IncrediSquare will introduce a new and exciting way to easily and quickly manage and publish digital content in unique online ‘cabinets’ called SQUARES.

IncrediSquare is a highly intuitive and easy to use web publishing platform. With IncrediSquare anyone will be able to create a variety of simple websites, quicker and with less effort than with any other blogging and web publishing platform. Look how easy it is to manage content and create websites with IncrediSquare’s one-window UI:

IncrediSquare is very easy to use, yet it is packed with advanced features. Others charge high fees for some of these, but with IncrediSquare users will get everything absolutely FREE.

Advanced features to be included with IncrediSquare are:

• A revolutionary one-window/no-navigation needed, back-office system
• A Drag & Drop module that allows full control over the order of pages on the website
• An advanced publishing module
• The ability to host your site on your own domain
• Customizable templates
• An advanced SEO engine
• Easy to use version-control system
• And in the near future also advanced sharing options

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Currently the increase in demand for Enterprise 2.0 solutions is almost entirely fueled by corporate level IT buyers within large organizations. With hundreds of millions of potential customers using Web 2.0 services and applications on a daily basis, these organizations desperately seek new ideas that will allow them to capitalize on these developments. Fearing that they will be left behind, many organizations opt to spend a tiny fraction of their IT budgets on untested solutions, thus driving the current demand. Most of these solutions are attempts to use recreational-oriented Web 2.0 applications such as web-page builders (WCM), social networking, wikis, microblogs, RSS, chat-rooms, and mash-ups. to improve internal organizational work processes. However, many organizations quickly learn that most of these solutions are difficult to align with existing business practices and organizational culture, and choose to return to the old and tested desktop solutions.[2]

Currently, corporate IT buyers within large organizations are slow (and will remain slow in the near future), at embracing new internet technologies geared toward improving business processes as they are mostly conservative in their business practices; have major (and justified) integration and security concerns with web-based solutions, and have no real or imminent need for such solutions. Also, large organizations represent only 2-5% of enterprises in developed economies. For all of these reasons, relying almost solely on corporate IT buyers within large organizations to provide the main impetus driving the Enterprise 2.0 market forward may prove to be shortsighted.

The fact remains, however, that the Enterprise 2.0 concept addresses real and viable concerns, as represented in several ongoing processes:

• The gradual shift to web-based work environments – cloud computing is the future (perhaps the most pertinent indicator of this is the fact that Microsoft’s Office 2010 suite will also become available as a cloud-based service).
• The change in the nature of the work environment – a growing number of people work outside the traditional office environment. For these home-based workers and telecommuters the PC, laptop, Smartphone and web services are the main tools of their trade.
• A generation shift – the paper/desktop generation is out, and the web generation is in.
• A growing focus on improving business performance by encouraging collaboration.
• The desire of organizations to capitalize on their existing web presence by using new Web 2.0 concepts such as social networking, microblogging, RSS, mashups, etc.

After taking into consideration the current realities in the Enterprise 2.0 market as described above, it is our contention that in order to address the challenges created by these processes, the target markets should be redefined along two lines: targeting home-workers and telecommuters; and, targeting micro businesses and SMEs.

Targeting home-workers and telecommuters

Home-workers and telecommuters are defined as self-employed persons or paid employees of companies who do all or some of their work from home. In the US as well as other developed economies, it is estimated that between 40-50% of the working population hold jobs that can be conducted from home. Currently in the US more than half of the self-operated businesses are home-based. This amounts to about 10-12 million self-employed persons. Of the paid employees, only about 10 million (about 9% of the working population) do so most or part-time. The same general statistics also apply in the EU.[3]

Although, even today, these figures are sufficient to sustain a viable industry, with the advent of information-oriented sectors as the main economic drivers, as well as with the advancement in remote-access and especially web-based technologies, the number of home-based workers and telecommuters is rising quickly.[4] In a 2009 report, Forrester Research found that in the next five years 43% of the workforce in the US, or more than 50 million workers, will telecommute to some extent.[5] They also report that even today, 59% of employees’ work time is spent at places in other than at their own desk in their office. According to Gartner Dataquest, in 2007, more than 12 million employees telecommuted more than eight hours per week, up from about six million in 2000. Gartner predicts the number will hit nearly 14 million by 2009, and by 2011, expectations are that 46.6 million corporate employees globally will spend at least one day a week teleworking, and that 112 million will work from home at least one day a month. Gartner expects this number to continue to grow.[6]

Indeed, many businesses, especially in the service-related and IT industries, find it cost effective and sensible from a business point of view to allow a rising portion of their workforce to telecommute to some extent. This rising trend also generates a growing demand for new technological innovations that facilitate a home-based work environment. Cloud computing technologies are ideal for this type of setup.

Nonetheless, as of today the leading Enterprise 2.0 vendors attempt to offer organizational wide solutions that are ill-equipped to address the needs of home-workers and telecommuters. Most existing solutions offer supposedly ‘enterprise grade’ versions of Web 2.0 applications such as internal corporate wikis and social networking that in their original form were designed for recreational rather than professional uses.

The effectiveness of the attempts to implement these solutions on an enterprise-wide level is highly controversial, and even more so, such solutions provide no real added value to home-workers and telecommuters. This large and rapidly growing market is highly complex, comprising of many types of potential customers with various types of needs. Rather than following the current trends, players who wish to tap into this promising market must completely rethink the way cloud computing and Web 2.0 concepts can be used to address the changing needs of users within this market. Players who in the next few years will succeed to introduce tools that will effectively address these needs may find themselves reaping enormous rewards.

Targeting micro businesses and SMEs

According to a recent survey of business owners in the US, about 20 million businesses, (almost 80% of all firms) are self-operated. Of this figure about 89% are very small businesses comprising up to 20 employees, and approximately 8% are SMEs employing a staff of between 20-100 employees. All together, self-operated and SMEs employ about 60 million people, or about half of the workforce in the US generating almost 30% of the US’s GDP. A similar trend is also characteristic of all other service-oriented information economies (In the EU for instance, SMEs employ about 65 million people who generate about 50% of the EUs overall GDP).[7]

The vast majority of people are employed in service industries, with a large proportion of these represented in information-based professional industries.[8] Other indicators show that in information-oriented developed economies, SMEs are a major driver for innovation and entrepreneurship.[9] All in all, the number of knowledge-workers employed by micro and small to medium businesses in the developed, as well as the developing, world is enormous.

Unlike large organizations, potential customers in these sectors are more open-minded and are quick to embrace new technologies; they lack complex managerial hierarchies and internal organizational politics, and are less bound by cumbersome corporate decision making processes. They are less concerned with integration and security issues, they run on tighter budgets that warrant openness toward cost-effective solutions that may replace existing expensive and cumbersome legacy business solutions, and finally, a large proportion of these businesses are home-operated thus heavily relying on the Internet and mobile devices as a work tool.

For all these reasons, cloud-based business solutions (Enterprise 2.0) are ideal for addressing the needs of micro and small to medium sized organizations; they are highly cost-effective and easy to implement, they usually do not require any special technical skills to set-up and put into service, and they offer easy ways to reach new markets. Despite these facts, studies show that awareness and adoption rates of Enterprise 2.0 solutions by micro and SMEs are very low, with almost 70% of such operations not even aware that such solutions are available to them.[10]

Summary

Except for a few niche players, the major players in the Enterprise 2.0 market target mostly the corporate IT buyers of large organizations. This strategy is skewed in two respects: it fails to address the special needs of home-workers and telecommuters and it fails to efficiently target the huge pool of potential customers operating and working within micro and small to medium organizations.

Currently almost all players in the Enterprise 2.0 market line-up with industry leaders in attempting to market social networking usability to corporate customers. However, it is our belief that in the span of the next five years or so, players who will resist the urge to join the pack and present innovative out-of-the-box solutions targeting the needs of both home-workers and telecommuters, as well as those in micro and small to medium organizations will become the future leaders in a potentially huge market.

_ _

Eyal Engelhardt Ari, PhD

Co-Founder & VP Product at IncrediCube

[1] See: Sarah Perez, “Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013″, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/enterprise_20_to_become_a_46_billion_industry.php; see also: McKinsey and Company, “How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey”, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/information_technology/management/how_businesses_are_using_web_20_a_mckinsey_global_survey_1913

[2] See, for example: Jakob Nielsen, “Social Networking on Intranets”, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/social-intranet-features.html; Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace”, revised edition 24 November 2009, pp. 1-2 (for an online full text version, see: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article4/article4.html; See also: T.D. Wilson, “The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’”, http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html; See: Susan Scrupski, “State of the Enterprise Market: Slow and Unsteady”, http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/04/state-of-enterprise-market.php

[3] See, for instance: http://undress4success.com/research/people-telecommute/; http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/telcom/commuting.html

[4] See: http://www.teleworkexchange.com/mobilizingagainstpandemic/

[5] See: http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/enterprise_20_user_harbinger_of_future_of/q/id/55735/t/2

[6] See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20281475/

[7] For the US statistics, see: http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html; for the EU, see: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/european_business/special_topics/small_medium_sized_enterprises_SMEs

[8] Ibid

[9] See: http://ec.europa.eu/research/sme/leaflets/en/;%20http:/www.kauffman.org/Details.aspx?id=1778

[10] See: Sarah Perez, “Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013″.

Although still at its very early stages, the infiltration of the new internet technologies (Web 2.0) into the business world is a fact. In the past two years the demand for web-based business solutions has been on the rise, and is expected to increase.

Under the relatively new area dubbed ‘Enterprise 2.0′, the new internet technologies (Web 2.0), and especially the concepts surrounding social networking and user-generated content, are breathing new life into the lucrative Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market. This process is currently fueled by large organizations. With hundreds of millions of potential customers using Web 2.0 services and applications on a daily basis, these organizations are desperately seeking new ideas that may allow them to “monetize” on these developments. Huge and large firms that were once satisfied with custom-made legacy or ‘homegrown’ systems are now acutely aware of the risk that they might miss out on opportunities created by the Web 2.0 explosion if they don’t act now. Their actions are leading to an influx of revenue into commercial software that is more adept at leveraging Web 2.0 capabilities.

As of today, however, there is a stark disparity between the growing desire of these organizations to integrate new web technologies to enhance their business processes and cut in IM expenses, and the ability of vendors to supply integrated solutions that meet their needs and expectations.

The following short paper will examine this growing market and the main shortcomings that currently prevent it from achieving its full potential.

Introduction

Although still at its very early stages, the infiltration of the new internet technologies (Web 2.0) into the business world is a fact. In the past two years the demand for web-based business solutions has been on the rise, and is expected to increase.

Under the relatively new area dubbed ‘Enterprise 2.0′, the new internet technologies (Web 2.0), and especially the concepts surrounding social networking and user-generated content, are breathing new life into the lucrative Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market. This process is currently fueled by large organizations. With hundreds of millions of potential customers using Web 2.0 services and applications on a daily basis, these organizations are desperately seeking new ideas that may allow them to “monetize” on these developments. Huge and large firms that were once satisfied with custom-made legacy or ‘homegrown’ systems are now acutely aware of the risk that they might miss out on opportunities created by the Web 2.0 explosion if they don’t act now. Their actions are leading to an influx of revenue into commercial software that is more adept at leveraging Web 2.0 capabilities.

As of today, however, there is a stark disparity between the growing desire of these organizations to integrate new web technologies to enhance their business processes and cut in IM expenses, and the ability of vendors to supply integrated solutions that meet their needs and expectations.

The market push factors

The growing interest of the business sector in the new internet technologies is the result of a culmination of several ongoing processes:

• The change in the nature of the work environment – a growing number of people work outside the traditional office environment. For these home-based workers and telecommuters the PC, laptop, Smartphone and web services are the main tools of their trade.
• The gradual shift to web-based work environments – cloud computing is the future (perhaps the most pertinent indicator of this is the fact that Microsoft’s Office 2010 suite will also become available as a cloud-based service).
• A generation shift – the paper/desktop generation out, the web generation in.
• A growing focus on improving business performance by encouraging collaboration.
• The desire of organizations to capitalize on their existing web presence by using new Web 2.0 concepts such as social networking, microblogging, RSS, mashups, etc.

The market main failure points

Currently, there is a stark disparity between the growing desire of organizations to integrate new web technologies to enhance their business processes and cut in IM expenses, and the ability of vendors to supply integrated solutions that meet their needs and expectations. Most web-based business solutions offered today are simply enterprise level versions of existing Web 2.0 applications, such as web-page builders (WCM), social networking, wikis, microblogs, RSS, chat-rooms, mash-ups, etc. Fearing to be left behind, many large organizations opt to try these often untested solutions, thus driving the current demand. However, it is increasingly becoming apparent that such solutions are difficult to align with existing business practices and organizational culture.

This reality suggests that the current Enterprise 2.0 offerings fail to provide viable solutions to the market needs. This supposition is supported by the fact that in a market that is potentially worth many billions of dollars, the market leaders only manage to turn 20-40 million USD each in gross revenues at the most.

The Enterprise 2.0 Market

Enterprise 2.0 is a real market with real customers and real issues that warrant innovative technological solutions. Enterprise 2.0 may be defined as the use of cloud computing technologies and Web 2.0 concepts for use in two organizational fronts:

• The Internal – the use of cloud computing and Web 2.0 concepts to provide savings on infrastructure costs, offer new web-based business process solutions, and improve internal communication.
• The External – the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications to extend reach into the huge pool of potential customers now using Web 2.0 services, such as social networks, user-generated content sites, and media streaming sites.

Market Overview

As Enterprise 2.0 offerings strive to target two major organizational concerns – improving internal communication and reaching new markets – many large organizations perceive the adoption of such offerings as part of their long-term strategic corporate strategy. According to Forrester Research the spending on enterprise Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years, reaching a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion USD by the year 2013. The top spending categories are: Internal social networking tools, Blogs and wikis, and Mashups. Forrester predicts that by 2013 spending in the external domain will surpass those in the internal domain by a billion USD.[1]

In an attempt to size up this growing trend, many Global 2000’s and very large organizations have invested in access of 700 million USD in 2008 in Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions.[2] However, studies show that the current mode in which Web 2.0 technologies are implemented in organizational settings does not enable organizations to reap the full benefit from such. Such studies reveal that, as of today, there is a stark disparity between the willingness of organizations to invest in enterprise Web 2.0 technologies, and the ability of the existing vendors to supply solutions that provide real proven value.[3]

Existing approaches and their shortcomings

The current solutions in the Enterprise 2.0 market may be categorized under two main different approaches:

The ‘Enterprise Social Network software’ approach

Currently the Enterprise 2.0 market is dominated by vendors offering ‘Enterprise Social Network software’. These solutions (e.g. SocialText, Jive Software, MindTouch, etc.) regard the future work environment as a social network made up of employees. Following the latest trends in Web 2.0 user experience, the basic model followed by these platforms is Facebook and Twitter. Their basic reference point is the organization as a social unit.

According to this approach the new internet technologies should be harnessed to transform the workplace into a vast egalitarian network of knowledge workers who may freely communicate with each other, regardless of hierarchies and/or departmental boundaries, in any way possible. Although it is unclear what might be the value of such an approach, they nonetheless compete amongst themselves on who will succeed in implementing more web-based communication applications into the limited space of a computer screen.

Shortcomings of the internal social networking approach

The social networking in the workplace approach has several major shortcomings that are the main cause for the current market failure:

• Limited target market – since networking is their main concern, they mostly target large companies that have enough employees to make the establishment of an internal social network worthwhile. They offer no value whatsoever to tiny and small businesses which comprise the majority of businesses in all western economies.
• Limited internal focus – they provide a solution almost solely targeting the internal aspects of the work environment, while offering only limited solutions to the external ones. In doing so, a major strong point of Web 2.0 concepts for the benefit of business processes is lost.
• Questionable value – The value of introducing Social Media into the internal organizational front is highly controversial, and there are no credible surveys that prove the viability and real value of such an approach. Dennis Howlett of ZDNet, for instance, put it this way:

“Like it or not, large enterprises – the big name brands – have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can’t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense. Therein lies the Big Lie. Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all. Yet none of that thinking has a credible use case you can generalize back to business types – except: knowledge based businesses such as legal, accounting, architects etc. Even then – where are the use cases? I’d like to know.”[4]

The main point of criticism against the implementation of social media in the workplace is that social networks, microblogging, chat rooms, rss feeds, mashups, social games, and other recreational Web 2.0 concepts are oxymoronic to a normal, effective work environment. They are segments of the current Web 2.0 experience which is wholly recreational, externally oriented, and is geared toward breaking hierarchies, dispersing effort, time and interests and diffusing concentration.

The Wiki approach

These solutions (PBworks, Huddle, Telligent, etc.) contend that the main focal point in any work environment, currently or in the future, will remain the individual worker. They strive to harness cloud computing and Web 2.0 concepts to offer this worker new and improved ways to conduct his/her work individually or in collaboration with others on the web. Their model is Wiki software that allows an individual to author and publish content and grant others permission to view and/or edit it as well. They compete with each other mainly on making the rather cumbersome and tech intensive basic Wiki software into a more easy to use and intuitive software.

Shortcomings of the Wiki approach

Unlike the Social media oriented solutions, the wiki oriented ones target all types of organizations from self-operated home businesses to huge cooperations. However, they also have several major shortcomings:

• Thin technological basis – their main weakness is that the basic wiki concept on which they lean is very thin and fails to take full advantage of newer more advanced web-based content management abilities. For that reason they mostly target people with very simple and basic needs.
• Limited internal focus – even more than the social media solutions, they provide a solution almost solely to the internal aspects of the work environment, while offering highly limited solutions to the external ones.

The cloud-based BPM middleware approach

A third approach that may be dubbed the cloud-based BPM middleware approach includes a limited number of vendors such as 37Signals, CentralDesktop, LessEverything, and Sosius that offer creative and useful web-based solutions to real business process problems. Nonetheless, with the exception of a few players such as HubSpot, the solutions offered in this category are mainly intended to expedite internal work processes.

Common shortcoming

All three approaches as described above also share an additional shortcoming – they all use of linear hierarchies. In such linear hierarchies objects and pages on a website are linearly interlinked to each other resulting in limited usability and obliging users to navigate through multiple screens.

Summary

To sum up, the current Enterprise 2.0 market is occupied by either socially minded solutions of questionable value, thin wiki-based solutions, or internally oriented innovative solutions. All three types of solutions are focused mainly on the internal aspects of the work environment. Almost all current vendors in this market disregard almost completely the growing demand for innovative web-based solutions that will succeed in combining sound internal individual and group work tools with Web 2.0 empowered external tools.

Currently, the Enterprise 2.0 market can be described as a classic situation where the tail – recreational Web 2.0 applications and concepts – is wagging the dog – the enterprise. In this respect the implementation of Web 2.0 and cloud computing concepts on the enterprise level may be equated to the Chinese invention of gunpowder – initially used to ignite fireworks for festivities and recreation, but later harnessed to advance tangible political and strategic ends. Right now Enterprise 2.0 is all fireworks. However, the potential to become a major strategic element in the way business is conducted exits and is yet to be even remotely exploited.

[2] Perez, “Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013″.

[3] See, for example: Jakob Nielsen, “Social Networking on Intranets”, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/social-intranet-features.html; Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace”, revised edition 24 November 2009, pp. 1-2 (for an online full text version, see: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article4/article4.html; See also: T.D. Wilson, “The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’”, http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html; Susan Scrupski, “State of the Enterprise Market: Slow and Unsteady”, http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/04/state-of-enterprise-market.php

[4] See: Dennis Howlett, “Enterprise 2.0: what a crock”, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/howlett/enterprise-20-what-a-crock/1228

In a recent meeting with a venture-capital firm, as part of our ongoing endeavor to secure funding for the continued development of IncrediCube, we were asked a strange question that I never encountered before – “what’s the pain?” As I did not suffer any pain at the time, I was perplexed as to the meaning of this odd inquiry. I mean, we did not come to pitch an idea for a new drug or medical procedure. We are developing a new concept for web publishing and sharing of information. What sort of pain can we possibly be asked to mitigate? The question haunted me for days afterward, and I was obliged to ponder about its meaning.

So, what does it mean “what is the pain?” in the context of innovation and capital? On the face of it, it seems to simply mean “What is it good for?” or “what needs are addressed?” Such “positive” questions make sense: “good” is the basis for the term “goods” for describing movable property or commodities that address real and tangible “needs”. But how does “pain” come into play here? Why substitute the wholly positive term “good” for the definitively negative term “pain”? Why imply that “pain” is an indication for “needs”? Well, the answer lies in the shifting definition of “needs”.

Save in a few isolated periods of time (that will be discussed later), prior to the explosion of the information society in the west merely a few decades ago, innovative theoretical and technological advances were evaluated based on one primary consideration – their usefulness. The most successful and enduring innovations addressed the various facets of the basic needs of life – feeding, finding shelter and security, working, and interacting. Others were mostly perceived as mere curiosities, and sometimes as heretical abominations.

Take that greatest Roman invention – concrete. What’s it good for? It’s good for building anything anywhere cheaper and stronger. This simple answer is accurate and makes sense in every culture and in every language on the face of the planet now as it did then. Now let’s leap in time to a modernist invention – the telephone. What’s it good for? It is good for allowing people to speak with one another beyond the shouting distance. This concept can be explained just as easily to a sophisticated scientist in MIT and to a goat herder in Yemen. It could have been invented at any time in history, and be just as easy to understand. In other words, until quite recently, all important innovations, the ones that defined civilizations and changed our lives, are simple to understand, address basic human needs, are timeless, and universal.

Now let’s ask ourselves “what is a computer good for?” well, it’s good for processing large amounts of information. No wait, it’s a sophisticated typewriter really. No, it’s really a sophisticated calculator. No, it’s a sort of television. Hey, you can also play games with it. No, wait, it’s good for using the internet. What’s the internet good for? Well, it’s good for connecting computers together. Really, what is a computer good for again? Well, with the internet it is good for connecting people. Like a telephone? No, like Facebook . . . Yeah, right, try explaining this to a Yemeni goat herder. In other words, since the implosion of the western entertainment seeking computer-based economies, the most prominent innovations have been extremely difficult to understand, address chimerical needs, are transient, and culture specific.

Nonetheless, it would be idiotic to claim that the entire IT advances of the past few decades have been useless since a goat herder, and even most ordinary contemporary people, are ill-equipped to fully understand the concept of a computer, the internet, blogging, bookmarking, or social networking. There is no doubt that the reasons so many people, all over the world, use these technologies, often without pondering what they are really good for, implies that they address real needs. But what needs are those?

This issue and others will be discussed in the next part of this essay.

Dr. Eyal Engelhardt Ari

05.06.2010

A file manger

This is a personal CMS used to navigate through, accesses, and use files in a file system. Today all file managers are GUI based navigational file managers. File managers present records in top-down linear hierarchy tree views in which each record (often called a branch or a node) can have a number of nested sub-records. A node can be expanded to reveal sub-records, if any exist, and collapsed to hide sub-records.

A network-based CMS

These are sometimes also referred to as Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS) as they are geared toward managing content on an organizational level. ECMSs are usually client-side presentation level applications that contain several business logic sub-systems for handling the core content management processes. In modern organizations these processes include: document management, records management, business process management support, business intelligence support (DSS), and user interaction management (knowledge management).

Until very recently ECMSs were enterprise level versions of desktop file management systems mainly designed to deal with existing records. For that reason, the vast majority of existing ECMSs still use top-down linear hierarchy tree views in order to organize records for retrieval and use, while more advance systems use branching hierarchy views.

Web-based CMS

These differ from ECMSs in one very important aspect – whereas ECMSs are mostly concerned with managing existing records in centralizes networks, Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) are mostly concerned with the creation and sharing of hypermedia pages on the web. For that reason, while ECMSs are essentially robust record management platforms, WCMSs are online web page factories.

Administration of the content management operations in WCMSs is conducted via Web User Interfaces (WUI). These WUIs use two models to handle and structure content:

1. Pure linear array in which each web page is interlinked linearly to the page that precedes it and the page that proceeds it (e.g. blogs).

2. Top-down linear hierarchy or branching hierarchy tree views (e.g. XML documents, Outliner applications, etc.).

Common file views in conventional CMSs

IncrediCube

IncrediCube takes a radically different approach to the structuring of content within the system. Using a combination of a new information workflow engine to structure the content, and a unique Mosaic UI to allow users to manage it, it becomes possible to radically improve and extends the ways in which content is collected, stored, preserved, created, disseminated, and shared.

* This post is part of a new ongoing series entitled: ‘Basic definitions for non computer experts’.

• Data tier.
• Business logic tier.
• Presentation tier.

The first tier, the data tier, consists of a storage device and a database (in a network) or a file system (in standalone machines). The database/file system stores and retrieves data, relaying it to and fro the second tier – the business logic or business domain tier (or in 2-tier systems moves it directly to the user). In the business logic tier data coming from the two surrounding tiers is coordinated and processed, becoming information (processed data). Operations in the business logic tier are mostly automatic and done in the background without the active participation of the end user.

Once data from the database has finished processing the information is relayed to the third tier – the presentation tier. Here information is made ‘physically’ available to the user via desktop applications or web pages. This process is circular as data flows from the bottom up (database – business logic tier – presentation tier), and from the top down (presentation tier – business logic tier –database).

In order for processed information to be useful for the user it has to be presented in the presentation tier in familiar forms and on top of a functional user-interface (UI). These familiar forms are referred to as ‘content’ (structured information). In order for the user to be able to use content, it must be presented in functional user-interfaces (e.g. texts in a text editor, pictures in a picture viewer, audio and movies in a player, code in a compiler, widgets in applications, web pages in a browser, etc.).

IncrediCube is a cloud-based system that can work against any database and\or storage device. IncrediCube offers substantial innovation in the way content is structured and processed in the business logic tier, and in the way it is presented and rendered usable in the presentation tier.

Incredicube 3-tier architecture

* This post is part of a new ongoing series entitled: ‘Basic definitions for non computer experts’

We hope you will find our blog informative and thought provoking,

The IncrediCube team