Feature Article

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Quark Announces Dynamic Publishing Solution: Fills Much Needed Gaps in End-to-End Publishing Void

We could have predicted it. In fact, we did. But, we were asked to keep it a secret until after Quark, widely known for its desktop publishing tools, announced a major change of direction for the firm and its products. It’s a most exciting announcement, the first we’ve seen that attempts to tackle the various challenges organizations face as they attempt to create, manage, publish and deliver dynamic content.

What Did Quark Announce, Exactly?
It’s called the Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution, “publishing software that combines flexible layout with automated publishing to deliver accurate, relevant, and attractive communications across multiple types of media, including print, the Web, and mobile and electronic devices.” The solution includes content creation, management, and delivery tools from both Quark and its new partners: In.vision Research Xpress Author for Microsoft Word (to provide content creators with an easy-to-use XML authoring environment) and Alfresco CMS (open source enterprise content management solution). Negotiations are in the works with an email delivery service, among others.

Out of the gates the company will target two target audiences, each with a big need for dynamic publishing: marketing communication and professional publishing firms.

Most content management solutions aim to solve the “management” problems associated with content. Seldom do they tackle challenges associated with authoring (some add a WYSIWYG XML editor, but seldom are these tools adequate for all content creators in an enterprise, especially non-technical writers and creators of creative materials for marketing and sales) nor content delivery (most don’t even connect to an email service provider, despite email being the number one content delivery mechanism today). And, they usually avoid the messy issues associated with process improvements altogether. The Quark Dynamic Publishing Solutions aims to change all that. And, we think they’re on to something.

Use Case: Marketing
Marketing professionals are one of the first target audiences for the new Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution. As most content professionals are aware, marketing communication challenges are often the same as most others in an enterprise: getting the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format and and in the right language. But, most generic processes and tools fail to address the actual needs of marketing. They are often slow and inefficient and create unnecessary go-to-market delays. Quark does a good job of explaining the challenges faced by marketers and how their new solution addresses those issues. There’s a whitepaper and an article on return on investment available for those interested in learning even more.

It’s Not Surprising To See Quark Enter The Arena
We’re not at all surprised to see Quark enter the end-to-end content creation-to-delivery space. After all, it’s a wide open market. Companies like Adobe, that have the money, talent and organization to tackle this market, don’t seem interested (yet!) in providing a dynamic content publishing solution. That’s good news for Quark, whose new management team (former head honchos at Arbortext and/or Adobe) all have considerable experience under their belts and know that dynamic publishing is where the money is in the long run. They also are smart enough to know that in order to succeed, they have to find ways to help knowledge workers easily create modular, XML content appropriate for reuse.

The partnership with In.vision Research (makers of Xpress Author for Microsoft Word) is a smart move because it doesn’t try to force everyone in the world to create content using a Quark authoring tool. Instead, it acknowledges, much like the Irish Government did, that when you want to get people to create XML content, it’s best to provide them with a familiar authoring environment and minimize the negative impacts changing authoring tools can introduce.

As Quark has just introduced their new strategy and solution, we’ll keep an eye on what happens and report our findings here in a future issue. Until then, it’ll be interesting to see how the other “players” in the industry react. Will they leave Quark alone to tackle this space or will they pile on by acquiring missing technologies and changing (yet again) their marketing messages? Only time will tell.

Learn more about Dynamic publishing.

Read more

Filed under: Content Management : Dynamic Content : Marketing Communication : Publishing : Technical Writing : Authoring Tools : Xpress Author for Word : Technological Innovation : XML

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