Posts Tagged ‘web content management’

eXo Delivers First User Experience Platform for Java

Monday, September 20th, 2010

eXo Platform 3.0 marks the future of Java application development: enterprise content management, collaboration, social and rich UI with enterprise portal capabilities

JAVA ONE (BOOTH #5209), SAN FRANCISCO, CA (September 20, 2010) – eXo today delivered the next generation of its flagship product, eXo Platform 3.0. Architected on the new GateIn portal framework, eXo Platform 3.0 offers the first integrated environment for building modern Java applications with features such as content management, collaboration and social. The product’s features will be showcased this week at Java One (booth #5209).

Why Use eXo Platform 3.0

Enterprises have invested millions in their Java infrastructure, but now those applications are beginning to show their age, especially when compared to the user experience and collaboration driven by the consumer web. End users of Java applications are demanding more than most Java shops can deliver in terms of collaboration, personalization and dynamic content.

“Until now, Java developers have been cobbling together a wide range of ‘best of breed’ software for content management, collaboration or social into their Java systems — because their only other option has been SharePoint,” said Benjamin Mestrallet, founder and CEO of eXo. “You shouldn’t have to throw out our Java investments to get these capabilities. With eXo Platform 3.0, Java enterprises now have a user experience platform for building modern Java apps with rich, interactive and social features — all in a modular architecture that developers are used to.”

eXo Platform 3.0 runs on standard Java middleware, but leverages REST services, Groovy, JavaScript, mashups and gadget-based development to build user-centric Java applications.

What You Can Do with eXo Platform 3.0

eXo Platform 3.0 offers all the capabilities expected of an enterprise portal. It leverages GateIn, the portal framework that eXo co-develops with Red Hat, to build portal-based applications complete with features like access control and single sign-on (SSO) for security.

But eXo Platform 3.0 goes well beyond an enterprise portal to provide:

  • A social intranet: Build an intranet by turning an LDAP directory into an enterprise social network where employees can connect and interact; teams can collaborate in their own online work spaces; and real-time updates and relevant information can be published in activity streams to the right people.
  • An integrated web content management (WCM) system: Quickly build and launch dynamic web 2.0 websites with a full suite of tools, including automated workflow for content publishing, version control and templates.
  • An application development platform for modern Java applications: With a REST architecture and native APIs, eXo Platform 3.0 is an extensible framework for building composite applications quickly and easily. eXo Platform 3.0 includes a web-based IDE for building and integrating applications, gadgets and mashups.

Technical Advantages

  • Unlimited extensibility: Create custom REST APIs on the fly to integrate any third party applications — even from .NET, PHP and other programming languages.
  • GateIn extensions: This new mechanism significantly simplifies application development. Developers can augment and customize GateIn’s features using extensions — without the need to modify the underlying GateIn framework itself. Upgrades to future versions will only require artifacts with the modified files.
  • Powerful and scalable content repository: By keeping applications’ structured data in a content repository, eXo Platform 3.0 provides developers with advanced capabilities that are lacking in traditional databases, including versioning, locking and more. IT operations also benefit from a wide range of management and monitoring functions — all provided in a scalable, clusterable architecture optimized for the consumer web.
  • Extensive open standards and protocol support: These include Java Content Repository (JCR), Java Portlet specification (JSR-286), JAX-RS for REST services and Content Management Integration Specification (CMIS). eXo Platform also implements the OpenSocial specification for gadgets and social APIs for People and Activity.

Availability & Support

eXo Platform 3.0 is immediately available for purchase or with a 30-day trial subscription that includes three support tickets. Download eXo Platform 3.0 today.

Online Resources

What is eXo Platform 3.0? (Part 3)

Friday, September 17th, 2010

In the last two posts introducing eXo Platform 3.0, I’ve focused on its portal capabilities, which is expected of any enterprise portal, and the social intranet, an area in which some portal vendors have ventured.

Now, we’re entering new territory for portal vendors. In this post and the next, I will detail what makes eXo Platform 3.0 really stand apart.

I previously noted that even though portal capabilities are still very critical, the needs of today’s business have outgrown a portal. The rise of web 2.0 brought high levels of interactivity and richer user experiences, not to mention an explosion of data driven by web apps. All this means more demand on businesses to be able to do more with their applications.

Java middleware vendors have been very focused on scalability and efficiency of controlled, self-hosted relational database applications. But in today’s world, relational database systems are no longer the keys to the castle. In fact, one could argue that the most valuable database in the world is Google’s index of the web — which is certainly not a relational database. The web’s core is built around documents and document linking. New web architectures and data stores like BigTable, Hadoop and Cassandra are replacing relational database systems.

Our Content services were built for this new world order, providing the tools, automated workflow and templates to get websites up and running fast:

  • Intuitive file explorer dashboards, drag and drop controls, multiple views for easily navigating, organizing and sharing documents
  • Integration with your existing OCR solutions, your LDAP directory, and WebDAV HTTP extensions give you flexibility and a ‘drop in’ solution
  • Templates, fast features with CSS and JavaScript support and version control means you can launch a website immediately
  • Workflow to automate content creation, approvals and publishing or design your own business process
  • A UI extension framework that can be used to create plugins and extensions for content management

And because eXo Platform 3.0 is designed for this new world order, it can work with content from many data sources: documents, existing relational database or even data stored in the cloud, such as Amazon S3 — all mapped to our Java content repository (JCR), so developers have advanced capabilities for versioning, locking and more.

But ultimately, eXo Platform 3.0 is more than the sum of its parts. Managing your content is just one aspect. But now, imagine doing this with a social intranet, where changes are published automatically to the appropriate people in their activity stream and workflows notify the editors and publishers when it’s their turn to act.

Stay tuned to my next post, when I wrap up what eXo Platform 3.0 can do. Rest assured, I’m saving the best for last.

eXo Webinar: How to Add Social Publishing to Portal-Based Applications

Monday, June 28th, 2010

GateIn, the open source portal framework developed by eXo and Red Hat, provides a foundation for developers to build and deploy portal-based applications. By adding Web Content Management (WCM) functionality and gadgets, these applications can be extended to allow end users to create and publish their own content, without having to know the inner workings of the portal infrastructure.

Developers can easily gain these capabilities with eXo WCM, which is tuned and optimized for the GateIn portal framework. Together, eXo WCM and GateIn can be used as a platform for integrating applications as well as managing and publishing content – all from a single, familiar console.

Join Benjamin Paillereau, product manager of eXo WCM, as he demonstrates how to get native WCM features inside GateIn. Sample use case scenarios and a live demo will also be provided.

Through the presentation and demo, attendees will learn:

  • How to set up a workflow process for getting content created, edited, approved and published
  • How to customize this workflow for the unique needs of the content author, the publisher and the site visitor
  • How to create a simple portlet to take advantage of extended publication features
  • How to extend the publication process with UIExtension Framework
  • How to use REST services to add authoring to a personal dashboard

Live eXo Webinar, Wednesday 7 July, 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT, register you seat now!

eXo Delivers Web Content to Enterprise Java

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

eXo Web Content Management 2.0 now available as open source download

San Francisco, Calif. (June 15, 2010) – eXo (http://exoplatform.com) today released eXo Web Content Management (WCM) 2.0. Bundled with GateIn 3.0 and Tomcat 6.0 to run out of the box, eXo WCM is now available as a free download under the open source Affero Gnu Public License (AGPL). Commercial support for eXo WCM will be available as part of eXo Platform 3.0, expected later this year.

Why Use eXo WCM

Like all eXo services, such as eXo Social (announced just last month), eXo WCM is designed for IT organizations that want to be able to integrate web content with their existing enterprise Java systems. eXo WCM comes with tools and extensions already familiar to Java programmers, so they can starting developing from day one.

On its own, eXo WCM provides all the modern Web 2.0 capabilities needed to create, publish and manage web content. It runs with GateIn, the advanced new portal framework created by eXo and Red Hat, so users now have content management inside a portal. Users can integrate  applications in the portal and manage all the content from the same user interface.

With eXo WCM as a core piece of the eXo Platform, Java enterprises have a comprehensive user experience platform for integrating intranet, Web and transactional applications – similar to what SharePoint provides for .NET.

Highlights of eXo WCM

Visit the eXo site for a full list of eXo WCM features. Highlights include:

  • Scalable Content: eXo WCM is based on eXo JCR,  an open source implementation of the Java Content Repository specification. This implementation has been in production for several years within large productions environments with tens of thousands of users and millions of documents.
  • Ease of Use: eXo WCM makes it easy to create, approve and deploy content as part of an overall Java web application. Search, Favorites, Tagging, Voting, Cover Flows, Timelines, Versioning and Locking are all easily enabled for content users.
  • Customizability: eXo WCM can be customized to suit project needs. Users can change the content repository structure and use their own metadata, for example; choose from different content templates, or create new ones; and create specific views based on roles.
  • Extensibility: eXo WCM comes with ready extensions for adding document management and workflow. This package also includes a preview of a new authoring publication extension for more contextual and dynamic content life cycles. Users can create their own plugins and extensions to make eXo WCM work for them.
  • Flexibility: With eXo WCM, users can slice and dice their content in several ways and publish in multiple places with different workflows. Even if stored in just one repository, content can be classified in different hierarchies, tagged for public or private view and “favorited” so it can be quickly accessed from an individual’s private drive.

Supporting Quotes

Benjamin Mestrallet, founder and CEO of eXo: “With eXo WCM, Java enterprises have a complete portal and content management system in a single software package — eliminating the need to cobble together solutions from different vendors. Anyone can start using eXo WCM on its own today. But for those enterprises looking for an elegant, integrated way to modernize their Java applications, eXo WCM is a hint of what’s to come with the eXo Platform.”

Getting Started

Availability and Support

  • Download today
  • Commercial Production Support: eXo WCM 2.0 will be supported in the forthcoming eXo Platform 3.0, planned for later in 2010
  • Early Adopter Program includes one-year developer subscriptions and early access to other eXo offerings

[New Release] eXo Web Content Management 1.0 Released

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

The eXo WCM team is proud to announce the release of WCM 1.0

eXo Web Content Management (WCM) solution is emerging to help webmasters who handle all tasks needed to run a website, including development, deployment, design, publication and monitoring. WCM allows making website operations more easily. In addition, the webmasters are no more the only actors in the spotlight. Each member of the community is welcomed to collaborate and contribute depending on his/her rights. All these features contribute to make the website management more agile and less onerous.

Main features for eXo WCM 1.0

  • Quickly setup a website
  • Managing multiple sites in one only place.
  • Easy to create a web content.
  • Support content categorization, comments, versioning, permissions.
  • Media library.
  • Advanced CSS & Java Script support in web contents.
  • Fast access and edition features
  • Web pages management.
  • Using Web DAV.
  • Easy to publish web content.
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Powerfully search: support scoring, highlighting, excerpt, wildcard, fuzzy, spellchecker and suggestion
  • Broken links detection engine
  • Simple language for integrating dynamic content
  • Simple and multiple content viewers
  • Simply and quickly manage your site with Site Administration Toolbar

You can download the release here and read the release notes.

Also, please read more information about our eXo WCM on eXo WCM Product page or eXo WCM Wiki homepage.

If you have questions, please send a mail to the mailing list exoplatform@ow2.org.

Thank for using eXo WCM product!