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Kas Thomas

Open Text goes to the (eye) candy store

10-Apr-2009

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Information Architecture, Selecting Technology, Media Management

Until Open Text came along and bought the company (in a deal announced earlier this week), Toronto-based Vizible Corporation was not exactly (ahem...) visible in the 3D-interface space, its most noteworthy accomplishment being a 3D web browser project (dubbed "Pogo") undertaken in conjunction with AT&T. That project is now defunct, but meanwhile Open Text finds itself in possession of a 15-person R&D firm with one patent and a technology that looks, at first glance, like Apple's Coverflow UI on steroids.

The glitziness of Vizible's browsing interface begs the question of why traditionally conservative ECM giant Open Text  would suddenly take an interest in G-U-eye candy. The answer is, maybe it's not just eye candy. Any user interface technology that runs on point-and-touch handheld devices (but also desktop PCs and others), and can stand direct comparison to iPhone's Coverflow UI, is something to be taken quite seriously, particularly if you're a content-technology giant with high aspirations in social media, multichannel publishing, and Digital Asset Management (as Open Text is).

Vizible presents tiles (representing text documents, spreadsheet files, rich-media files, or files of any kind) to the user in one of a number of 3D motifs, ranging from Vista Flip 3D style arrangements to spinning globes, grids, and virtual conveyor belts. The tiles are "actionable" in the sense that clicking into one can bring up a browsable preview of the file (including movie playback), or cause the tile to spawn new tiles (each one representing a preview of content inside the file), or cause tiles to rearrange themselves and form new proximity relationships based on relatedness, among other possibilities. At the same time, the system captures analytics that can be used to drive personalization. In a world where interactivity and personalization are key drivers of adoption and stickiness, technology of the Vizible kind becomes potentially strategic in importance if you're selling state-of-the-art Web Content Management tools to some of the biggest companies in the world.

It also doesn't hurt to have a powerful, eyepleasing front end to your DAM system. Open Text's Artesia DAM system (which will soon lose the "Artesia" name, by the way) has been in need of a facelift for some time. When and if Artesia gets the Vizible treatment, it will give Open Text's DAM customers a whole new way of looking at the product (literally), and maybe a new way of looking at Open Text itself.

Open Text, it turns out, is not the only DAM player working hard right now to modernize its products' front end. The rest of that story can be found, of course, in our Digital and Media Asset Management Report (which you can subscribe to here). Also watch this space; we'll give you a peek into the latest new developments (and what we think of those developments) right here, as always.