denotes premium content | Feb 7 2012 
Enterprise Information archive
Volume 1 Issue 1
A new dawn
It’s the end of an era, as we wave goodbye to CM Focus and Intranet Strategist and herald the arrival of ei, or enterprise information, magazine. The launch has been a response to recent developments within the content-management and portal markets. As companies look to address their information-management needs with a single, integrated strategy, technology providers are rushing to add functionality to their existing product offerings in an effort to meet customer demand. The result has been industry consolidation, technology partnerships and an influx of new and improved products, as solution providers endeavour to secure a foothold in the market.
These complex developments are particularly confusing for customers, who must now select the most appropriate solution for their company from a growing number of products on offer. Here at ei magazine, we regard this as an opportunity to reinforce our commitment to our readers by providing them with even more up-to-date, pertinent information than ever before. Our extended news pages cover market briefs, customer wins, product updates, senior appointments, vendor partnerships and web services. Additional regular pieces include our ‘Trend tracker’ slot, which will focus on the month’s latest industry initiative, and ‘Last word’, which will provide a taster for the theme of our next issue.
Continuing the precedent set by both CM Focus and Intranet Strategist, ei magazine places emphasis on sharing best-practice approaches to information management by sourcing case studies from public and private-sector organisations. In this issue, we have contributions from Scottish Enterprise, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, mySchool!, Novartis and Cisco Systems, to name a few.
As well as a bumper publication, readers will receive a fortnightly electronic newsletter featuring news of the latest industry developments. In addition, not only will they be able to access all the news and articles featured in ei magazine at www.eimagazine.com, they will also have unlimited access to the archives of CM Focus and Intranet Strategist, regardless of whether they subscribed to the magazines previously.
Should you have any questions about ei magazine, or if you would like to suggest potential topic ideas, as always, feel free to contact me at llaypang@ark-group.com.
Layisha Laypang,
editor
Features
Analysis: Testing web services
Web services are being used more frequently in the development of intranets and extranets. Whether creating web services from scratch or integrating legacy back-end servers via web services, Adam Kolawa, chairman and chief executive officer at Parasoft, illustrates engineering and testing practices to ensure complete web-service functionality, interoperability and security.
Case study: Community spirit
MerseyBIO’s eBIO portal is intended to harness the talents of biotechnology professionals and organisations throughout the north-west of England and, ultimately, as far afield as Europe, through the use of online communities. Here, Russell Ratcliff unveils how.
Case study: Opportunity knocks
Opportunity Wales is one of the most successful e-commerce projects in Europe, writes Paul Squires, head of web services at Opportunity Wales. The programme’s weblog was launched in May 2003. It was designed to provide a channel through which the business community in Wales could publish and receive the latest information on technology and business life, with a distinct focus on how such developments would impact on the Welsh business community.
Case study: A bittersweet pill to swallow
As a child of the M&A concept, one would imagine Franco-German pharmaceutical company, Aventis, to be somewhat familiar with the notion, especially now that both Sanofi-Synthelabo and Novartis are keen to purchase it. But, as Layisha Laypang discovers, with Aventis in the process of deploying a content-management system for its intranet, any potential M&A activity could cause difficulties.
Case study: Driving organisational performance through KM
Process automation has been used to address organisational performance for a while now, helping to achieve financial, operational and human goals. But according to Michael Munro, executive adviser, internet business solutions group, Cisco Systems, organisations are coming to realise that human factors are just as important to the success and returns generated by technology investment.
Case study: Pharmaceutical research powers ahead
While the hype around the Human Genome Project is receding, drug-discovery and development teams are under mounting pressure to increase output and success rates, while reducing costs and research cycle times. Manuel Peitsch, Jürgen Basse-Welker and Pascal Afflard consider the importance of high-performance computing to pharmaceutical research and, in particular, to research work at Novartis.
Case study: Country connections
North Norfolk in the UK is home to 100,000 people living in 200 small, rural communities spread across 373 square miles. Like all councils, North Norfolk District Council was obliged to follow the government’s modernising and best-value agenda. But, as Nick Manthorpe, media officer at North Norfolk District Council reveals, with only three area offices covering seven towns and 121 defined parishes, this was to prove challenging.
Case study: Paper cuts
For Commerzbank, which processes over 170 multimillion euro loans and credit lines to corporations and institutions every year, streamlining the corporate credit-lending process to reduce paper and costs has become a priority. Jaymin Patel, project manager, document and process management at Commerzbank, reveals the steps taken to do just that.
Case study: Live and learn
Operating across Luxembourg, mySchool! is Europe’s largest educational e-learning portal. Daniel Weiler, project manager at mySchool!, explains the vision behind the project, how mySchool! has evolved to incorporate the latest technologies, and how it has devolved its ownership, with the portal effectively being managed by the users themselves.
Case study: For the greater good
The mission of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is to improve the lives of vulnerable people through humanitarian means. To help its 181 national societies, 70 field delegations and Geneva secretariat in this endeavour – and to stop the propagation of several smaller, rather aimless extranets – the organisation launched FedNet,
a global extranet. Layisha Laypang reports.
Case study: Serving the lowlands from higher ground
Scottish Enterprise is one of the largest economic-development agencies in Europe. A recent business transformation resulted in an overhaul of the business processes supporting the organisation and led to the creation of a new knowledge-working strategy. Russell Simpson, SE network intranet and intranet-area manager at Scottish Enterprise, explains how the intranet was redesigned in line with this transformation and used as the main delivery vehicle for the strategy.
Regulars
Last word: Getting the message across
Instant messaging in the workplace is nothing new, but now its use is being legitimised thanks to a series of partnerships between technology vendors and IM service providers. But while corporate messaging solutions might be the latest addition to the collaboration and knowledge-sharing arsenal, Claudine Beaumont asks if IM has what it takes to become a business-critical tool?
Trend tracker: Covering convergence
As companies wake up to the need to address their information-management requirements with one integrated strategy, major technology providers are aligning their product offerings in a bid to meet this trend. Layisha Laypang finds out where the industry is heading and what solution providers are doing to ensure they stay ahead of the game.
