Our expertise in building content workflow and delivery systems spans across various platforms using a wide range of technologies. We also customize CMS frameworks such as Ektron, Sitefinity, Sitecore, Drupal, etc. While these web sites and web applications make content management very easy for our customers, the widespread use of mobile devices pose some unique challenges. While the CMS does help deliver content to a mobile device, presentation is still a concern.
For a CMS that brags of multi-channel delivery including mobiles, the content delivery mechanism is prone to have a loosely coupled architecture, the guiding principle being separating content from presentation (in adherence to the ‘Share first’ concept). Loosely coupled systems use a central repository for storing content. The delivery application, a part of the presentation layer picks it from the repository and presents it to users based on the queries to the CMS. CMS responds with a XML stream that is processed for display on the mobile device. This is easy if the same content needs to be delivered to similar destination devices. But if it is delivered to mobile phones as well to as web and tablets, there may be significant issues. For one, the user while using his mobile is distracted and wants to quickly get to the point. If the content is created for the web and not for mobile, the user is unlikely to consume the content. Secondly, the presentation for a mobile device becomes complicated due to the various types available, leading to constraints such as file format, semantics, security, size, space premium to name a few! In short, what you use for a smartphone may not be same for a tablet.
A CMS does make life easy with its presentation agnostic way of storing content but the complication that mobile devices bring to the picture remains. The developers and content creators continue to worry about the output type instead of the message, a problem cropping due to the simple reason that we still consider web as the centre of all our communication.
Our content lifecycle now needs to revolve with the mobile at its centre. Such a system needs built-in functionalities as that of a CMS while catering first to mobiles and then to webpages or simultaneously to both. The present products satisfy only one part of the cycle such as content publishing but not the final delivery. Integrating two or more applications is an alternative, but it makes the system more complex. Instead a product which integrates everything, from content creation to publishing to delivery is required. Additionally, a feature for analytics to measure content performance in a social media driven world would be an icing on the cake.
What is your opinion? Do your Enterprise Content Systems satisfy all your needs or are you looking for more? Do let us know!
Suyati Technologies has created a product under the brand Voraka as a solution to the above problem. Voraka is a writer management tool for content marketers along with the capability to publish content and track content performance through in-built analytics. We have also added a custom mobile content area. This enables us to create content specific to mobile which can be pushed out at the click of a button, helping put a cap on the word count, image size etc. To know more about Voraka, If you have any queries regarding mobile content delivery, please feel free to ask us! Our experts will be happy to help!
Source:
http://paradox1x.org/2010/01/the-case-for-ki/
http://mobility-strategy.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Decouple-Content-and-Delivery-Mechanism/90140-17523
http://www.slideshare.net/StephenWilliams/web-content-management-content-delivery-types
http://apoorv.info/2007/05/26/content-management-for-mobile-delivery/
http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/2008/08/Content-Management-Systems%E2%80%99-Mobile-Embrace/