Following up on earlier communications around its roadmap for the Alterian Content Manager (ACM) product line, Alterian now provides even more details about its upcoming Web Content Management (WCM) product releases.

In parallel, Alterian is currently developing the next release of its Alterian Content Manager – Corporate product, CMC v6.3, as well as a major new release of its Professional and Enterprise edition product, ACM v7. Both CMC 6.3 and ACM v7 are due to be released in the autumn of 2010.

CMC v6.3 features will include 64-bit support for Windows 2008 R1 & R2, as well as support for SharePoint 64-bit in the SharePoint Connector. In addition, a number of known issues will be resolved and a selection of customer requested enhancements implemented, including changes to the JavaScript stripping feature, the ability to search within Edit Source, and additional API methods and Providers.

The next major release of Alterian Content Manager - Enterprise edition, as well as the recently launched Professional edition is designed to include a number of impressive enhancements such as:

• flexible support for branching and parallel workflows, allowing workflows from basic to very advanced to be set up through a graphical user interface
• extensibility of both the web interface and the smart client (desktop) editorial interface, allowing partners and clients to add bespoke functionality to the editorial interface
• Support for Google Chrome as rich (AJAX driven) editorial interface, allowing contribution from an unparalleled variety of browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome
• Enhanced Microsoft Office connectors allowing content contribution and approval to be performed from within Microsoft Word and Outlook.

In addition, based on ACM, Alterian is also working on functionality to publish content directly into social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and others, and to capture and manage responses, allowing social media marketing to comply with internal processes and authorizations.

Arjen van den Akker, Product Marketing Director for Alterian’s Web Content Management products, says: “Alterian has always tried not to follow a “me too” approach when it comes to adding new features to its WCM product line. We believe that the upcoming releases of our WCM products truly offer differentiated feature sets that set us apart from competitors. We do have a very compelling solution when compared to pure play CMS vendors but, in addition, we are in a unique position to help companies take the next step in their maturity model for web content management, allowing them to progressively enter into a true engagement cycle with their audiences. Our campaign management and analytics, social media, and email solutions are crucial parts of that and, these days, cannot be viewed separately from WCM.”