Fastwater: What We Do

The Focus

Fastwater is a consulting and market research company focused on "content." We track the changes in the tools and processes that organizations use to manage and extract value from documents that they produce, the books and research that they buy, and the e-mail and other information that they create in the course of their daily work.

We take a broad view of this activity. It is the only way to see what is going on and to begin to understand the trends.

We have worked and sometimes run companies that built publishing software, conversion software, retrieval software, and document management software. We have worked as analysts and experts for hire in the document systems software business.

Over the years we find that we need to develop ever broader perspectives to follow the changes as content moves from being something that companies own and publish to being, in this age of XML, essentially indistinguishable from the instructions that make systems work and that allow organizations to cooperate and interconnect. The book that Bill Zoellick, one of Fastwater's partners, published in 2001 is a good example of the need for both breadth and depth -- CyberRegs emerged from the realization that the use of content is being shaped as much by the courts and by Congress as it is by software and business.

The Offers

Publishing: we publish as we learn. There is a wealth of information -- years of work and learning about the business of content -- available on our site. You will find articles on syndication, on learning from your customers visits to your website, on legal concerns, and much more.

Research: we undertake market research both to answer our own questions and to help our clients answer theirs. We have undertaken private studies for numerous clients trying to understand changes in their business or explore new businesses.

Consulting: we work closely with organizations that publish content or manage it. We work with companies that build content management and publishing software. In all cases we help organizations change as the business of creating, managing and using content changes.