Donald A. DePalma

When mankind built the Tower of Babel in its vain attempt to reach heaven, information traveled no farther than the builders' voices could carry it. The small human population on this pre-literate planet communicated its newfound knowledge from mouth to ear. Millennia later, billions of people create enormous amounts of new information daily. Governments spew out crushing heaps of information. Corporations increase the data they store by more than 50 percent every year. To be useful, much of this content needs to be translated into many languages and formats. The European Union alone mandates publication of Community law in 20 languages, more as it expands to the east. Multinational corporations produce websites and publish marketing collateral for dozens of languages. ... (more)

Globalizing an Enterprise Content Architecture

Rushed to deployment under the mantra of "now or never" in the late 1990s, many corporate Web sites have received major makeovers in the last few years. The driving force behind these efforts has been the increased use of the Web to create an active channel of communication with consumers, corporate buyers, resellers, shareholders, and employees. As they integrate these external Web site... (more)

XML and the Transformational Imperative

Many companies complain that they don't get as much value from structured data, documents, and websites (collectively, "content") as they should. They need to convert content assets into increased sales, lower costs, and better customer service. DePalma characterizes these demands as the "transformational imperative." Using an automotive manufacturing case study to demonstrate what evolv... (more)