 Publishing  Current workflow and technology solutions are poorly adapted to the challenges of cross-media content delivery In the race towards new publishing platforms and workflow models, a gap is appearing between high-end system integrators and shrinkwrapped solutions Publishers will need to support the basics of cross-media publishing, even if they only focus on print |
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 What is happening? The publishing industry is currently based on technology that is over a decade old - not very long for an industrial tool, but an eternity in the digital realm This means that the application software and workflow structures in place are not at all adapted to the challenges of the future cross-media world Many publishing operations are questioning their current setup. While there is no extreme urgency to change what works right now, in the midterm it will be essential to find a new publishing platform which will take the challenges of the online world into account Analysis The publishing world is headed for the what could be called the ‘second wave’ of Desktop Publishing. During the first wave, which started with the arrival of the Macintosh, desktop page layout tools and Postscript, most publishing companies converted their print production to computer -based tools. Operations with complex workflow problems, such as newspapers, moved to or continued to use high-end editorial systems - but this currently concerns only a fraction of the overall number of companies involved in publishing. Now the situation has evolved considerably. Publishing is no longer only concerned with producing printed pages, but is now about managing content and adapting it to a variety of formats, ranging from the printed page to WAP-enabled phones. These are not the only challenges the industry is facing. Even without considering the cross-media aspect of things, hardware platforms are evolving continuously, and so is the system software necessary to use them. In addition, the Operating Systems landscape is changing profoundly: Microsoft has launched Windows 2000, and Apple is readying MacOS X. In parallel, the tools which have been used to date are mature, but are not necessarily adapted to today’s challenges. Most publishing setups are based on software applications which are over a decade old. To accompany the evolution of hardware and operating system, it will be necessary to rethink the software aspect of publishing. And, increasingly, the ASP model of software distribution is being discussed as a potential alternative for today’s way of working. In fact, during the first wave of Desktop Publishing, things were (relatively) easy: you had to find the right software package, solve the problems linked to output, and then you were ready to publish. Well, it wasn’t really that easy - but at least it was much more straightforward than the challenges technology managers in publishing houses are facing today. Conceptually speaking, it is not so much of a problem. In fact, one vision of the future wave of publishing has been the center of heated discussions at technology events for a while: an information-centric publishing model, where content elements are stored in a central database, ready to be adapted to a variety of output formats thanks to rich data-encoding standards (mostly XML). Of course, solutions of that kind exist. In fact, one could argue that part of the problem is that there are too many solutions. High-end system vendors are competing with each other to get attention for their costly and complex solutions. Low-end vendors are scrambling to provide a simpler and less expensive solution to the same problems. High-end systems are far too complex for many publishing setups to implement. Low-end solutions are somewhat simpler, but face the problem of critical mass. While no one has a problem with buying a software application from a small vendor, buying a complete integrated system requires confidence in the provider’s longevity and capacity to provide mid-term development and support. Compared to most desktop publishing solutions in current use, what is required today is exponentially more complex - and only a few vendors have the sheer size to reassure anxious customers that they will have the R&D resources necessary to follow the evolution of the market. Recommendations The picture that emerges from this analysis is not a reassuring one. What the market really needs in the next year or two is something significantly more complex than the solutions currently available from mainstream software publishers such as Adobe or Quark. However, just as now, only a fraction of the market will be financially and technically able to support the complex solutions from some of the big system integrators (without even mentioning the fact that most of these solutions, tailor-made for the newspaper market, are not adaptable enough for a completely web-centric publishing model). And even though a number of publishing companies may not feel directly concerned about the issues bigger companies will be facing, the industry needs to rally around one set of standards and protocols. In short, publishers will need to support the basics of cross-media publishing, even if they only focus on print. The market needs to move on - the whole of the market. But is it ready? Who will provide the next generation solutions? How will they be implemented? The development schedule for application software is such that it will take years before the major applications are fully converted to the emerging new model and a viable new standard emerges. The long and the short of it? Don’t underestimate what is happening. The market is waking up. Many of the bright minds in the industry are working very hard to conceptualize what publishing will be like tomorrow. For the time being there are far more questions than answers - but then again, finding the right questions is a major step towards gaining the answers. Note: Pfeiffer Consulting is currently conducting research for an in-depth report on publishing platforms for the future. Please let us know if you would like to be contacted when the research becomes available. July 7,2000 ©Pfeiffer Consulting 2000. |
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