With Ensemble, DTI Helps Newspaper Data Flow Freely

Available in .pdf

Digital Technology International (DTI) is a leading vendor of newspaper publishing software, with operations around the world. They are committed to helping their clients compete successfully in the modern news dissemination business, which means going far beyond paper and ink. “Our customers need to pull information from a number of disparate sources, and deliver it via a number of different media,” says Byron Oldham, Vice President of Engineering at DTI. “That’s a complicated integration job. But by using Ensemble to enrich our applications with integration capabilities, we’re making it much easier for newspapers to stay competitive in the information age.”

“...using Ensemble to enrich our applications with integration capabilities, we’re making it much easier for newspapers to stay competitive in the information age.”

- Byron Oldham
Vice President of Engineering
DTI

Ensemble Enables a New Data Paradigm

Ensemble has allowed DTI to develop an innovative concept for managing newspaper data – Liquid Media™. “Just as water can be poured into any size or shape container, Liquid Media can be put into a newsprint page, a Web site, a mobile phone, and it automatically assumes a format appropriate for the delivery system,” Oldham says. “And, Liquid Media can be drawn from multiple sources. It could be a wire service story, a digital picture from a reporter’s cell phone, an ad layout containing text and graphics. All the information that used to live in separate databases at individual newspapers can be ‘liquefied’ and ‘flowed’ between multiple delivery outlets.”

Customers Realize Benefits Sooner

The Liquid Media architecture is built around Ensemble’s connection, abstraction, and data transformation capabilities. Using Ensemble, DTI’s solutions can access data from any source and transform it on the fly as it is “flowed” to where it is needed. According to Oldham, one major advantage of Liquid Media is that it frees data from the isolated “silos” of existing systems, without the requirement that those systems standardize on a data format. “Sure, there are some advantages to standardization,” Oldham says, “but it’s almost impossible to achieve completely, and it can take years to convert every database at every newspaper in a chain. With Ensemble, we can provide value to our customers incrementally, and very quickly.”

For example, a newspaper chain might start by using the Liquid Media architecture to update their Web sites in real time. Information from any paper could be made instantly available to any paper’s Web site. Each site could contain a unique mix of stories and information, combined on the spot and conforming to the local Web site format. Next, the chain could “liquefy” its ad content, so that an ad placed in one paper could automatically appear in all papers, and also on the Web sites those papers maintain. Then they might enable classified ad searching via a local Web site to include classifieds throughout the entire newspaper chain. “Our customers don’t have to standardize their data before they can start to exploit it,” says Oldham. “Ensemble gives our applications the ability to pull information from any source.”

Ensemble Helps DTI Reach New Customers

Being able to access any data source has opened up new business opportunities for DTI. Oldham points out that, “The Liquid Media architecture can even connect to applications that do not come from DTI. We’re not forcing prospects to abandon their existing systems, but we are adding value by freeing the data those systems contain. That gives us a new way to approach prospects and to grow our business.”

“With Ensemble, DTI has been able to create a whole new class of modern, connectable applications in an amazingly short period of time.”

- Byron Oldham
Vice President of Engineering
DTI

DTI has already enhanced several of their products with Liquid Media capabilities, and according to Oldham, all future development will be based on Ensemble. “The days of the isolated solution are over,” he says. “In order be competitive, applications will need to connect to all sorts of other applications, both within and without the walls of the enterprise. With Ensemble, DTI has been able to create a whole new class of modern, connectable applications in an amazingly short period of time.”