Straker who, asks content manager

US content management company Interwoven, which has high hopes of getting its first government client in New Zealand, professes to not have heard of local market contender Straker Interactive.

Auckland-based Straker, whose product is Shado, and former rival Net4Business, also of Auckland, are teaming up for a combined assault on the Asia-Pacific market. Straker head Grant Straker says the move is intended to propel the company into dominance in the region.

But Interwoven Australasia managing director Kyle McManus, asked last week if he knew of Straker, was unaware of where it fits in the market. Interwoven sees its competitors as Vignette and Documentum.

Interwoven has two New Zealand customers, dairy company Fonterra and Contact Energy, but McManus looks to a potential government presence as a reference site for further business in the public sector. The unidentified prospect is in education, but is not the Ministry of Education.

“Over half our business in Australia is in government,” McManus says.

Interwoven deals in “enterprise content management”, seeking to bring together all an organisation’s documents, files and applications in a single repository, with metadata overlaying it, making it easier to find. Unlike many content management companies, Interwoven considers application code as “content” on a par with data. This allows, for example, all the content relevant to a website, including the applications and applets, to be stored in the same place.

Shado’s claim to fame is that it is based on ColdFusion MX, a Java version of the web application development tool. According to Straker, that’s catching the eye of potential UK customers, including the BBC.

The Net4Business deal means the end of the line for that company’s Turnkey content manager. The arrangement is intended to give Straker access to Net4Business’s regional distribution network.