ECM - No single product?

Russ Stalters in a post Dec 2008 (For Most Enterprises;"A ECM Solution from a single vendor is a Myth!") outlined that most Enterprises ECM Solution tends to include a mixture of technologies from various vendors, rather than that from a single vendor.

Out of the 150 executives that attended a presentation that Russ gave none disagreed with the statement.

Well the same is true here in NZ, especially within some of the larger organisations that I get to eal with. There seems to be a range of technologies that have been deployed over a period of time, either by virtue of no strategy, or because the functions of Web Content and Document Content have been driven by different departmental budget lines and therefore different visions have emerged.

In some cases a strategic view has emerged from a product selection, but very seldom have I seen a full on ECM proposal come to market, or any ECM strategic planning preceed technology implmentation.

A key area that seem to be missing time and time again is an appropriate Information Infrastructure, or as I like to call it Infostructure. Infostructure provides to the information a set of capabilities that enables information to be understood and flow in and out of core business processes.

The building of an infrostructure is independent of the technology to be used. The infostructure is a set of policies and supporting tools to make the technology work for people and processes. Tools that enable the technology to work are things like the business taxonomy, classification systems and associated metadata models and relationship entities.

These tools are part of the information structure not the technology itself and if designed and developed correctly will allow for an organisation to build and implement an ECM system from multiple products.

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.

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

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.