Information

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

ECM Job Security

I lot of things have fallen through the cracks the last few weeks while I have been busy with family and work obligations. One of those was mentioning the updated version of The Expanding Digital Universe. CMS Watch helped remind me when I was catching up on their posts.

This report, written by IDC and commissioned by EMC, basically says that there is more information out there than we thought and that it is being created at a faster pace than estimated. The amount of information from 2006 to 2011 will increase by a scale of magnitude. At that rate, by my calculations, we’ll hit 1 Yottabyte around the year 2025.

Continue reading →

ECM: A Working Definition for the Next Generation

2 Comments

A while back I talked about how the current definitions of Enterprise Content Management left a lot to be desired. They don’t accurately describe the reality of what ECM systems need to accomplish in today’s environment. They are also boring and lack a soul.

I have come back to this topic through multiple avenues. One is the concept of Invisible ECM from Billy and crew over at Oracle. It resonated very strongly with my previous discussions on Transparent ECM. We can debate terminology later, but what is important now is the shared concept.

A second avenue comes from my need to explain where ECM is going, ECM 2.0, in a simple and concise way. I can explain it and speak passionately on the topic. The need to get the concept out there in one breath has become more important as I talk to more people.

I have developed a proposed definition for your consideration. I would love feedback. I will approve all constructive comments for sharing, though I may not respond until a subsequent post. I’ll throw it out there and then discuss it briefly. Remember, I want this definition to have a soul.

Enterprise Content Management is the empowerment of all content within an organization. This is accomplished through the centralized management of content, allowing for people and systems to access and manage content from within any business context using platform agnostic standards.

Continue reading →

Online Games and Enterprise Applications

2 Comments

James posted on this topic after watching a presentation at OWASP’s local Hartford chapter meeting last week. It was buried halfway down in the post, but it asked a great question:

Do they really think that their silly little architectures that support 500 users concurrently is somehow more challenging than implementing an architecture that supports 2 million concurrent?

It is a damn good point. The playground for these applications is different, but the same issues arise. I’ve played a few online games in my day and have seen the ups and downs of their implementations. I think I’ll throw in my opinion on two of the items for comparison, performance and security.

Continue reading →

Social Media and Knowledge Management

7 Comments

Run for the hills! I just dragged the on again, off again, term of the year, Knowledge Management (KM). For those of you newer to the space, KM has made an appearance every few years and then been torn apart by end-users as the latest KM solution failed to live-up to its promise.

Well, KM is back, but under a disguise. Enterprise 2.0, using the Social Media on Web 2.0 in the business world, enables Knowledge Management. When I took my adventure through Chuck’s Journey, it was like a light bulb clicking on in my head. All of this Social Media tech solves some of the key issues that have plagued KM systems.

Continue reading →

SharePoint for Web Content Management

7 Comments

Before continuing, I’ll pause to let the laughter die down. Done yet? Don’t worry, I’ll wait…

Seriously, Microsoft continues to push SharePoint 2007 for Web Content Management. I’m sure it can be done, but it seems a bad fit. SharePoint’s primary weakness, in my opinion, is the inability to scale for the large Enterprise. Now imagine managing a large website. There are two options here:

  1. Host on SharePoint. Bad. Beyond bad. The security and scalability issues are challenging on a good day.
  2. Store an manage on SharePoint and publish out. Definitely not out-of-the-box. At a minimum, a WCM system should be able to handle this.

It appears that I’m not the only person that thinks that SharePoint isn’t a good fit for WCM. Janus Boye over at CMS Watch shared a couple of stories from some Danish companies that wanted to use SharePoint for WCM. They couldn’t find anyone that would do is for them, and one of them even asked Microsoft directly. The closest they got was one that offered to do it on SharePoint 2003!

Continue reading →

Open Source vs. Open Source

I went to the monthly meeting of the Web Content Mavens last night. They were featuring a panel speaking on about 7 different Open Source Web Content Management systems. Some of the vendors present, like Alfresco, do more than web content, but web content was the focus. It was moderately interesting. I would have loved to see more interaction among the panelists, but it was good to hear their spin on what they each do best and to talk with them afterwards.

Before I say anything else, the highlight for me was when one of the panelist, a primary contributor to DotNetNuke, Antonio Chagoury, said,

You get what you pay for.

Continue reading →

The Endless Security Cycle

4 Comments

I have been thinking about how to write this post for a while now. I have several approaches to choose from, but then I hit on the key concept. It doesn’t matter. Here is the general pattern of James’ approach to this topic.

  • James will criticize ECM security as a whole and then point to one or more issues.
  • I then attempt to explain why those key “issues” aren’t issues.
  • James will then elaborate or comment on my post in one or more follow-ups, usually explaining something that I didn’t put in my post for one or more reasons. In the case in point, I didn’t take it deep enough. While doing this, he ignores any defenses I may have made of the “issues”. He invariably bringing up other “issues” as well.

Rather than continue the cycle, and eat my time up, I’m going to post one more time on this topic and move on for now. Some disclaimers of my own:

Continue reading →

Conversational Collaboration at EMC

1 Comment

Thought I would let me next post on security in ECM percolate for another day and share something that Jed found. He found a second blog by Chuck Hollis chronicling EMC’s adoption of Social Media as an Enterprise 2.0 effort. The blog started in August, so I started reading there as Jed recommended. I’m going to chronicle my adventure through his blog.

These are posts that I found particularly insightful or useful. If you don’t have time to read the whole sequence, you can jump around.

  • Why Me?: Chuck starts with a simple introduction to himself, explaining why he is leading the initiative and his initial strategy in getting started. My favorite line is, I had to informally recruit (hijack!) a few people who were as passionate on this topic as I was becoming, especially during the formative stages. Having recently started leading a few initiatives in my own company, I like the accurate portrayal. The key is to recruit those that will contribute, but may have been hesitant to volunteer due to various reasons. I’m trying to make sure that they get credit and rewarded for that work so they are still willing in the future.

Continue reading →

Build that Taxonomy…Why? Because I Said So

5 Comments

So there were a couple of good posts the other day by Johnny and the BMOC. The best thing is that they were about the same thing, yet not. Johnny wrote about how it was important to create a taxonomy, however superficial, and not put everything into one folder. BMOC looked at the same situation and talked about how it is important as consultants to guide clients away from the dark path onto the bright, safe path.

Continue reading →

Embracing SharePoint, Recipe for Death?

4 Comments

Wanted to take a quick break to comment on a post I read on Big Men On Content. This is a blog I have recently added to my regular read list, such as I read any blog “regularly” these days given my recent workload. It mentions into the perils of ECM vendors hitching their wagon to SharePoint with the observation that Microsoft doesn’t need them. They are right and they are wrong. Where they are wrong is slight and the whole concept is worth exploring.

Continue reading →