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 The following article is a reprint from the November/December issue of Association Publishing, a publication by the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) and is a follow up of SNAP's Purpose/Process/Politics Conference Session - "Reshaping the Landscape: Learn 60 New Technologies in 60 Minutes."
The first order of business for progressive association publishers in 2009 will be investing in technology to manage massive amounts of electronic data. As website become the primary communication vehicle for associations looking to deliver more interactive - and storage hogging - content such as audio, video, and online presentations, publishers are seeking out inexpensive,
high-performing solutions. So what technologies should your association leverage in 2009? Here are three that top the list.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
The days of the traditional Webmaster are long gone. When the Web first emerged in the early 90s, the Webmaster was usually both technical contact since this person knew HTML as well as the publisher since all Web content flowed through this position. However, as the amount of content grew, the Webmaster became a bottleneck. This is where content management systems (CMS) come to the rescue.
A CMS empowers anyone and everyone in the office with no technical expertise to update the Web site through a simple-to-use Web interface. Many of these interfaces are facsimiles of Microsoft's Word so there is not much training needed for staff. In fact, it's usually a matter of cut and paste, hitting a submit button and the content is formatted automatically for the website.
The best place to start is exploring open source software CMS packages. Check out http://cmsmatrix.org. This website allows you to filter for CMS based on desired functionality such as forums, email newsletter capability, allowing member profiles, etc.
The two most popular open-source CMSs I'd recommend are Drupal at http://drupal.org and Joomla at http://joomla.org. The reason is many consulting firms working with associations realize cost is a factor. Since both these packages are open source, they are free and you pay for just consulting and development time.
High-speed Bandwidth
If your office is connected using a standard T1 connection, you may think it may be sufficient for your Internet needs. Now consider your next generation or present Web site delivering multiple video and audio streams to customers and members, contributors uploading massive files to your FTP server and remote employees connected via virtual private network (VPN) uploading content. The 1.5 Megabit a second (Mbps) a T1 provides will be killed.
Today, there are several broadband alternatives can deliver 10 times the speed of a T1 at 15 Mbps or even double that at 30Mbps. Let's seal the deal -- these options are usually one fifth the cost of a T1. Yes, LESS costly than a T1.
Broadband
options include cable Internet through your local TV cable company, fiber optic lines through mostly Verizon's Fios service or Business Ethernet also known as "last mile Ethernet" through select carriers. Cable is the cheapest at around $100 for 15 Mbps and is the most widely available. Fios is next and usually is around $150 for 30 Mbps. Business Ethernet will only be available where DSL is already installed.
Business Ethernet gets speeds up to 30Mbps and theoretically more by combining several DSL lines to work as one. This option is the most expensive - more than $1000 for up to 8Mpbs but provides the most redundancy since the combined line can still function in case any contributing DSL line goes out.
Regardless of which you choose, be sure to get the "business grade" package which provides two key advantages over consumer grade products: dedicated bandwidth - you're not sharing the line with the neighborhood teenager downloading MP3s and static IPs addresses - this allows you to host Web, FTP and email servers if you wish.
Mass Data Storage
As a consumer, you can buy a 1 Terabyte (TB) hard drive or 1000 gigabytes for less than $200! This pricing ramps up to business grade storage products of up to 4 to 8 TB because you'll definitely need it. Here are the reasons you'll need this much storage - Internet video and audio, higher resolution digital cameras which output files from 8 to 12 mb each and higher quality PDFs in addition to all the files you'll use and store associated with your print publications.
So should you go off to BestBuy, Staples or other electronic stores and grab all the terabyte drives? Since you're a business, again you'll need "business grade" type storage. You'll need to ask your IT department about network attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) solutions that combine multiple hard drives to work as one to provide data security. This is known as redundant array of independent disks or RAID.
You'll want to have at least a RAID5 configuration which, as an example, would use five terabyte drives to give you four terabytes of storage. The extra one terabyte that is seemingly lost is actually used to provide data backup so if any one drives fails, the rest continue to function. You'll just need to replace that failed drive ASAP.
Overwhelmed?
Did all this tech talk overwhelm you? Why not pass this article on to your IT department or vendor and empower them to do a little research on your behalf to figure out the cost and time of implementation. At least now you understand that CMSs, mass redundant storage, and high-speed broadband will be a small investment compared to the huge benefit of being comfortably equipped for the present and future of online publishing.
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