SII enters groupware arena

System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, long a provider of "big iron" newspaper systems, has announced it will market a new editorial "groupware environment" based on IBM's Lotus Notes.

The announcement, made last month at the IFRA conference and trade show in Lyon, France, said SII would co-develop a system that has been written by Associated Newspapers of London, publishers of The Mail, Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard.

The publisher has had more than 700 seats of a traditional SII System/55 for more than a decade and has used Digital Technology International's PageSpeed as a pagination environment. In 1996, Associated began looking at nontraditional systems for publishing a newspaper (and in the process, consulted with The Cole Group, publishers of this newsletter).

"The question has been asked," said SII Chief Executive Frank Washington, "'What's in the best interest of our existing customers as well as our new customers?' It's been clear for some time that we don't have all the answers and we don't have an R&D [research and development] capacity to build all this stuff on our own."

In a phone conversation, Washington and Mike Lee, SII's executive vice president of worldwide sales who is based in England, both emphasized that the new Lotus Notes-based system would be an addition to the existing product line and that SII would continue to market its Tandem-based System/77 products.

Lee emphasized that there is an easy transition from a System/77 to the Notes-based product. "It's retained a high degree of familiarity," he said. He also said it was "a way to move SII to an open environment."

Lee said that "Notes is well accepted within the newspaper enterprise -- it is an administration vehicle." Many newspapers are using Lotus Notes as a method of running projects as well as using it as an editorial front-end (see The Cole Papers, September 1997).

And, though a little avant garde in 1996, there are now a small -- but significant -- number of companies providing Lotus Notes-based editorial solutions, including NewsEngin of St. Louis (in conjunction with DeskNet of New York), Dalai of Mexico and CoDesCo of Germany (see The Cole Papers, April 1998, June 1998, August 1998).

Though SII demonstrated the Associated-Lotus Notes product at IFRA using Adobe PageMaker as a page layout environment, it is assumed that the system will adopt Adobe's new K2 page layout product for pagination. Sources inside the company also suggested Quark XPress might be offered as a page layout choice.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

"Business managers in traditional industries who think of technology as more of a nuisance than a benefit should be concerned. ... Many executives continue to believe that they are 'not in the technology business' and that they might just as well outsource their information technology needs. This is like an athlete saying that he is not in the strength business or the coordination business. As the marketplace continues to evolve, these naysayers might as well say that they are not in the business of being in business."
-- J. William Gurley, Above The Crowd, Oct. 12, 1998

CIOs: At the New York Times, Michael Williams has been named vice president and chief information officer; previously Williams was vice president of information technology and chief technology officer of Seagram Co.'s Spirits and Wine Group. Before Seagram he worked for Aetna Life and Casualty Co. and Emery Air Freight Corp. ... At the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, John Suchecki has been given the title of vice president; he continues as the paper's chief information officer. ...

Real bits: At The Sun of Baltimore, Lisa Lovullo has been named director of planning for new business development; previously she had been director of electronic news and information services. ... At The Herald-Standard in Uniontown, Pa., Albert Sloan has been named production director; previously he had been production computer operator. ... At the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, Sharon Roberts has been named assistant managing editor for presentations; previously, Roberts had been AME/design at the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif. ...

Vendor ventures: At American Computer Innovators Inc. of Amherst, Mass., Warren Huff has been named president and chief executive; previously Huff was a lawyer at a Dallas-based law firm (which, uncoincidentally, took Dell public; you figure it out). Founder Scott Killoh becomes chairman of the board and chief operating officer. ... At CareerPath.com of Los Angeles, Philip Viener has been named to the newly created position of vice president of marketing; previously Viener was senior director of discount retail acceptance for the U.S. region at MasterCard International and was vice president and general manager of Pacific West Cable TV in Sacramento. ... At ECRM Inc. of Tewksbury, Mass., Vincent Cooper has been named vice president of sales, the Americas; previously Cooper was Ecrm's director of sales, the Americas, director of OEM sales and national sales manager. Prior to joining ECRM, he was with Varityper and Xerox. ... Also at ECRM, Lee Merryweather has been appointed area sales manager for the Northwest (including Northern California); previously Merryweather was the regional sales manager at Prepress Solutions Inc., and before that he worked with Tegra-Varityper as an account manager. ... At Knight Ridder/Tribune Photo Service of Washington, D.C., Harry Walker has been named director of photography; deputy director since 1995, previously Walker was weekend and features photo editor at the Kansas City Star. ...

Confabs: The JavaScript Conference '98 will be held Nov. 9-10 in Monterey, Calif. Speakers include Brendan Eich of Netscape Communications Inc. (inventor of JavaScript) and author Danny Goodman (JavaScript Bible). For more information, call Thunder Lizard Productions at (206) 285-0305 or e-mail javascript@thunderlizard.com. ... The Southern Newspaper Publishers Association's 95th annual conference will be Nov. 15-18 in Boca Raton, Fla. Scheduled are Kenneth Berents (an analyst talking about newsprint) and the NAA's Jim Conaghan (discussing on-line classifieds), plus a debate featuring Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. More information is available at the group's web site (http://www.snpa.org/) or by calling (404) 256-0444. ... The Editor and Marketeer Conference and Expo will be Nov. 18-20 in Vienna, Austria. Sponsored by the World Association of Newspapers, the theme of the meeting will be "new content development." For more information, call (011) {33} 1 47 42 85 00 or send e-mail to contact_us@wan.asso.fr. ... The CTI Expo will be Dec. 1-4 in San Jose. Covering computer telephony, data/voice convergence, Internet telephony and call center solutions, speakers include John Dvorak of PC Magazine and Deborah Ingram of AT&T. For more information, call (877) 428-4397 or send e-mail to ctiexpo@tmcnet.com. ... The Customer Relationship Management Conference will be Dec. 1-3 in Boston. Topics include "How New Advances in Technology Are Creating the Virtual Sales Organization" and "Avoiding the 'Hidden' Costs of Application Integration." For more information, call (978) 470-3880. ... The Digital Content Creation Conference and Exposition will be Dec. 2-4 in Los Angeles. Session titles include "Training Techniques: Your Secret Weapon," "Bringing Your Website to Life: Producing 3D Media for the Web" and "Your Hardware Needs: NT or UNIX?" For more information, call (218) 723-9130 or send e-mail to dccinfo@advanstar.com. ... The 26th Annual Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar will be Dec. 4-6 in Decatur, Ga. Speakers include Allan Detrich of The Blade of Toledo, Ohio; Dirck Halstead of Time magazine; Bill Steber of The Tennessean of Nashville, and Jody Steck, formerly of the Orange County Register in Southern California. Optional workshops include those covering the photo manager's job, documentary photography, layout and design, and Adobe Photoshop 5.0. For more information, call (404) 982-9359 or send e-mail to info@photojournalism.org. ... The Digital News Forum (subtitled "The End of Journalism?) will be Dec. 8-9 in Atlanta. Speakers include Thomas Curley of USA Today, Mark Teren of washingtonpost.com and Rocco Rossi of the Toronto Star. For more information, call Jupiter Communications at (212) 780-6060, ext. 142, or e-mail hema@jup.com. ...#

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.