RedDot Solutions

	RedDot Solutions AG Industriestraße 11 D-26121 Oldenburg Germany Fon +49 441 93578-0 Fax +49 441 93578-88 E-mail info@RedDot.de Internet: www.reddot.de

Corporate Profile

Over the past ten years, RedDot Solutions AG has established itself as a leading vendor of content management technology. RedDot’s customers comprise more than 1,000 enterprises and organisations who use RedDot software products to maintain and manage over 3,000 Web sites and intranets. With around 700 installations, RedDot is already the market leader in Europe. According to a study by the iBusiness information service, 30% of all Web site operators listed by the independent advertising watchdog IVW, who use a commercial CMS, opted for RedDot (iBusiness Executive Summary 17/2002).

RedDot Solutions is based in Oldenburg in Northern Germany and operates subsidiaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland; RedDot employs some 115 staff worldwide. The majority interest in the profitable company is held by RedDot founder and CEO Niels Metger. Additional interests are held by venture capital firms 3i and Viewpoint Capital Partners, and other private investors.

The Market

As the amount of data generated at any given company increases at a rapid pace, fast access to the right information has become critical to business success. However, not having access to the latest versions of centrally stored important information still presents a problem for many companies. Updating Web sites and intranets can be a time-consuming and costly process; and corporate knowledge may be lost when it is not systematically managed and used. This situation calls for a technology that enables all employees who are in possession of vital information to participate directly in the content, document and knowledge management process. Information and documents need to be quickly and easily managed, made available and used corporate-wide, and integrated into projects and processes.

A recent Meta Group survey of 400 companies confirmed that companies are aware of the situation. It revealed a growing interest in software for data archiving and digitalisation in 2003. One important aspect of this development is the trend towards enterprise content management (ECM), which includes both content management (CMS) and document management systems (DMS). Ovum predicts annual growth of 7 % in the ECM market. Analysts have forecast an increase in vendor sales from $ 82 million in 2002 to $ 113 million in 2006 in the German market alone. Germany is the most important Western European market for ECM solutions.

With its Extended Content Management System (XCMS), RedDot Solutions has developed a concept that encompasses not only CMS and DMS, but also business workflow, collaboration and back-end integration.

History

Founded in 1993 by Anke and Niels Metger as InfoTip KG and specialising in the development of city information terminals, RedDot moved into the development of online publishing systems with its "InfoOffice" software in 1995. By 1996 the company had already implemented a large-scale online project using "InfoOffice" for German publishing giant Axel Springer. From that point, RedDot focused on developing its software into the RedDot Content Management Server (CMS). The RedDot SmartEdit Technology enables users to create and update content on the intranet or Internet without requiring special technical knowledge. Due to the enormous success of the RedDot brand, the company changed its name to RedDot Solutions AG in April 2001.

The Products

The RedDot Extended Content Management Suite (XCMS) provides a comprehensive, complete solution for all document- and content-based processes, ranging from Web content management to document management, business workflow, collaboration, personalisation and finally back-end integration.

The product suite has a modular structure; it can be extended with individual components as required. Key features shared by all RedDot products include ease of use, rapid implementation, integration of existing developments and minimal training requirements. These are the modules in detail:

The RedDot Content Management Server (CMS) serves to create, review, manage and archive content elements from various sources. Major features include multi-level workflows, version management, user administration with LDAP integration, and multilingual capability. RedDot CMS quickly enables companies to efficiently manage their Web site or intranet. RedDot CMS is also available as an "express" version with reduced functionality for smaller projects.

The RedDot Content Collaboration Server (CCS) includes document and knowledge management functionalities, project collaboration, and a global workflow. RedDot CCS allows users to store documents of all types in a folder structure and assign them meta information and authorisations. Thanks to the integration with the RedDot Content Management Server (CMS), information can be published simultaneously on a Web site and intranet. This enables businesses to centrally manage a large variety of content elements and adapt them for different output channels. RedDot CCS also supports the mapping of corporate processes. For instance, a customer enquiry coming in via the corporate Web site can trigger a task that is automatically routed to the correct person in the company. Employees constantly have their task list, the latest news, e-mails or other relevant documents at their fingertips in their working environment.

The RedDot Content Personalization Server (CPS)is a platform-independent system based on XML/XSL and Java, which supports the user-specific delivery of content and the definition and administration of user profiles. RedDot CPS allows a real-time analysis of user behaviour to determine visitors’ interests and create user profiles step by step (implicit personalisation). Alternatively, registered users can define their own profiles, thus indicating what content they consider particularly important (explicit personalisation). As a result, each Web or intranet page can be composed to meet the respective requirements of a user (customer, staff, supplier etc.) in the best possible fashion.

The RedDot Content Integration Server (CIS)is a Java-based, platform­-independent framework; like RedDot CPS, it is based on open standards such as J2EE and XML/XSL. Developers can use the CIS Open API to access all objects (such as users, content, sessions, etc.) and edit them in proprietary applications. This approach makes it easy to implement custom applications such as e-shops or online booking systems, and to integrate external applications. The RedDot CIS Application Portal also integrates content management, business data and processes in a uniform user interface. Integration with enterprise portals (e.g. SAP, IBM or Sybase) is implemented using RedDot CIS.

Customers and Partners

RedDot Solutions relies on more than 300 multimedia agencies and systems houses around the world as distribution and implementation partners. It has a customer base of over 1,000 organisations and companies from all sectors, including the banking and insurance sector, the media and service industries, trade and commerce, telecommunications, utilities companies, tourism and the public sector.