Ann Rockley, president of The Rockley Group, has certainly earned her Star of Fame in the content management world. With a Master’s degree in Information Science, two decades of content management practice, not to mention having been an instructor of Managing Enterprise Content Management at the University of Toronto, and her successful book on the same topic to round out her portfolio, she recently added another achievement to her list: author of the first CMS Watch report on component content management.

The term “component content management” is relatively new, not well-known, and not yet really understood. Back in the day, Rockley explains, content management started out meaning document management - that is, managing file-level documents, but not the smaller components that come together to make up the file. Then, with the advent of the Web, and because websites became so ubiquitous in the business world, the term content management practically became synonymous for Web Content Management (WCM). Then, as business needs expanded, the term Enterprise Content Management (ECM) was used to include business documents in the mix.

But in all the positionings of the concept, how do you describe the type of content management that helps producers of technical content do their jobs? That group of people has very particular needs to manage structured, re-usable content. Re-use, in that context, means components or chunks, pieces smaller than a file. Finding technology to support that is less commonplace. Companies may say, “We already have a CMS that manages content ‘kind of like that’. And if it’s just XML, why can’t we use the CMS we have?” However, the WCM or ECM systems can’t find, track, manage, or version content components in the ways needed in the world of technical publications. And without the right technology, the trade-off is a lot of wasted time and effort. Hence the name component content management was coined to describe the systems that can manage content in those ways. It’s not well-known yet, but it is getting some traction in the industry; at least now, there is a way to do an internet search for a common term.

Having helped coin the term for this industry segment and having written on the topic, it was only fitting that Rockley write the report for CMS Watch. CMS Watch is an analysts’ firm providing strictly vendor-neutral evaluations of the leading software vendors, analysis of the industry and trends, and advice in areas from how to buy a CMS to technologies to consider in the coming year. This report, due out in early 2008, explains component content management, and reviews the products in this space with the meticulousness that educates and informs business and IT decision-makers alike about their options.

When asked what Rockley predicts as the content management trends for the coming year, a conservative optimism comes through loud and clear. She predicts that companies will look at a wide range of documents within their other organizations, with a view to turning them into smart documents. This trend toward content mining is to get at valuable content that is akin to unused inventory. Corporations have lots of valuable information; their content is their IP. When that information cannot be found or re-used because it is stuck inside documents, it doesn’t provide the company with its worth - and the cumulative cost is often quite a lot. After corporate attempts at making content accessible through tagging, sharing, and other social media technologies, there is now a move to look at the content itself, to make the documents into “smart” content through structured XML authoring.

Another prediction is that DITA will become the standard for technical documentation. As the OASIS co-chair for the DITA Enterprise Business Documents subcommittee, Rockley has watched this movement gain momentum. Structuring content in XML will continue to gain popularity because, she asserts, it is the most intelligent way to create, manage, and deliver content. She qualifies her statement by saying there are select software products that do a fine job without XML, but for the most part, XML is the place to be, particularly when a company has vast amounts of content to process.

Rockley’s final prediction is that companies will start to “get it” this year in that their focus needs to be on users rather than on technologies. Given the economic factors affecting the US economy, 2008 looks like it may be a tough economic year. However, it is during those times that the smartest organizations innovate and survive. Those are the organizations who provide their customers with the best product, service, and information, which means they are focused on customer needs. Tough times have traditionally been the best times for breakthroughs, so it makes sense that this would be another one of those times. And that, Rockley might say, is a Good Thing.