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This is the work part. Posts here relate to the craft of my career and profession.

Am I Buying a WCM Solution or Stock?

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The Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management came out for the first time this month.  I say the first time because it was always a Market Scope before the 2009 report.  If you look at it, you can learn many things.  The one thing you won’t learn is if any of the products are right for you, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Jon Marks did a good job of comparing Gartner’s and Forrester’s latest rankings and highlights how a “Niche Player” may be worth considering. CMS Watch has stronger words on the topic, talking about some of the differences between their methodology and Gartner’s.

I have a few of my own thoughts to add into the fray…

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The Future of Content Management

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About a week ago, Julian Wraith asked the ECM world what they thought the future of Content Management was.  He then said that he was going on vacation and would check back in a week.  So like all good techies, I waited until the end of the week before even starting on the task.  I did want to answer because I felt my ECM Definition needs a vision to where I see ECM taking us.image

Before I dive into the topic, I wanted to frame my answer.  I am backing off the term ECM 2.0.  As I think on it, the “2.0” is over-used, and doesn’t really apply directly to ECM.  ECM may support and be an important part of an Enterprise 2.0 system, but that can be achieved with old tech.  I am still ECM focused and see it changing, but slapping a version number is not the way to indicate the evolution of ECM.

The last thing about this future state is that it will not be here tomorrow. It is a future that is years away.  Some organizations may be there soon on a small scale, but the full-scale vision is a world where we are all there. So without further ado…

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Stage 1 Complete, Documentum Helps Developers

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I’ve been meaning to talk about the new Documentum Developer Edition for a while now.  I’ve referred to it in previous posts and twittered about it.  More recently, Marko over at Big Men on Content has talked about the benefits of freely available ECM platforms for development and proof-of-concepts.  I thought some spare vacation time, and the release of the 6.5 sp2 version, was a perfect time to write-up my thoughts.

To start with, ABOUT TIME!!! Okay, that may be a little strong, but in the age of open source and when Microsoft and Oracle have been offering developer editions of their core products for years this was way overdue.  If you want the developer pool to grow, which is one of the major costs of a large-scale deployment, you need to allow them to use the tools.  There are lots of independent consultants out there that have trouble keeping-up with the technology because they can’t afford to become partners for the requisite fee.  The Developer Edition makes it easier on them (and harder on me, but that is another post) to deliver into the market.

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EMC Opens Their Eyes and Has a Vision

Went to the EMC Federal Forum yesterday here in Washington, DC.  I enjoy this event, if for no other reason than it is one of the few times a year that EMC people actually come to my town.  They’ve realized that it is easier to just talk to me than to try and avoid me, so it is now a truly fun and informative event.

The value of the breakouts were a mixed bag.  Many were similar to sessions from EMC World, which is perfect for this event as many users in the Federal Government could not make the trip to Orlando.  I did attend EMC World, so a lot of things weren’t exactly new.  I did Tweet some updates, and you can search #emcff for more tweets.  I decided to blog the keynote as it was focused on the EMC Strategy and Vision.

As you may recall, Vision was a problem at EMC World this year.  No Vision was really presented.  It was a nice description of things now, but Vision was lacking.  Rick Devenuti, the Sr. VP and COO of the CMA Division, has been tasked with sharing the “Vision” at this event.

I’m typed some notes as Rick talked and I have provided those at the bottom of the post.  Due to the content of the keynote, I’m providing a summary as well.  Keep in mind that this was a U.S. Federal Forum, so that market was the focus.

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Email, Part of this Nutritious Breakfast

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Last week I got into a discussion with a few people on Twitter about email as a collaboration system.  It started when I sent a foolish tweet:

RT @lehawes: Email is not a collaboration system!! It is a communication system.

People started getting riled up. Some solid points were made about people using it for collaboration, but my point was that people using email for collaboration doesn’t make it a collaboration system.  I collaborate using the phone, but it isn’t a collaboration system.

I decided that a post was needed to fully explain the difference as 140 characters is just too limiting.

Remember Sugar Cereals?

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The Evolving Enterprise 2.0 Revolution

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I’ve been observing and getting into a lot of discussions recently regarding Enterprise 2.0. This is probably because I was following the Twitter feed for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week. I have always liked the concept, 2.0 moniker aside, because I have always viewed it as the next step to realizing the goals in Knowledge Management.

One of the discussions is whether Enterprise 2.0 is evolutionary or revolutionary.  The simplest answer is yes. How others answer this question is most likely directly related to their belief in the importance of the technology in the equation of building Enterprise 2.0 success.

The Evolving Technology…

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ECM and Enterprise 2.0 – AIIM Throws Numbers on the Wall

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Enterprise 2.0 is a growing theme out there in the wild of the Internet. This is especially true in the world of ECM where vendors are looking to add all those “Web 2.0” features to their platforms. EMC, Open Text, and IBM are all releasing new “Enterprise 2.0” products. It is a smart play because people with ECM and collaboration tools are looking to their vendors to provide the newest Enterprise 2.0 features in the “next upgrade”.

AIIM saw this trend a while ago and did some research.  In May, AIIM updated their research. I was “lucky” enough (lucky being defined as someone who follows AIIM leaders on Twitter and clicks on links) to get an early copy of the results, AIIM Industry Watch: Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0, on Friday before the general announcement of availability. I thought I would share what I found.

Numbers, Numbers, Everywhere…

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Tips: Where Did the Time Go? D6 and the UTC Timestamp

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I had planned to start running all of my “Tips” posts in the EMC Developer Network, but I wanted to editorialize a little in this Tip, so I’ve decided to throw it up here.  This issue arose when I installed a new repository into an existing environment.  It is a documented issue, though the Support guys need to read that documentation a little more closely.

The Time Warp

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EMC World 2009, The Case of the Incredibly Shrinking Momentum

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This year was the second year where I “felt” that there were less Documentum sessions than the older traditional Momentum conferences.  This is strange as there are more components to Content Management and Archiving, Documentum, than there were even two years ago.  Luckily, I have the conference handbooks for the last three EMC World conferences and I can check numbers while I watch a new repository build.

The EMC World 2007 conference, while under EMC World’s wing, still felt like the session count wasn’t that far off.  I remember a few grumblings, but nothing documented, so I’ll just use that as a baseline with the understanding that the previous year was at least as good.  I believe 2007 was the year that the long-standing pre-conference tutorials vanished, so calling it even is a throwing EMC a bone.

Let’s See Some Numbers

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CMIS, Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep

Kas Thomas wrote a post about how CMIS could be called DMIS as it is more for document management systems than content management systems. This hit me on two fronts. The first is with the concept of “CMS”.

Why is it that when I talk to people about “CMS”, they are almost always referring to Web Content Management? Seems to be a pretty narrow definition of the use of content. Along the same lines, many “Information Architects” that work with these “CMS” applications seem to be senior website designers. I’ve met Information Architects that I felt deserved the title, but they dealt with things beyond, though including, the web.  Enough of that, for now, on to the main course…

The second, is of course the slight to CMIS. That is the focus today. While I encourage criticism of CMIS as criticism is important for growth, I don’t want misconceptions to perpetuate themselves.

Sticks and Stones

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