Enterprise Content Management Systems

An enterprise Content Management or Enterprise CMS as it is popularly called these days is a computer application package designed to manage the publishing of digital print and other electronic content of the information of an organization.

Data and information are the key resource of an organization and to use them optimally and efficiently the organization of these two things gains a prime importance. The Enterprise Content Management facilitates development of tools and strategies to effectively collect, store, “channelize”, manage and process the information and deliver a well managed documentation related to the organizational process.

The term Enterprise Content Management was coined in around year 2000 by Association for Information and Image Management or AIIM. The term has been interpreted and defined in many ways since then but the most generic all encompassing definition was provided by AIIM in early 2008 which explicitly states that Enterprise Content Management is a set of tools and strategies used to effectively collect, manage and collaborate the documentation related to organizational process.

The ECM provides features to further develop the intelligent quotient of traditional CMS by providing the necessary infrastructure to provide verticals that can be used to provide adequate architecture for SoA Service Oriented architecture as well as EAI or Enterprise Application Integration deployments.

The interface of Enterprise Content Management has features to provide reporting as well as auditing functions.

The initial companies that sold the idea of ECM basically propagated the concept of Document Management companies. Some leading vendors of the same had been Documentum, Filenet and Opentext. All these companies were of medium size. But now the concept has gained new dimensions with many business mammoths coming in this field to provide state of art documentation management and informatics tool. Oracle, IBM and EMC are the chief vendors of ECM applications.

The ECM also has a rich repository that integrates both the date warehouse database and documentation database. Such set-up provides a smooth and streamlined flow of information across all the departments of the concern. The tool has easy and user- friendly interfaces and does not require any specific IT training to be imparted to users to get them using the application. The true success of Enterprise Content management lies in the fact that the user becomes unaware on what level of abstraction he is working, the ECM chiefly provides such interface that the user is unaware of the application structure.

Open Source CMS

Content Management Systems provide a very practical and quick solution for the daunting tasks related to creation, maintenance and management of a web site application. It provides a new and better way to do these tasks which were once considered very technical in nature and not the cup of tea of an average computer user. The philosophy behind CMS and specially Open Source CMSs is to empower these average computer users by giving them an approach to website management that is as easy as typing an article in a Word Processor.

Like every other product in the software world, CMS systems too had been commercialized by vendors to churn profits from this great idea. Some of these are even open source but you pay money for gaining support from the company in using and possibly troubleshooting it at times. But there are also CMS packages available that are both Open Source and Free. These packages include Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki, Wordpress etc. These are mostly community driven projects where everyone is free to participate in the development process.

Open Source CMS systems are usually written in some open source web programming language. The popular choices include PHP, Perl, JSP etc. By Definition, ASP.NET is also a free language under ECMA specification so some free, open source CMS are also surfacing like the AxCMS and Umbraco CMS which are written in ASP.NET. But these are not completely free as of now as currently ASP.NET only runs fully on Internet Information Services or IIS which is a paid server by Microsoft. But projects like Mono which aims at porting the complete ECMA specification of .NET on Linux and Apache server are progressing very fast.

Basically, the Open Source CMSs available today are of 3 types:

Website Management CMSs: These include CMS systems which allow you to create and manage a complete, traditional looking website. These CMS are also called General Purpose CMS sometimes. Any type of site can be created with these but they are most of the time, overly complex. Examples are Joomla and Drupal.

Blog Systems: These are specialized types of CMS that are specially suited to create personal weblog kind of sites where posts are shown one after another in chronological order. These systems are very popular these days due to their simplified, easy to use interfaces that can be used to create a website quickly that shares your views with the rest of the world. In other words, a no-nonsense solution. Example is Wordpress

Wiki Systems: These systems are a kind of documentation systems which are editable by its registered users. So these are useful when more than one person’s content is to be shown on the website. Example is MediaWiki CMS.

A Note On Transferring Domain Names

Selling or transferring domain names has become almost like a popular sport in web business. Domain name transfer is nothing but the transfer of registered domains to another name. For those who may wish to transfer domain names it may seem like a herculean task because of the process that seems quite complicated, whereas in actuality it is not. You can transfer domain names quite easily these days with so many online sites and agencies actively involved in this business.

Often you choose a domain name for your business and get it registered. Somewhere down the line the chosen domain name may not serve the purpose anymore or a change may be called for. In such a scenario you might find people willing to buy your domain name especially if it is a popular name. While selling your domain name you are required to transfer the domain name to the party who is buying it from you. The entire process these days takes just a few minutes and the transfer happens quite fast.

The entire domain name business once upon a time was handled by Network Solutions Inc. There was no choice then when it came to selling or transferring domain names. But Network Solutions Inc no longer enjoys monopoly. There are thousands of reliable domain registrars who provide domain registration services and the process these days is no longer long drawn and complicated.

Whatever may be cause of your domain name transfer, you should apply for it with the gaining registrar who would be responsible for the entire operation. The gaining registrar will see into the matter and ensure that application filed for transfer is a valid one. An email will be sent to the administrative contact for validation. Sometimes a fax could also be sent for validation.

Process of domain name transfer

The process of domain name transfer is not complicated but it is completed in several steps. Usually it requires less than ten working days to get the domain name transferred, but in some cases it may take more time. First you need to choose a service through which you would carry out the domain name transfer. Once you have chosen a reliable service to help you with your domain transfer here are the few steps you would need to follow:

First collect all the necessary information and data about the person/business to whom the domain name is being transferred for instance name, address, email ID, and other important information. Secondly log onto the site and find the icon which leads you to ‘ My Domain Names’. Next you should choose and click on the domain name you wish to transfer. Finally go to manage accounts and fill the new registration form by clicking on ‘change account’.

Once it is done, the registrar will carry out the verification and other processes to transfer the domain name. In case if your transfer domain name fails, the registrars will refund you the money. However few registrars may charge a small amount as administration fee and other expenses for the transfer process even if it does not go through.

Transfer of domain names is similar to transfer of a real estate property that you own. The domain names change hands and ownership lies with the person in whose name the domain name is registered.

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