An interesting discussion with a client this week who is a leading publisher in the field of STM, SOCS and HUMS.

We have been working very productively with this client for some time now. They have a number of highly-regarded, online reference and journal products available to the academic community, delivered on Semantico’s Information Publishing Platform, SIPP.

Recently, they have been using our platform to build microsites which enable them to optimise the value of their content and to showcase particular well-known publications within the wider context of their main offerings. These microsites benefit from cross-searchability, but each has its own look and feel. Quick and easy for the publisher to develop and bring to market, they can be deployed on the platform within a matter of hours, limiting the total outsourced development outlay to a matter of hundreds of pounds rather than thousands.

For all of these reasons above, the facility to offer these microsites is highly-popular with the publisher in question; however it has also led them to ask if we aren’t ‘shooting ourselves in the foot’ with respect to potential lost development?

It’s a fair question …

For us, there’s no issue about providing clients with the tools to self develop. DIY is a factor of our landscape, with new free and open source tools coming on the market every day, against which we have no aspiration to compete. We see our core value for clients in helping them to find the best solution for what they need to accomplish, in ways that suit the needs of their organization and marketplace.

All our toolsets are built with scalability and flexibility in mind, and the advice we provide, if not exactly vendor-neutral, is provided with an eye not only to how they’re going to publish online today but also how they can leverage their investment with us going forward, and meet the changing needs of the business with minimal extra outlay.

So while the publisher above’s concern for our financial wellbeing is touching, he shouldn’t be too worried. It’s not altruism at work here necessarily, but the sign of a higher aspiration: we want to be not just the development partner of choice, but – more than that – the online publishing partner of choice. In a fast-developing, emerging marketspace, we feel that’s a safer place to be.