Products: Enterprise RSS Engine

Enter RSS. An acronym for Real Simple Syndication, RSS enables information delivery based on recipient subscriptions, rather than senders hitting the Send button. RSS notification is also event-driven, rather than send-driven. If I specify that I want to be notified when a document or blog is updated, I get a notification whenever that event occurs – “sending” is automatic, not dependent on someone remembering to notify me.

RSS is a powerful alternative to email for knowledge delivery. Spammers cannot reach me through RSS, because I don’t subscribe to spam feeds. The noise of what other people think I “ought to” read is replaced by my own decisions about what I want to receive.

Combined with the other elements of the SearchScience suite, Enterprise RSS is a fundamental tool for creating breakthrough knowledge sharing and collaboration within an enterprise.

  SearchScience Research Highlights

In our research we have spoken with hundreds of knowledge workers about the need to get content change notifications delivered in a timely manner. Embedding RSS into the enterprise context is a key part of the needs we have heard described over and over. Here are a few highlights from those conversations.

• If I had known about that new Gartner report in time for that sales meeting, we would have won that contract.
• I know there are experts all around me, but I don’t know when they generate anything new I can use.
• I subscribe to feeds from dozens of blogs on the Internet to learn about changes in competitive products, why can’t I do the same thing inside the company to learn about changes in our own products?
• Critical customer news and information delivered to my mobile device would make a big difference in my ability to close a deal.
• If I could fine tune the information I subscribe to by topic, product, competitor, or customer, it would be extremely helpful.
• I don’t want to be constantly asking for updated information. I’d much rather subscribe to an RSS feed and have the changes come to me when they happen.

  Differentiating Features

The SearchScience Enterprise RSS Engine has been designed from the ground up to support integrated access to RSS feeds from both inside and outside the organization. It exploits all the capabiities of the other SearchScience modules and includes numerous features optimized for intra-enterprise use:

• Enterprise taxonomy-driven RSS feed identification, publishing, and subscription
• Centralized Enterprise RSS Engine administration – ability to set up, monitor, and manage all enterprise RSS feeds and channels from one central administrative console
• Multi-level RSS security – control over ability to see, receive, or publish RSS feeds based on multiple membership criteria (workgroup, community, organization, region, job type, etc.)
• Personalized RSS feed suggestions based on user profile attributes – job type, area of specialization, process participation, process experience, product focus, work unit, department, unit, geography, etc.
• Centralized specification of required feeds for individuals, members of a work group, members of an organizational unit, or members of a community
• Ability to assemble lightweight workflows based on receipt and publishing of RSS feeds
• Integration of Enterprise RSS feeds into existing workflow systems
• Ability to access external (public) RSS feeds as well as internal feeds
• Ability to subscribe to feeds based on Expert Finder results
• One-click publishing and subscribing to feeds for blogs, documents, web sites, enterprise application outputs, periodic search results, and community network resources
• Ability to subscribe to changes in Microsoft SharePoint Portals
• Multi-mode RSS notification and alert mechanisms – desktop pop-ups, home page posting, email notification, etc.

  Engine Technical Specifications

• Integrates with existing Security IT LDAP/Active Directory Infrastructure
• Can we rapidly deployed on easy to use off the shelf hardware
• Easy to use and maintain
• Deployed on Industry standard J2EE Application Servers
• Complaint with existing standards for Blog publishing including RSS 0.9x, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom
• Supports Secure RSS feeds
• Supports large volume high-throughput RSS feeds via multi-threaded publish/subscribe listener architecture
• Supports Subscription to HTML and file based sources using custom adapters
• Supports fault-tolerant parser for corrupt and broken feeds

  Hardware Requirements

PC with 1 Ghz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 800MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system); Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended

• 1 gigabytes (Gb) of RAM or higher recommended
  (512 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
• 1.5 gigabytes (Gb) of available hard disk space
• CD-ROM or DVD drive

  Software Requirements