A Maturity Model - The truth is out there

Feel like an X-Files re run.

Well in most cases a lot of organisation can't find the File let alone the "X" one. The level of ECM Maturity in New Zealand is quite low in many areas. I know that I am being general, but I have to because in this forum it is not convenient to name names, projects or the lack of strategy that seems to be around managing content. This is simply a lack of maturity around ECM.

One good thing however is that Alan Pelz-Sharpe from CMS Watch along with other authors from Wipro and Hartman Communicatie have released a maturity model into the Creative Commons, known as the (ECM3) ECM Maturity Model v1.0.

I suggest that some organisations, not just in NZ, may want to have a look atthis model to at least to work out where they are today and how they could start to move forward towards real maturity.

The truth is out there and you can start the investigation here http://www.ecm3.org/

My disclaimer is that I have reviewed the model and provided feedback, as you will see on the website. I applaude that the authors have released this mode into the wild "with caveats" and that they have opened it up for community development.

Enter the year Autonomy in acquisition mode

So welcome to 2009.

We are in the midst of a global recession. There is a new US President. And the day after inauguration Autonomy has moved to acquire Interwoven. What a start !

So Autonomy has now moved into the ECM space with this acquisition and places them on the Gartner MQ as a serious player. The rationale for the purchase from Autonomy is as follows:

The combination of Autonomy's Meaning Based Computing technologies (IDOL) (with
its ability to understand content) with Interwoven's suite of products (focused
on managing the interactions of people and content) will create a new set of
technologies, updating and enhancing Interwoven's products by significantly
reducing the levels of manual effort now required. These technologies are ready
to address the new need for manage-in-place and extend Autonomy's reach into a
new customer base. Interwoven's products know what the customer interactions
are, and Autonomy's IDOL will allow them to know what they mean.

A full press release is outlined on the Autonomy site

http://www.autonomy.com/content/News/Releases/2009/0122.en.html

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.

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 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.