17 October 2008, Swindon, United Kingdom

Stilo International in conjunction with its customer STMicroelectronics, is preparing to present a frank insight into the real-life challenges and opportunities of adopting the new DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) standard for authoring, producing and delivering technical information. At the upcoming DITA Europe 2008 conference, the two companies will deliver a joint presentation that discloses their experiences in an early European DITA publishing and content migration project. STMicroelectronics is one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers.

DITA Europe 2008 will take place in Munich on November 17-18 and includes both a conference and an associated exhibition.  For organisations involved in developing, producing and delivering technical content, the event provides a good introduction to DITA and a wealth of information about the application and benefits of this XML-based architecture.

Les Burnham, CEO of Stilo International, says: "DITA has attracted a lot of attention because of the flexibility it offers for re-using and sharing content.  But what companies really want to know now is how to overcome the practical challenges of moving across to this new architecture.  We have been working on a complex DITA project at STMicroelectronics for several months and want to give other organisations the opportunity to learn from our practical experiences - gained on this project and with other customers.  We expect to be able to answer questions and address the concerns that many attendees may have about embarking on DITA publishing projects of their own."

STMicroelectronics manages 650,000 pages of active technical documentation, of which 70,000 pages are updated every year.  In addition, a global team of 50 authors produces 100,000 new pages annually.  By migrating to DITA, the company aims to reduce the cost of content development and re-use, ensure the timeliness of published information and improve the consistency and accuracy of content for all its customers.

The presentation at DITA Europe 2008 will explain the strong business case for DITA at STMicroelectronics and discuss the challenges faced by the project team at key stages including:

- Managing the scope of the DITA project
- Communicating the benefits of DITA internally
- Creating style sheets that met requirements without being over-complicated
- Migrating legacy content from FrameMaker
- Helping authors adjust to the new working practices

STMicroelectronics appointed Stilo to consult on content modelling, improve publishing processes, develop new style sheets and handle all of the legacy content migration to DITA.  As a crucial part of the project, STMicroelectronics is piloting Stilo Migrate, a brand new tool that simplifies the migration of legacy documents to DITA and other XML publishing environments.  Initially, the solution allows users to upload Word and FrameMaker documents via the Internet and provides a controlled document conversion workflow with easy-to-follow steps.  By using Stilo Migrate, organisations can both reduce the time required for content migration and improve the accuracy of the process.

Sheila D'Annunzio, Head of Technical Documentation at STMicroelectronics, says: "The Stilo Migrate tool was an important factor in our choice of Stilo to support us in this project.  Unlike conventional migration services, this online tool gives authors hand-on control over how and when they convert their content to DITA.  Documents can be converted in a matter of minutes, thus avoiding the traditional content freeze during the migration process - a definite plus for STMicroelectronics which has a large quantity of content to convert."

Stilo will demonstrate Stilo Migrate at DITA Europe 2008.  The solution is currently undergoing final user testing and is expected to be generally available by the end of 2008.

You can see the joint presentation from Stilo and STMicroelectronics at DITA Europe 2008, on Tuesday 18 November, 10.30am - 11.30am.

Visit www.infomanagementcenter.com/DITAeurope/index.htm to register and see the full conference programme.

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