Month: February 2010

CMIS is Helping Application Separation, Today

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It is already happening, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are CMIS-base custom clients being developed and released that are taking some of the pain out of using ECM systems.  I’m not talking about open source clients, but commercial clients with dedicated teams and one goal, to make money.

I know that there is pain in the use of ECM systems, and not just because I use them.  I know this because of one simple metric; In my list my most successful ECM projects, the top of the list is dominated by systems that do not use the default user interface.  I’m not talking about customized clients.  I’m talking CUSTOM clients.

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Looking Beyond Box’s Market-Speak

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Box.net.  In case you missed it, I basically called their term for their solution, which I refuse to use again, “market speak” and hype while implying much worse.

A week later, Aaron Levie, the CEO and cofounder of Box.net, was interviewed on Fierce Content Management.  Here he espoused a solid vision for Box’s hosted version of Content Management, though that term was heavily featured, again.

During all this, a very surprising thing thing happened, Aaron contacted me and asked if we could setup a time to chat so that I might better understand their vision.  I accepted his offer.  Our scheduled meshed today and I thought I would share.

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Lessons in Product Marketing, ECM Style

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Last week I went to the Drug Information Association’s conference on Electronic Document Management (DIA EDM). I was there to get my feet wet again in the pharmaceutical industry.  I wanted to see what had changed and how things had evolved.

I learned a few things.  The first was that the drivers are basically the same in the industry as they were a few years back.  I’m still digesting the material on the conference, and there should be more on what I learned later.  The most important thing that I learned wasn’t about Clinical Research Organizations or any other of the latest trends in managing electronic submissions.

It was in marketing.

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Is 2010 the Year of CMIS?

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imageYesterday, Fierce Content Management published an article that I wrote entitled The Future of CMIS.  I discussed what I see as a very busy, and important, year for CMIS.  It is a good article, at least on the Scale of Pie, and I am not going to be regurgitating it here for you.

Instead, I feel the need to clarify an inconsistency.  In the article I stated [bold added]:

The past year was a good year for the proposed Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The specification was released for public review and efforts began to build an Open Source implementation of CMIS,  Apache Chemistry. The next year promises to be even bigger…

I even proclaim that The future is now.  That is all well and good, but there is one thing hanging over that statement.  I predicted in my mandatory 2010 predictions post that:

2010 Will Not be the Year of CMIS

These statements appear to contradict each other.  Now I could just say that my thinking has evolved and excuse myself that way, but I’m not.  I’m sticking with both statements.

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EMC Admits it Needs Help, Partners with FatWire

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If you haven’t been paying attention, EMC announced a strategic partnership with FatWire today.  I couldn’t be much more pleased.  I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t feel that EMC’s Documentum Web Publisher has the chops to compete in the market and that as long as its release cycle was tied to the Content Server, it never would.

That is no longer a problem.  What does this mean for EMC and FatWire?

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"Cloud Content Management" Hype

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headdesk Every now and then, I read a post/article/tweet that makes me slam my head against the nearest hard surface.  The culprit this time was an article titled Cloud Content Management to Challenge ECM?

I saw the title and was intrigued.  I then read it and realized that the author had started falling for some market speak.  I quickly determined that the fault was not completely with the author.  Yes, they had fallen under the spell of some marketing and should have been strong enough to resist.  The real villian here? Box.

Remove the Cloud

Okay, lets think this through, logically.  First, let’s look at Box’s definition of Cloud Content Management.  When you look at it, you see them describing a SaaS offering.  More importantly, you are seeing them talk about the advantages of hosting it on the internet as opposed to your server room.

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