by Sören Stamer September 07, 2007 at 12:34 AM

Sich selbst in einem Video zu sehen, fühlt sich seltsam an. Noch immer. Die Gewöhnung lässt bei mir noch auf sich warten. Dennoch sehe ich in Videos im Unternehmenskontext mittlerweile ein sehr wertvolles Werkzeug.

Ein Video-Interview hat nämlich schon seinem Wesen nach einen besonderen Wert: Es zwingt mich meine Gedanken direkt und unmittelbar auf den Punkt zu bringen (siehe auch "Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden"). Und gleichzeitig gibt es mir nachträglich die Gelegenheit mich bei dieser Übung auch noch kritisch zu beobachten und dabei meinen blinden Fleck zu verkleinern ("Nuscheln wird als Stilmittel deutlich überschätzt"). Wirklich erhellend!

Das Ergebnis des letzten Experimentes dieser Art ist gerade unter den Creative Commons Lizenzbedingungen online gegangen. Ulrike Reinhard und Lutz Berger haben meinen Kollegen Henrik Schürmann und mich letzte Woche zum Change Management bei CoreMedia interviewt und das Ergebnis zu einem ansprechenden Video-Format zusammen geschnitten.

Hintergrund des Interviews ist die SCOPE 07 - The Future of Learning Conference. Da das Thema "Kollektives Lernen" CoreMedia bewegt und vielen bei uns sehr am Herzen liegt, haben wir uns entschlossen die Konferenz als Sponsor zu unterstützen und uns gleichzeitig inhaltlich einzubringen. Wir sind gespannt.

Herzlichen Dank an Ulrike Reinhard und Lutz Berger. Das war bereits im Vorfeld der eigentlichen Konferenz eine sehr schöne (Lern-)Erfahrung.

by Sören Stamer August 20, 2007 at 12:44 AM

I wish I was a student or a PhD student again. It seems to be the best time ever to think about the future of enterprises and our whole economy. So, it couldn't be more interesting to study Business Administration, Economics or related disciplines.

The paradigm shift labeled "Web 2.0" reached the shore of conventional enterprises mainly build upon hierarchies. Digital Natives enter conventional enterprises and the fun begins. They demand to work in the new paradigm and cause change. So, it would be good to be able to answer one important question: Why should any enterprise make intensive use of social software and transform itself into an Enterprise 2.0?

Well, I have been thinking about this for a while now and did what I had to do: I started to transform CoreMedia into an Enterprise 2.0.

The change management was all about changing the corporate culture. At the beginning, the use of social software was only a minor point. By now, it has emerged to a central aspect.

Through my own experience I came to the conclusion that the main aspect of Enterprise 2.0 is raising the order of connectivity between all stakeholders. And here is my hypothesis: With more and better connections between employees, managers, partners, customers and to the rest of the world, an enterprise will be more aware of its environment. It will be more agile and more creative. It will be more competitive and, therefore, stays longer alive. Well, at least on average.

I really like to put this hypothesis to a test through a study. I expect to find evidence that the rate of innovation and the customer orientation raises along with the order of connectivity.

And I expect to see some evidence "being connected" means "staying alive" in a networked economy and society.

Anyone interested in making this topic the topic of her/his thesis? Please contact me directly or through this blog.

by Sören Stamer August 14, 2007 at 10:54 PM

First things first: I do admire Google for what they have achieved in such a short time. And I still like all the people at Google that I know personally.

Well, I also like their search tools and most of their other amazingly innovative services like Google Earth, Google Maps, etc.

Google has fundamentally changed the world we live in. They made Bill Gates' vision "information at your fingertips" mainly come true. Actually, I was one of Google's big fans. I loved them for being different, for "don't be evil" and for all the smart and funny ideas around the Google logo.

However, something important has changed: I don't like Google anymore.

About 15 to 18 months ago they started to lose my friendship. I became more and more skeptical:

Was "don't be evil" great marketing or a great vision? What do they really think about transparency? Where can I see my own profile with all the profile data Google has collected about me over years now? Where can I delete all the entries about myself I dislike? Do they own my profile data? Do they provide my profile data to government authorities on request? Who is Google in person?

I’ve realized that it is way too dangerous in the long run to have a single company with such a huge power over all of us getting stronger and stronger. It simply feels wrong.

And we ain't seen nothing yet. For Google it seems to be pretty easy to enter and dominate also other markets. They offer more and more attractive services for free, collect even more and better profile data and sell a lot more ads. They started with search, added mail, maps, blogs, calendar, analytics, office applications, video, and the like. Then, they added billing and telephony. More to come. Now they are well positioned to become the biggest operator on earth.

Obviously, Google doesn't have to make any money with those services directly. It is enough to improve their user profiles and they will earn more with AdSense.

This makes it pretty tough to compete with Google due to Google's strategic positioning.

And it’s getting worse. If you are a mobile operator you can choose one of two evils: If you bring Google onto your phones your customers will be happy and Google gets stronger. So you lose ground. But if you block Google and promote your own search your customers won't be happy at all and so you lose ground again.

What about copying Google? Well, it is not very likely that another company can do what Google did. The existing network effects for Google are way too strong. And another huge search company won't solve the underlying problem. Such a highly centralized power seems to be way too dangerous for normal enterprises.

So if you want to beat Google you have to change the rules of the game. You can't outperform Google the Google way.

Here is my best guess for mobile operators and any other companies that are afraid of Google and want to compete:

Go open source

Google uses a lot of decentralized mechanisms to create innovations and they hire loads of smart people. However, the whole world is still smarter than Google alone. So let's go for open source to build an open and trusted alternative to Google.

Be transparent

Google is non-transparent and non-transparency kills trust. So let's make everything transparent to you as a user, the algorithms, the source code, the policies, your profile, etc. If someone wants to change his/her profile that is fine as well. If someone doesn't like to be profiled that is fine too.

Support the Wikipedia universe

Google is a global brand everyone knows and looks for. So we need to have an even better global brand with more trust. Wikipedia.

So let's spend some money to make Wikiasearch the world’s greatest search engine, the first one being open and trusted as well.

It will be a different game for Google: It is all about trust - an extremely powerful force. Fortunately, even Google cannot win this game against Wikipedia us all.

I am really curious how long it takes until the big operators will start to implement this plan.

Well, we ain't seen nothing yet.

by Sören Stamer July 13, 2007 at 02:17 PM

I don't believe in patents. Actually, I do not like the whole idea of patenting my ideas to exclude others from using them. And I am pretty sure that today’s patent systems and the whole idea of patenting ideas will be gone sooner or later - for the benefit of our society. But what is the alternative?

First things first:

1. I don't believe in the patent system: It simply doesn't scale

Informationen grows with exponential speed with a growth rate of 66% per year. As a result it doubles in less than two years for at least a century now. The number of globally filed patents grew by 6,8 % in 2006. It was a record year for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

However, the rest of the system doesn't scale nearly as well. It doesn't scale at all. Someone has to evaluate patents and review them against prior art, existing patents and hopefully against stupidity. This takes time. And it will take even more time in tomorrow’s world with a lot more knowledge to check against. Well, we might be able to address this issue by hiring more people in countries with relatively cheap labor or some kind of crowd sourcing.

However, the main issue here is another one: The rest of the world, i.e. all other enterprises, have to spend more and more resources to keep the patent system alive. Every company has to educate all of their employees to know all the patents that might be relevant to their work all the time. How would this work - for example in the software industry? We live in a global society and offer global services over the Internet. Not even the brightest software engineers will be able to handle all the different patents in every part of the world. The results may be funny: Hire one or two lawyers per software developer? The first one to evaluate all existing and new software patents and the other one sitting next to the software developer to do the legal code review in real-time?

Think of all the time we have to spend in every company today if you try do it right. And now think of a situation with 159 times more knowledge and two times more patents. Life in 2017 won't work like this, would it?

2. I don't like the idea of patenting ideas: It is not fair and it harms our society

Every idea has its context. It needs an environment so that it can be thought of in the first place. Since all human beings are social beings we can't speak, think or exist without the society we live in. The whole knowledge of our society is the gift that our society gave us as an individual being. But if this is true, it is kind of unfair to exclude society from results that were created out of its own context. Our existing patent systems overvalue the contribution of a single entity and undervalue the contribution of the whole society.

Patents are often said to be used to "defend" a business against competitors with other patents. Sounds like a stupid idea to create those "weapons against innovation" in the first place.

Our whole society would be better off if we shared all of our ideas to build a better future for us all. Therefore, limiting the use of good ideas to create a better world through the artificial concept of patenting is unfair and harms our society as a whole.

3. I am sure patents will vanish: We can't take the consequences

Is our society really willing to accept the consequences of the patent system as a whole? I don't think so. Think of all the poor people in Africa suffering from diseases that could be reduced by patented drugs from the first world. Is protecting the existing patent system more important than the lives of millions?

Think of global warming. Wouldn't it be good to openly share our knowledge to reduce the global output of CO2? If a major car manufacturer knows how to build a highly efficient engine for a very low price and using limited resources, shouldn't this knowledge be used everywhere in the world to build better cars with lower energy consumption? Is it acceptable for our society to limit the use of such knowledge to maximize the profits of one company? I think not.

I believe we should share all the knowledge we have for the benefits of our society. And I also believe that we have to find a new way to value the contribution of us all in such a system. Innovators, artists and other knowledge workers should be able to pay their bills at the end of the month.

How might a world without patents work?

A pharmaceutical company has to invest a lot of money into R&D to find new and better drugs. They may argue that they are not able to do this without our existing patent system since other companies may use all the research results without paying for them. Those new competitors without any R&D spending will be more competitive from a financial perspective. They will be able to offer the drugs for a lower price and therefore win the whole business sooner or later. Therefore, not investing into R&D looks like the best strategy.

Well, not if we as customers act differently. We don't have to buy the cheapest product. We can make a strong statement with every single buying decision.

We should buy the drugs from those companies that contribute the most to our society. Yes, we will pay more. But there’s nothing wrong with that – just think of our existing behavior regarding alternative energy. In such a society, pharmaceutical companies will continue to invest into R&D but without patenting the results at all. They will contribute all of their results to the public domain instead. As a result we will see an explosion of creativity on a global scale. Nobody will be excluded from the knowledge. And everyone will be able to benefit from the results.

Wouldn't this be fair?

Yes, and I believe it will be reality some day. The major issue is the fundamental paradigm shift that has to be mastered by all the existing stakeholders. My guess is that the public opinion and our own buying behavior will be the driving force for this healthy change.

by Sören Stamer April 02, 2007 at 07:53 PM

Does your company still surprise you - in a positive way - from time to time? Regularly? If so, when was the last time that you were deeply amazed by your colleagues?

Well, I recognized a fundamental change at my own company CoreMedia with regard to positive surprises. Since we started to transform to an Enterprise 2.0 my own perception is full of these and it feels absolutely fantastic.

Fortunately, the latest set of surprises at CoreMedia becoming an Enterprise 2.0 were documented by Axel Wienberg, a highly respected colleague of mine. Please enjoy!

I tend to believe that within a well-functioning self-organized environment positive surprises are ubiquitous - especially for the CEO. And this is good, since he or she won't limit the potential of the company by his or her own personal creativity anymore.

This feels so amazing. You will definitely know that you work for the right company if this happens to you.

by Sören Stamer March 17, 2007 at 07:44 PM

As an entrepreneur it is always a very inspiring opportunity to listen to Ben Verwaayen, the highly successful CEO of BT Group. Ben has managed the turn-around of BT Group and made it a bright star in its segment. Fortunately, he openly shares some of his insights with all of us.

Last Wednesday was such a day to remember - Ben Verwaayen gave the Keynote Speech at the International CeBIT Summit: “Embracing Change – The Untapped Potential of Technology”. Here are some of the insights that resonate most with me:

Choices in a globalized business environment
If you are an entrepreneur, the choice is yours about going global. You can be global at once if you want to, since it is easier than ever to work with people all over the globe, and start a global business. Through the Internet we have more and more options to employ workforces or to buy components anywhere in the world.

The next big thing: “Your time” vs. “our time”
Customers will be in the driver’s seat in the future. They will decide on the right time to access a service. It’s their choice, not ours anymore.

“Open” vs. “locked in”
Services have to be open to enable others to build on top of them and add value. If you try to lock users in you will fail sooner or later. (In a way, Apple looks like an exception to this rule. Well, I tend to believe that Apple knows very well, when and how to open up parts of their closed systems to strengthen their competitive position.)

Demand for “Integrity of an organization”
While we see more and more loosely coupled social groups on the Internet – e.g. Wikipedia with all of their contributors – enterprises have still a very distinct role: they are able to keep the privacy of sensitive information, and they are able to agree and deliver against service level agreements.

Leadership
Every CEO and CIO listening to his speech (or reading blogs) will take a lot of different aspects with him or her. Leadership means to choose. It is the ability to say “No”. Ben made perfectly clear what he meant with this: “Be authentic in your choices and have the guts to follow your instincts.”

Change Management
With regard to successful change management Ben pointed out three aspects: people, tone and risk taking. First, you need the right people at the right places. They have to have personality and meet highest ethical standards. Secondly, the tone of communication matters a lot. Does your style of communication appreciate other opinions, or not? Thirdly, are you and your team willing to take risks?

“Please the boss” vs. “please the customer”
Ben shared with us a great story about a weakness of BT Group as an organization. I guess this weakness is present in every other company as well. People want to please their bosses. Therefore, every idea and proposal is shaped in such a way, that the next level in the hierarchy should accept it. With every other level in the hierarchy things get worse. Therefore, a lot of innovative ideas will be crippled when they meet the eyes of the CEO.

Pleasing your CEO might sound like a good idea, but it’s not. If everyone wants to please the CEO the whole organization is just as smart as one person. “The limitation of your own brain limits the thinking of the whole organization.” You won’t get any unfiltered feedback.

As a leader you have to change this by encouraging people to think freely and have their own opinion. You have to be able to endorse things you do not understand. It is “the art of letting go”.

Harvesting the collective intelligence
BT Group has set up an internal video platform like “YouTube” where everyone can broadcast his/her ideas and get feedback from all over the world. Those ideas that resonate well with other have a good chance to be implemented regardless whether Ben might be a user.

The best input for CEOs
The best input you can get as a CEO is customer feedback. Customers that come to you when things go wrong will give you the deepest insights and an unfiltered view. Therefore, Ben has opened up his e-mail account to every one of BT’s customers.

Be unreasonable
As a CEO you have to stay totally unreasonable. It is a bad sign when you think everything is fine. You always need to have a bit of distance from your own company.

“Stars” vs. “movie directors”
Bosses should not be stars. They should be movie directors that help the stars to shine bright. The real stars are the people in front of the customer.

How to setup a global enterprise?
Distributed intelligence will outperform the client-server approach by far.

Dear Ben,
It has been a great pleasure to listen to your talk. Thank you very much for sharing your insights so openly with us. I am deeply impressed by your leadership and the corporate culture at BT Group. Therefore, I made a choice right after your speech: I want to win you and the BT Group as a customer and partner for CoreMedia. I share your vision and I am absolutely sure that BT’s and CoreMedia’s corporate culture will be a perfect fit.

Best regards,

Sören

by Sören Stamer February 17, 2007 at 09:27 PM

When Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs used the word "multi-touch" to describe a breakthrough in the field of user inferfaces. Apple calls multi-touch "the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse". And in fact it seems to be true. Multi-touch enables us to interact with our computers in a highly intuitive way using no more than our own two hands:

[via ahlers]

This video about multi-touch comes with some explanations:

[via el ton]

There is something to discover here: The mouse was great to point and click in a two-dimensional world. However, in a three-dimensional environment its usability is pretty limited. Multi-touch seams to overcome these limitations. Just take another look at the demonstrations. It looks like it was especially made for interactions with three-dimensional environments. This might be the secret behind the intuitive nature of multi-touch.

Now, think of the amazing growth rate of 3D environments like SecondLife. Again, it seems to be the three-dimensional nature of this new medium that makes it such an intuitive environment for us.

Putting one and one together: The concepts behind Multi-touch and SecondLife look like core building blocks for the next generation Internet - definitely a three-dimensional Internet.

by Sören Stamer December 20, 2006 at 01:07 AM

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in an interesting discussion about open standards at the OMAWorld2006 in Washington. Jari Alvinen, Chairman of the Board of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), invited me to meet the Board members of OMA, without doubt global leaders of the mobile industry. It turned out to be a dinner to remember with very inspiring people. Thank you, Jari! I won’t ever forget this evening.

CoreMedia believes in open standards and is proud to be an active member of OMA for several years now. It is a perfect fit since interoperability through open standards is exactly what the OMA is all about.

But can open standards win in an ever changing future? And if so, where and how will they do?

Even though open standards are highly important, they are hard to deploy. And this might be an even more challenging task in the future. It takes quite some time to define, implement and deploy a global standard. And in a highly innovative environment you may not always have the time to do so. Instead people start implementing proprietary solutions before the standardization body is even ready to start. These are, by nature, competing and typically tend to delay the growth of whole marketplaces. Given the increased dynamics of today’s world standardization will be more difficult than ever. .

On the other hand, interoperability is key in an interconnected and converging world. This is a simple truth, but a very important one. Not surprisingly, open standards play a crucial part in the digital age. Just think of the Internet Protocol, better known as “IP”. IPv4 was defined in 1981 - staggering 25 years ago - and it is by far the most commonly used protocol on the Internet. Another good example is the Signaling System #7 also known as “SS7”. SS7 has been defined as a standard in 1981 as well and is still used to set up the vast majority of the world's telephone calls.

Well, there is a big difference between IP and SS7. While IP tends to be the poster child of the converging world, the future of SS7 looks a lot less shiny. All-IP networks will dominate the future with attractive new services like Voice-over-IP, and IPTV. SS7 may then be replaced by new lightweight protocols like SIP. I guess some standards are more sustainable than others when it comes to a fight.

Another strong competitor for open standards comes from the Internet space: Fueled by attractive services with some kind of network effects, proprietary “walled garden” solutions like iTunes or Blackberry push e-mail have also developed quite some momentum in the first place. Still, with these success stories in mind, I tend to believe that open standards will prevail. The potential benefits of open standards are simply superior to those of walled gardens.

Nevertheless, the weak spots of open standards have been increasing complexity, limited usability, poor time-to-market, and – recently – unresolved patent issues fueled by weaknesses of the existing patent law. Thus, we need to address these weaknesses as early and effective as possible in order to truly unfold the full potential of open standards.

by Sören Stamer November 29, 2006 at 02:38 PM

Do you hate these boring conferences full of impertinent product pitches instead of inspiring presentations, like I do? Well, then, you should have been in Dresden at the Future Forum two weeks ago. It was a great conference about global trends, innovations, web 2.0 and other aspects of our future.

9 reasons why:

1. Richard Scase’s great talk about the future shape of our global society and the rise of China and India. He made me think.
2. Dr. Curtis R. Carlson’s insights regarding innovations – and how to manage them. I was inspired by his ideas and instinctively decided to introduce “Champions” and “Waterhole Meetings” at CoreMedia as well.
3. Jaron Lanier’s controversial talk about the potential evil of the digital society. He has changed our future already by making the whole blogosphere think about the threat of Digital Maoism.
4. Tim O’Reilly’s personal perspective on Web 2.0. It is always good to know the source.
5. The digital art of Zachary Lieberman. Really nice!
6. A lot of spare time to meet and greet with a lot of interesting people.
7. The beautiful city of Dresden. It was sunny and warm.
8. The charming conference organization. Thanks for the lovely reception at the airport.
9. And most fascinating, the unexpected opportunity to talk to Jaron Lanier for hours when we met the day before at the Sarasani Tracadero Show.
   Great thanks to Peter Klingenburg and Dr. Klaus Radermacher from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions for hosting such a great event.

by Sören Stamer November 03, 2006 at 08:24 PM

Es ist Ihnen bestimmt auch schon aufgefallen: Die Qualität der Kommunikation geht in letzter Zeit zunehmend verloren. Wir werden unfreiwilliger Zeuge eines schmerzhaften Niveauverlustes. Ja, wir erleben einen richtigen Absturz, könnte man meinen, denn auch die Sixt-Werbung ist einfach nicht mehr das, was sie mal war.

Mit Wehmut erinnere ich mich an frühere Tage, an den Scharfsinn, Witz und Humor in jeder einzelnen Anzeige. Sixt-Werbung an den deutschen Flughäfen war für Vielflieger einst der überzeugendste Beweis, dass intelligenter Content eine Marke nach oben bringen kann. Sixt hatte stets die beste Werbung; sie war frecher, spritziger und witziger als die Werbung der Konkurrenz. Sie war einfach intelligent. Wir mochten sie. Und wir haben es Ihnen gedankt, indem wir in langen Schlangen vor Ihren Sixt-Terminals standen und die Konkurrenz links liegen ließen.

Die Sixt-Werbung war herrlich politisch und nah dran an den Themen unserer Zeit: Man erinnere sich an die Fönfrisur unserer Bundeskanzlerin, den flexiblen Fuhrpark für das „fluktuierende“ Schröder-Kabinett oder die Auswirkungen der Rechtschreibreform.

Doch der intelligente Witz früherer Tage ist schlicht und einfach verschwunden. In jüngster Vergangenheit ist er langweiligen Anspielungen auf erschreckend niedrigem Niveau gewichen. Es tut mir mittlerweile richtig weh, die Texte auf den neuesten Sixt-Anzeigen zu lesen. Ihnen nicht auch?

In den neuen dreidimensional gestalteten Anzeigen ist meist von einer Frau und einem Mann die Rede, die sich anschließend auf bedauernswerte Art und Weise in einer platten Anspielung wiederfinden. „Wo ist denn da der gute alte Sixt-Humor?“, wundert man sich und hofft irritiert auf eine intelligente Auflösung. Kognitive Dissonanzen sind die unangenehme Folge. Darf das sein? Könnte das vielleicht sogar Absicht sein? Teil einer großen Kampagne, deren überraschende Auflösung noch folgt?

Lieber Erich Sixt, bitte erlösen Sie uns. Bitte lösen Sie das Rätsel auf und unterhalten Sie uns wieder mit der gewohnt intelligenten Sixt-Werbung früherer Tage. Wir Vielflieger werden es Ihnen sicher nicht vergessen.

by Sören Stamer September 18, 2006 at 02:10 PM

Recently, Janus Boye at CMSWatch asked an interesting question: Is German CoreMedia still a CMS company?

The true answer is: Yes, absolutely! And no, CoreMedia has never been.

Yes, CoreMedia is a superior and highly innovative CMS company. Here is why:

1. The CoreMedia CMS product offers outstanding performance for high-traffic portals, multi-channel applications, highly-innovative services and complex integration scenarios. Trials over trials against our competition from the US performed by some of our clients proved this point again and again

2. The CoreMedia CMS product is the preferred Content Management platform for most of Central Europe's high-traffic portals. CoreMedia is the clear market leader with a high level of customer satisfaction.

3. The CoreMedia CMS product is a star in our portfolio. Our revenues generated with the CoreMedia CMS product are growing. And we see a very attractive global market and plenty of use cases for our CMS product.

4. The CoreMedia CMS product has a superior architecture. With its unique object-oriented content modeling it is designed for multi-channel and multi-touchpoint applications, for billions of transactions per month or even per day, for linear scalability, for carrier-grade performance, for seamless integration of content and transactions, for 24/7 operations and for innovations.

5. The CoreMedia CMS product can be used and is already used for various services like Enterprise Content Management, Internet Portals, Intranets, Online Shops, Mobile Services, Knowledge Management Interactive TV, Mobile TV, Electronic Service Guides, Media Asset Management, Cross-Media Publishing etc.

6. The CoreMedia CMS technology provides the powerful basis for the CoreMedia DRM product as well.

7. And CoreMedia CMS and CoreMedia DRM belong together. Content Management and Digital Rights Management follow pretty much the same idea. Enterprises want to control their content. They buy a CMS to manage and control all of their content and to deliver it only to authorized users. A DRM system does pretty much the same. But the DRM system handles rights objects instead of content objects. Put simply, rights objects are used to control the use of content objects after delivery. I am convinced that any next-generation Content Management Environment has to provide solid DRM features soon. Therefore, CoreMedia is one of the world's most innovative CMS companies.

And no, CoreMedia has never been just a CMS company. Here is why:

1. Content Management means a lot of different things to different people. Our CMS competitors were happy to store and manage various types of files, especially HTML pages. CoreMedia was not. For us content has to be handled smarter than as files or documents. Therefore, CoreMedia invented an object-oriented content object modeling to define the semantics of the stored information. HTML-pages and documents are the results of some business-logic dynamically selecting and transforming various pieces of content. We tried to highlight this, when we called it CoreMedia Smart Content Technology a few years ago. This it not classical Content Management like Vignette, Documentum, Interwoven or RedDot define it. So, CoreMedia has never been only a CMS company.

2. Static content is of little value. To generate real value content and transactions have to be tightly interconnected. Content may be used to sell products, to enable business processes, to create entertainment services, to answer questions in a call center or to build interactive services. The CoreMedia CMS product is designed to enable the seamless integration of content and transactions. Nearly every CoreMedia CMS customer uses this capability to create highly innovative new services. So, CoreMedia CMS is not only a CMS, it is more. CoreMedia Content Application Platform described it very well five years ago.

3. Classical CMS is not enough anymore. What Enterprises really need is a powerful, flexible and highly-scaleable platform to create, maintain and deliver attractive digital services to their customers, employees, partners, shareholders, and to the public. Enterprises need something we might call a Service Delivery Platform, like the Telecommunication industry already does. CoreMedia has worked hard to implement this bold vision for years now. CoreMedia's Services Delivery Platform integrates CMS, Multi-Channel Content Delivery, Multi-DRM, Transaction Control, various specialized services, Web 2.0 building blocks and a powerful development environment. The Next Generation CMS will be known as SDP and CoreMedia is again one of the leading innovators.

To keep a long story short: If you want to be able to innovate, to create attractive new interactive service all the time, CoreMedia is the right partner for you. The CoreMedia Service Delivery Platform (SDP) offers superior CMS, DRM, and more. Is CoreMedia still a CMS company? Yes and no. CoreMedia is a future-of-CMS company.