When I saw him speak at the DC User Experience Professionals Association meeting, he was talking about his book Mindfire. He was giving out free copies to those that participated in the presentation/discussion. When I “earned” my book, I traded for The Myths of Innovation. An earlier book of his, it is one that gets to the root of why I listen to Scott Berkun.

Enough prelude, let’s talk about the book.

The Nuts and Bolts

In The Myths of Innovation, Scott tackles many of the “Myths” that people have about innovation. Actually, the myths are about old innovations that he dispels while demonstrating that the assumptions about innovation that people have drawn from those myths are not true.

This isn’t to say that he discounts the efforts or accomplishments of Isaac Newton, the Wright brothers, or Steve Jobs. On the contrary, he essentially gives them more credit because the facts around their myths reveal the real work and effort that went into their advancements.

In fact, one thing that Scott stresses is that innovation is work. It does not come in an epiphany unless the proper groundwork has been laid. That flash of insight is likely the result of a lot of effort that culminates when the subconscious decides to release the results of its efforts.

Scott does more than smash myths and misunderstandings, he clearly explains the reality behind each concept with examples drawn from both history and modern day companies. These real life examples help illustrate how much work innovation is and how even then it sometimes isn’t enough.

Forget Innovation

One thing that Scott points out is something that I’ve heard many people observe of late…the word ”Innovation” is over-used. We cannot force innovation. We can enable creativity among ourselves and our colleagues. What comes out of it may be innovative or it may just be simply new and useful.

You can set out to be innovative, but success depends upon your output, not just your efforts. You do have to work at it to have a chance, as everyone has in the past, but true innovation can be elusive.

I’ve created a lot of cool things in my time, solving some tough problems. Were they innovative? Maybe? If they were, they were limited in scope. That doesn’t make me less proud of what I’ve done. My accomplishments are the same that they’ve always been. Innovative? Maybe not.

Conclusion…

Read it. If you want to foster creativity in the hope of doing something truly innovative, read this book. It offers ideas and helps you to take a different angle as to what is required to enable creativity.

I think one of the most important lesson is that there is no single formula. What helps be be creative won’t necessarily work for my colleagues. As a leader, if I want my staff to be creative, I have to create an atmosphere where they can feel free to try new things and collaborate in an environment that works best for them and not myself.

The speakers are Don Prodehl (VP Research & Development) Darryl Hopkins (Director R&D/ Product Manager), and Craig Dellorso (Chief Customer Officer).

Notes:

• Themes this past year
  • Accounting enhancements
  • Framework/Foundation/UI
    • API/eWeb/Widgets
    • iWeb UI/div-table-based forms
  • Process Changes:
    • Mid-year Feature Pack release (basically optional point release)
    • Service Packs with potential functionality
    • More collaboration between Professional Services, R&D and Support
  • Going for a more modern looking App and more functionality in baseline
• Christine Delorenzo is the new Product Manager for Accounting. (Much needed and she seems to have a decent background for the position)
• Avectra2013 release is due in April
  • Avectra2012 release was delayed due to various factors: feature creep, not cutting Quality Assurance (QA)
  • Avectra2013 feature pack will be in August
• Avectra2014 is slated for January, target month for future releases
• Lots of features in April 2013 release
  • Improved A-Score, including rolling member activities to their organizations
  • Taxes on all product types
  • More Payment gateways and tokens
  • Auto-create interest codes based on actions (useful for AIIM)
  • Enhance Outlook 2010 plugin now supports 64-bit and will sync tasks and assignments into Outlooks and close them (need to attend that session)
  • Events budgeting and payables
  • More marketing opt-in and opt-out management through xWeb. Improves integrations with 3rd party applications (like Marketo)
  • Mobile eWeb and HTML5
  • eWeb Google Analytics integration
  • Improved form designer in the Toolkit, supports dynamic forms to handle mobile form factors
  • .NET 4.5, SQL Server 2012, jQuery updates, Bootstap, GLYPHIcons
  • xWeb has added RESTful as well as SOAP, including resource designer in Toolkit
  • Individual Designations, Table-based and not free-form, order by rank
  • More Communications Preferences
  • Consolidated notes for one person into one place
• [Note: Demo showing redesign of iWeb (cool) and eWeb (nice but we don’t use)]
• Working on a login from Facebook in eWeb for members, may not be part of 2013
• Looking at OAuth and SAML (very happy to hear both of those, especially SAML)
• Auto-redirect from desktop to mobile when site is viewed on mobile, when the page exists, maybe in the 2014 release
• IdeaStarter being brought into netFORUM: CrowdFunding (funds, time, resources, and connections). widget based that can be incorporated into existing website
• Roadmap, 2014 and Beyond
  • Enable hooks for more extensibility
  • Web Widgets built on RESTful web services
  • Query designer UI imporovements
  • Tax and FedEx integration
• Want to create a full complement of RESTful services to build new eWeb version not in 2014 (very important. Must do to be mature platform)

Next step is the 1st-time attendee reception. Thinking I’ll drop off my laptop in the room first. After that, my next post will be tomorrow.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Avectra products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

I have no idea how I’ll share my experience between twitter and here at the Word. This is my first time so I’m not sure how the muse will possess me. Regardless of the outcome, I wanted to let everyone understand what I’m doing.

In case I decide to publish raw notes, I wanted to share this disclaimer for those that are unfamiliar with my style. Enjoy.

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Avectra products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

I am a Generation Xer. I am not a “digital native” by anyone’s definition. I may be an early adopter from Generation X, but no matter how well I adapt to the changing technology, I am not a digital native. I still remember using rotary phones and a time when the most advanced technology in the home was the television sitting on the floor.

The same division can be made with technology companies. There are many different generations. There is the Mainframe Generation, the Enterprise Generation (the client-server), and the Cloud Generation. In software there is also a strong DNA strain of Open Source, though those vendors can still be categorized in specific generations.

As a rule, vendors born of one generation have a tough time migrating to the next. If they succeed, and many do, they still have to work to overcome their roots. DNA is very strong in technology companies. It is in their code, their financial models, and in the visions that their founders established.

Unlike previous generations where market disruptions occurred after the founder had died, in the technology sector the truly disruptive technologies come at a rapid pace.

Take IBM. They are leaders from the Mainframe Generation. IBM did a good job finding a place in the Enterprise Generation, but their position at the top slipped. Their current position is from ground that they have re-gained.

Oracle, EMC, Microsoft and Hyland are from the Enterprise Generation. Alfresco and Nuxeo are as well though their DNA is as much Open Source as it is Enterprise.

Box, Dropbox, and Zendesk are from the Cloud Generation.

DNA is hard to change. Just ask IBM. They had to fight and scratch to leave their mainframe roots behind. Their efforts to become more of a solutions company is something that will help make the next transition to the cloud age.

Are the Enterprise Vendors doomed?

The simple answer is that they aren’t all doomed. Some are making solid strides at entering the world of the cloud.

That doesn’t make them Cloud Vendors. They are Enterprise Vendors with cloud solutions.

Cloud Vendors are cloud down to their DNA. They were born in the cloud and they think of no other way of life. “Hybrid” is a dirty word to them.

Of course, not being a cloud vendor doesn’t mean that an Enterprise Vendor are incapable of delivering good solutions via the cloud. Enterprise Vendors are distinctly different, and that difference can be a good thing if used properly.

Enterprise Vendors understand the realities that companies face day to day because they’ve been living it since the Cloud Vendor founders still in puberty. Information Governance is not a foreign concept to them. The solutions that they place in the cloud are typically more mature from a feature perspective than the ones the Cloud Vendors deploy. Though the may carry many of the perceived flaws of enterprise software into the cloud with them.

The Cloud is the future and the Cloud Vendors are going to lead the way by showing us new ways of doing things.

Not being a Cloud Vendor isn’t a bad thing. It is a recognition of your DNA. The key for vendors is to recognize their roots. If they do that, they can embrace the good, leave the bad, and focus on becoming a force for good in the world of the cloud.

Before diving in, want to say that Ron was smart, knowledgeable, and entertaining. The room was heavy with Association types and his experience in the space was minimal but most of what he said applied very nicely to the world of Associations.

Why Customer Experience Management

I know that many, including myself, will call it a craponym, but CEM/CXM is a valid concept. Knock the marketing lingo all you want, managing the customer’s experience with you and your brand is critical. As proof of this, Ron pointed to someone who had taken the top 10 companies in CXM, as per Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, and the bottom 10 companies and tracked their stock price over five years.

You know what he found?

Top 10 Customer Experience Index public companies’ stock grew at a rate of 22.5% over those five years. Those at the bottom of the rankings shrank by over 45%. Meanwhile, the market as a whole, as measured by the S&P index, was down little over 1%.

That’s a pretty strong correlation.

The Age of the Customer(?)

According to Ron, the rise of CXM has singled our arrival in the Age of the Customer. His argument is that the customer has so much information that they control things.

[Note: Ron said the Age of Manufacturing lasted until 1960, the Age of Distribution was from 1960 to 1990, and the Age of Information was from 1990 to 2010.]

Here’s the thing, it is NOT the Age of the Customer. It is still the Information Age. As much information as the customer has about a company, a company has the ability to collect even more about their customers.

And the smart ones are doing just that.

The customers may be better armed, and they have been for quite some time, but companies are even better armed.

If they are taking advantage of things.

As Ron outlined, organizations need to Meet the Needs of their customers, be Easy to work with, and be Enjoyable to do business with them. Each builds upon the other. “Enjoyable” is about not making things painful for the consumer. Don’t pester customers. Be perceived as helping, not simply necessary.

In fact, checking if those three needs are met make great survey questions.

[Note: In the panel, Nate Barad said that he things the most important question is “if you could improve one thing, what would it be?” Afterwards we discussed it and I shared my thought that his question was great, but it makes the perfect final question.]

To sum it up, Customer Experience strongly correlates to loyalty and can be measured by the:

• Willingness to consider for another purchase
• Likelihood to recommend to a friend
• Likelihood to switch business to a competitor

Final Thought Collection

There was a lot of talk about mobile, but I’m saving the details for another post. I will say that one important point was that the experience across devices should be unified, but distinct. People will use devices for different tasks so they should be designed appropriately.

Contextualization of the experience is important. Contextualization was defined as the tailored adaptive, sometime predictive, digital experience based on the demographics, behaviors, environment, and touchpoints. Contextualization is based on the customer Profile/Persona + History + Situation.

The Situation in the world (war/other buyers/recession/…) is part of the Big Data equation. Ron stressed the importance of not losing the little data (profile) in the process. The personal information needs to be carried from touchpoint to touchpoint.

Recommendations

Ron gave a few recommendations as he wrapped up the talk.

• Improve your knowledge of your customers.
• Expand your definition of digital. It is the combination of every digital and the set of behaviors, not just the touchpoints.
• Take advantage of the device capabilities in non-invasive way. For example, use the GPS.
• Focus on context of the experience, not simply on the touchpoints.
• Define unified, not uniform, experiences.

There will hopefully be a few more posts in the near future covering some other details that deserve more focus.

Disclaimer: This was a free event but AIIM uses both Sitecore and ICF Ironworks, though there are no current engagements. Before you rush to any other judgments, any issues with the AIIM website, as of this writing, are not the fault of either of those companies.

Tweets

Some of my tweets that aren’t reflected in this post:

• Ron Rogowski says Customer Exp Mgmt (CXM) is “How customers perceive their interactions w/ your company”
• 1700+ CEOs named customer obsession as the top leadership trait from Global CEO Study by IBM
• Some customers still want physical touches (mail/phone). Not just moving to digital. Total experience
• Customer experience is about pattern recognition. Easy in real life, harder in digitally w/o data
• Need to get disciplined about knowing your customer. Empathy w/ your customer is critical – @RonRogowski
• Want to improve #CXM in Association space? Hire target Persona from industry. Use personal outreach outside your events
• B2B is must harder for #CXM than B2C. Nice admission. B2B changes by industry & by Dept in a Business
• Not everyone can own the customer’s experience. All are responsible, but if 1 person doesn’t own it, nobody does
• Personas are important. They need to be based on real people & decisions over time have to leverage them. Can’t write & ignore
• Making wrong assumption about a persona makes things fall apart (seen it. very sad when it happens)
• Price is part, not the entirety, of the customer experience. It impacts perception but doesn’t directly correlate
• In customer relationships, the perception of the customer is what matters more than the reality

I’ve always enjoyed attending events like this. Whether it is a random meet-up group, a local AIIM chapter, or one of the bigger seminars/conferences, talking to people the best way to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.

When I was a consultant working with multiple clients, I would be very focused on a subset of the industry from both a technology and business perspective. Getting out and trading war stories with others was a great way to learn, let off steam, and to make sure that I never lost sight of the bigger picture.

Why Local Matters

I didn’t get where I am today by just working in the content industry. I as far as I have by getting out there and learning from others. In fact, the local connection is the ultimate in learning and networking.

Social networks are great, but they have limits. Twitter is very good for connecting for new people in the industry and tracking what is happening outside of your project’s bubble. It is work though to find all the right people to follow and make sure that you are getting the right balance of views.

That is where local comes into play. You interact with people in an environment where they are more genuine and less scripted. It is a good way to meet people follow in social media and to find people that can give you real advice.

Advice delivered 140 characters at a time is limited. Discussions without body language cues may miss critical issues or topics. When you throw in serendipity that comes with meeting new people, the value skyrockets.

Going Local in Content Management

There are lots of ways to get that local love in the Content Management space. AIIM has a lot of chapters spread throughout the US and Canada. There are local AIIM seminars in the spring and fall. Even the AIIM Conference is a great place because while it may not be local, it will have people in various industries from around the world gathered to chat.

Outside of AIIM, there are local meetups of various specializations. Heck, even your school alumni group isn’t a bad place sometimes.

If you are stuck in the middle of nowhere, there are a few online alternatives. They aren’t as good as a physical meeting, but they are better than just hanging out in the social media world. There are chats on Twitter that you can participate in on a regular basis. The participants of those chats usually are great people with which to connect and engage.

In the Information space I try and participate in #InfoChat Thursdays at 11AM EST. When I want to talk about the business side of Associations, I participate in #AssnChat Tuesdays at 2pm EST. There is a chat on probably every topic.

Let’s Get Local

Seriously. Go out and meet people. I’m going to the AIIM Conference in March. Did I mention it was in New Orleans? I’ve only been there once before but it was, “The. Best. Conference. Ever.” I’m not going because I work for AIIM, I’m going because of the people attending. Okay, I have to attend but I would fight to go if I was told to stay home.

If you are in the Association space, maybe you can see me at the Avectra User Conference in March down in Orlando. I’m going as normal attendee to meet fellow users and see what I can learn.

There will be lots of other local events in the DC area I always try and attend. I’d like to attend the National Capitol chapter of AIIM but it conflicts with my duties as a Scout leader for my son. That shouldn’t stop you.

Until we cross paths, see you on Twitter and feel free to swing by #InfoChat one day.

Silicon Valley has declared war.

Oh, they haven’t made such a bold declaration. Well, not most of them. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a war taking place. It also doesn’t mean that the war is such a bad thing. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said,

Every generation needs a new Revolution.

If you ask anyone in the Valley, they’ll say that they only mean to help. They believe it when they say that they come in peace.

Which they don’t.

They mean to take almost everything we’ve done the last couple of decades, throw it out, and “install” their vision of the future.

Don’t get me wrong, they have the same desire to improve things as Steve Jobs, their idol, did last decade for consumer electronics. Unfortunately for the Enterprise, replacing your Content Management System (CMS) is slightly more complicated than changing phones.

Especially when the new CMS doesn’t deliver the 9x improvement we’ve come to expect from the consumer revolution.

Ripe for Conquest

Let’s face some hard truths. Enterprise software, especially Content Management, hasn’t exactly been a slam dunk success. Many IT projects fail and they still take too long to finish, even when executed properly.

The reason is that they are complex. The systems insert themselves into the workday and don’t always deliver enough new functionality to justify the added burden. Do not forget that it often appears that “User Experience” seems to be a foreign concept to many vendors.

To be fair, the complexity doesn’t start with the vendors. Have you seen some of the Record Plans out there? They aren’t quick reads. When buying CMSs with Records Management (RM) features, or a stand-alone RM system, that complexity is forced upon the vendors.

I cannot tell you how many organizations I have been to with STRICT Records Management requirements that barely have basic Content Management under control. I’m not talking years ago, I’m talking recently.

There are real issues out there, making Enterprise IT ripe for attack.

Complexity through Simplicity

This opportunity has been targeted by Silicon Valley. Their approach is simple. They allow users to do basic business activities, without complexity. Soon, a significant portion of your staff are using this software. Like a good espionage unit, agents from the Valley are in your organization laying the groundwork for a revolution.

There isn’t only one cloud vendor infiltrating your organization. This is leading to the first problem, which is “cloud sprawl”. Remember when every office had its own systems? Now imagine every user or project using their own system. Chaos.

Once your organization is ripe for takeover, the cloud vendors swoop in and promise everything will be better if you just commit and make the switch.  At this point, you just want only one of these cloud vendors creating chaos, not 3-4 of them. You sign the contract, embracing the chaos.

Then things start to get more complicated. Remember all those complex requirements to meet your legal requirements? Those needs have to met in other systems because the cloud providers can’t support those features and they cannot be customized to implement them.

Now there are redundant systems that are in place strictly to meet those requirements. Want them to talk to each other, good luck. The cloud vendors may love creating APIs for you to use but they don’t seem to care about support the industry interoperability standards. You can make the systems work together, but you have to do the work and maintain the code.

Have fun.

A Truce?

We need a truce in this war. Silicon Valley and the Enterprise need to work together. Things are broken but the systems can’t just be bulldozed to make way for a new world. There is a middle ground and both sides acknowledge it.

If you are going to the AIIM Conference in March, you can hear me talk more about the war during my keynote. This war is going to define IT in 2013 and I’m hoping we can negotiate a truce.

We’ve been working on thing to improve the user experience but sometimes circumstances catch-up with you as it did this week. I thought I would share a little case study in addressing Website performance.

Quick Background

If you aren’t a regular visitor to AIIM’s website, in addition to standard content delivery, we have some basic Community features including blogs, profiles, and discussions. In addition, members can update their information and preferences stored in our Association Management System (AMS). One final feature is that our training courses are all available directly through our website.

In 2012 we saw a steady rise in traffic, which is good. We were seeing more engagement and more of our research and content being accessed by a wider audience than before. We also noticed a trend of people taking more of our online courses instead of the traditional in-person courses.

Seeing this, we made plans to improve our scalability. Then reality hit.

Going Over the Cliff

This is an example of the performance load we were seeing in the first half of 2012.

*Note that all graphs are designed to be illustrative, not an accurate reflection of actual performance.

It doesn’t look too bad. We are clearly using a lot of resources but nothing we can’t manage, right?

Wrong. Take a look at this with a trend line added.

Resource Consumption is clearly trending upwards. In fact, if we look at a representation of the entire year you get this.

As you can see, there are some flirtation with 100% capacity before beginning to exceed it at the end. While this graph doesn’t take the Christmas season into account, most websites pick-up where they left off once the holidays are over.

I know our website did.

What To Do?

Everyone’s first instinct is to just add another web server. This will increase capacity but it may not solve everything. In fact, it may reach a point where that doesn’t solve the problem as adding a web server only scales the performance hit from users.

Every server and service has a baseline level of resource consumption that occurs regardless of the number of users. Let’s look at the site breaking the fixed resources from the user-based variable consumption.

As you can see, a new web server isn’t going to start at zero capacity. Going from one to two web servers will still nearly double your capacity to server users, assuming all other factors such as bandwidth can accommodate the volume.

Look closely at the above graph. You’ll may notice that the Fixed costs are actually trending up. That is because the Fixed costs of a website can change over time.

Let’s look at one more graph.

Most websites cache information to provide faster response time. The AIIM site is no different. We cache many Community-centric components. Unfortunately, caching was not designed to effectively scale should it become a popular feature.

Well, it became a popular feature.

As our Community features grow, the amount of resources consumed on the server increases, even if the number of visitors remain constant.

Which they haven’t.

So what do we do?

Well, adding more web servers is a quick fix, but we knew that the amount of resources used by users wasn’t that large. We had to address the bottom line.

A high level list of some things we have done:

• Relocated a Fixed Process: We have a web application that runs behind the scenes that consumes a fixed amount of resources. We moved that to another server as it was loosely coupled with the main site and is invisible to users.
• Removed a High Caching Feature: We had a feature on our website that was seldom used and was consuming an increasing amount of cache space. It is gone for now.
• Removed an Inefficient Feature: On our blogs, we displayed lists of recent comments from across the site on the right navigation. It had a growing cache, was inefficient during page loads, and was seldom used. Also gone for now.
• Remove Abstraction Layers: For one task, requests go through many layers of abstraction. At least layer was inefficient and consuming a large portion of the cache. We will be going directly to the source now for information, negating the cache and speeding information retrieval.

There are a few other things that we’ve done and are doing. Most aimed at improving performance of the fixed and cache zones.

Long-Term Plans

We have implemented enough to make the website usable again. We are going to implement a few more items this week that should help us out for the next couple of months. Then we are moving on.

Why?

Because we have several things in the queue over the next 3-4 months that should help, if we can focus on them.

• New AMS: This will reduce the amount of fixed resources and likely reduce the resources per user.
• New LMS: We are working to deploy a new Learning Management System in the cloud. This will reduce:
  • Fixed resources consumed
  • Users hitting the primary web server
  • Bandwidth consumed (streaming video)
  • Resources per user
• Implement Sitecore’s Community Module: Our current Community is homegrown and runs in our Sitecore system. By adding this module, we allow a COTS package to handle the existing  functionality, including caching. It will also add another server set to the mix to provide the Community content.

Not So Simple

As you can see, it isn’t always as simple as throwing-up another web server. That is always a fair approach, but if you don’t look more deeply you may be missing things that are hurting the user experience of your website.

Take the time to figure it out. Your website visitors will thank you.

What people really need is the best solution for their “most important business problem” and then everything else can be good enough. Some systems are too important to not be the best but it is prohibitive to expand that to everything.

Looking in the Mirror

AIIM is an association, so it should go without saying that our most important system is our Association Management System (AMS). This is the system in which we track everything about AIIM. This system has to be Best of Breed, or at least meet all of our needs today and tomorrow.

Everything else can be good enough. The AMS drives things in our world. The website needs to reliable but it doesn’t have to be the fanciest one out there. Our finances aren’t that crazy so we don’t need the top-of-the-line system there either. In fact, we can trade off features for cost on almost anything.

When I was in consulting, our financial systems were the most important systems. We had to track all hours worked against thousands of projects and be able to measure the profit against how much we invested in winning the work. Almost every decision made was driven by the financial systems. That had to be top-notch. Everything else could be worked around.

Flexibility in Approach

My new advice is to have you sit back and determine what one or two key systems “stir the pot” in your organization. Those are the systems that you can’t afford to compromise upon. Sure, there will be bells and whistles that you don’t need, but you need the system to work and meet your needs for the foreseeable future.

As for everything else, it has to basic meet the basic requirement of not getting in the way of business and be able to support the key systems.

None of this is as easy as it sounds but nothing worthwhile ever is.

First Major On-Premises Traditional ECM Vendor will become Obsolete: I know, obvious right? Statistically speaking, one of those vendors will likely still be a market leader in 10 years. In 2013, we’ll see our next elimination for that spot (though they will be in denial). To make this easier to measure, I’ll name the contenders: EMC, IBM, Open Text, and Oracle. Microsoft falls into this category but it won’t be them, at least not in 2013.

Aside from simple statistical probability, I saw a few things this fall that led to this prediction.

1. Talked to people attending the IBM Information OnDemand while I was in Las Vegas.
2. Attended the Open Text conference in Orlando.
3. Watched the news out of Momentum Europe.
4. Kept my eyes open.

What I’ve seen is a scary amount of consistency among the players.

The Go-To Strategy

When I was at the Open Text conference, I was struck by the similarities in their strategy with several other players in the market. To be honest, I had to make sure I wasn’t at another event, so similar was the strategy. While the details, and progress, of execution varies among all the players, it is pretty consistent.

• Talk about the Cloud. Explain it. Point to pure cloud solutions within the company, no matter how remote to the Content Management group, to establish credibility.
• Port your software to a Managed Hosting solution and call it a cloud solution/alternative.
• Create a file-synching solution to demonstrate feature equivalency with the new challengers.

After those steps, the strategies are held closer to the vest. Some, like EMC, are trying to build pure cloud solutions. Others think that no further steps are needed.

Looking Ahead

Until the future arrives, nobody knows who is playing things correctly. Meanwhile, the challengers are moving forward, slowly eating away at the ground underneath.

What are some things the vendors can do to ward off making my prediction come true?

• Deploy a true cloud solution, this year. That means scalable, flexible licensing, self-provisioning, and every other SaaS feature.
• Organizational changes to reflect the transition from large license deals to steady “subscription” deals.
• Fortitude to deal with the stock market’s reaction to decreasing license revenue as the new financial model takes shape.
• Willingness to allow the new cloud offering to cannibalize their on-premises product.

HP, and thus Autonomy, is likely toast as a Content Management leader forever. Everyone else is still in play, but for some the odds are long.

Those odds are getting longer everyday.

When you tackle BYOD, there are a lot of things to consider in order to insure the proper security of all the information. It is simple to create a long laundry list of guidelines. The key is to make sure they don’t inhibit the benefits or users will work around the system.

Let’s look at how I work in the BYOD world.

Breaking Down the Devices

One year ago, I needed a new laptop. I had the option of IT providing me one from the department or buying one of my own at a similar cost against that same budget. Not wanting the same brand that AIIM buys by default, I went and bought from my preferred laptop vendor. When I did this, I acknowledged that IT might not be able to assist in hardware related issues. I’m technical enough that it wasn’t a concern.

I use a tablet and a phone. My tablet of choice is a little Galaxy Tab I got almost 2 years ago because it fits in my pocket. Sometimes I use my iPad because it has a data plan and I know that I’ll want to do something that would be challenging on my phone.

I use Evernote fairly extensively for note taking and constructing my to-do lists. It is perfect because it follows me around on all my devices.

Through it all, email is the most important application. Try as we might to replace it, it is the killer app. I use it differently on each device.

• Phone: I keep track of what is going on and send short emails to keep things moving along. If I need to write a long email, I wait until I can get on a device with a better input capability unless it is critical. I can review attachments in a crunch but given the small screen size, I prefer not to do so.
• Tablet: I’ll reply to most emails on my tablet as long as I don’t have to mess with attachments or reference old emails. I can do those things in a pinch but I don’t enjoy it. Attachment management is much easier on my Android tablet than my iPad.
• Laptop: I do it all. I also manage my emails here, sorting and filing them away as necessary. The interface is just much more conducive to that kind of work.

Other people have different patterns. I know some that do a large portion of their work on Macs with just about everything else on their iPads. Some work almost exclusively on their laptops.

And IT has to support it all.

It isn’t easy without the proper systems. Few established, older, organizations have those today. At AIIM, we’re having to replace one system because it required Windows operating systems to use and that isn’t practical. Right now there are people nursing old computers along because they want to buy that Mac when the switch is made.

And that has to change.

Here’s the trick. I bet every single one of you, once you return to your office immediately starts working on a PC. Before you protest, keep in mind those Macs are Personal Computers (PC), as are those new-fangled Ultrabooks.

Let’s face it, when creating information of even moderate complexity, you still can’t beat a PC. If you need to multitask between applications, PCs win every time.

Mobile adds a new dimension to how you do things. It allows users to be more flexible in when they work. It requires IT to be more flexible in providing solutions.

The use of mobile devices doesn’t alleviate the need to think about the PC or to make it a priority.

Different Spin on an Old Topic

Just forget Mobile. It isn’t the real thrust of what we are seeing today, just the most obvious. It is cool and sexy, but it is really just part of allowing users to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). While a newer trend than Mobile, I’ve decided it more readily describes the challenges facing organizations.

Mobile and BYOD are both about flexibility. Among PC devices, there are Microsoft and Apple  environments, not to mention a myriad collection of browsers. On their mobile devices there are Apple, Android, and Windows environments. Any user might have a complete mish-mash of platforms. I myself regularly use three of the environments above and at AIIM I working to support all five.

BYOD, and the ability to seamlessly transfer work between devices, is the real goal here. It isn’t about enabling mobile. It is about allowing users to work in a familiar and comfortable environment without IT having to provide all the answers themselves.

More Than Mobile

Being able to support mobile is only half the battle. Every device needs to be supported. That means browser friendly solutions. Mobile apps are great, but IT cannot force someone to use their mobile device for work unless they provide the device themselves, thus defeating the BYOD concept.

Secure devices and device-independent applications. That is today’s world. That is today’s challenge. The transition isn’t easy, but once made, life can be very good.

I didn’t realize it until Ron Miller asked me what I thought the biggest story was this year. I couldn’t think of a story that was “big”. I could wade through a bunch of small stories and pick the “biggest”, but that wasn’t what he was looking to learn.

The Not So Big Stories

Without looking at anyone’s thoughts as to what the biggest story was, here are my guesses.

• SharePoint 2013: Released, complete with new features. We’ve known it was coming. No news here.
• Chatterbox: Salesforce released a Content Management offering called Chatterbox. Aside from the unoriginal name, not really big news. If they are twice as successful as they have been with Chatter, this is a non-starter.
• Microsoft Acquires Yammer: Remembered this one as Microsoft really looks to improve Office 365 with much improved Social Business tools. This is what I would call the biggest news but it won’t shake-up the Content Management space unless it makes Office 365 that much better in 2013.

Those are my guesses. Now imagine waiting a day to read a few articles…

The Next Day

…and Ron Miller has just published his compilation of The Top Content Management Stories of 2012. It is a good read but I quickly noticed something.

It is full of 2012 trends. Content Marketing, Open Standards, Content Experience, and Mobile are all important, but they just trended upward and existed in 2011.

There were a couple of stories in there but most contributors focused on those trends. I’ve met most of them and they are pretty bright people. They must not have seen major stories out there either.

Let’s look at the stories:

• HP/Autonomy Acquisition Debacle: Picked by both John Newton and Tony Byrne, this was a big story. While the deal occurred in 2011, the financial unveiling took place this year. What does it mean for Content Management? Likely more deliberate acquisitions. The Content Management offerings of HP/Autonomy will get close scrutiny by customers. Neither vendor are/were considered leaders in the space and this makes it that much harder for that to change. HUGE financial news, minor Content Management news.
• US Government Publishes Roadmap for a Digital Government: Picked by Geoff Bock, this was fairly big news in the US Government sector. It fails the test as a large story. It doesn’t focus on Content Management and unfunded mandates have a tendency to not change the world. I would have said that the Records Management Directive from August was bigger, but that was just a continuation of efforts by the White House.

Of those two, the HP/Autonomy story was the bigger story. While big, the impact to the Content Management market is limited. When the acquisition took place, there were a lot of questions and concerns. Those questions still exist.

In the end, it was a year of little big news. It was a year when the Content Management market seemed to shift in order to prepare for big changes in 2013.

Stay tuned…

I am descended from a long line of engineers. I remember when growing up that being able to use a new device without reading the directions was considered a badge of honor.

One year, I received an electronic game called Maniac. It was a four player game that consisted of four sub-games. You would play each one in sequence, earning 1 or 2 points each. When I received the game, I tossed the directions into the trash, confident that we could learn how to play. The first three games were figured out, but the fourth was forever a mystery. The most amazing thing was one year, one of my friends actually scored a point on the fourth game! We could never replicate that partial success and it is still a mystery to me as I write this.

That attitude is what makes a good engineer. The desire to systematically determine the proper solution and to rule out false trails. This is a skillset that served me well as a developer.

And yet….

The “Perfect” Coder

Back in the 90s, I had a developer working for me that wrote incredible code. I know this because it just worked. If he was given a task, he would not only knock it out on time, but it wouldn’t be stuck in testing for weeks.

Until one week, there was a problem.

There was a bug and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I stopped in to chat to determine what the hold-up was. It only took me a few minutes to determine the basic problem.

He had no idea how to debug code.

His code was always so well designed that errors were rare. If it compiled, it worked. He had never really had to spend time learning how to debug code. He hadn’t learned how to properly limit variables in the code or capture intermediate values that would reveal where things went kaput.

On the Other Hand

A few years later I was on a development team whose members had clearly become programmers because of the career opportunities. They could code, especially when they started with sample code, but they didn’t have any of the talent for development.

Books and the Internet had told them how to optimize code and to vary syntax, but new situations flummoxed them. They couldn’t engineer around a problem. They would pound their head against the wall seeking to solve fairly straight-forward problems.

They weren’t all like this. One person in particular had the engineering knack but not the discipline.

This got me wondering, what the hell are they really teaching these days?

Looking Back

This appears to be more normal than I would. Coding Horror asked Why Can’t Programmers..Program? a few years back. I myself saw how helpful Visual Studio 2008 was and wondered if it was actually taking the programming out of development.

As I think back on my education, debugging was never really taught. Sure, there were classes on languages, proper programming style, and algorithms. Any engineering skills were really brought by the student into the courses or were learn through lots of practice fixing bad code.

What needs teaching is a class on how to fix a problem. There should be a timed test where a student should have to break down an application and determine what module is broken and then fix it. A well designed program would have several independent issues and a few that are dependent upon fixing a previous bug.

If you are just going to be creating websites or writing simple customizations of software, then it is syntax and stealing. If you are going to be creating actual systems, then you need to think like an engineer.

And that can be taught.

So without further ado, here is what you can expect in 2013.

1. There will be More Clouds in 2013: Inspired by Forbes’s prediction of More Hosted Private Clouds, I’m going to take it further and say that there will be more of all types of clouds in 2013, except maybe Cumulus.
2. First Major On-Premises Traditional ECM Vendor will become Obsolete: I know, obvious right? Statistically speaking, one of those vendors will likely still be a market leader in 10 years. In 2013, we’ll see our next elimination for that spot (though they will be in denial). To make this easier to measure, I’ll name the contenders: EMC, IBM, Open Text, and Oracle. Microsoft falls into this category but it won’t be them, at least not in 2013.
3. Big Data Falls from Grace: This is the combination of a couple items. The first is Moore’s Law which is making the line between traditional tools and Big Data tools occur further up the scale. Eventually only systems with millions of live inputs will need Big Data. What people are going to start doing is realizing that the real value is the Analysis that is performed on the data. The tools are just the means. What matters is being able to look at all that data with a critical mind.
4. Facebook Will Have Serious Competition: This is just a matter of time. People are going to get tired of Facebook and start to look elsewhere. Likely it’ll start in the college ranks and move upwards through the interns. While it won’t be supplanted, real competition will be seen in the marketplace.
5. My Secret Prediction Will Come True: I can’t tell you what it is, but it will happen. Trust me. When it happens and I point to it, you’ll know I was right.
6. A New Cloud-Based Content Management Player Will Emerge: This isn’t just saying that a new vendor will startup. That happens everyday. By the end of the year, when talking about the leaders in the space, there will be a new name in the conversation.
7. We Will Bicker Over Using “Social” as a Term: Let’s face it, “social” tools are nothing more than enhanced online collaboration. Collaboration still sounds old and “social” still sounds like goofing off to many business people. Regardless of what Deb Lavoy said in her predictions, this semantic chaos will not improve in 2013. The tools will still progress and gain a more established place in the business. Maybe in 2014 we’ll be happy with the terminology, maybe.
8. Traditional Content/Document Management Vendors will be Forced to Acknowledge Challenge of Pure-Play Cloud Solutions: Many vendors are in denial that the pure-play vendors like Box are real threats. While that isn’t stopping them from adding file sharing features, they seem secure in their belief that they can win. In 2013, they are going to start losing enough deals to realize that they have a real fight on their hands. (I think Real Story Group got this one exactly right in their predictions)

Just eight of them. Why eight? Simple, because I couldn’t think of nine. I could get nitty gritty and make some prediction about Office 365 starting to gain real traction once migrating to Office 365 becomes smoother and Yammer is tied into it all.

Wait, was that a ninth prediction? Let’s see if it comes true before I decide.

Then Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

Oh sure, it started out wonderfully. He created the iPod which made the CD collection that had been built-up over the years dramatically more portable. Sure, the artistic vision that is the album started taking a hit but that wasn’t your problem unless you were in the music industry.

Then came the iPhone.

At first it seemed like a better Blackberry. It was hard to think of it as something else because there wasn’t anything else really like it. Palm Pilots didn’t count because they lived or died by their ability to connect to their home computer.

The iPhone didn’t care about wires.

Like the Blackberry, it was email on the phone, but it had apps. Fun apps that would be pulled out at every happy hour and entertain all the closet nerds. The mobile device was the new toy at grown-up show-and-tell.

Of course, there was that web browser feature.

In IT, we had spent the better part of the past decade creating web interfaces for EVERYTHING. At first it was because it was cool and offered the potential to reduce the maintenance of individual computers. Eventually, it just just better.

But the web worked too well.

All of the sudden, people were trying to do work on their new phones. Some people complained that it was hard to use some applications because the web pages were too busy but they were a minority. After all, we were still busy supporting the business just as we always had.

Then it all exploded.

One morning, CIOs woke up from celebrating their latest success and they realized that people were not only buying Macs again, but they were using them for WORK. Other companies decided that they wanted to have phones that were as useful as Apple’s devices. They started selling smart phones at a lower price point with systems that were incompatible with Apple. Even RIM created the BlackBerry Storm.

And the apps were EVERYWHERE.

DropBox, Box, Evernote, SlideShark, Facebook, and Google. They were churning out applications that were easy to install, worked with your approved email clients, and made information easy for everyone to use. Let’s not even talk about the “Share” button.

Easy to use, impossible to manage.

These applications would take sensitive business information and store it in the Cloud. We weren’t sure why they called it the Cloud as it was more like a Fog. Information was no longer where it belonged. It couldn’t be found without a map, which only the users possessed.

Then the users suddenly got quiet.

They would ask for something and when you told them it would be a few months, they would nod their heads and leave. They would never come back. They had found one of those evil apps to meet their needs and had moved on to doing their job.

It is now adapt or die.

Thanks to this cascading of events, CIOs everywhere have to embrace the new world order brought on by this Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution or find a new job. There is no middle ground. CIO’s have to find applications that allow for the necessary control of information while still allowing the users to have the easy experience that they have come to expect.

And the vendors?

They are trying, but they are either mired in the past or learning what Enterprises need. CIOs have to grab the vendors by the shoulder and tell them that the first one to solve this gets my money. It is that simple because it is either that or start over in a new career.

And it is all Steve Job’s fault.

Years ago, James and I discussed Security standards around Identity Management, primarily SAML. While my focus on the time was on Documentum, the issues were universal. Since we last interacted online, James has moved on to HP in an advisory role for clients.

Sadly, the issues we discussed are still prevalent in the industry. In fact, these issues are becoming more important with the advent of new players in the cloud space.

Sure, the new vendors support integrations and work with existing Active Directory installations. That’s nice. So did the established vendors. The problem remains, there is no standard way to pass both Authentication and Authorization.

Advancing Standards

Here’s the thing. The traditional vendors all jumped on board the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. There is even a new version, CMIS 1.1, coming out soon that addresses most of the gaps that people always pointed towards in 1.0.

Of course there are two problems. The first problem is that the cloud-based vendors seem to be ignoring standards. When challenged on this point, they say that the market isn’t demanding standards.

To that viewpoint, I have two things to say. The first is that to be a platform for solutions, you need to support standards. Standards enable people to use your solution as a platform without having to learn your custom API. It also allows for things to work consistently even as the platform evolves.

Second, You can’t be a Leader in an industry if you don’t Lead. This means leading across the board, not just in things that directly drive the bottom line.

That Second Problem

I said there were two problems and I wasn’t kidding. The other issue is the different user and security models across all these solutions.

Now, I’ve visited this problem before. When introducing the concept of Omnipresent Content Management, I stressed that only standards can make this happen and that the Identity Management standards were sadly lacking in adoption.

Let’s take a basic scenario. I’m working in a Case Management system and I’ve attached content to a Case. All my content is stored in a separate, dedicated system. If I’m lucky, some sort of Single-Sign-On is deployed and I don’t have to worry about authenticating multiple times. If I’m really lucky, this is a secure process.

Let’s ask some questions:

• If I create the content within the context of the Case Management tool, what security is applied to the content? Does it have to be specified explicitly or does it default to something? If it defaults, is the default based upon the context of the Case Management system or the underlying Content Management System (CMS)?
• Once set, how is the access managed? What if the case gets locked down? Does that security trickle down to the CMS?
• What if new people are granted authorization to access the case? Do they get granted rights in the CMS?
• Is there a chance that users could exist in one system and not the other?
• Can users go into the CMS directly and change the permissions, essentially hiding the content from everyone working on the case?

That is just one basic scenario. The key here is that Authorization to access Content or any Information needs to be managed simply. Let’s think on the Omnipresent Content Management example.

If I have a piece of Content that I want to share with James, I should just grant him access to it without regard for the application he will use to consume it. If I later decide it is a final copy and not a draft, I should be able to lock it down, even after I send him the link.

In essence, if I lock it down, all my sharing rules should adjust.

The trick is that this should be true even if we don’t have any systems for which we both have accounts.

Impossible!

Think of email. It just works. If you have an address you can send an email. Simple as that. Why?

Because of the SMTP standard.

That is what we need. We have the CMIS standard which seems committed to evolve with our needs. We still need the Authentication and Authorization standards to match. That includes adoption as well as simple creation.

That will allow people to work together, regardless of their preferred system, in a common manner.

In addition, it will make integrating information between different business systems streamlined and consistent. It makes the world a more open place because any system implementing the standards will work in the greater universe.

As a bonus, standards help people identify those that are serious about the industry and solving the big problems versus those that just want to make a splash.

• CMS 6.6 this quarter, November 5, 2012
  • Mobile SDK, Device simulation, MVC (new development approach)
  • Mobile SDK, build mobile apps with Sitecore managed content
    • iOS first, Android later
    • Restful API’s that are optimized for mobile applications
    • Device Specific API’s, First for iOS devices in Objective C
    • SDK for creating an “App Shell”
  • Device simulation allows viewing a page in different simulated mobile devices through page editor
  • Item Web API
    • REST-style web service that outputs JSON
    • Build to support mobile SDK
  • Native MVC support in Sitecore projects
    • Treats MVC as first class rendering engine
    • Can optionally be mixed with webforms as well
    • Support for MVC Razor
    • Can use Renderings and certain control
• CMs 7.0 in Q1 2013 with large-scale Item storage
  • Item Buckets, not all websites are hierarchical, think faceted search. Content retrieved based upon meta data fields. Supports beyond current 100 item limit in current structure. Support for massive amounts of unstructured content
  • Native MVC support (Uh, wasn’t that in 6.6? Maybe just committing that the new stuff has MVC support)
• SPEAK UI refresh in Q2 2013 (SPEAK = Sitecore Process Enablement and Acceleration Kit)
  • Framework to create task focused, user centric interfaces
  • Graphical workflow, including ad-hoc workflow
  • Content reuse manager and dependency reporting
• DMS Engagement Intelligence entering public beta
  • Next generation of Sitecore Enagement analytics (Business Intelligence (BI) for marketers)
  • Release in Q1
• Social Connect 1.3 released now, H1 2013 will bring onsite social features such as commenting and rating
• Visual Path Analysis and Optimization  Guidance Q1 2013
  • Analyzes user patterns and behaviors
  • Identified optimal paths on site leading to greatest benefits (push them down profitable path, let the user randomly navigate less)
  • Cross channel path analysis
• Email Campaign Manager 2.0 in Q1 2013 (ECM? Really?). Includes spam tester
• CRM service layer in DMS Q2 2013
• DMS – Big Data, Multi server scaling in 2H 2013, support for 100TB, local or Cloud based, NoSQL support
• CMS is supported in Azure now, by Q2, DMS will be supported in Azure. H1 2013 scalability enhancements
• Multi-site Order Management Application Framework Q1 2013, extensible to plug into various providers
• Foundry 4.0 in Q4 2012, franchisee marketing support, based upon CMs 6.6

That’s it. A break to work and the the reception. Likely less posts tomorrow as I concentrated on sessions today. I have some work to fit in tomorrow.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Sitecore products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

• Good Old Days, SEO 1.0, was easy back then
  • Meta fields, repeating terms, keyword stuffing, and links all USED to work well
  • Meta Titles still works well
  • Meta Description is useful because it will show-up in the Google result (helps people choose your result)
• Panda and Penquin (monthly) updates to cut down on cheating
  • 65 changes in August and September
  • www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change to track changes
• Thriving in current SEO world

• Find out through social media and searches what people are looking for
• Create that content, complete with quality assurance, and then place it where it can be found
• Then broadcast/launch it
• Measure the results and start listening for the next opportunity
• Need a team now, need everyone to contribute content
• Need to define your business goals
• Study your market: Who are they? What do they want? Create the library of research. Leverage keywords in the content, but in a quality way
• Now not just content, but quality content
• Develop personas (profiles of target audience)
  • Target content at personas
  • Develop a full profile and make sure the content creators understand the personas
• Google wants fast website response time, good design, natural linking (share this), social media activity, quality content
• Linking seems to be gettig diminished. All the old factors still work, but to much lesser extent as emphasis is added to the new items
• If an audience is on a social site, Google doesn’t matter because people are sharing your content through other methods
• Google Webmaster Tools and Blog are useful and free
• Match keywords to the cycle
  • “What is…” should direct to awareness products
  • “What is the best” for consideration
  • “How much does it cost” for Pricing/buying
• Google Keyword Tool to determine what words people were looking for and to try and determine what your competitor may be ranking for
• Bing Webmaster Tools are better than Google, but they have lesser volume
• SpyFu is a paid service, as is KeywordSpy
• Quality of visit is important than Quantity. If the page doesn’t lead to the desired action, then there is not a lot of value. Can use Executive Insight Dashboard
• The suggestions when searching on Google, Bing, or Yahoo give you potential keyword phrases
• YouTube is 2nd most popular search engine
• Right-Angle Marketing, find related interests so you can tie it together
  • The process of setting-up an ad in Facebook, or other tools, can help you see what people are interested in,
  • Facebook Recommendations app
  • Facebook Open Graph
  • Wisdom App gives good information for Facebook for free (now)
• Google Insights (formerly trends)
• Measuring your progress is important
  • Track your keywords
  • Measure your competitors so you can compare. Some good tools at SEOMoz.org
  • Open Site Explorer is another good tool
• Google Analytics seems to be restricting the data they show on their website

I think I need a week or two to work on this. Lots of good stuff. Next, the Product Roadmap.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Sitecore products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

• Shared Source currently
  • Blogs
  • Polls
  • Comments
  • Ratings
• Social Starter Kit powered by Telligent, complete integrated platform

• Low cost of entry ~$10K (some limitations regarding server count and applies to only 1 domain name)
  • 2 production servers and 1 non-production server
• Quick time to value
• Incremental steps and investments for a broader, more comprehensive social strategy
• 80 joint customers between Telligent and Sitecore
• Features include: Blogs(5 apps), Micro-blogging, Discussion Forums(10), Media Galleries(2), Relationships/Networking, Automated Moderation, Widgets (Sitecore related), and Search
• Telligent demo
  • Discussions can just be discussions or can be Q&A
• Sitecore demo
• They have an integration to YetAnotherForum (look-and-feel) may be harder
• Referencing the Sitecore Social Connected
  • Can automatically tweet when something is published

Off to get some coffee and attend a session on SEO. I understand the basic rules but am curious to see what Sitecore can help from this perspective.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Sitecore products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.