JustSystems Announces DITA Maturity Model Co-Authored With IBM

Industry's First Graduated Methodology for Implementing Darwin
Information Typing Architecture to be Featured in Joint Webinar
NEW YORK--(Business Wire)--
JustSystems, Inc., the largest independent software vendor in
Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management
technologies, today announced the availability of the "DITA Maturity
Model," which was co-authored with IBM and defines the industry's
first graduated, step-by-step methodology for implementing Darwin
Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The co-authored maturity model
will be introduced in a JustSystems and IBM joint webinar on February
5.

"DITA makes sense wherever content is highly branded or regulated
and broadly leveraged, from technical documents to marketing
materials, regulatory filings, customer communications and beyond,"
said Paul Wlodarczyk, vice president of solutions consulting at
JustSystems. "The DITA Maturity Model recognizes that each
organization is adopting DITA at its own pace. So, the model starts
from square one, laying out the key steps that any organization can
take to successfully adopt DITA."

"DITA is emerging as one of the preferred approaches for document
authoring and publishing due to its cost and efficiency benefits,"
said Ken Bisconti, vice president, IBM ECM products and strategy. "To
greater leverage content reuse, more technical publication
organizations are making the move to content management systems, where
DITA becomes an increasingly important component. The DITA Maturity
Model will help provide organizations with a methodology, best
practices and success criteria for a graduated, stepwise path to full
exploitation of DITA."

A Stepwise Approach to DITA Migration

One of DITA's most attractive features is its support for
incremental adoption. Users can start quickly and easily with DITA
using a subset of its capabilities, and then add investment over time
as their content strategy evolves and expands to cover more
requirements and content areas. However, this continuum of adoption
has also resulted in confusion, as communities at different stages of
adoption claim radically different numbers for cost of migration and
return on investment.

Authored by DITA experts Michael Priestley of IBM Corporate User
Technologies and Amber Swope of JustSystems, the DITA Maturity Model
addresses this confusion by dividing DITA adoption into six levels,
each with its own required investment and associated return on
investment. Users can assess their own capabilities and goals relative
to the model and choose the initial adoption level appropriate for
their needs and schedule. The six levels of DITA adoption include.

-- Level 1: Topics. The most minimum DITA adoption requires the
migration of the current XML content sources.

-- Level 2: Scalable Reuse. The major activity at this level is
to break down the content in topics that are stored as
individual files and use DITA maps to collect and organize the
content into reusable units for assembly into specific
deliverables.

-- Level 3: Specialization and Customization. Now, users expand
the information architecture to be a full content model, which
explicitly defines the different types of content required to
meet different author and audience needs and specify how to
meet these needs using structured, typed content.

-- Level 4: Automation and Integration. Once content is
specialized, users can leverage their investments in semantics
with automation of key processes and begin tying content
together even across different specializations or authoring
disciplines.

-- Level 5: Semantic Bandwidth. As DITA diversifies to occupy
more roles within an organization, a cross-application,
cross-silo solution that shares DITA as a common semantic
currency lets groups use the toolset most appropriate for
their content authoring and management needs.

-- Level 6: Universal Semantic Ecosystem. As DITA provides for
scalable semantic bandwidth across content silos and
applications, a new kind of semantic ecosystem emerges:
Semantics that can move with content across old boundaries,
wrap unstructured content, and provide validated integration
with semi-structured content and managed data sources.

The upcoming webinar, "The DITA Maturity Model: Fast-Tracking Your
Enterprise Content and XML Adoption Strategy" will be held Tuesday,
February 5, 2008, at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET. Sponsored by KMWorld
Magazine, the webinar will be moderated by KMWorld publisher Andy
Moore and will feature DITA Maturity Model authors Amber Swope,
principal consultant at JustSystems and Michael Priestly, lead IBM
DITA architect, IBM Corporate User Technologies. To attend the
webinar, please visit
http://www.kmworld.com/webinars/justsystems/05FEB2008.

For more information on JustSystems, please visit
http://na.justsystems.com. For more information on IBM, please visit
http://www.ibm.com.

About JustSystems

JustSystems is a leading global software provider with a 27-year
history of successful innovation in office productivity, information
management, and consumer and enterprise software. With over 2,500
customers worldwide and annual revenues over $110M, the company is
continuing a global expansion strategy that includes the launch of its
new enterprise software offering called xfy (pronounced 'x-fie'), and
XMetaL content lifecycle solutions. JustSystems has worldwide office
locations including global headquarters in Tokyo, and regional offices
in New York, Palo Alto, Vancouver, and London. The company currently
employs over 1,000 people. Major strategic partnerships include IBM,
Oracle and EMC. For more information, please visit
http://na.justsystems.com.

TECHMarket Communications for JustSystems, Inc.
Dottie O'Rourke, 650-344-1260
Dottie@TECHMarket.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008