IGP:ACOM - CONTENT OBJECTS ON STERIODS

Instant content reuse has long been a dream for Publishers and content owners to extend the value of content, and to lower the costs of maintenance and production. IGP:ACOM assists Publishers realise those dreams through a fully integrated Advanced Content Object Management (ACOM) system

Content Objects (COs) are content building blocks that allow new IP works to be created by the assembly of pre-existing content, and then optionally allowing the content to be modified and extended with new or supplementary content. The Scalable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is probably the most well known CO standard. But SCORM Content Objects are expensive to create, difficult to maintain and require a very large technology platform to drive them; and then they do little except act as parts of course modules.

"There is far more that can, and should be done with object-based content, we are in a remix, mashup world." stated Richard Pipe, CEO at Infogrid Pacific. "There is an ocean of amazing, high-quality, high-value content out there, but it's essentially monolithic, locked in books and software application formats and is unavailable for object reuse strategies."

Content Object management requires tracking the relations between objects and maintaining and managing the copyright rules and terms of use for every item forever. IGP:ACOM (Advanced Content Object Management) does all that and more.

Rather than manage content complex XML databases - a sure fire way to see budgets rapidly dissapate - IGP:ACOM maintains everything in strict XHTML, including the metadata. "By using IGP:FoundationXHTML we can package faster and easier and still maintain schema interoperability with other formats and systems at the boundary" says Gordon Drego, Information Architect for the project, "the hardest part of the project was defining what a content object actually was. We had discussions with many publishers some of whom were stuck with the idea that they should be able to assemble at the paragraph and even the word level. We all realized that solution already existed - it's called cut and paste. So we focused on the discovery, ownership, relations and rights issues as an abstract framework which allowed any content to be seamlessly brought together as a new print or e-publication."

Content Object management is especially useful in the creation of training and education material, but is equally powerful for the maintenance and creation of large formally controlled documents which generate multiple versions, variants, translations and derivatives.

Infogrid Pacific CTO Deepak Chandran said, "We can attach any content to the model from a single character to anything that can be referenced. Although we have extensive XML experience and are considered experts in the field, we could see an XML database or similar approach was going to lock Content Objects into a technology framework and make them unmaintainable, or escalate costs of ownership with an unpredictable return on investment for the users. Content Objects are a new way to use content, and businesses need to be able to afford the solution and to experiment with how they will use it. We have used a Service Oriented Architecture with a number of cooperating stand-alone services - archiving, search, metadata management, relations management, license tracking, finished content catalogues, and the editing framework are all stand-alone, easily extended service applications."

IGP:ACOM also allows content to be edited and created in its own controlled online editing framework. Objects which have assertable rights licenses (offers, agreements, constraints and permissions) are maintained by the system. The license enforcement operation is based on the Creative Commons model, which allows the licensing of content from public domain to full rights assertion. Business transparency is maintained by using a public, standardized and well defined vocabulary for derivatives, attributions and commercial terms. If an Object has constraints - for example, "no derivatives" - then the object will not be able to be edited.

Infogrid Pacific Marketing Director for UK and Europe Mark Harrop said, "We have not only created the first real and practical content object remix and reuse solution, it's actually easy to use. The complexities of tracking reuse relations and license enforcement are virtually transparent. Using Content Objects and creating Content Objects from legacy content are two different issues. We have the entire solution in place with strategies for cost effective conversion of legacy content into Content Objects."

Newly created fusion works - a combination of existing content objects and newly authored or generated content - can be re-ingested into the system. They are automatically decomposed into content objects which are tracked by IGP:TUCO - the Tracking Usage of Content Objects relations management service. The new objects are reindexed in the Search Service and finally everything is registered in IGP:SOLA - the Subscriptions, Offers, License and Agreements management service.

IGP:ACOM is available directly from Infogrid Pacific.

About Infogrid Pacific Pte. Ltd.

Infogrid Pacific (IGP) is a Singapore based company with a development centre in Pune, India. It has sales offices in Auckland, London and Singapore. IGP specialize in advanced content management technologies that challenge the traditional barriers of ownership cost and complexity. The innovative range of content ownership solutions is sold through a worldwide partner network.

For more information about Infogrid Pacific, IGP:ACOM and the other supporting technologies contact:

Infogrid Pacific Publishing Technologies Division

Sales: sales@infogridpacific.com

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