XML: The Necessary Ingredient for Information Publishing

Author: Marc Strohlein, Chief Agility Officer

XML has quietly become pervasive in all aspects of content markup, manipulation, and reuse in its 10 years of existence. Still, many publishers and information providers could exploit more value from it. This report explains XML and its potential applications, portrays the current state of the XML landscape, provides insight for publishers into how others in the information industry are using XML, and hopefully provides a “jolt” to those that have been slow to adopt and exploit XML. The report draws from an Outsell survey fielded in February 2009 that garnered 30 respondents from a cross-section of publishers and information providers, as well as the author’s experience working and speaking with both vendors and practitioners over the life of XML. This report contains:

- A brief XML primer;
- Examples of how XML can be used to deliver custom content to clients or to repurpose content for delivery on different media and devices;
- A table outlining four typical business problems and their XML-based solutions;
- Data about XML use, planned use, and business benefits from Outsell’s survey of publishers and information providers (30 respondents);
- Case studies of four information providers currently using XML;
- Profiles of four vendors that supply XML-based products and services;
- Essential actions for companies beginning to explore using XML.