For the plum, see Prunus salicina

Prunus salicina

Prunus salicina , commonly called the Chinese plum or Japanese plum, is a small deciduous tree native to China...

.

Jadu is a software company based in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and a proprietary web content management system

Web content management system

A web content management system is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease...

 of the same name, used for non-technical management of web based content, data and electronic documents.

Jadu also develops other web applications related to document management, search and publishing. The company is based in the UK, with an operating company focused on professional services and support in the USA.

Company history

The company was founded by Suraj Kika and Richard Chamberlain in 1999. The system was first developed for the Department of Trade and Industry (now Department of Energy and Climate Change

Department of Energy and Climate Change

The Department of Energy and Climate Change is a British government department created on 3 October 2008 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take over some of the functions of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs...

) for the UK consultation portal for Oil and Gas and Renewable Energy.

The software developed for the Offshore-SEA website, an environmental portal managed by geological and oceanographic specialists Geotek

Geotek

Geotek is a UK company that designs and manufactures specialised geological and oceanographic equipment.-Company history:Founded by Peter Schultheiss in 1989, Geotek was incorporated in 1994 when Quentin Huggett joined as a company director and the business moved from Haslemere, Surrey to its...

, then became Jadu Content Management Engine Version 1 — and was implemented for scientific organisations in the UK as a means to publish complex electronic documents generated in MS Word and PDF formats.

In 2001 the system was redeveloped in PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

 and MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

 and a Version 2 was deployed for UK Government and Local Authorities. Based on the e-GIF

E-GIF

e-GIF is the UK eGovernment Interoperability Framework.It is an ambitious exercise intended to resolve and prevent problems arising from incompatible content of different computer systems.-What are the aims of e-GIF?:...

 standards, and using XForms

XForms

XForms is an XML format for the specification of a data processing model for XML data and user interface for the XML data, such as web forms...

, the system was deployed at the beginning of the first acceptance and adoption of open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 platforms within Government. Jadu as a company has a cross platform approach, preferring to develop its software to be agnostic in terms of operating platform and development framework.

In 2008, Jadu launched a .NET compliant binary of the Jadu CMS supporting IIS

Internet Information Services

Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...

, MS SQL

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...

 and the .NET 2.0 framework using the Phalanger

Phalanger (compiler)

Phalanger is a project which was started at Charles University in Prague and was supported by Microsoft. It compiles source code written in the PHP scripting language into CIL byte-code. It handles the beginning of a compiling process which is completed by the JIT compiler component of the .NET...

 which compiles PHP to CLR (Microsoft's Common Language Runtime

Common Language Runtime

The Common Language Runtime is the virtual machine component of Microsoft's .NET framework and is responsible for managing the execution of .NET programs. In a process known as just-in-time compilation, the CLR compiles the intermediate language code known as CIL into the machine instructions...

) effectively enabling any PHP application to run natively under the .NET framework.

Jadu have funded and are supporting the development of Phalanger, including leading the development of VisualStudio.NET support as well as other upgrades to PHP support in .NET. With this new framework under .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0, Jadu CMS can be extended in C# or any other .NET compiled language using Visual Studio.

Using the Phalanger compiler, Jadu CMS (or any other PHP based applications) and the front end web templates are compiled down to two DLLs. - bringing together two fiercely competitive programming disciplines together - making PHP interoperable with the .NET framework.

Jadu's Head of Design and User Interface Lee Pilmore was the designer responsible for Lichfield

Lichfield

Lichfield is a cathedral city, civil parish and district in Staffordshire, England. One of eight civil parishes with city status in England, Lichfield is situated roughly north of Birmingham...

 District Council becoming the first UK Local Authority to win a Webby Award Official Honoree status and The City of Edinburgh Council website, which was awarded a top 4-star rating as "the best Local Government Website in Scotland" by SOCITM.

In 2007, Jadu's design for Kettering Borough Council (designed by Lee Pilmore) was nominated a finalist for the CSS category in the SXSW (South by South West) awards - for "pushing the boundaries of CSS coding technology, bringing together top-notch design and content with standards compliant and accessible code"

In 2008, Jadu launched Manchester City Council's website using the Jadu CMS, which won the BT Online Excellence award as the Best Local Government website in Britain.

In January 2011, executives from Jadu were invited to a private round table discussion with UK Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

, David Cameron

David Cameron

David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....

 to consult with Jadu over barriers to business growth in the UK

Jadu CMS

The company's core product, Jadu CMS, is a suite of non-technical web based content management application which covers publishing, directories, search, productivity and workflow, HR, e-payments, retail store management and e-forms.

In December 2008, Jadu launched the 1.8 version upgrade to the Jadu CMS (named 'Clearwater' by the company), which includes Semantic Web frameworks and a public API called 'MyJadu API'. The new version upgrade also introduced the concept of social 'directories' enabling structured data records to be either mass imported into the system and/or submitted by users of sites run by the Jadu CMS.

In April 2009, Jadu announced a social media module for the Jadu CMS which provides integration to the Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 micro-blogging social network. The Jadu Twitter client provides content management with drafts and workflow approval for corporate tweets.

In April 2010, Jadu in collaboration with some of its customers, released an Election Results plugin for the Jadu CMS to its government user base to promote the use of Opendata in government. The plugin makes election result data available as RDFa

RDFa

RDFa is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to XHTML for embedding rich metadata within Web documents...

.

Jadu Content Management itself is a proprietary system. Its architecture is cross platform and runs in Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and the .NET Framework

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...

, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and Solaris

Solaris Operating System

Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....

.

Jadu Rupa for Google Search Appliance (Enterprise Search)

In 2005, Jadu joined Google Inc.

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 as a GEP partner and delivered Google Search Appliance

Google Search Appliance

The Google Search Appliance is a rack-mounted device providing document indexing functionality that can be integrated into an intranet, document management system or web site using a Google search-like interface for end-user retrieval of results. The operating system is based on CentOS...

 systems into various UK Government organisations.

Jadu also developed a software authentication system and user interface for the Google Search Appliance, called Jadu Rupa for Google Search Appliance which integrates with Active Directory

Active Directory

Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems. Server computers on which Active Directory is running are called domain controllers....

 and LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network...

. Jadu Rupa provides a management user interface within the Jadu CMS framework.

The Google Mini and Google Search Appliance are the default search products integrated with the Jadu CMS.

Jadu Galaxies (CMS deployment system)

In 2006, Jadu developed the Jadu Galaxies content management system.

Jadu XForms Professional (Forms deployment system)

Jadu XForms

XForms

XForms is an XML format for the specification of a data processing model for XML data and user interface for the XML data, such as web forms...

 Professional provides a non-technical framework for complex forms development. XForms Professional connects to back office systems (such as CRM

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...

) and e-payments systems to enable accessible transactional forms.

Notable users

Jadu's customers tend to be substantially sized organisations. Recently, Jadu announced the University of Leeds

University of Leeds

The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

 (one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom), who having signed a 3 year agreement with Jadu to deliver the Jadu CMS and Galaxies deployment system as well as the Jadu.NET system across the University, starting with the Leeds University Library. Also notable are The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, who are also implementing the Jadu.NET product across their organisations global websites. Other users of note include The Alzheimer's Society, Manchester City Council

Manchester City Council

Manchester City Council is the local government authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. It is composed of 96 councillors, three for each of the 32 electoral wards of Manchester. Currently the council is controlled by the Labour Party and is led by...

 and the Edinburgh City Council.

Socitm

Socitm

As described on the Socitm website, "The Society of Information Technology Management was founded in 1986 as the professional association for information technology managers working in and for the public sector in the UK....

 (Society of Information Technology Management), an organisation which tests and benchmarks Local Government websites for usability, accessibility and functionality, selected Jadu to implement their website, online forms system, online product management and integration to back office systems

Directgov

Directgov

Directgov is the UK government's digital service for people in the United Kingdom, providing a single point of access to public sector information and services.The content is developed by government departments, working with a central Directgov team...

, UK government's digital service for people in England and Wales announced that it was using the Jadu XForms Professional online forms system to implement accessible online forms within the Directgov website.