Ford Motor Company has signed a deal to use Microsoft's Content
Management Server 2001 as the content management solution for its
Ford.com Web site.
Content Management Server, which Microsoft acquired from EnCompass
Labs in May last year, features Web site development and management
capabilities, template-based content publishing, content workflow,
scheduling and archiving and dynamic content delivery.
At its TechEd conference in New Orleans next week, Microsoft will
show off tighter integration between Content Management Server and
its SharePoint through an Integration Pack, which will be
downloadable from the Microsoft Developers Network. The Integration
pack is expected to be available at the end of April.
"The tighter integration makes it easier to share documents with
SharePoint right out of the box, and also results in improved
document management capabilities and [the ability] to publish those
documents to a Web site," said Chris Ramsey, a product manager on
Microsoft's Content Management Server team.
Microsoft officials said they plan to release the .net version of
the Content Management Server some time in the second half of this
year.
As part of the deal, Ford contracted with Microsoft's Consulting
Services (MCS) to come up with an implementation as well as a
roadmap for the site. Together the two companies were able to
rebuild Ford.com in 13 weeks.
Ford decided on Microsoft's product because it scaled better than
others they considered and for several of its ease-of-use features,
company officials said.
Company officials added they have increased site reliability and
availability to 100% uptime and have decreased exiting hardware
requirements by about 60%.
In related news, Microsoft also announced that its Xbox video game
system business has implemented the Content Management Server 2001
for building, managing, and deploying its Xbox.com Web site.
"We need the ability to keep the site fresh with new content about
Xbox, which is key to drawing new and repeat visitors to Xbox.com.
We think [Content] Management Server makes this process very
efficient and quick because the content producers publish their own
content," said Don Hall, director of Xbox at Microsoft.