Provoking Jed on ECM 2.0

I am worried. Worried that Jed will want to stop sharing pints with me. In a previous post, I said that the ECM community, users and organizations, need to define what makes up ECM 2.0. The definition should not be dependent on the definition of Web 2.0. Jed thinks I was calling him cynical. Not quite. I think Jed is too optimistic.

ECM as Part of Enterprise 2.0

Jed tries to show how close ECM is to Enterprise 2.0. Using one approach, he scores ECM technologies at 5.5 out of 6.0. Using the same approach, I can’t score ECM higher than a 4. However, that is still pretty good as I can give that score to the current collection of ECM 1.1 products (I can use numbers as well).

There is an important point in here that I haven’t mentioned. ECM, in any form, is an important part of Enterprise 2.0. Dion Hinchcliffe scores Google Docs against a different scorecard, and comes out with a non-perfect score. However, he goes on to say that Google Docs is actually a fairly good Enterprise 2.0 citizen. If that is the case, then an imperfectly scoring ECM application can also be a solid Enterprise 2.0 application. He mentions that this will become even more accurate as ECM vendors incorporate more Web 2.0 features into their applications.

eRoom as Enterprise 2.0?

Jed mentions that if you compare the checklists against eRoom, you actually score higher. He is dead right. I would score eRoom much higher everywhere. Heck, I would score SharePoint high as well. However, there is a minor problem. Just as I have stated that SharePoint is not a true ECM application, neither is eRoom. Both fail at Enterprise. However, unlike SharePoint, eRoom doesn’t claim to be one.

I think that eRoom could be a great Enterprise 2.0 application. It is missing some of the Web 2.0 collaborative artifacts. You can fake blogging with either Notes or Discussions. You can fake a wiki as well, but it isn’t quite as good of a fake. However, as I think about it, the main thing missing from eRoom is that it looks old. It has great notifications. Update the interface, add RSS feeds as a notification option, and throw in blog and wiki artifacts, you will be there.

This is a call to action for EMC. Nurture eRoom! It is well poised to move forward. Don’t cede the field to SharePoint. SharePoint has the lead, but it isn’t cemented. Documentum’s Content Server ties into SharePoint better than eRoom. This can all be fixed, so please take action. Soon.

3 thoughts on “Provoking Jed on ECM 2.0”

  1. Dude, your a star, your response is thoughtful and as thought provoking as ever, so the beer is definately on me !

    I second the call to action, in fact, as Laurence and I ended up sat on different tables even though we were both in the ‘collaboration Product Advisory Forum’ at the last Momentum conference, he probably did not hear me asking for all of the above !! The whole eRoom Next Generation (code name Phoenix) thing deserves a lot of effort from EMC, so jump to it guys……

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  2. p.s. if you get a spare ten minutes, post your scoring against the SLATES so we can compare and contrast – pretty please 🙂

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  3. Jed’s blog response. For my quickie score (a generous 3.5):

    Search: 1
    Links: 0 (The ECM systems don’t do this. This is more dynamic content.)
    Authorship: 0 (ECM systems don’t really provide this. Productivity Applications do.)
    Tags: 1 (You can tag in all sorts of ways. Keywords combined with the taxonomy allow you some nice flexibility. Need better ways to translate.)
    Extensions: .5 (Not very strong. You can start auditting, but overhead hits hard.)
    Signals: 1 (Room for improvement)

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