Microsoft Citizen Service Platform

I have been on partner training for the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform (CSP). The CSP is a framework that looks to leverage project activities that have been delivered across Local and Regional Government customers and brings it all together as a model and set of guidance and templates that can be leveraged to solve business problems.

The cynic might say that it is marketing to sell Microsoft licences, in one way that is true. However, what is real is that Microsoft are really trying to show some leadership by getting above the pure product drop and providing real world experience on how the products are brought together to form solutions that deliver real business value. Sample the CSP at the Microsoft site Citizen Service Platform.

Search FASTer

Announcement by Microsoft at FAST Forward 09 a detailed road map of FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business.

FAST Search for SharePoint, is a new "search server" that will bring the portions of the search capabilities of the current FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. This functionality will be available as a part of the next release of the Microsoft Office system, currently named O14 release. Some will say, it's about time !

For those who are interested in the product today, Microsoft also announced ESP for SharePoint, a special offer that allows customers to purchase high-end search capabilities now, with a defined licensing path to FAST Search for SharePoint when it becomes available.

Overall this direction from Microsoft is a significant advancement in the world of search. We are beginning to see the $1.2b acquisition of FAST now being leveraged to bring great value to the SharePoint interface, as well as provide a path to include the power and versatility of the full FAST engine as required. The Search market is going to heat up very quickly.

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.

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.

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 - 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 - 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 - 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 !

Consolidation musings and Open Source dark horses

Intersting to see that the rash of vendor consolidation continues unabated from the pre Xmas rush.

Microsoft puts out the stocking and stuffs in FAST. This is an interesting play in the battle of the Titans (read Microsoft and Google). But it is also an interesting play in the Search piece of the ECM Market. Love them or hate them Microsoft entered the ECM market big time with MOSS 2007 and from the vendor stands at the annual AIIM Conference they have made a big statement over the last couple of years. It has been commonly said that once Microsoft enters a market in three years they tend to dominate.

As I have talked internally in my own business for a couple of years consolidation is coming down to one to two serious horizontal platform players and the traditional ECM specialist companies are looking desperately as to how they are going to differentiate themselves or die.

Some like EMC have the pleasure or pain of being part of a wider super tanker company and therefore can balance out the software side of the business with the tin sales that are made year on year, but others are in a serious position of looking to get purchased or face getting squeezed in the process.

Now the dark horses are the Open Source players such as Alfresco and Nuxeo. While these guys may not feature on ye old "Gartner Magic Quadrant" they are really becoming quite serious in the capability that they can offer.

Alfresco has a serious line up of architectural power that comes out of the roots of Documentum and Interwoven. Having all the industry scars but not having to be encumbered with an Architecture that is now set, they have been able to re think and retool for the "new age". I have been watching them for awhile and now that they have records management in the offering it will be interesting to see the customer pick up in the "government" type clients.