The latest news coming out of Ixxus, publishing and media specialists, is its partnership with Inkling, which is aimed at delivering off-the-shelf integration of Inkling’s Habitat publishing platform with Alfresco’s content management system. The Inkling-Ixxus connector will allow clients to access and manage digital assets stored in Alfresco through Inkling’s authoring environment. It will also enable teams to store and manage fully composed digital documents in Alfresco for compliance and approvals, as well as access from downstream systems. Ixxus is the only global reseller of the Alfresco system.
Benefits of the Ixxus-Inkling connector for users include creating e-books and publications using approved assets directly from Alfresco CMS; manage, store, and author content in an integrated platform from any device; having enhanced trackability and analysis of used assets, as well as powerful and efficient search, discovery, and reuse of content. “Given that Inkling powers content development at many of the largest publishers in the world while Ixxus provides publishing solutions to 40% of the top 20 largest publishers in the world, it was a no-brainer to bring our worlds together,” says Ixxus CEO Steve Odart, whose teams—in London and Boston—work with Pearson, Penguin Random House, Cengage Learning, and Oxford University Press.
The partnership, according to chief innovations officer Paul Twelftree, is in line with what he sees as “a move by more publishers toward one-stop content storage that is more granular to enable easier discovery, reuse, repurpose, and monetization. Publishers also want tools that allow them to try new things with their content in a quick, easy, and low-risk way. So we are strategically partnering with many publishers to help them think more proactively, and to transform the way they work to be more agile, flexible, adaptive, and market responsive.”
For Dorling Kindersley, for instance, Ixxus developed a customized, cloud-based application that archives around 7,000 products; allows for cross-platform granular and scalable discoverability; and opens up potential for content reuse, new products, and additional revenue streams. Ixxus now manages the platform, which uses Alfresco, Amazon SQS, ElasticSearch, and MongoDB technologies.
For Pearson’s global English-language teaching division, the task was to define, design, and implement a content management and collaboration platform using Alfresco, MarkLogic, and custom Ixxus components. The four-month deadline saw Ixxus working across two publishing centers (London and New York) to carry out testing and training.
For more information, visit Ixxus booth (DZ2065).
This article appeared in the May 27, 2015 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.
