RedDot Content Management Solution Proves Its Ease Of Use

RedDot Solutions&' content management solution runs entirely on Windows and provides extensive API and Web services extensions that tap into many of its modules. The company has partnered with Trados for term management and Kofax for digital asset management. With Kofax&'s technology, XCMS Server provides image capturing and tagging for retrieval. Integration with Trados allows users to translate documents into multiple languages at once.

RedDot&'s CMS Server users now will be able to work with multiple sessions simultaneously. When working with multiple systems, users can log on several times and have discreet sessions displayed on different monitors. Each session works independently and provides views based on users&' roles.

CMS Server&'s SmartEdit provides users with a content WYSIWYG editor, and this functionality now has been extended to include Microsoft Word. For example, whenever users click on text to edit, CMS Server can be configured to open Word with the text in it. Users also can drag and drop Word documents right onto a page residing on CMS Server.

RedDot now supports Mozilla&'s FireFox browser as a native client on its products. FireFox allows Macintosh and Linux users to access and contribute content on CMS Server. With this functionality, solution providers can attract publishing houses as well as marketing firms with Mac users. Developers, who are the majority of Linux users, will be able to provide a knowledge base of project experiences that can be shared across their organizations. However, instead of SmartEdit, Mac and Linux users need to use an open-source editor to edit content. On a Mac, for instance, CRN Test Center engineers could not verify if the edit function also worked in Word.

RedDot&'s LiveServer acts as an assembly layer for content coming out of CMS and XCMS servers and delivers it based on rules. LiveServer renders content to users, so it works similar to a portal; however, it&'s more content-oriented since it operates like a personalization server and works within a CMS Server production environment.

Unlike RedDot&'s content servers, LiveServer is a highly scalable Java application that works on a J2EE-compliant server. LiveServer uses HTML, XML and XSLT to serve pages to users using filtering mechanisms based on personalization rules and user profiles. All RedDot servers arrive with granular security features that regulate content as well as access. Through LiveServer, users can personalize content based on job title, group name and site location.

CMS Server&'s Site Manager now can export large sections of a site and move it onto new sites. This feature is useful for solution providers reorganizing corporate intranets. Site Manager also can become a syndication engine for sharing content across multiple sites, allowing users to quickly distribute content from any site.

As long as production work is light, CMS Server allows publishing houses to manage highly targeted content for print to be delivered to products such as Adobe InDesign or to be rendered through the Web. Like most content management servers, CMS Server separates content layout using templates that easily can format and encapsulate text. Content for online training or any educational print material can be presented to users through CMS by connecting multiple Web pages with different layouts or even print material in PDF files.

RedDot promotes partner services to customers and sells about 50 percent of its software through the channel. The company offers three partner levels, each receiving sales, product and technical support, including training and demo software. Training costs about $2,000 per week per attendee and varies per course and location. In addition, partners receive a sales kit, case studies and white papers.

Partner level is determined on volume sales and number of successful implementations. Advanced and Premium partners share co-marketing dollars, receive referral fees and participate on product development. RedDot provides a margin on licensing that ranges between 20 percent and 40 percent. Price starts at $55,000.