I was at Gilbane in order present my view on the future of Content Management.  I thought I would share the slides here and talk a little about the recent research on the same topic from AIIM.

The Future is Coming

The topic, Revisiting ECM in the 2.0 World, was a quick 30 minute tour of the history of ECM, the biggest flaws, and where the industry needs to go in order to really address the problems of Content Management.  It was focused on making the case for Omnipresent Content Management (OCM). [Check my new page which consolidates my ECM/OCM thoughts.]

Until I have the link to the audio/video, you will need to watch it on SlideShare so you can see my speaker notes.

You can download the PDF version as well.

Meanwhile, At AIIM…

I’ve been talking about the vision for OCM since July of 2009.  AIIM has decided to get into the future act and has developed a vision around Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement.  You can read about it on AIIM’s site.  John Mancini also talked about the findings on his blog in good detail.  Finally, you can look at the presentation here on SlideShare:

Now that you are caught-up, let’s talk about this briefly.  The study, while very interesting and full of relevant information, isn’t looking very far into the future.

The questions that they addressed (slide 3) were looking at the wrong things.  They asked where the industry was heading, which is good, but then talked about the impact of Social Media on ECM and how the users want to engage.  These are important things, but are not new to those outside of the traditional ECM vendor ranks.  The Gilbane Conference talked about these issues and had people talking about how they were addressing these things NOW.

Why do we need to call them Systems of Engagement? It is just collaboration with newer collaboration tools.  If you don’t like that term, why not use Enterprise 2.0? Please, No new terms for existing concepts.  Craig Rhinehart talked about these points in great detail in his post: It’s Back to the Future, Not Crossing the Chasm When it Comes to AIIM’s “Systems of Record” and “Systems of Engagement”.

Waiting to learn more about the research before I comment much further (Webinar 12-14-2010).  I do want to say that what has been not shared is what has to change for Content Management.  The focus was purely on ECM and how people use content at work.  The problem is that there is a growing amount of content outside of the Enterprise.

Another train of thought I want them to run through to conclusion:

• I have a System of Engagement and I decide to engage with my partners.  I have between 5-10 partners, though that number can get quite large.
• Each of my partners may have an equal number of partners.  Eventually almost every company in the world can be linked.
• How do I collaborate with my partners in a common way that they will also be use with their partners, they with their partners, and so forth into infinity?  Most people prefer to collaborate in only one system.

I don’t trust Facebook with anything I want to keep private.  A lot of people do not like Microsoft.  Some people love Google.  There will be no one common collaborative application (except for email).  How do we solve the problem?

My concern is that the AIIM research is focused on the interface.  Without standards and larger infrastructure to support both Systems of Record and Engagement, a good interface will only go so far.

Stay tuned.

Um…..

I’m a little torn here.  It is an important piece of research and of value and all that, but…

• Those in the Leaders quadrant frequently aren’t leading.
• Too many people look at the report and research the market no further.
• Enterprise Content Management cannot be bought.  It is a strategy.  I can buy a Content Management platform or suite that supports my ECM strategy, but I cannot buy ECM.

Of course, it is full of useful/interesting facts, so let’s dive into it…[download a copy from Hyland Software.]

First Impressions

The first thing I did, like a kid digging into their Christmas stocking, was look at the chart and compared it to the old chart.  Gartner tells you not to do that, but that just makes me want to do it more.  It is important to remember that how Gartner rates companies changes from year-to-year, so movement isn’t necessarily indicative of how a company is doing.

One last note, better positioning in the Quadrant does not mean that it is a better solution or that it is better for you.

• Hyland Software jumped into the leader quadrant. SaaS/CMIS.  Congratulations to Hyland.  Let’s see what they do with the recognition.
• Last year, the traditional leaders where separated by ability to execute, but not in vision.  Not so this year.  They are no longer grouped together.  Oracle has the best “vision” score, followed by, get this, Microsoft….
• That’s right, Microsoft and Oracle are arguably the best positioned in the report.  Microsoft, as an established company, will always score well in the ability to execute.  The vision for SharePoint, especially when you listen to the marketing.  To be honest, the other longer-term established vendors should be a little ashamed to be falling behind.
• SpringCM hasn’t moved much.  Not a good thing for a SaaS vendor.  They should be able to do a little better.  They have been focusing on delivering solutions and not a platform.  It is a nice revenue approach, but it doesn’t seem like it will lead to future leadership.
• There are a lot of companies scattered on the left, but that is the low-vision side of the quadrant.  This is actually important as the industry starts to transform for the future.  I feel that the difference between the Niche players and those on the right is going to widen if those companies don’t act soon.
• Along those lines, Perceptive Software is listed as the lone Challenger, though Laserfiche is pretty close.  Neither rated well in Vision and that is important.  In fact, once a company has a minimum level of execution capability, Vision is critical unless you are planning on changing vendors in three years.  Why would you plan on that?
• HP is gone, on purpose.  They are a Records Management vendor now.

Okay, going to read last year’s post on the 2009 Quadrant and this year’s report in detail before hitting the next section.

Pulling the Real Value

Okay, more notes on the report as I have dug deeper.

• Nuxeo and BOX.net both get a mention, but neither qualified to be included.  Having been tracking both for a while, I expect both of them to get out of the Niche quadrant faster than those already in it.  They have the Vision to get there.
• There are now “four worlds” of ECM.  They are Transactional CM (think CMS+BPM), Social CM (Collaboration),  Online Channel Optimization (evolution of WCM), and CM as Infrastructure (think Cloud and Services).  These are good divisions for the most part, though I think that to be good at the first two, you need to think about creating that solid platform.
• There are example vendors listed under each of those worlds, some listed twice.  The thing that grabs me, EMC wasn’t listed as an infrastructure example, and Microsoft was.  Really?  SharePoint is a development platform, but I wouldn’t call it an ECM platform.  There is some reference in the example of integration with enterprise information management practices, so maybe that is the factor, but it still seems off.
• There is a reference to Content Analytics as a key topic for the next year.  Let’s just chalk that done for the next several years until it is as common and reliable as checking content in and out of the repository.

That wraps it up for now.  To be honest, I could riff on many of these points for individual posts, but I think I’ve rattled on long enough.

For some other solid thoughts, checkout the initial article over on CMS Wire.

Simple, push for CMIS 2.0! In all seriousness, that is a post for another day. I want to focus on the actual release of the standard and the Demo where you can see it in action.

Stage One Complete

I’m not going to say “Mission Accomplished” for many, MANY, reasons.  I am going to say that I am pretty happy with the progress and would like to savor progress for a few days.  74 companies voted for the standard, making for 23% acceptance (15% is the minimum required).

John Newton wrote a blog post about his Irrational Exuberance on CMIS.  It is a great post for anyone with doubts to read.  I don’t think his exuberance is irrational.  While the future of CMIS is not carved in stone, I think the forward momentum is great.

• Alfresco has a supported release for CMIS, their Community Edition 3.3.  Support for the Enterprise Edition is planned for this month.
• EMC has announced that their latest early release candidate is the actual release candidate.  CMIS will be part of the core platform in their 6.7 release at the end of this year.
• Microsoft announced that the CMIS Connector for SharePoint will ship as part of the SharePoint Administrator Toolkit by the end of June 2010.  This will include using SharePoint as both a consumer and supplier of content.
• Day Software has announced their release of CRX 2.1 with full CMIS support.

Other official announcements are likely to follow quickly now that CMIS 1.0 is final.

For more information, check out the recent post AIIM 2010 CMIS article on Fierce Content Management and my 8 Things You Need to Know About CMIS article on AIIM’s Digital Landfill.

Want to See CMIS in Action?

STOP!!!  This is more than just a plug for you to play with the demo.  I am offering you a chance to download the code and play with it yourself.  You can even point to repositories that weren’t officially supported for the demo

Here is what you need:

• Object Model: This is a spreadsheet that describes the object model. This is what each vendor used.
• Source Code: This is Visual Studio 2008 project (you can try and see how it works in VisStudio 2010 trail).  All of the code is in C#.  I have removed the host servers and the authentication information from the CMISCalls.cs file, but if you look in the setConnectionInformation method, you can see where you need to go.  Note that if you want to add a sixth repository, you will need to make edits in the DefaultSearch.aspx.cs file.  If you try that and need help, leave me a comment.
• Documentum DAR File: This is the object model for the Documentum repository.  Just load it up and away you go.  You can get Developer Edition for free and then download CMIS separately.

If any of the vendors wish to make their repository that was used for the CMIS demo publicly known for everyone to use, please leave the necessary information in the comments below.

Think about it, why is a company in business?  Yes, to make money, but that goal will only get you so far, just ask the gnomes.  You have to have something to offer and the ability to convince your customers that you can deliver and still be around in the future.

So in order to inspire your employees and your customers, you create a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).  For example, maybe you want to create the market leading ECM solution.  Ten years ago, that was a challenge.  No one company had all the capabilities in house and the leadership of the market was in flux.  Now, to hit the same goal, you just take aim at the big boys and go forward.

But what does that really get you?  Are you leading or just following the trail already blazed?

What Do You Give the Person that Have Everything?

Out there in the greater US, there was a newspaper organization that set an impressive BHAG in the 90s.  They wanted to own advertising in their market.  For a large market, that is a heck of a goal, especially with the advent of more national sources moving into the region.

Well, a funny thing happened, they achieved their goal.  It was a most impressive achievement.  The question then became, “What now?”

That is a dilemma that companies face when they become successful, how do you define the next step?  Trying to maintain leadership for the sake of maintaining leadership will only leave you reacting to the competition.  That very process cedes the leadership position to other companies.

If you don’t have a destination, how can you lead anyone anywhere?

What is Next for the ECM Guys?

So the question is, what is next for the large ECM vendors?  They have big honking platforms that can do everything (if you know where to look) and are constantly comparing themselves to each other.

At the same time, they are flirting with Microsoft because they see a product and a company that may not have a vision for the future, but does have a vision for the knowledge worker’s desktop of today.  They are flirting because they are hoping to buy time for SharePoint to become the next Lotus Notes and collapse under its own weight, or become inspired to be the next big thing.

The future is closer than you think.  The industry needs a vision, something to aim for collectively.  This is a call to the vendors to articulate a vision that we can identify with and see progress against.

This is a question for all of the vendors and the industry as a whole.  If you think that any company in the industry is immune from what I am saying here, then share.

People need to know.

After all, if you don’t know what you want to be in 5-10 years that is more than what you are now, are you a company in which I want to invest my company’s future?

Not a rhetorical question.

A Starting Point

We have talked to death about what ECM means.  We are pretty much working on the nitty-gritty details now.  We all know the WHAT.  It is time to look at the HOW.

How should people be interacting with their content in 5-10 years?  We know there will be more content, so let the engineers keep working.  The key is how will workers interact?

I’m telling you that we’ll be using our smart phones and tablets more.  We’ll be wireless and not always on our network.  That is obvious.

Forget the “cloud” and all the hype.  If a vision depends upon a cloud, that is pandering.  The cloud is a tool, a platform.  A vision may leverage the cloud, but it shouldn’t be central.

I wrote about Omnipresent Content Management (OCM) a while back.  The term is a little pretentious, but it had the virtue of being new, unclaimed, and applicable.  We might not be there in 10 years, but pick a point along the way.

The ECM vendors need to think about how to achieve that vision, or create their own vision that has power and evokes a new way of solving problems.  I listed three things, Storage, Identity Management, and Tagging as things needed for that future.  The middle item will not go away, the others will change as the future and visions evolve.

Pick a vision.

Define the vision clearly.

Map a path towards achieving that vision.

Share the vision.

After all of that, start work.  Don’t worry if we are following you.  If it is a good vision, and we believe you can get us there, we’ll follow.

Just lead for a change.

[Note: I said it in the post, this applies to all the vendors.  I'm not just saying that.  Right now, the grass doesn't look greener on the other side.]

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.

A Market is Born

Well, there are some companies that are addressing the problem.  As I said in my Fierce Content Management guest piece on The Future of CMIS, two companies are leading the way by taking existing custom ECM client applications having them use CMIS to create a broader market for their software.

Generis updated their existing common interface, CARA, to leverage CMIS to work against multiple repositories.  WeWebU has announced plans to follow suit with their OpenWorkdesk interface in the second quarter of this year.

This is great!  Companies are looking to address the largest pains out there with ECM systems.  We may actually be entering the time of true Application Separation!  I’ll address some impacts shortly, but first, let’s look at what I saw over the past couple of weeks.

There is a Market, Now

So, three things triggered this post.  The first was watching Generis’s CARA application being shown to a continuous flow of prospective clients at last week’s DIA EDM conference.  Many were Documentum users, but there was a healthy collection of SharePoint users as well.  The response was consistently positive across the board.  Even those that said they were happy with their existing interfaces were impressed.

The second was talking to a company that was starting over fresh.  They had written a set of architectural principles that they wanted every component in their new Knowledge Architecture to meet.  Documentum’s interface didn’t cut-it.  The platform may have cut it, but having spent years being ignored by EMC, they were moving on to another platform.  They did feel that CARA, using CMIS and being browser neutral, met the bill.  They still had tests to run, but they were enthusiastic about the prospects.

Those two events showed me that there is not only a market for applications, but potentially a strong market.

The final triggering event is this Implementation Spotlight on CARA3 on the Ext JS website.  They used the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build CARA, using Ext GWT to round out the functionality.  This allowed them to build CARA very quickly, allowing them to hit the market quickly and to throw in all sorts of cool features with very little effort.  The result is quick, light-weight, and browser independent.

The important part about the article, while it has a healthy amount of marketing, it gives you more background into what led them to develop a CMIS-base interface and about the underlying technology.  The first is important from a market perspective.  The second is pretty cool from a development perspective.

Enough on that, on to what this means…

The Landscape is Shifting

This is actually part of a perfect storm.  Look at this:

• ECM Platforms have gotten stronger to keep up with the increasing volume and more diverse nature of content.
• ECM interfaces have been steadily falling behind the innovation curve.
• CMIS allows a common way to communicate with a repository.  Chemistry is providing a common implementation for those that already support the JCR standard.
• Documentum and FileNet were bought by EMC and IBM.  Oracle bought Stellent, but they aren’t the user-friendly people.  Open Text bought everyone, leading to a shifting product lineup that leave people wondering if they are coming or going.
• Open Source ECM has matured, providing multiple options for an ECM platform.
• Microsoft has been Microsoft.  They are fixing every problem with SharePoint, but they haven’t caught-up to the curve yet.  Meanwhile, their biggest flaw remains, Works best with Microsoft products. (IE and with SP2010, Silverlight).

Fun fact: Did you know that many ECM vendors charge a separate license for their user client?  I wonder if they could take that money and buy a better client for less?  That is what we are about to find out.

We are now looking at vendors creating custom user interfaces.  Generis may have been first to release, but they are going to be far from the last.  WebWeU has been aggressively marketing their interface and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is released.

History says that the first couple of vendors typically don’t win the war in software (Wordstar, Novell, AOL).  When you take that into consideration, you can see why it is way to early to make any judgments regarding either of these offerings.  What we can say is that unless things change, this may become a permanent market niche.

Until Open Text buys them all.

Disclaimer

This time, there really is something to disclaim.  Generis is a partner of my company, Washington Consulting, Inc.  While my company, as policy, does not accept any revenue from any technology vendor if their software is used/purchased by a client, there are still some co-marketing efforts and lead-sharing that takes place.

That being said, this post was entirely MY idea, not my company’s or Generis’s.  I heard about the spotlight and thought it would be a good time to highlight the first commercial CMIS client already in the market.  In six months, there will be more competitors and it is entirely possible that one will be better.

None of this changes the fact that the release of this client shows that CMIS is already changing the Content Management landscape for what I hope is the better.

Well not in Forrester’s world.  Only one new vendor (HP) was added and a few were cut, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 2009 Wave

Thanks to Oracle (again), you can look at the Q4 2009Forrester Wave for ECM Suites in detail. For those with less patience, here is a copy of the wave…

Before we talk about the individual vendors, let’s talk about the low number of vendors.  If you look at the 2007 report, many vendors are gone. A couple were acquired (Interwoven and Vignette) and some aren’t what I would call ECM (SAP and Xerox) vendors anyway.

The question is, where is Autonomy?  They bought Interwoven and weren’t new to the content space.  They aren’t mentioned anywhere.  Nuxeo got a mention as one of the two open-source vendors in the “reduced footprint” category.  The SaaS focused SpringCM (under “reduced footprint”) and emerging Laserfiche (under “process-focused” and “SMB”) both got a nod as well.

All of those got placed on the Quadrant, as did SAP and Xerox.  I wouldn’t be upset, except I like how Forrester structures the wave more than Gartner’s MQ.  I want to see more vendors in here.

Breaking it Down

Let’s look at some of the vendors…

• Alfresco: Forrester thinks they are losing ground.  They didn’t say as much, but last time they were on the verge of making the Strong Contender  classification.  Now they are just strongly a Contender.  I understand raising the bar as the market evolves, but Alfresco hasn’t been sitting on its laurels.  They lost a lot ground in Strategy according to Forrester. As for the Current Offering, looks like the increased focus on integration in this Wave hurt Alfresco.
• HP: Welcome to the Wave.  Still the only major vendor that I haven’t heard connected to CMIS in any way.  I’ve even heard that Hyland is working on it.  Forrester has noticed and made note.
• Microsoft: Love the realism.  There are gaps, but less this time around than two years ago.  Microsoft  has a vision.  When 2010 comes out, they should push their way into the Leaders.
• Open Text: Getting hit on their Strategy.  Constant acquisition of the competition can do that.  Getting things integrated, as always, remains their biggest hurdle.
• EMC: Not much to say, except they got dinged for their poor WCM.  This is a growing trend.
• IBM/Oracle: Feel the love, especially with IBM.

To be honest, nothing surprising, just reinforcing.  I like how Forrester has the Leaders spread a little and how getting closer to the upper-right corner is rewarded.  You need a strong Strategy and solid Offering to get rated well.  Market Presence is measured by the size of the dot.  It just makes a lot more sense to me.

You know what is missing this year?  The score weighting.  Smart move as I trashed it last year and it gives people something extra when they pay for the full details.

Overall, the scoring had nothing massively off, though I’m not sure why Alfresco took so many hits.  The next couple of years is going to be critical for Alfresco as they start to hit middle-age and strive to be more.

So without further ado…here’s Jed.

SharePoint Conference 2009

Anytime you get a chance to go to Vegas, it usually turns out to be a good time. This trip, although work related, was no different…plus it was free. My company flew me out and put me up for this year’s SharePoint Conference. Overall, I thought Mandalay did a great job of managing the 7000+ attendees, most of which really wanted to be there. Also, to my surprise, I barely managed to miss a session. I thought there would be more down time, but every time a session ended, I usually found another one I didn’t want to miss.

I’ve been working with SharePoint for about 4 years and very interested in hearing about the new product. I am not a developer or coder. Most of what I do I would consider “heavy configuration”. That being said, I have had my fair share of problems getting SharePoint 2007 (and 2003) to work the way some clients would like. While not all of them have been addressed in 2010, many of them have. Here’s a summary of where I see SharePoint 2010 adding the most value to my clients.

Business Intelligence

Obviously a big focus for Microsoft this go around, business intelligence (Performance Point) has been enhanced for SharePoint 2010. I sat through 3 BI related sessions and I walked out fairly impressed from each. Not only does it offer the ability for developers/administrators to easily create dashboards and reports, the inclusion of PowerPivot also enables the end user to create and share their own analytics.

Microsoft Access Services

This was long overdue. I have worked with several clients that rely heavily on MS Access to run day-to-day activities…not saying it’s the best way to do things, but it happens. I have also used Access to build SharePoint reporting solutions for clients. Now, having the ability to create and publish solutions into SharePoint where users can access via a browser adds a great deal of value where a more robust solution is not needed.

Forms Management

Forms Services in 2007 is anything but simple. Anyone that has used them would probably agree. I spent some time in the lab at the conference and am now very excited about the ability to create custom forms and the simplicity of how they publish effortlessly without spending hours troubleshooting some vague error that could be a dozen different things.

Improved Workflows

This is an area that anyone that attended the conference had to be impressed with. The new workflow capabilities in 2010 are significantly improved. Coupled with Visio Services, these enhancements add value to both the user as well as the developer. Being able to update the workflow forms (improved forms services) as you build your workflow is awesome. Also, providing the user the ability to visualize the workflow adds a transparency that was missing in the previous version.

Cross-List Lookups and Referential Integrity

I saved a simple, yet one that I run into all the time, for last. New in SharePoint 2010, the ability to link lists and enforce referential integrity is now available. Along with that, when using the lookup field, you can pull back fields from the lookup list. This feature alone save a ton of time and allows for simple joins from within SharePoint.

Wrap-Up

The major concern I have is the x64bit requirement. This won’t be an issue for someone that has yet to make an investment in SharePoint, but for those currently using SharePoint, it may be some time before they are willing to upgrade…not to mention Office 2007 is just starting to catch on at some places. Who knows how long it’ll be before they’ll take a look at Office 2010

Overall, the new product seems very promising. Microsoft seems to be adding more and more features to a product that already does enough things well to satisfy most organizations. They have listened to many of the complaints and delivered (almost…we’ll see in a few months) a solid product that I look forward to working with next year.

Thanks to the Documentum voters splitting their time between two topics, discussing the recent Gartner MQ for ECM is today’s topic.  The voting was an interesting little diversion that I’ll revisit later.

I’m going to talk about the report here.  The recent controversy around Gartner is a post for another day.

Staying Out of Trouble

Last year I was threatened (my word) by Gartner for putting a copy of the MQ here.  I was also chastised for several other nitpicks. So I will only link to Oracle’s courtesy copy of the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management this year to avoid wrath.

One thing to remember is Gartner really doesn’t want you to compare a vendor’s location in the MQ from year to year. That is both well-advised and unrealistic.  To be fair, as the measurements and industry change, scores change.  Movement isn’t just dependent on vendor action, or inaction.

However, we are human and we like to perform comparisons. I have a copy to perform the comparison for my own interest.  The link I had online to last year’s report is no longer valid, so you’ll have to take my Word on it.

Looking at the Leader Quadrant

The first thing that you notice is that the same five vendors are sitting in there. One a second, closer, inspection, you notice a few things:

• They are much more closely bunched. There are any number of reasons for this. I think that Oracle, EMC, and IBM aren’t doing anything that really distinguishes themselves from the pack.  Microsoft just caught the pack, and Open Text keeps acquiring companies, watering down anything they may do to stand out.
• Microsoft has the “prime” positioning. Okay, this doesn’t mean anything other than bragging rights, but they are the most “visionary” and their execution is second to IBM. Of the five, they shifted the most. Keep in mind, SP2010 isn’t out yet, so next year’s MQ could be very interesting.
• The analysis of EMC reveals nothing new. This is a negative reflection on EMC, not Gartner. The product stack works well together, but the price list is long and complicated and the lack of an overall strategy.  This is not new.

My general opinion on these vendors is this, they are large and “in-charge”. They also aren’t exciting and are going to be less flexible going forward in adapting to the market.

Other Fun Notes

There are some other things that caught my attention this year that I wanted to mention…

• Alfresco: Last year we celebrated Open Source playing in the game. Now Alfresco has jumped quite a bit to the right to become a Visionary. This is a well deserved move.  They have added RM to their solution and they have been very visible leaders regarding CMIS in the industry as a whole.  Their open-source nature and smaller size is part of what is probably keeping them from moving their position into the leaders quadrant. Though, judging by the vendors their now, maybe they should strive to be the best visionaries possible.
• Laserfiche: A newly evaluated vendor, they seem to want to join the ECM ranks.  Their product is pretty solid from a DM/RM perspective. Their web interfaces need some investment and they need to be looking at CMIS if they want to ever grow beyond their current location.
• HP: Every year, I grow more disappointed.  Tower TRIM was a fairly solid product.  Even after the acquisition, it still is, but it feels static.  While other vendors have taken their roots and made them an application on the ECM foundation, HP has kept RM as the foundation. This is fine for an Enterprise-class RM system, but not for an ECM system. Also, as of September, their field people did not even know what CMIS was.
• Composite Content Applications: Say goodbye to CEVAs (Content Enabled Vertical Applications), CCAs are here. While I’m not sold on the word “Composite”, I’m very happy to see the word “Vertical” removed.  Composite addresses the desire for mash-up applications with content, and the Restful services that vendors are throwing out there support this quite well. The term just seems to pass over the content-enabled aspect of some “integrations” where you are just managing the content in the ERP or CRM system.
• Hyland Software: My “favorite” mid-market ECM vendor is threatening to become a leader.  With a strong Healthcare foundation, Hyland has been moving forward steadily.  They, like Alfresco, have added a DoD 5015.2 certified RM solution and seem to be thinking about capturing larger fish. The one problem I see, their baseball freebies now have green threading which looks horrendous.
• SpringCM: The first SaaS ECM vendor to make the MQ is SpringCM.  With all of the cloud hype going on, I’m surprised that they only included one vendor here.  SpringCM is a great solution, but they have a while to go until they really have a complete offering.  RM is a no-show here, and I feel that is required. Even non-certified RM is better than none.  SpringCM needs to step their game up if they want to survive the eventual cloud offerings from the established vendors.
• WCM for Marketing: Gartner has acknowledged the trend of Marketing to have their own systems for the external website. Given the WCM offerings of most of the ECM vendors, I see this trend continuing.  I think CMIS will be key to getting these systems working together, which will reinforce the trend.

I think that is enough spare thoughts for now. Time to start working on the “Why do we still care about Gartner” post.

The Google Keynote

Okay, let’s be fair. On the third day of any conference, the “keynote” is usually the 3rd, or 4th, string presenter. From what I heard from everyone else, this time was no different. I was there and wasn’t impressed. I heard good things about the other keynote speeches, so I didn’t really ding the conference.

The speaker was Rishi Chandra from Google.  He is the Product Manager for Google Enterprise and was talking on Collaboration in the 21st century.  I like to think I know a little about collaboration so I was mildly interested. I also had nothing else to do in Philly until the Expo opened at 10am so I went.

What did I learn? Well very little, or a lot, depending on your point of view.  The highlights were as follows:

• The Cloud is really cool and nobody can handle scale like Google can handle scale. Your content would be a drop in the bucket by their standards so they can take it. Of course, this could be translated into the fact that we are meaningless to Google and if they only loss 0.001% of their stored data, they would be doing well. The fact that it might include all of your or my content is irrelevant.
• Collaboration in the 21st century is going to look a lot like collaboration from 7-10 years ago, but in the cloud. Hmmm. Tony Byrne of CMS Watch had a great observation on this. If it is so great, why do we only get to see screen shots? Isn’t his stuff available where he needs it?

I left after that.  The whole Google spin reminded of a line from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. With no artistic ability, and an apology to Douglas Adams, we can substitute Space (as in outer) with Google and get:

Google…is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggling big it is. I mean, you might think think it is a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to Google.

That is enough commentary on this keynote.  Anything else would just be mean and Google isn’t that bad, as far as we know. I’m sure that there were lots of attendees that got a lot of value from the presentation. I just wasn’t one of them.

CMIS Takes the Stage

At 11:30, David Choy of EMC, and chair of the CMIS OASIS Technical Committee, spoke in the expo about the standard about how great CMIS is. He was right on every point and you can go to many vendor sites to see them reinforce the message. Afterwards when there was a short panel. Moderated by Thomas Pole, the AIIM iECM Committee chair, the panel consisted of vendor representatives for some of the major ECM players participating in the standard, and me.

Thomas showed a quick demo (the most recent version includes Alfresco, EMC, and Nuxeo) and then I talked about building the search federator. Atle Skjekkeland from AIIM took a picture of me speaking. Seated to my left are Thomas Pole, Paul Hampton from Alfresco, Florent Guillaume from Nuxeo, Tracey Caughell from Open Text, Ethan Guresh from Microsoft, and lastly, David Choy from EMC.

Most of the story I covered is discussed in a previous post, but I want to add an update. A little after 7pm Wednesday night, I got an email from Nuxeo that their system was ready. It took me one hour to get it to work. ONE HOUR!!! Yes I could leverage previous code, but that is the point.  I didn’t have to learn anything outside of their beta CMIS implementation quirks. I figure in a mature system, it would have taken 15 minutes.

THAT is the value of CMIS.

Other Random Conference Notes

So there was more to AIIM, and here are some observations:

• If you are only going to go one day, the last day is not the day. It was the shortest day of the Expo and people were leaving town. I didn’t have a choice with the panel on the last day, but for those who do, you have been told. That being said, the last day had light foot-traffic in the Expo so I could get the attention of the booth people.
• Jesse Wilkins is a pretty cool guy and I can’t wait to chat with him again in RL when I’m not in a rush.
• Open Text and IBM didn’t have booths.  IBM did have a meeting room. Autonomy was there, but it was just a little stand in the Microsoft Partner pavilion for their iManage product. This was Open Text’s 2nd year without a booth. Read into it what you will.
• I’ve decided that I really like the CMS Watch crew. I got to have a pint or two with some of them and they are all fun and smart people. If you didn’t see their press release during the show, you should. It was meant as a joke, but it feels very real to me sometimes. There is more unmanaged content in the world than when I started in this business. That was not a pleasant realization.

On that disturbing thought, I think I’ll stop.

• We are implementing the Web Service binding for CMIS. While REST would be better for what we are doing, it was felt that the Web Services binding would be easier for the development team to churn out.
• As a result of that, the participating vendors are Alfresco, EMC, IBM, and Nuxeo. Microsoft wanted to participate was not sure that their Web Services binding would be complete in time.
• Each vendor will have a two issues worth of articles from AIIM’s bi-monthly publication, Infonomics.  In addition, each vendor is welcome to add their own white papers and collateral to the system.
• Users will search on metadata and/or full text. All searches will be round-robin sorted so that each repository has multiple hits on the first page, assuming that they have any content that meets the criteria.
• The system is being developed in .NET because we were able to identify a free hosting server that could support the effort.
• We, including myself, are going to be at the Expo on April 2nd to talk about it. I’ll share the exact time when I have it.

That is about it. I’ll be working and trying to get a basic search up this week. The second step will be performing this in a federated manner against multiple repositories.

I’ll share the journey as it unfolds. Until then, here is a modified version of the metadata model:

Object: AIIMContent

* Each Vendor will have the same value for all content in their repository.  It will clearly identify the vendor and may identify any other repository product information. For example, in my development Documentum repository, I’ve set this to “EMC Documentum”. Of course, EMC may actually us a different value if they desire.

Well, Microsoft appears to be doing things right so far.  In addition to showing a desire to participate in the AIIM effort (along with EMC, Alfresco, IBM, and Nuxeo), they hosted the first OASIS CMIS Technical Committee meeting out in Redmond, WA.  More important than either of those actions is the implications of this MSDN article, Integrating External Document Repositories with SharePoint Server 2007.

What Did Microsoft Do?

From all appearances, they created a way to consume some CMIS services within a specialized Document Library, called an External Library.  They used a Microsoft Silverlight application for the custom Web Part interface.  Why Silverlight?  I suspect it was to promote two technologies at the same time.

For the external repository, they created a custom repository consisting of just a simple directory structure with XML files to store document metadata and repository specific information.  In front of that, they implemented four of the CMIS services: repository, navigation, object, and versioning.  This is in no way a CMIS compliant implementation, lacking all the services and the REST implementation, but it is sufficient enough to demonstrate the capabilities, and benefits, of SharePoint working with an external repository.

Does this answer the question of how best to integrate Documentum and SharePoint?  No. It does show how SharePoint can act as a Federated front-end and expose existing content into SharePoint.  This approach allows for a single SharePoint integration point, supported by Microsoft, that will allow users to interact with content from multiple external repositories.  That is all I ask from Microsoft at this point as that is the one of the strongest use cases for SharePoint and CMIS.

There is still a long way to go though.  Getting the authentication and authorization mapped properly is not addressed, but is recognized as a weakness.  They mention a few ways to address this as well.  I don’t consider it an oversight as this is more of a practical proof-of-concept than a finished product.  With CMIS only at version 0.5, I’m not overly concerned at this time.

If you want to play with the project, you can grab the code from Microsoft.  As Shawn Shell at CMS Watch indicates in his post, Making it Real, there is a lot to dive into here, and even more to watch for down the road.  This implementation may not be how things are done when the final implementation is released, but it does show some of the current thinking.

Meanwhile, In Redmond

As mentioned above, the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee met in Redmond in the latter part of January, and Microsoft hosted.  According to John Newton, who gives a nice write-up of the 3-day event, this is not the first CMIS event that they have hosted.  The event was well attended.  Attending companies/organizations include:

• AIIM (by phone)
• Alfesco
• Day Software
• EMC…David Choy is the chair of the committee
• Exalead
• Greenbytes
• IBM…Al Brown is the secretary for the bindings
• Microsoft…Ethan Gur-esh is the secretary for the data model
• Nuxeo
• Open Text
• Oracle
• SAP…Presented the security proposal

From John’s account, which you should read, this was a very productive event and I am enthused by the progress.  I look forward to hearing more about the future meetings.  It looks like the standard is about a year away from finalization, but that is more determined by the process for comment than any real hurdles at this point.  I just hope I didn’t just jinx it.

One sentence that caught my eye, in a non-CMIS way, was, OpenText presented hierarchical properties.  I think that comes from the old Docs Open product that they acquired from Hummingbird.  It was a great feature and one that I wish I could implement effectively in other systems.  DOCS Open is the first Document Management system I ever implemented.  I even worked as a consultant for Hummingbird back in the day.

Ah, memories.

Here’s to Microsoft, EMC, Alfresco, and the rest of the committee giving us some good ones.

[Edit: The meeting notes are online in PDF format.]

One thing about writing entries on public transportation, no Internet.  This make is tough to refer to web sites that haven’t been opened and cached.  As a result, today (I’m optimistic, so I’m not saying “this week”) brings you Gartner, Inc.’s 2008 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management review.  Released on September 23, 2008, the biggest surprise was the number of vendors that didn’t hype it.

An important note from Gartner, Inc., Gartner advises readers not to compare the placement of vendors from last year to this year.  With that in mind, since I’m human, here is a link to my post about last year’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management titled, The ECM Magic Quadrant, for reference.

Enter Open Source

Before we get to the chart, there are two big developments to take note of this year.  The biggest is the inclusion of Alfresco.  That’s right, an open source vendor has arrived.  They are listed categorized as a niche player so far in this report.  Considering limited, but growing, adoption and their evolving product, that is understandable.  I think that their vision got dinged because they have been taking a stronger collaboration (read Enterprise 2.0) tack as of late, but that is just conjecture.

I think they may be selling Alfresco short, but marketplace adoption and confidence is a factor in this study.  It will be interesting to see how the perception, and reality, evolves over the next year.

Other open source vendors will be slow in appearing here as Records Management is considered a core requirement to be in the chart report.  I agree with this, but I may set the bar lower for compliance than Gartner, Inc. does as I think basic retention policies are all that is required.

The Pretty Picture

Without any further delay…(read the report to check out the graphic).

[Removed Graphic on 11/11/2008 at "request" of Gartner, Inc.]

Let’s look at some of the highlights :

• All Hail Microsoft! The second big development is the promotion positioning of Microsoft to the leaders quadrant.  I believe this is because SharePoint has been driving the discussion about ECM heavily over the past year.  They became a key member of CMIS standard and everyone wants to be like them.  Microsoft has been driving ECM more than the other way around since last year.  They are being a leader in the important sense of the word.  Are they leading us to the right place?  Who knows?  I am counting on them to continue to show people the possibilities of ECM so that they hunger for more.  Personally, SharePoint isn’t quite ECM, but that is a dead horse for now.
• Vision is apparently suffering in the ECM space.  Maybe as a consequence of reacting to SharePoint, most vendors appear less visionary.  Hyland Software went from a challenger on the cusp of leadership to a more solid position as a challenger.  Meanwhile, Xythos and Xerox dropped from being visionaries to being niche players.  In fact, as I look at some of the companies that didn’t drop their vision score, I see a lot of companies that didn’t heavily chase the SharePoint market.  It will be interesting to watch developments here as companies learn to co-exist with SharePoint and realize that the key isn’t to bring scalability to SharePoint, but to bring advanced ECM features.
• SAP does ECM?  This has been bothering me a bit.  Gartner, Inc. says that Clients perceive SAP to be an ECM vendor.  That means that they have to be considered, even if most of the install base are broad SAP shops.  They are part of CMIS as a supporting player (more on that soon) and they have invested in Alfresco, among others.

Turns out that HP has decided to buy their way into the market, but only with a single product, Tower Software. Like EMC, HP is looking to broaden their Information Management offering by adding Records Management and eDiscovery. If that is all they were looking to add, then buy Tower was a great move. I have always heard good things about their software for those purposes, though I always had doubts as to their complete ECM capability.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe makes the same assessment and adds some more useful insight. However, I think that HP’s competition for comparison is more EMC than IBM. EMC and HP are both from the world of hardware, acquiring Information Management related software to manage all of the data sitting on their hardware.

Alan states that they still need a better search component. Welcome to the world of EMC. Will EMC or HP add it first? This is a two-stage race. The first one to buy has more selection. However, the integration of said software is the second-stage. Integration is important and not to be over-looked. Just ask Microsoft.

What is Next?

The Big Men then enter a fun debate on the merits of the acquisition. I think that HP’s acquisition actually makes things harder to figure out. I can’t see HP buying any other ECM vendor, unless they are looking for a place to spend R&D money. Multiple solutions make life complicated. Just as IBM and OpenText.

The thing to consider in future acquisitions for HP is Tower’s architecture. They are heavy into Microsoft technologies. This isn’t a bad thing, unless you happen to be working for an anti-Microsoft IT shop. What this does do is lean future acquisitions to platforms that are, at a minimum, well tested on Microsoft.

That leaves OpenText. They can make it on their own, but they need to actually consolidate things if they are going to pull things out. After acquiring IXOS, Hummingbird, RedDot, and Artesia, putting everything into one place still isn’t easy. If I had to pick a buyer, it would be NetApp or Microsoft.

To be honest, I wouldn’t want to acquire OpenText if everything wasn’t consolidated. Of course if I bought them for 3 of their platforms, sold one off on its own, and just provided a migration path for the one that was left, that might work. Don’t you think that Artesia and RedDot would each make a nice CEVA?

The Cloudy Future

Right now ECM vendors are trying to make their more scalable platforms and plug them into the back of SharePoint. When properly done, this can really make SharePoint quite a useful and powerful solution. There are a lot of ways to get them to work together, as Andrew has pointed out in his Seven Reference Architectures for SharePoint and ECM.

The basic problem for ECM vendors that Lee Dallas at BMOC correctly observes is that Microsoft is going to fix their scalability limits. I think it may take a little time as the amount of content that an organization needs to store is growing as well. I believe that Microsoft will increase their scalability on a sharper curve than the market requires, but it will most likely take two releases for them to completely catch the curve.

Of course, they could do it on their next release if they invest heavily. One never knows. Even if Microsoft doesn’t, if SharePoint can handle 80% of the Fortune 500 with their next release, that’ll put pain on the current ECM vendors.

What’s a Vendor to do?

SharePoint is a Collaborative Content Application. That is the key concept. SharePoint should be where people go to work together to create content and knowledge. The ECM vendors need to focus on the other, non-”enterprise”, reasons for putting their applications in the back-end. They need to focus on fact that SharePoint isn’t for WCM or for well-defined or high-volume business processes or for Records, though Microsoft is likely to strengthen those features.

In a few years, when SharePoint throws our their next version, ECM vendors need to have already shown their value beyond simple scalability. They need to show how they can work to make SharePoint a part of the ECM environment and the larger world of Information Management.

The trick is to do all of this in a standard way so that the ECM system can support SharePoint and portals such as Vignette without having to create and maintain a separate product. That requires more investment than a single, standards-based solution.

Hmmm, a way to save money by using standards. I wonder if it will stick?

So it seems that Search is still on the same path. Upgraded FAST and an option for Lucene in D6.5. This should also lead to more plug-in architecture for Search engines in the future. It also means that we need to watch Microsoft more closely once they close the deal in Q2.

The folks at Brilliant Leap! and Lee Smith had some interesting thoughts (Read in that order). However, with the information regarding RSA, it spins it a little straighter.