Information Architecture. It’s is lots of things to lots of people. In the web sense it is all about usability, navigation and search. To the more hard core EDRMS types it is all able the classification and metadata that drives the ability to store, link, retrieve and retire (destroy records).
Most ECM repositories have the capability to take an Information Architecture model and make it part of the system.
SharePoint, MOSS, Office SharePoint Server. What ever you call it is now a ubiquitous platform that has really hit mainstream usage.
Having been around ECM for awhile I remember the AIIM Conference in Philadelphia in 2006. Wham; There was Microsoft right from out of the blue with a massive presence at the Conference. There was buzz, there was comment, there was concern from other vendors.
Finally in the domain of Information Architecture Microsoft is making a strong play. The public beta for SharePoint 2010 is a real step up in the tools that have been made available to deploy an enterprise Information Architecture framework.
Now there is the concept of Enterprise Metadata Management (EMM) and the creation and deployment of this metadata is above the web application layer which means that we can now build metadata model and taxonomy term sets that can be consumed across farms and site collections from a central service, rather than having these locked into the site collection level.
Sounds liberating, it is. Now we have the ability to develop the Information Architecture as a service rather than having it baked into the site collection. To some this may not sound exciting but to an Information person this is really excellent news.
