Divine Ups The Ante In Content ManagementDivine Ups The Ante In Content Management

When it comes to making content-management simpler, divine Inc. is upping the ante. The maker of collaborative business tools on Monday is introducing a revision of its content-management platform that makes it possible for companies to use basic Microsoft Explorer functionality as a de facto content-management interface.

The idea is to make content management as transparent as possible to those who are doing it. By making the process of publishing unstructured content as easy as a drag-and-drop operation, divine is attempting to combat the market perception of content-management systems as being complex, unwieldy, and training-intensive. "Users shouldn't have to learn new applications to do content management," says Brian Platz, divine's VP of product marketing. "In some cases, they shouldn't even realize they're doing content management."

Version 5 of divine's Content Server represents the second major release of the software since divine acquired the technology from Open Market two years ago. The upgraded version lets users literally drag a document from a file folder and simply drop it into another folder that uses filters to automatically transform that document into publishable formats, as well as insert it into content publishing workflows. The software comes with an out-of-the-box filter for transforming 220 content types into HTML or XML, and it provides IT departments with the ability to build additional filters as needed. It also includes Java connectors for integrating with back-end enterprise applications such as ERP or CRM systems, as well as most of the major content repositories.

Plastics marketplace Omnexus has been beta testing the new release, and VP of technology William LeVine is impressed with the potential productivity gains the company figures to realize by making it easier for nontechnical users to manage parts of the content-publishing process. For instance, Omnexus would like to take some of the elements of its public marketplace, customize them, and reuse them as private applications and services for individual customers. By making it easier for nontechnical users to do so, the new technology will reduce the demand on IT to handle such tasks. "To me," LeVine says, "it's all about how to keep our site fresh and exciting without having an army of people to maintain it."