IT is from Mars and your Information is from Venus

"Information structure , Sure, no problem , got that covered" says the Enterprise Architect as you ask about the alignment of the Business Classification Structure and metadata to the IT technology that has being proposed for the Pan Galactic rollout that you have just heard about.


"It's all just a quick review and we get on with. The vendor told us it will be easy", he adds, almost without taking a breath. After wondering that maybe you are in different solar systems, or different companies you race off to see how wide spread this IT selection disease has become.

Does this sound like your situation? Scary as it is, it is still be played out across companies of reasonably large size as we speak.

IT selection alone will not solve an information problem that you have. In treating the information just as a bit or a byte ultimately the thinking will by default go to a technology only "Storage Bucket" view.

Maybe this is why most technology only selections seem to fail, or why IT seems to get impatient with information management people who see the need to get a clear understanding on the complex mess of connections and associations between information in a contextual way.

By focusing only on product (technology) not the capability that it can provide you to assist in the management of your information in context you will replay the IT solution that fails over and over again. Only when you realise that there are two planets involved will you start on the right path to providing a working solution.

One Degree of separation from Obama!

Have I hit the big time? I think not. So you can guess that I was surprised to find that I am only one degree of separation from the President Elect himself.

Don't believe me, well, check this out. Look bottom right is there he is "Mr President Elect" himself separated by one contact that I know, blanked out to protect the innocent.

I have to say this, with no offence to Barack Obama, but this is more reason why I'm getting a little social networked out. I mean to say who am I in the world of Barack Obama ? and why would I click "Add Barack to your network"?

I suppose that if I did click the link it has more going for me than for him. I mean is he going to get all excited because I pop up as a "now connected" person on linkedin? Or will he even know?

Should I also race out there and sign up for Facebook and get connected? Maybe I could go for as many different social network connections with Barack that I could find. then I could claim that we are in CLOSE contact Frequently ! I think not.

Good luck Mr President Elect and I hope you find time for all the Social Networking ahead as there will be a number of big ticket items on your agenda and maybe we will not have as much time to connect in the future.

Social Network Fatigue

Are you suffering Social Network Fatigue?

I am trying to keep up to date with just the information networks and systems and frankly I cannot keep up. There seems to be so much to connect to and share and get involved in, but I keep asking myself, so what is the purpose of all this "connection".

I find concentrated, personal, one to one far more engaging and responsive than the electro, sound byte type relationships that seem to occur through social / information networks.

How do you keep up? I don't think that I have that many information / social network tools going, what I do have is:

• Linkedin
• Plaxo
• Information Zen

I don't do facebook, twitter, bebo or others as I cannot keep ahead with what I have already and keep my personal human relationships going with my own family.

How many people out there rush home only to sit in front of a computer to "keep in touch" while the ones at home are in the relationship wilderness. I guess you could connect through facebook or txt !

From sausage to splat- Gartner's ECM 2008 MQ update

Last time I wrote about the Gartner ECM MQ I commented that the 2007 MQ view resembled that of a sausage with the way the vendors were spread from the bottom left to the top right. Well now that the September 2008 release has been put out I have to say it now looks like a splat !

So what has changed in significance?

The top right quadrant (Leaders Quadrant)

• Microsoft has arrived in the leaders quadrant, any surprises here!
• IBM and EMC and OpenText are curling back to the left so is there a stall here, or more like a market realignment?
• Oracle has risen up in the leaders quadrant, seeming to make good head way after the Stellent re brand.

In the top left (Challenger Quadrant)

• Hyland once nearly smack, bang in the middle has drifted to the left but remains in the challengers quadrant.

In the bottom right (Visionary Quadrant)

• Interwoven seems stable and near to breaking the top right line
• Vignette has drifted back to the left and is close to entering the niche quadrant

In the bottom left (Niche players)

• Alfresco has entered the quadrant, welcome and well done for Open Source
• Other players seem to be grouping together for a conference of some sort
• Tower Software has become HP
• Objective has drifted further to the left

Overall the sausage has become a vendor splat onto the MQ quadrant and next round is going to be interesting as to where some of the players move too looking at the current moves.

Don't forget to execute

In a previous post "Plan, plan, plan then execute" I stressed the importance of planning, and that is correct.

But what often happens is that the the execute part of the plan gets left out, becuase people stop at the end of the plan, consequence, little or no execution to make the plan a reality. After all why have a plan if you are not going to execute it in the first place.

In the strategy world it is often said that a bad plan executed well has better sucess than a great plan not executed at all. Execution is all about having the right direction as indicated by the plan and then adjusting according to weather conditions on the way to the destination.


Like sailing there are times when you must tack like crazy just to get a few yards up the line and in other areas you are blasting ahead with a downwind stream behind you. What really matters is that you keep making decisions (execution) along the way to ensure that you are headed towards the goal that you have set.

Now back to the linking blog. Why were Justain & James successful? Not only did they have a plan but they executed sucessfully by making decisions to compensate for the unknowns, keeping the end goal in mind. Outcome, sucess.

Leverage Momentum

The US Elections have been and are still quite topical. What was the result, sweeping change to the government from the Republicans to the Democrats. Barack Obama on his victory night speech invoked the picture of lines and lines of people, thereby creating an illusion that the voter turnout was massive towards the change mantra that had been preached over the campaign. To quote from his victory speech.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in
numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four
hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this
time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

Listening to the victory speech made we want to check the inside messaging of the statement.

Was it massive voter turnout? NO; Total voter turnout was 60% of total voters up 3% from the previous election in 2004, and the increase is in line with the general increasing trend of participating voters showing a steady increasing trend from '96 when it was 49% of total voters. So this is a trend of +4% per election over 12 years.

Yes, there were more registered voters this time, but that is also line with general population increase and the general trend of registrations.

Was it total dissatisfaction (excluding President Bush's personal ratings)? NOT NECESSARILY., as there was only 53% to 46% in the popular vote total, a gap of only 7% in the end result. The electoral votes are a winner takes all, but in some states the individual races were very close indeed.

What made a difference was the mood for change. The Democratic party identified this an galvanised people to action, leveraging the mood for change. They managed to gain the precious percentage over and above the registered party core to win through.

Along with the change message there was the defining figure of Barack Obama. Change became personalised, a history making event and therefore more real, more personal. Momentum began to build more and became defined in the person of Barack Obama.

Then on top of this was the availability of funds for ad spending and airtime. In reviewing the numbers I see that the Democrats had roughly a 2:1 ratio in funds to put into the overall campaign. In Florida alone the Democrat's spent somewhere around $24M to the Republicans $9M, go figure that, great marketing.

So to sum up, the thoughts here are that there was a momentum for change, a defining figure to attach to and that momentum was leveraged through solid marketing to ensure achievement of success.

There are some lessons that we can learn here for our ECM projects.

1. Find the mood for change (the compelling event)
2. Place the right leader in front to make the change personal
3. Leverage the Momentum through marketing and messaging for example "Yes we can" Change you can believe in"

And don't forget that a little extra funding does help to move things along. I am sure that now the campaign is over and the victory won that reality will hit home. All the best Mr President-elect.

Microsoft Sure with Azure?

Microsoft broadens the "Software + Services" play with the Azure platform pitch. What's this all about? Well the Azure services platform is, and I quote from the Microsoft site:

The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

This set of hosted services provides a "cloud platform" that developers and users can consume to quickly deliver solutions either, stand alone or as part of a hybrid application that may have some of the services on the inside of the firewall.

I find this positioning from Microsoft interesting. One would say that Microsoft are just trying to counter the Google effect. However, if you look into the Microsoft past as a fast follower, you would more likely say that they have seen SaaS as a viable market play and are now moving to dominate or at least re brand the market in their favour. I have seen before that when Microsoft see an opening they are quick to move and look to dominate within a three year period where possible.

Will this happen? Time will tell.

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

Interesting to see that a number of the big players are talking up interoperability. Not surprising as there is no "One ECM to rule them all". Although vendors would like you to believe that theirs is the best and the brightest the general "real world" deployment is that there are multiple repositories out there and will continue to be so. Microsoft has really done a great job of marketing the UI to be MOSS 2007 and this is then driving the need for more pure play vendors to inter operate. So what is CMIS ? Quoting from wikipedia

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) [1]
is a proposed standard consisting of a set of Web
services for sharing information among disparate content repositories that
seeks to ensure interoperability for people and applications using multiple
content repositories. EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Alfresco, Open Text, SAP and Oracle have joined
forces to propose CMIS, the first Web services technical specification for
exchanging content with and between Enterprise
Content Management (ECM) systems. The proposed standard has been registered
for public comment with OASIS. [2] [3]
More
specifically, Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is a technical
specification domain model (data and services) for interacting with an ECM
repository via Web Services. It provides a content management domain-specific
data model, a set of generic services that act on that data model and several
protocol bindings for these services, including: SOAP and Representational
State Transfer (REST)/(Atom).

Players that are in the ring with CMIS include

• Alfresco
• EMC Documentum
• IBM
• Microsoft
• Oracle

Some links to CMIS news and views as follows:

Alfresco Wiki - http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS
Microsoft View - http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/capabilities/ecm/cmis.mspx
EMC videos on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbMvd0gVTH0

Transmision resumes - lets get digital

Life x.0 got a little busy lately and the blog posts suffered in accordance. Between responding to customer queries and proposals and family during the school holidays it was less screen time and more face time. This is a good thing, maybe I should call this "people, machine life balance".

We face some interesting times right now with the way that the global markets are tipping around like a annoying drunk after a bad party and many countries going through a change of government at the same time.

What will be around the corner? Will demand for products and services take a dive? Or will organisation realise that like never before they need to get control of the information asset that they own?

On area that always seems to have value is getting paper and getting that part of the digital food chain under control. You might call this old fashion imaging, but hey if you put in some business process with this as well you start to see some beneficial value if planned and managed correctly.

Making the paper digital and streamlining the capture and delivery process has a significant benefit to the business and the lives of the workers that struggle with the "way that is has always been done around here" current processes. An interesting article that I read in the AIIM Infonomics magazine was one about Horry County, S.C and the journey they took to go digital. This included not only the capture and digitisation of the paper, but also integration to legacy systems through the use of "application enabler" think advanced "screen scraping" here. To get a look at the article it is available through subscription to the Infonomics magazine.

MOSS 2007 - Infrastructure counts!

Like all things infrastructure is often not seen, but is essential. There is a song called "The wise man built his house upon the rock". This is very much the same with MOSS 2007. The infrastructure, hardware, storage, network that supports the database and the application software is a very essential part of the design and deployment.

A case in point is the difference that a SAN can make to a MOSS 2007 deployment where there is lots of dynamic content from a very transactional Internet facing website, along with the right kind of Internet pipe as well. The difference is the time to load and deliver the pages necessary to make a great user experience rather than a pathetic one. Here are some good links to places that will give you a start on the necessary planning.

Planning and Architecture for MOSS 2007 - Microsoft Technet
SharePoint Capacity Planning Key Info - Joel Olsen SharePoint Land Blog (recommended)
MOSS 2007 Best Practices book link - Microsoft Press

Obsess or Obese?

Bit of a left field blog today, but I guess that is why I have the rider at the top of blog roll. Coffee is loosely related to ECM, especially on the long night proposal churn.

So, at the local supermarket they have built out a counter in the foyer that will soon open as a cafe bar. Great, except the name is "Obsess Coffee" pretty innocuous, except that my eyes and brain is having mild dyslexia every time I go in the supermarket, all I can see as I flash past is "Obese Coffee".

Will this coffee make me fat? maybe I am too fat already. For some strange reason although I read obsess my brain turns up with obese. I think that it has something to do with the black letters on a dark wood background that might not be helping me here.

Sometimes our ECM implementations get a little like the coffee bar as when they have gone all obese, but we seem to be obsessed with them. We love them because we created them but if not connected to the business drivers and business outcomes they quickly become obese repositories for information flab, created from the content rush that comes with initial enthusiasm and not long term information lifestyle change.

Recently we have been dealing with customer that still want to go direct to technology and it hard going at times to hold the line and ensure that we are advocating the right approach. To make sure that we are treating this as a business project not just a technology project.

Well I better go work on that spelling and get my brain obsessed!

ECM - MOSS 2007 How do I get going?

How do we get going with MOSS 2007. Well, Setup.exe is NOT I repeat NOT the way to get started. Why? MOSS 2007 is a great platform for collaboration and information sharing but if not planned correctly it quickly becomes a virus within the organisation with information silo's that are out of control.

Now, I am not advocating the evil empire control, but like most projects if you don't have the end in mind then failure at least comes a total surprise I guess.

Planning, especially in the information management space is hard work becuase it takes some hard thinking and some hard talking up front to get everyone on the same page, with a single view of the end game that we are heading towards. This is especially true with MOSS as you have to take into account the nature of containment in the MOSS Hierarchy.

Microsoft have some reasonable guidance and checklists on their Governance resources centre on Technet. However, this does not cover fully the information management side of getting ready, which if you don't get a good handle on will cause you pain in the long run.

Another starting point would be to look into the "Best Practices" book by Ben Curry, Bill English, Mark Schneider and the Microsoft SharePoint Team; you can find it here at Amazon. This book is a good one for both technical and business people to get a handle on the things that you need to consider with MOSS 2007 and some best practices based on real world field experience.

This is a good resource to get a handle on how to start and what to consider before SETUP.EXE.

Oh, baby, baby 2.0 me one more time !

If you have not seen a 2.0 article recently, where have you been? Maybe I'm getting old but I'm kinda 2.0'd out at the moment. Here's is a small snapshot:

• Web 2.0
• Enterprise 2.0
• Infrastructure 2.0
• Storage 2.0
• Government 2.0
• Life 2.0
• Religion 2.0

And just today in a channel magazine "box moving 2.0" (it has to do with selling hardware, OK), come on give me a break ! how about Kids 2.0 well actually I'm at 5.0 so there.


It's great to get new buzz and hype in the industry and life in general but it sort of feels a little like the latest chocolate bar advert at times, same stuff new wrapper. How about Life 2.0 (sorry it's already there as I found out today) or Hairdo 2.0, Marriage 2.0, oops that is already so yesterday.

2.0 is not something new like we have all of a sudden had an epiphany. but isn't it more like a gradual realisation that with the new technology and more cost effective ways of doing things we are able to create and deliver solutions that are different and new. Then marketing gets in the way and wants to label and package it all up. Consultant see and opportunity for new service line 2.0 consulting fees. Maybe I need to blog 2.0?

ECM Standard Steering Group Announced Today

ECM Standard Steering Group Announced Today Here is a link to the announcement (5th August) of the people on the Steering group for the BSI led sandards creation for Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

Alan Pelz-Sharpe from CMS Watch is noted as being on the Steering Committee and therefore I will be keeping in touch with him to see how things are progressing. Of course AIIM are involved as well. The Contenet Group are leading the Steering Group. Publication of the standard is expected at the end of this year!

ECM - Information Infrastructure

"Information infrastructure" interesting term! Well this is a term that I use to try and raise awareness that like any building it is the infrastructure supports all the other ECM deployment areas.

Information infrastructure is about putting the right information thinking and planning in place to make our ECM rollout a real success. Just as in building projects the infrastructure is not sexy, but it is essential to the structure and longevity of the overall building. If you have noticed any large building project it is the initial foundations and infrastructure that seem to take the longest. But once this in place the rest seems to take off, according to the plan, so to is it with ECM projects, you need a solid information infrastructure to build on.


If I use the term "information architecture" generally people are confused, and think in terms of the web definition of architecture. This definition has more of a focus on the structure that needs to be in place for the navigation and the web side of the Manage, Process & Deliver information chain. Yes there are linkages between the overall architecture and the infrastructure part but the core fundamentals of infrastructure go well beyond just the web.

Information infrastructure encompasses the core pieces of content classification and structural metadata that must be defined in advance to ensure that there is a clear understanding of what needs to be managed and how it will be managed in a business context. Along with this understanding you also need to define and map the set of business rules that will provide the glue to the content relationships. Then once this has been put in place you can concentrate on navigation and findability as the infrastructure is now in place to make the upper layers successful.

So that is a general look at Information Infrastructure. Soon we will look at bringing some of these pieces together realitive to MOSS 2007.

ECM - MOSS 2007 Taking a general look

Is it bird? Is it a plane? Well with MOSS 2007 it sometimes feels that way. So the question is what is MOSS 2007? Let's start by quoting from the executive summary from the CMS Watch Report on SharePoint:

However, what remains less clear more than a year after the launch of
SharePoint 2007 is where the product actually fits into the
enterprise. SharePoint is truly a collection of individual components that
interact together to varying degrees, but require extra work to weld into a
cohesive package. And unfortunately not all components of SharePoint are created
equal. In other words, SharePoint is well suited to some requirements, but
certainly not all.

So folks, what is clear is that you need to be careful as to what you use MOSS for and how it is used. Some features work and play well out of the box, while others require development (that's cutting code folks). In addition I would say that MOSS 2007 is primarily a platform of services that may or may not suit what you are trying to achieve within an overall solution.

Now when I say platform of services I mean that what you get is the core services but sometimes it feels like you need to run your own power line from the curb to the house to get all the appliances working.

However, I must say that the set of services that are supplied in MOSS 2007 are feature rich, and on first look there is something for everyone. The overall message however is that prior planning will prevent a poor implementation, especially with SharePoint or MOSS 2007 as it is also known. Plan, Plan and then execute. Do not go direct to setup or base install, you will regret that somewhere down the track.

For a look at the top 10 things to avoid with MOSS 2007 click the link. Note that the first two points are not even technology rated and Setup.exe comes in at number 3. You should ask yourself before you slap that CD into the drive, have I though about why I am doing this and what we are trying to achieve here?

But back to MOSS 2007. Feature, feature, feature. Well to start there is really great

So firstly, it is a platform, and when we say platform that means a rich set of infrastructure services and some front end services out of the box. With any platform there is a degree of development that needs to happen to make the platform useful for your situation. An overview of the functionality provided by MOSS 2007 is as follows: (Diagram courtesy of Microsoft)

As you can see from the "Pizza wheel" there is a wide range of services and functions that are available as part of the platform. Here downunder (that's NZ folks) the main areas that are being implemented are as follows:

• Intranet (Portal) and Internet (WCM from the Content Management piece)
• Document Collaboration
• Forms and Workflow

Of course Search is something that is everywhere. With MOSS 2007 you get the ability to use Search across MOSS Site, and also to extend it to the web and file systems. The Enterprise license also gives you access to add search into line of business applications and bring a rich search experience into the MOSS Portal. With the recent acquisition of FAST there is a wider Search story that Microsoft is able to present and I am looking with interest as to how this unfolds.

Another area that I am keen to see get going in is records management, however this will require some planning as here in New Zealand there is very much a continuum life cycle approach to records management rather than the traditional here it is a document and "bling" now its a record. The life cycle approach is a view that starts from the time of creation of an item and this item is then managed in a "records context". Microsoft in NZ have done some great work to get connected to the government market and has developed a jump start pack for MOSS 2007 and NZ government agencies. There are also partner organisations that are now building Records Management add-ons for MOSS 2007 that are very exciting and will be a big change to the way that customers deploy MOSS 2007.

With the release of a solid records management add on that fits the NZ market MOSS 2007 will move from the Intranet collaboration space to the main stream records and document management fields, this is both exciting and scary. As I have said before when Microsoft decides to enter a market space it does not take long for them to start to dominate and certainly in NZ this is starting to come to pass.

ECM What's up with Consolidation?

Consolidation news has been big over the last year and tracking back through some old threads and links has been an interesting catch up.

In general consolidation is a natural occurrence as companies look to dominate market share and the battle for customers. I found a slide deck share from John Mancini (The One Minute ECM Guru series) which covers consolidation very quickly.

What was especially telling was the slides that outlined the number of companies that have been acquired from the likes of OpenText and EMC. Looks more like the local Org chart of the multinational itself. How are they going to get that all together in a single, flexible, scalable platform? Will Consolidation provide you and me any benefits

Better product to create better solutions in a more cost effective manner?
Better Service and reduced complexity across the ECM stack?
Better capability to be able to federate across multiple repositories?

Only time will tell if we are to see a major shift of benefit to the customer.

What I do know is that all this consolidation creates an opportunity for new players to slip into the middle ground, especially now that the Gartner Magic Quadrant now looks more like a sausage in shape as the vendors spread out.

The big opportunity is for players such as Alfresco to get the ground swell going and gain market acceptance of Open Source and get in amongst the large and heavy incumbents with the promotion of a new and exciting model and innovative and flexible architecture.

Microsoft (Already a Gartner player) has the opportunity to take advantage of current consolidation to dominate through a "ECM for the Masses" approach thereby driving mass market adoption of ECM type deployments and pulling through other partners in a cost effective delivery of ECM projects across departments and eventually into the enterprise. The key for them will be what next past the MOSS 2007 release?

Plan, Plan, Plan, then Execute

So three days at the Sales Conference. Someone has to do it, right! Well the great speaking event this year was two 20+ year old adventurers. Justin and James a couple of ordinary guys that think big and go for their dreams.

They had kayaked 3318km, braved 10 metre swells, faced howling winds of over 50 knots, endured severe food and sleep deprivation, wasting muscles and adverse winds and currents to become the first kayak expedition across the Tasman Sea as well as become the longest trans oceanic kayaking expedition undertaken by two expeditionary individuals.

But was was more interesting to me was that while it took 62 days to complete the mission there was 4 years of planning and hard graft that went into making the execution happen. I had the pleaseur to speak to Justin just before dinner and told him the math.

For every day of rowing there was in rounded terms 23.5 days of planning, and boy did they plan. They started by created pages of questions to which they had no answer and then set about looking to acquire through experts and from their own inquiry the answers necessary to create a blueprint for success.

Then having a list of question they then set about looking to build a virtual team of experts that would share the vision and who couldprovide them with the best minds and materials for answering the questions and propelling them forward towards success.

Having got the team and the questions starting to be nailed they also focused on making sure that they had a risk plan that covered off all the likely events that would or might happen while in their execution phase.

Great stuff guys ! and a great lesson for ECM'ers that are heading into the dream of content management, do the plan, work the plan, do the plan and then execution is simply a playing out of the moves that have already been set in place.

In fact if you take the 4 years *365 days and add 62 days and then do the division.

Planning = 96% of total
Execution = 4% of total

No wonder success was achieved, because as they stated we had the blueprint. For more information on this amazing feat check out James and Justin at their site crossing the ditch.

Analytics a mystery?

Funny title for today's blog? Well given that it has been seven weeks without a post I was checking feedburner, google analytics and technorati for what has been happening while I was away.

Now to get some facts up front, I know that this blog is not a heavy traffic site because I get about 11-13 subscribers per day, mainly from feeders, so I guess out of that there may not even be a read against the blog.

What I find interesting is the trend of how people get to the site. From the Google analytics there is a 50% search page hit, 42% referral and 8% direct traffic. Interesting that over time the search engine traffic has steadily increased. After initially putting up the blog I did a little research and took some time to get metadata into the page headers so that search engines could find the titles, metadata.

This seems to have made all the difference to getting some traffic to the site. Also I have been impressed that although I have not blogged for some 6-7 weeks the content that is on the site is still being accessed by visitors. Well, enough on the analytics mystery I will need to get back to some serious ECM blogging soon !

ECM and SaaS. Intersection or Contradiction?

Well it has been over 6 weeks of no posting, but I can honestly say that I have had a ball with all my girls in the US and Canada, even getting a free 5.4 earthquake ride in Disneyland on the way back out! As one of my girls said "Dad, that was a Disneyland, no queue, free, rollercoaster ride." Right on girl. Well it's is back to getting some posts moving and figuring if you are all stile out there or given up the ghost.

So on with the posting, ECM and Software as a Service. I have been looking at this for some time and trying to figure out where it fits, is there an intersection or are they contra to each other?

From the conversations I have had with vendors and observations that I have seen from customers it seems that SaaS is currently a convenient niche looking to break into the wider ECM big time if it can.

In most cases I am seeing SaaS ECM type solutions fufilling a role of converging multiple independent parties to enable collaboration around documents and content relevant to a joint project. Therefore the solution is document / project specific and the main drivers for going the SaaS route seem to be speed, convenience and cost effectiveness.

Speed - Because x clicks and you are up and going
Convenience - Because it is and you can bypass all the firewall and security hassles of the internal IT Shop.
Cost Effective - Becuase you can pay monthly and when the project is finished shut it down. No harware and software and installation costs required. Only the price for usage.

But coming back to the reason for the SaaS decision. It is a point solution that is generally focused at this time around the collaboration and sharing of documents. Some vendors such as SalesForce are using SaaS ECM as an extension to the CRM option, while companies such as SpringCM are extending out from document management into business process management to get more business automation going.

SaaS still has a way to go, but it is an option that needs to be considered in the mix. Maybe one day we will see a combination of inside / outside solutions to fit the overall enterprise ECM play and if that is achieved then we will truly see an intersection of the two pieces.

Intermittent Postings coming up

Hi all who may be tuning in, I am currently travelling with my family through the US and therefore will be very intermittent in posting until the 4th August. I guess the shakes will happen and I will seek in a few post here and there along the way. See ya all soon

ECM - MOSS 2007 compared to ECM components

Some posts ago I outlined my view of the ECM core components that make up an ECM product set, with a set of explanations as well.

I posed these components as a mixture of product features and supporting services. So in this post I am going to make a "subjective" assessment of MOSS 2007 and how it compares to the ECM core components.

This assessment is based in a New Zealand view, especially around things like records management. It is an "out the box assessment" So belt up folks, here we go.

You need to realise that this is not a WSS 3.0 comparison, but a MOSS 2007 (read Enterprise version) comparison against the ECM core components that I have outlined.

Now for some commentary / justification! Let's start with the obvious strengths areas for MOSS 2007.

• Collaboration - Out of the box you get great collaboration features to share documents and get people working together in a unified collaboration workspace. Combine this with blogs, wikis and other social networking / collaboration tools and MOSS provides a great "high value" low cost Portal for getting going in Collaboration


• Web Content Management - MOSS 2007 handles web content as part of the platform. There has been quite a change from the 2003 model with integration of the WCM from CMS 2002 into the overall MOSS 2007 platform. With some planning you can now deploy Portal / Intranet and Internet content directly off the same platform base.


• Document Management - With the introduction of Content Types, two stage recycle bin and a slew of other features Microsoft has finally made it to real time document management. While some vendors may say that they have only"just" arrived, Microsoft has certainly arrived in style. Combined with Office 2007 you get very good integration at the Office interface, especially with the Info panel view at the top of the Word document.
  
• Forms Management - With the Enterprise MOSS you get the capability to publish forms that can be deployed to a client web browser. Combined with workflow and some custom code you can develop and deploy forms based workflow solutions that meet most requirements in day to day business activities.

Here is NZ Collaboration, Web and Forms are driving technology adoption of MOSS 2007. Implementations are manifesting in the form of Intranet Portal and Web Content Management (WCM) projects. My company's own website http://www.gen-i.co.nz/ is a representation of the WCM side of MOSS 2007 deployment.

Document management is an out of the box strength, but generally we are only seeing this being implemented as part of the overall collaboration space, except for some work that we are doing internally around our own systems of how we manage document control for various business functions, such as customer data and the sales and bid processes.

Forms that can be delivered through the web are fantastic, but will only become as useful as the workflow that can be built behind it. While there are business user tools in the form of SharePoint Designer this does not go as far as other workflow "out-of-the-box" visual build features.

So forms gets a big 100% but business process management really requires some help to get going, hence the 60% assessment against the component area here. There are currently a number of companies out that that provide this value in a very cost effective way. We are seeing these staring to be adopted by customers as a "value add" to the overall platform.

The other areas that are marked as a more than 60% are marked thus because there is more required to get the overall solution together. Now some of the these are specific to down under, especially in the records management area where we have a different lifecycle view on records management. To quickly explain the rating here is my explanation:

• Records management - There are core records management features that are delivered and this is a great move by Microsoft. There are some pieces that were missing out of the box, namely visible numbering patterns, record relationships and classification construction, (see also classification with search). There has been a DoD pack that has been built to add on to Microsoft and this has been released as both an installable pack and MSDN developer features that can be used as part of an overall development. Here in NZ and AUS we are staring to see ISV's building on top of the MOSS platform to create added value records management solutions building on what Microsoft has delivered.

• Classification and Search - First a confession. Grouping classification and search together in some ways is not fair to the capabilities of Search by itself. But generally the two are combined together so given these two Microsoft only get a greater than 60% rating. Why? Well it's mainly because of the classification part. Out of the Box there is little or no capability to create classification structures.

• Archival and Storage - All content in the MOSS platform is stored in the SQL Database. IF you want some form of secondary storage and archiving you will need to go looking for 3rd party add ons. This is where there is a big opportunity for the pure play ECM vendors to step in and let you know why you should be working with them in combination with MOSS as a platform. Or if you are looking for a more pure archive and storage option there are players such as Symantec Enterprise Vault, Autonomy Zantaz and Commvault Data Archiver that can assist.

• E-mail management - MOSS provides some basic e-mail management out of the box, but goes and does things like storing the e-mail message in a non MSG format. While they have probably attempted to keep the format open for storage it takes away some of the fidelity of being able to open up and forward or reply off the archived e-mail if necessary. Partners such as Colligo Contributor are a good fit to get the e-mail into SharePoint, plus pulls SharePoint list and other functions directly into the Outlook UI.

• Process management - Here is where we are looking to go beyond just a workflow type activity and get into system to system process management. Enter Biztalk if you are wanting to get serious around long running inter system process management. There is much that you can do with the Workflow foundation (WF) to get going but if you start trying to build out too much stop and consider the options that are available. In the workflow space there are a couple of good options to round out the Microsoft WF, these are Nintex and K2.

So there it is folks a purely subjective assessment of the MOSS 2007 platform against the Core ECM Components. Overall assessment is that you get a great set of features out of the box, and if you combine these with some cost effective partner products you are well on the way to getting the right ECM technology in place to support your overall ECM programme.

But remember technology is only one third of the overall ECM solution, and I regard it as the bottom third, so get planning and get on with the business alignment and change management before setup.exe takes hold.

ECM What does consolidation mean for customers?

Consolidation has been happening in the ECM marketplace for some time now. In a previous post I looked at the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM over a period of years to see how things had progressed and who was still on and who was off the radar.

If you are interested in this post called Quadrants, consolidation and sausages. Following on from this previous blog entry, I have been wondering what consolidation means for customers? Well here are a couple of thoughts on the situation.

On the positive side vendor consolidation creates a greater opportunity for software to broaden out for the customer, that is, if the vendor is an innovation focused company. Acquisition of smaller companies by a larger one allow the acquiring company to rapidly assimilate innovation and deliver new value through synergy with their existing technology. This creates a 1+1=3 offering for customers, and provides some longevity to the company that has acquired the innovation. Alas this perfection is not always reality.

On the negative side acquisition can also stifle innovation as the big fish gobble up smaller more innovative players, possibly as a blocking play to consolidate their position. Maintenance revenues for these vendors are a large and certain thing, especially when you have a massive target to make, you need to fill up the yearly quota with consistent and repeatable revenue. Often the mantra of management is "no disruption", "no bugs"so that customers are happy and pay out the cheques.

Hopefully there are not too many companies that take this attitude, but have a more balanced outlook and acquire for the betterment of the customer base, to increase their competitive advantage and to drive greater value of product functionality and ease of use for the customer.

After all it is for the customers benefit that we are building all this stuff anyway? Which camp is your vendor in, ask some questions and find out. Be sure not to ask too close to an end of quarter cycle!

ECM Open Source Options, what's out there?

Hello, hello, hello is there anybody out there? as "Pink Floyd" would say in Comfortably Numb.

Well for a period of time we were all comfortably numb in the embrace of the multinational vendors as licence sales were pushed like logs into the ECM bonfire, but thankfully since 2000 we have seen the entrance of a couple of contenders into the ECM race that make things interesting. These two contenders in the ECM Open Source corner are Nuxeo and Alfresco.

So lets start with a Wikipedia snapshot of Nuxeo, founded in France 2000.

Nuxeo is a comprehensive free software / open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform. It has been designed to be robust, scalable and highly extensible, by using modern open source Java EE technologies, such as: the JCR, JSF, EJB3, JBoss Seam, OSGi, and a Service Oriented Approach. It can be used to develop both web-based server applications and Rich Client applications.

Also, according to the CMS Watch ECM Suites it is reported tha Nuxeo is a good mid range ECM player (mainly due to its current France and UK only penetration) that has strengths in it's client options, well designed workgroup collaboration tools and it's standards based repository compliance. To quote the CMS Watch ECM Suite on Nuxeo.

Nuxeo offers decent collaborative document management technologies, on a
technically quite open platform. Nuxeo is one of the better options currently
available particularly for its target market of government clients. Except for
Alfresco, it is the only open source ECM option that can be considered for
critical enterprise deployment.

quoted from the CMS Watch ECM Suites Report 2008

Nuxeo currently has over 1,000 deployments, all be it most of them on the older platform variant based on Zope/Python. Now version 5.x is based on a JAVA platform base. Nuxeo's own explanation of the switch to the JAVA platform choice is well documented here.

Next, into the arena comes Alfresco. Founded in 2005 by John Newton, co-founder of Documentum® and John Powell, former COO of Business Objects®. Its investors include the leading investment firms Accel Partners, Mayfield Fund and SAP Ventures.

Alfresco, has certainly been somewhat the darling of the ECM circuit, due in part to the smart marketing expertise that the founders bring to gain visibility of the product. Again to quote from Wikipedia, here is a snapshot of Alfresco.

Alfresco is a free software / open source, open standards, enterprise scale content management system for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Its
design is geared towards users who require a high degree of modularity and scalable performance. Alfresco includes a content repository, an out-of-the-box web portal framework for managing and using standard portal content, a CIFS interface that provides file system compatibility on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, a web content management system capable of virtualizing webapps and static sites via Apache Tomcat, Lucene indexing, and jBPM workflow. The Alfresco system is developed using Java technology.

CMS Watch place Alfresco into the "ECM Suite" company category. I remember talking to Alan Pelz-Sharpe about Alfresco at the AIIM Conference in 2006 and have been keeping a watching brief on the product and the company since. In summary CMS Watch have this to say.

In sum, Alfresco is a high-end ECM development platform that happens to run on
an open source business model. As an ECM platform, Alfresco is scalable enough
to slug it out with the best of the competition in some high volume projects,
but at the application level it remains immature. If you are looking for
industry-specific, out-of-the-box solution, you may want to look elsewhere.

The interesting point that I see with Alfresco that it is in fact a commercial concern operating with an Open Source business model. So where is the money? Well there are two aspects. Ongoing service contracts. If you want the enterprise capabilities and resilience then you buy a services and support contact to get into the Network version of Alfresco. Secondly there has to be an IPO coming somewhere, or a possible buy out by a suitor.

As at November 2007 it was claimed by Alfresco’s CEO John Powell that there are now over 29,000 working installations/deployments of Alfresco around the world (50 countries, 20 languages). The dig was that it took IBM/FileNet over 25 years to get close to this number of installations, whereas Alfresco has done it in 2 years.

Here is a reference to Islinton and Alfresco in a previous post.

So a brief look at Nuxeo and Alfresco, some time soon I will look at a feature comparison of Nuxeo and Alfresco from a product and business fit perspective.

Analysts and Acronyms? ECM EIM ABC?

What is it with analysts? Here we are with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) well defined and Gartner needs to get a new spin going! Why am I saying this? Well in reviewing the ECM MQ 2007 I realised that they have started to push the Enterprise Information Management (EIM) acronym.

I need to ask, is that not what ECM technologies are for the supporting and management of enterprise information? But to put a perspective for my following comments I must quote from the Gartner MQ what they are saying.

"Moving Toward Enterprise Information Management
Content technologies are steadily gaining more capabilities to integrate with, or handle some aspects of, structured data, as well as document-centric data. Gartner’s vision for the evolutionary path of these technologies is called enterprise information management (EIM). IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have strong opportunities, as database vendors, to bring these two worlds together. As companies plan for an increasingly information-centric future, they must understand how the development of today’s content management applications will fit into an overall architecture. For information management, solutions such as content integration and service-oriented content applications will gain momentum to resolve unique business requirements. Information access has always been a critical component of an ECM suite and will play an even bigger role in helping companies sift through structured and unstructured information as it expands to include content analytics."

Maybe I have been somewhere else but this is not a new realisation and feels like new money for old rope. Maybe it is all down to language and definitions. After all we have had "Information Technology" (IT) for a long time but it feels a lot like the "Information" piece always seems to drop out and it should be technology only.

Information people "feel" like the poor cousins at time when it comes to senior executive buy in. If there is any focus on information it generally is at the data in the database level rather than an enterprise level of how information comes together regardless of the form or function.

Guess it is easier to see the hard tin and understand a database than have to do the heavy thinking required to get a concept to a model and then out to the business stakeholders for translation into technology.

Enterprise Content Management is in its broadest sense is the management of content across the enterprise, so far no rocket science here. Maybe it is all in the way that we view the content, or maybe the way the analysts view it. Here is how I view it anyway.

Firstly my definition of ECM is"

“The methods, tools and technologies that enable an organisation to manage, process and deliver content across the enterprise”

To me the methods (methodologies) and tools represent the people and process part of any ECM solution, including the elements of Governance, Policy, Strategy and the inclusion of the ConOps (you could also call it a vision document or roadmap) as outlined by AIIM in the ECM training modules.

Not forgetting that it is the ever important Change Management and communication that make or break a project as well. Drilling into the tools (more specifically) we can then talk about the way that we will turn content into information. I use the premise that:

• Content + Context = Information

Now content in a broad sense is either structured (generally in a database), unstructured (generally office, e-mail or paper documents) or semi-structured (such as XML data streams).

Tools such as a Business Classification Structure (BCS), or Classification, or taxonomy, plus metadata and controlled vocabulary all provide to the organisation the ability to give context to the content, thereby placing context around the content and giving us information.

These tools, combined and delivered through a solid methodology, and supported by the necessary change management, communication and appropriate technology will provide a better opportunity for success in any ECM project.

So roll on ECM, EIM and ABC to you all.

ECM - MOSS 2007 A disturbance in the Force

Reading a Gartner report early in the morning, as you do ! I came across one about MOSS that was almost akin to "A disturbance in the Force". From the key finding section came this comment

Enterprise interest in SharePoint is causing some concern that the enterprise
content management (ECM) market will face a recession.

And further into the document was this very interesting statement.

Another interesting piece was that Enterprises spend billions of dollars on ECM
Software but ask any CEO for the 30 second benefits that they have accrued and
most will struggle for an answer.

So we have interesting times around us folks, we can now blame ECM for global recession ! Yes I know I'm twisting the words, but if we look at the two comments extracted for the report we can see that there has been vast buckets of cash thrown at ECM Software and very little value is realised. Why? Well the technology alone is only an enabler to the overall business process, and the process requires people.

Change Anything anywhere and you need to change behaviours and ways of working. This is an area that naturally resists change, like a Force itself it moves organisations in a way of working as people have tried to do there jobs with what they have.

So now we have a low cost, reasonably high value tool that is easy to use and by all accounts is spreading like wild fire. A disturbance, Yes, recession, Yes for the fat bloated suppliers that delivery less value for more money, but NO for those that figure out how to make it work and compliment MOSS with some other products to get what you need today and to position for tomorrow.

ECM core components an overview

So what are the core components of an ECM product set? Well over the years the components have changed, so it is always difficult to get a full definition up front. Based on the various analysts in the market place here is my peg in the ground for ECM core components

Firstly, you need to realise that in this diagram there is a mixture of traditional product features and some supporting services that are supplied by the overall system, such as classification. So let's go through the pieces, some will be very self explanatory so I will not elaborate that much on them as we go through. let's begin:

Records Management - Here we deliver support to the management of both paper and electronic records, areas such as classification and retention and disposal are strong features that need to be delivered. Records management is a big driver, but beware of making it the be all and end all. Any good project should have compliance as a natural outcome to what you are trying to achieve.

Imaging - The capture and storage of paper having transferred the paper into a digital format for long term preservation. The electronic format and storage is perferably in the same repository as the other paper and electronic content from records and document managment but not always the case. You will find imaging is big in the Insurance and Finance sectors by the bucket load and has in the last couple of years had somewhat of a renaissance of sorts as it has been incorporated into a wider ECM play.

Web Content Management - management and control of web site style and content. Traditionally this has been out on its own, but if you look strategically it is just part of a spectrum of contnet that needs to be managed, processes and delivered across the enterprise. Therefore it has now become mainstream in ECM based solutions. Infact if vendor does not have an option here they will not make the quadrant.

Collaboration - Big word. lots of different meanings. Generally collaboration is aligned with portal. The Portal provides the interface to glue together office content and content from other sources such as line of business applications and the wider records and document management repositories. It is all brought together into a collaboration interface. Once again in days gone by we had a Portal market that lived by itself in this area, but now the Portals are also just part of a wider ECM offering.

Classification and Search - A Classification is all about grouping or bringing items together under a common category. An example is in records managemtn where a functional based classification has the hirearchy of Function Activity Task - at the end of the hirearchy folders for containment may or may not be developed. There are many other types of classification that can be built as well, you may hear of classification also called taxonomy. Now Search is well search. In some ECM systems the search is closed into the ECM repository only, meaning that you can only search the scope of contnet in the repository. However more forward thinking and innovative vendors will also offer a search engine that reaches outside of the core ECM repository in to the file system, line of business applications and the web.

Document Managment - The management of electronic documents, can be confused with Imaging for paper to electronic, but at the end of the day is is really about getting those office documents under control and into a repository where we can manage them effectively. Thing secure and relaible storage and access with version control and you are on your way. Yes MOSS 2007 does well here with Office documents.

Print and Distribution - This area covers the Computer Output to Lase Disk (COLD) and enterprise report management (ERM). Generally this is the domain of the top right had quadrant players, but there is also others that are now starting to provide these services on top of a MOSS base, such as ClearView ECM, and Knowledgelake.

Process Managment - covers both workflow (human based with system linkage) and business process managmenet (BPM), which is generally system to system and handles long running buiness processes. These days the two are generally interlinked and workflow tends to handle some form of documents within the overall process that is being managed. This is a area that should be of most interest to you as it is the one area that is the heart of all businesses. See the ECM Model to get a view of what I am trying to get across here

Archival and Storage Management - Archiving denotes the ability to capture and maintain content in a secure and manageable repository for a defined period of time. So retention and dispoal rules generally apply here. Most common forms of archiving around file system archiving and e-mail archiving. Traditional ECM vendors that have come from records and document management have generally had e-mail integration early on, but have in the lst couple of years added e-mail archiving to the mix as demand has driven it. Storage Management denotes the capability to manage storage of the overall respository and to provide soem form of HSM type capabilities. There are not many vendors that can do this other than the software + hardware players such as EMC and HP.

Digital Asset Management - Here we are looking to support the capture, annotation, cataloguing, storage and retrieval of assets, such as digital photographs, animations, videos and music. Digital asset management in ECM is a new thing and while the services to build a DAM system are there they may or may not be realised by the organisation as such. This is one area where specialised solutions are still selling very much like web content management used to.

E-mail management - OK folks, here is the big one. Hands up all those you do not have an e-mail problem. Not too many hands there! Well the big area that is driving is e-mail archiving, but archiving is not records management and the real issue is really around managing the "business transactions" that are flowing through the e-mail systems. Most ECM vendors provide front end integration to Outlook or Notes Mail but rely heavily on the end user for intelligence to get the e-mail into a system. Archiving provides a great vacuum cleaner to capture everything. If there is one area that needs real sorting this is it.

Forms management - Heavily aligned with the process management area you should see this popping up everywhere. There are a lots of e-forms projects on the go with everything from claims process to the basics leave forms. To get value from this area it will be combined with collaboration and the process side. Once again the traditional ECM vendors are pulling the forms into the overall ECM suite.

Well that's all folks, 12 components with a little explaination on each. Good luck out there becuase in the ECM world we all need some.

ROI in your project ?

Management are from MARS and Techie's are from, hmmm, Pluto and marketing well they like ice cream ! Here is another great "Greg the Architect" video that looks at ROI. Yeah I know it is not directly ECM, but get some neurons working and you will see the links, or the gaps that you have in your current project.



Again this is a great way of getting across a message and oh yeah marketing do like ice creams.
And I forget to mention that Sarbanes Oxley does not allow us to provide cake with this blog!

ECM - MOSS 2007 Top 10 things to avoid

So MOSS 2007 is a great platform for driving collaboration and usability around getting documents and other electronic information.

Here are the top 10 things that you should avoid. OK so it's not just MOSS 2007 that these apply to. But given the amount of MOSS out there and the types of people involved it is a timely list.

1. No business objectives - Why are we doing this anyway? You have got to have a connection to the business objective that you are trying to solve. Otherwise you will get a File Server on steroids result. Lot's of messy content with a pretty interface.


2. No measures for success - If you don't know what you are doing then how can you measure it, I guess failure then comes as a complete surprise.


3. Setup.exe - Commonly called the "Nike" install; That's right, a straight install with no fore thought will spell mid term disaster. This generally indicates that all the other points that we are talking in this list will not have been covered up front. In that case, Good luck guys!


4. No Governance - You need sponsors and people to make this all happen past setup.exe, who will provide the high level air cover, own content, administer sites, decide and make changes and ... (take a breath here !).


5. Lets put is all on one box with no planning - Prior infrastructure planning for growth up front equals a real pain for the migration later on. Not to mention that you will also need to ask for more tin. At this point I will put in a plug for virtualisation, think about it, seriously!


6. No information architecture - If you don't know how content will be structures then you won't have a clue where things will go the chances are you will not find any of it later, on. Also you may as well welcome yourself to Site Collection hell right now.


7. No rollout plan past setup.exe - So now that's all installed what next, you better have a plan past setup.exe please. Who's first, why, what for? And what extension and development needs to be done up front before you get rolling?


8. No communication plan - What , how, for who and when?


9. No training - Sorry we have spent all the budget, you told me this was intuitive! Wrong answer, you need to plan for the training and make sensible decisions up front.


10. No backup, recover or DR plan - Things go wrong and this has now become a mission critical platform for enterprise content, what is you get out of gaol plan?

Oh, and did I forget testing? Oh, don't worry it will just work anyway, at least it does on my desktop!

ECM - How much Information?

Note that table above is from the Berkley report. See the end of the article for the URL link.

Well how much information is out there. Berkeley have done some research in 2000 and 2003 to estimate how much information is created each year. Consider just a small sample of the overall facts.

• 1 Gigabyte is a truckload of books. Now think of that little USB stick that you carry around.

The World Wide Web contains about 170 terabytes of information on its surface; in volume this is seventeen times the size of the Library of Congress print collections. Wow, talk about the new Gutenberg Press and personal print.

The overall estimate is that we generate 800MB of data / information per person. But hey, I have more disk space than than sitting on my desk right now, in fact 1225MB in total running about 70% used ! So the spread is obviously lumped up in those that have technology access.

The report estimates that in 2003 a total of 2-3 exabytes of information were generated and 5 exabytes were all the words spoken by human beings. Maybe we get to a point of cross over. I hope not because if we stop talking to one another we will lose relevance in meaning and connections.

For the full picture of the research link to the full report and findings below, and finally remember there are some good stats here for your next ECM analysis phase.

http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/

ECM Alfresco a customer story

Great to see a customer reference to the implementation of Alfresco for records and document management. I have been following Alfresco for some time now and I came across a set of slides from Islington Council in the UK.

Great to see that Open Source is starting to enter into the traditional ECM Market space, especially around records management. The Jeremy Tuck, Islinton's CIO has a slide deck presentation give a good overview of where they were and where they have got including a high level of the process that they went through. Sure it is high level and you need some solid information management background to fill in the gaps, but he has put in his e-mail address for you to contact him if necessary.

CMS Watch have also put Alfresco into their ECM Suite reports and I find that next to Nuxeo it is one of two potentials if you are looking at Open Source for the technology piece of your ECM solution at a reasonable cost.

But there is a warning here folks, while the community edition is free, if you are looking for scalability or DR facilities then you will need to sign up for a per annum support fee for Alfresco. However this is not a bad option when you consider that the annual maintenance cost of any ECM technology runs at 20% per annum.

HP Enters the ECM Race?

Found an article from Forrester on HP entering the ECM Race (thanks Tower). Click on the link for the full article available form the Tower Software Site.

Forrester states that HP are now confronting the "Four Horsemen" of Enterprise Content Management, guess they mean, EMC, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle ? Just to make sure I did a little googling and found the Forrester ECM 2007 report (thanks Oracle) that indicates this is so, as well as the report noted at the beginning.

But getting back to the overall thought of HP entering the race, what concerns me is how HP are going to compete in the ECM space race? The investment strategy seems to strengthen HP's compliance, archiving and discovery stack, but there is more to the total ECM feature space.

Will HP invest and develop in the other key ECM feature areas? Will they provide a set of "infostructure services" (as opposed to infastructure) to an ECM programme, or are they looking to get out there as an ECM Suite player in their own right. Only time will tell, I would hate to see the Tower Software purchase bury the TRIM engine into the overall HP stack for the sake of just ticking the box on a records management piece.

Guess we are all to stay tuned for the next unfolding in the ECM space race !

ECM - MOSS Architecture.

I deal a lot with MOSS 2007 these days. I guess with $800M in sales and the massive massive marketing machine that Microsoft brings to bear you can avoid it. I believe that even Microsoft themselves have been surprised at the adoption of MOSS 2007 as a platform.

But putting that all aside what fascinates me, and drives me mad is the way that the MOSS 2007 information architecture hangs together. Why? well because I have dealt with other ECM systems before, you tend to come with some well ingrained expectations when you begin to look at MOSS. Expectations such as:

• A single repository for information that is single source, create once and find and edit anywhere


• The ability to set retention and disposal at a system level and configure for the information in context


• The ability to leverage information outside of organisational boundaries eg. have a policy document spread across all departments

So give some of these expectations I found that I had to do a mind bend when starting to dig under the covers of the MOSS platform. Microsoft has an architecture for MOSS that goes like this.

(Click the image to get an enlarged view)

From the diagram you can see that the Site Collection is the logical grouping bucket for information. Now most large organisations that deploy MOSS will have multiple site collections. But here is where the mind bend on my expectations start.


The following features of MOSS 2007 DO NOT work across Site Collections (SC's)

• Content Types - You will need to deploy content types across all other SC's
  
• Content by Query Web Part - aggregates across site(s) but not SC's
  
• Workflow - Only available to the site collection it is deployed to !!!
  
• Information Management and Retention Policies - Only set at the SC level
  
• Search - Certain features so not work across SC's
  
• Quotas - Want to control the space people use, this must be deployed across SC's as well
  

So this starts to create some interesting exercise.

Firstly for the Information Architect / records management experts as they try to make sense of how to construct a classification / metadata / security and access controls.

Secondly for the MOSS Administrators as they try to keep track of the deployment and changes to the information support features that need to be managed as well. This is a ripe area for the 3rd party developers to help and some have already identified the gap.

So the moral is, prior planning prevents a poor deployment !

Greg the Architect. Is there an ECM link here?

Here is a YouTube link to Greg the Architect. While it deals with SOA (that's Service Orientated Architecture) you could swap out SOA for ECM and still have a great laugh, especially with the blue, red and grey team members.


Great piece of marketing by Tibco and I can identify with the Fisher Price Greg, as a look alike is in my daughters toy box. Don't worry Greg they love you. I find this hilarious viewing and was rolling around on the floor. BTW I am off to get that ECM systems migrated into the hardware software and services, and hardware!!

Where do I start?

I was called on the other day to run a briefing session to talk about SharePoint licencing, Hmm! This type of request generally gets me thinking, do they know what they want? and what they are doing?

Well it was evident that there was from the outset of the meeting that there was a bit of confusion as to roles and responsibilities of the people in the room. Not a good sign if this is the way you feel about your own structure, or organisation.

Fortunately I had already prepared my deck as a game of two halves. The first half was talking about their licensing request, as expected, and the second half was all about getting them to focus on, why? and what? of the wider content issues that they would have to face up to.,

I started the second half by asking some questions:

* How does the organisation view information?
* How do senior executives view information?
* Is there an information strategy?
* What understand do we have of how information flows?
* Do you understand the relationship of information to business processes?
* Is there a view that there is a problem?

These are generic questions that if you fail to get a solid answer up front indicate that there is some serious thinking, planning and alignment that needs to go on before you buy software. Then from this opening I gave an outline of five steps to help get started. These steps are as follows:

1. Conduct an Information Assessment (where are you today?)
2. Align content (you need a definition of content first) to People and Process
3. Identifying problems (with the content alignment) and solutions (how can we make it better)
4. Sell the solution (to identified sponsor(s) ) and gaining executive Air Cover
5. Break the overall delivery into manageable steps (build a road map of projects)

And with these steps, always ensure alignment to business objectives and outcomes of the organisation.

Compliance and Mouth Wash

Just read a great Post by Alan P-S (Apologies to Alan Pelz-Sharpe for the name abbreviation) on the CMSWatch site around Compliance being a dirty word, follow the link for the full noise.

I agree with the points that Alan raises, and see alignment of the the topic of his conversation to my local patch, being New Zealand. Here we have a thing called the Public Records Act that has been published by Archives NZ, a great piece of work by the way.

It is a broad umbrella Act that outlines the requirements that organisations need to achieve to obtain a suitable level of records compliance. The act is further supported with a whole framework of guidelines and standards so yo are not left hanging in space, even further great work.

But here is a secret, you can if you want to meet all the requirements without technology! Sure it would take a huge effort and lot of management and people, but you can do it. Yes, technology can make the job easier, but technology is only the supporting act to the process and people involved that combine to make it all happen and help an organisation meet its records management obligations. I fully support the comments that Alan makes around organisation going back to good old retention and disposition tools, rather than having a fancy "out of the box" compliance product.

If there is one thing that I am tired of hearing around the traps in NZ is this:

"Our <name technology here> is PRA compliant !!!

Compliant to what? Firstly there is not testing against any standard and secondly there are no magic solutions with a flick of setup.exe that will take the place of the necessary elements of:

• Business alignment,
• Judicious planning & business case justification
• Competent change management, and
• Solid IM, IT and Project management disciplines

Technology by itself will not do it, and at best can only provide some support to the overall programme of work. Guess we need to break out the soap bar to wash out the dirty words !

Quadrants, consolidation and sausages !

As a point of interest I dug out ye Old Magic Quadrants (here after referred to as"the map") from Gartner covering the ECM vendor landscape over the period 2004 - 2007. Why? well with the recent pre-agreement from HP I was interested to see what I thought the vendor landscape was going to look like and to review what had already come before.

It was an interesting exercise and the following observations are simple snapshots of stacking the quadrants next to each other, far from scientific I know, but makes for some good, quick observations.

2004 There were 22 vendors on the map. Some of these looking back we would arguably question today, such as RedDot? Maybe this was a time where the Web Content Management (WCM) area was still moving along and there was some confusion as to where it stood in the the whole ECM space. Well that quickly got sorted in the 2005 map.

2005 the map is down 4 players to 18 and quickly taking on the shape of a sausage with the spread of vendors from the lower left to the top right. Meridio drops out as well as RedDot due to the lack of spread of functions that are being delivered to classify as a full ECM player. Objective enters into the lower right, obviously they had cash to spare this year; The big change of course was the acquisition of Hummingbird by OpenText. The top right were certainly looking to acquire, or get big enough to stop being acquired by some one else.

2006 held the total number of players as 18, however consolidation was very evident in that IBM went for the big bite on FileNet and the top right has dropped from 8 to 4 players. Looking at the map in the top right IBM and EMC were going neck and neck in the race for the anointed leaders position.

2007 sees the total number of vendors reduced to 17. Stellent has acquired by Oracle; IBM move to the leader position, slightly above and ahead of EMC. Interesting to note that Microsoft have steadily moved to the right and are firmly placed in the visionary quadrant. The sausage is starting also to look a little stretched in the middle as the gap widens between the top and bottom players. Hyland Software have for the last 4 years been steadily moved toward the very centre of the map, not a bad position to be in for expanding out of the US only market.

2008 the prediction is that the number will stay at 17, as HP will enter and Tower Software will be no more. But the big question will be where will HP appear on the Map? Will they be in the compete area of the top right. Guess there are some fast and furious analyst lunches, oops I meant briefings, happening right now !

Tower Software, gobble, gobble, munch, munch by HP

Well it is always interesting in the Vendor landscape for ECM lower left quadrant members. News today on the wires that HP are to and I quote from the RTTNews article:

"3/31/2008 6:26:26 PM Personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Tower Software, a document and records management software company based in Canberra, Australia, on Monday said they have signed a pre-bid agreement for the former to acquire Tower. The acquisition will be conducted by means of an off-market takeover bid for all of the outstanding shares of Tower. The takeover is expected to close in the second quarter of calendar year 2008."

Full article link here.

So consolidation is still on the move and the Gartner magic sponge as it seems from the vendor shapes on the quadrant is tightening up even further.

I am not surprised at this move as the relationship between Tower Software and HP has been developing for some time, especially around what was previously know as the HP RISS solution. Tower needed to expand and needed capital to do so, but seemed to be a little behind the mark on road map and where the buying market seemed to be moving. Microsoft is on the march and there is was VC in Tower with 50+% looking to get the cash and move on. Also the available dance partners willing to take the Tower brand home for a bit of pampering were starting to dwindle with the acquisitions that had happened last year.

Smart move Martin and Brand, good luck for the future, and I am off for a Strategic review session!

AIIM Conference Summary

Well another year and another AIIM Conference has closed out. Overall I have been pleased with the Conference and the networking that I have been able to do, plus the ability to get around and see all the vendors in one space.

The presentation streams that were run by CMS Watch were informative and entertaining, plus this year there was an audio capture of all the streams so I can now listen to all the presentations in my own time and catch up on the ones that I had to miss out on because you cannot be in two places at one time.

During the course of the show Microsoft came up again and again and the main issues seems to be the uncontrolled release of SharePoint sites that spread through the organisation. Well the resolution comes back to policy and planning before "Setup.exe" is executed as if this wonderful technology is just left to go by itself there will over time be SharePoint hell in the form of isolated silos of Site collections.

So get planning and do it right, or if you already have it out there get a stock take going and get some Information Management professionals involved.