WebCenter Sites, which takes web content management to the next level. Not only does it offer the standard author, edit, approve and publish capabilities, it provides web marketers with tools to define customer segments and the content to be targeted to those segments, as well as analytics to help with further site refinement.

Fishbowl Solutions is excited about this because we have spent a lot of time with customers integrating a web analytics component with their public facing websites. Sites will enable us to deliver this pretty much out of the box, which will decrease a customer’s time to value. So overall, Fishbowl Solutions is guardedly optimistic regarding the capabilities of WebCenter Sites. Over the 10+ years of our website development experience, customers have continued to ask about the availability of a non-technical yet feature-rich web development platform. In our exposure to other systems that claimed to offer this, we found that there was still a level of technical skill required to expose certain features and functionality. When it comes to WebCenter Sites, we will be digging in to the product over the next few months, and we will share our thoughts regarding its overall capabilities and any technical prerequisites after our testing and evaluation is complete. In the meantime, what are your thoughts regarding WebCenter Sites?

So Long SharePoint?

Our week kicked off with a presentation (see it here) regarding the SharePoint Connector we developed for Oracle WebCenter Content, which is an Oracle Validated Integration. Prior to presentation, we asked the 45+ attendees if they were using SharePoint in their organizations, and all of them raised their hands. We also asked them if they were using WebCenter Content as well, and about half of them raised their hands. This was not surprising, as industry stats indicate that the majority of organizations are using more than 1 content management system.

What resonated with us however, was how much angst and frustration the attendees we talked to have with SharePoint. This is primarily due to how pervasive it has become in their organizations, to the point where site governance and records management is pretty much impossible. Organizations are truly looking for WebCenter Content to be their system of record for collaborative content coming out of SharePoint. We feel that our connector makes this possible, and the benefit to organizations is that once this content is all stored in WebCenter, they can easily surface that content to the other Oracle systems they are using, including Oracle Applications and WebCenter Sites. This ability, coupled with the collaboration capabilities of the newly announced Oracle Social Network, may be tipping points for organizations to phase out SharePoint altogether. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Mobile ECM

Fishbowl Solutions also gave two presentations at OpenWorld regarding mobile content management or Mobile ECM. It seems that mobile is everywhere these days and mobile devices have become more common within organizations, enabling workers to complete job-related tasks regardless of time and space. When it comes to content management, these tasks may include sharing content, checking in content, and approving workflows.

Technologies exist to extend content management capabilities to mobile devices either through the web or an application. We compared mobile applications vs. mobile web during this session, and then were fortunate to co-present with Medtronic and discuss their mobile application for Oracle WebCenter. This application, which Fishbowl Solutions largely developed, enables content stored in WebCenter, including videos, images, and PDFs, to be securely searched and accessed by Medtronic sales reps around the world using their iPads. This medical device product and therapy services information can then be quickly and easily shared with doctors, patients, and patient advocacy groups. By utilizing this application, Medtronic has been able to decrease time to market for their products and services, save on printing and storage costs, and increase overall sales process efficiency.

This unique use of WebCenter as a content storage and delivery mechanism for 1000s of iPads enabled Medtronic to win an Oracle Fusion Innovation award, which they received at OpenWorld. Their Mobile ECM use case has also won them a Forrester Groundswell Award. This recognition clearly illustrates the possibilities and positive outcomes available to organizations looking to implement a Mobile ECM system that leverages the power of Oracle WebCenter. What’s your organization’s Mobile ECM strategy? If you don’t have one, Fishbowl Solutions would be happy to help you define and develop your Mobile ECM strategy. Contact us today for a demo and further discussion.

It was great meeting everyone at OpenWorld. You can find all of our OpenWorld presentations here. You can also keep up with us through the Fishbowl Solutions Website, via Twitter – @FishbowlE20, or on Facebook (Fishbowl Solutions).

Fishbowl would like to extend a sincere thank you to Jim Freeland of Medtronic for making this possible. Jim will be presenting Medtronic’s iPad solution with along with Chuck Day of Medtronic and Tim Gruidl, President of Fishbowl Solutions, on October 4th at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. To read more about the presentation or OpenWorld visit our OpenWorld page.

Medtronic’s Mobile Content Management System (mCMS) enables sales reps to download collateral from Oracle WebCenter Content into folders on their iPads by leveraging Fishbowl’s iOS Mobility Suite API. The iPad allows sales reps to quickly call up the latest videos, presentations, and PDFs stored in Oracle WebCenter Content. If reps don’t have an internet connection, they can still access any downloaded content in offline mode and use the synch button to check WebCenter for content updates when reconnected. Medtronic has nearly 2,500 mCMS users across 11 global regions, and these users access over 3,500 pieces of content. To read more about the solution, click here.

Fishbowl’s Jason Lamon attended the Forrester Content & Collaboration forum today to accept the award on behalf of Fishbowl Solutions and Medtronic. There were over 200 entries this year for the Forrester Groundswell Awards. Jason also participated in a panel discussion with the other award winners to provide some highlights of the project and its success.

This award recognizes Fishbowl’s ability to solve our customer’s information management challenges, and how as a team, we are able to deliver exciting and innovative solutions to customers. Thank you again to Medtronic and everyone at Fishbowl Solutions whose hard work made this solution and the iOS Mobility API a reality.

Both Site Studio and Site Studio for External Applications offer the ability to build and maintain enterprise-scale web sites.  Both technologies separate content from presentation, and allow content to be updated by non-IT users.  Additionally, both components support Oracle Universal Content Management 11g.  Therefore, either component is more than adequate for website creation today.  However, one thing to consider is the technology direction your organization is heading.  If you see your IT infrastructure quickly evolving, you may want to consider SSXA as it more closely aligns with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware strategy to provide interoperability and integrations across all Oracle software applications.  If your organization is content with your current infrastructure and technologies today, and may not see the immediate need to move to a more IT-centric web content management system (WCM), Site Studio will suffice.  Ultimately however, either system provides the necessary WCM features and functionality to create and deliver highly visual and interactive websites. Fishbowl has experience implementing and developing sites using both SSXA and Site Studio, and we are ready to help you decide which one may be best for your organization’s website creation process.

For more information and technical details read the complete comparision whitepaper by Mariah Bailey, Senior Software Consultant  at Fishbowl Solutions. Read the Whitepaper