Ann Rockley writes this week in CMS Watch about the partnership between IBM and Quark, which in their words brings "DITA to the masses." DITA is an XML content standard that enables you to reuse and repurpose content more easily. It was originally developed by IBM before being sent to OASIS where it became an official XML standard.

Rockley points out the irony that IBM, the company that developed DITA and has a substantial enterprise content management presence as the owner of Filenet, has never really implemented a DITA solution within its own systems until now (and it took a partnership with a third party to get them there).

She points to several trends driving DITA adoption including better and easier to use editors like Quark's (no surprise that IBM chose them, I guess). DITA can help companies organize and reuse content, so that they can finally have the promise of writing once and using many times. But it's not always an easy journey to get there. As Rockley says, the idea of bringing DITA to the masses has more than a touch of hyperbole to it. It still takes hard work and a high-level vision to get from installation to a smoothly flowing DITA-driven system and there are always going to be bumps in the road getting to that final destination, but if you can get there, it will streamline content creation and production.

For more information:
- see Rockley's post on CMS Watch