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MARK LOGIC: GETTING THE VALUE OUT OF XML
By David Worlock
April 4, 2007
Those who bet on the outcomes of technological progress need a certain steely determination and courage. Certainly every publishing pioneer of a decade ago who nominated XML as the future must have had moments of doubt as production costs mounted, and a considerable band of “nay-sayers” began to wonder whether this was the future, or at least, whether this was yet appropriate. And a considerable element of the pioneer bet was on the availability of software at the end of the mass conversion process which could effectively utilise the structures and the flexibility inherent in XML to reduce the cost of product and service development. In this wager they were justified, as more and more tools and process environments have come to the market in the past 3-4 years to support XML initiatives. Mark Logic, based in San Mateo, CA and employing 65 people, is typical of this outgrowth, and significant for publishers in that it targets publishing and government as its key vertical segments on the way to building the $100 million topline company that it sees emerging in the next three years.
The environment into which Mark Logic and its peers are emerging is growing more helpful all the time. The recognition of XQuery (P) as an official W3C “recommendation” is one step in the right direction. Microsoft Office 2007 XML creates native, XML storage formats. Some industry enthusiasts (www.flworfound.org) lobby for a free and open XQuery engine “configurable down to a few hundred K, to be embeddable in browsers, servers and mobile devices”, with the ultimate aim of supplying users with an “instant, complete XQuery/XML HTTP and web services server” (Roger Bamford, in CRN 6 December 2006).
As we emerge into this type of environment, the opportunities for players like Mark Logic to add value in the publishing process will strengthen. Many major publishers now see themselves pushing hard into workflow integration and process management as they bring third party and customer content together with smart tools and solutions. Here the natural competitors are the mighty players in RDBMS marketplaces, yet even the largest players make little impact on Oracle or SAP in the current generation. It is predictable, however, that as service levels increase, and competitive barriers in software development diminish, this will be an active area of competitive pressure or strategic alliance development. Those same major enterprise software players, especially when aligned with enterprise search engines, are also the natural competitors for the Mark Logic generation of software developers, and publishers will find common cause in working with these players on solutions developments which carve out niche dominance in important professional publishing verticals like STM, legal, tax and regulatory, and education and training.
Above all, the focus of the generation of players headed by Mark Logic and Xyleme is on content. We are now past the data-handling world in which Oracle built its original business and emerging into a publishing content environment dominated by XML, and the emergence of XQuery and XML content servers. Publishers will see the rapid growth of players like Mark Logic as a justification of their faith in XML.
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