Content Management, the Cloud, and Disruptions

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Not too long ago, I made a snarky comment about the cloud on twitter. I don’t know why anyone noticed as I make snarky comments all the time. This time, someone did notice and asked me if “cloud” was my least favorite word of all time. I gave both a snarky and serious response. The short version is that I don’t hate the word, just the overuse of the word.

I recently talked to a vendor that had started recently with the word “Cloud” in their name. After seeing their product, I realized that their product as cloud specific as Linux or Windows. They just used the term because it started meetings. I could have made use of their tool on multiple projects over my career, before the cloud.

So let’s look at the reason I made my snarky comment. It all started with an article, and like my best snarky comments of late, it involved Box….

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One Organizational Goal, Many Paths

I wrote the other week about how I learned, without realizing it, many lessons about organizational change back in college. I left the most important lesson out, the shared mission.

Back in the Fraternity, we would debate almost anything for hours on end. We were all very passionate in our beliefs, and being young, had the energy to debate late into the night. (We were also shortsighted and neglected the realities of 8am classes).

It was rare that any vitriol would last more than a few days after a decision was reached. Many a Brother would walk out, slamming their key down (don’t ask). I only know of one Brother that hadn’t returned to the fold within days.

Why?

The reason was very simple, we all wanted the same thing.

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Everything I Need to Know About Organizational Change I Learned in College

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If that title isn’t an arrogant statement, I don’t know what would qualify. I’ve been out of college for almost two decades and I just realized the truth of this statement listening to the Smithsonian’s Michael Edson today. I started to realize it on slide 136 and it crystallized in my brain during the Question and Answer session.

It wasn’t college itself, but my Fraternity experience. The Fraternity was the most political environment I have ever been in during my life and I’m just now realizing how useful it actually was, aside from meeting most of my closest friends to this day.

I’m going to confine myself to examples raised in the talk for this post, but I’ve already thought of related items that I’ve captured for future posts.

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The Unreality of Web 4.0

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Another quick little rant that I’ve been saving up…..

We all love new things. Once the Internet was new and it was fun. We were learning all sorts of things. We had no idea of the potential. I thought, incorrectly, that the Web would become a giant library of linked information (similar to the “semantic” web) but that was it. I underestimated the innovation to come.

Then came eCommerce followed by Web 2.0. Both were innovations as we went from Informational to Transactional and finally to Conversational versions of the Web. Web 2.0 definitely changed how we use the Internet and has provided a means for so many people, like my old relatives, to become regular Internet users.

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Haiku-ing Off to BoxWorks

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image Last month I was offered a chance to attend Box’s “customer” conference, BoxWorks, later this month in San Francisco. After watching the agenda grow more and more interesting, and making sure my work schedule would permit, I finally agreed to accept the offer. One not-so-minor detail, Box was the one offering to pay my way.

I’m not (that) stupid to know that this is purely from the kindness of their collective hearts. While I have used Box when I needed to collaborate on things for AIIM and other efforts, I’m not what you would consider a key client. What I am is a vocal (loud-mouthed) Content Management rabble-rouser that has said positive things about Box in the past. No strings or conditions were placed on my attendance but I know that Box wants me to talk about the conference, thus raising awareness. I’ll discuss the impact of that in more detail later in the post.

First, I have something to offer you.

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Don’t Discount the Cloud Guys

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Was going to have a multi-rant post, but I’ve decided to slice and dice. I thought I would start with a warning for all the Content Management vendors.

Never discount the cloud guys. They are dangerous. Today they may just be file-sharing or basic document management but tomorrow they’ll be the de facto cloud content repository. As fast as you think you are moving, they are moving faster.

Those flying cloud monkeys have no problem throwing new features up there at a pace that will make your head spin just to see what sticks. They don’t need to make a profit today as they are working to make profit in the future. The source of that profit? Money that is now going to all the other content providers.

How do you beat them? Simple, fix your pricing structure to a metered/usage approach and move to a secure cloud, now. Older vendors know the market better, so if they get the architecture figured out fast enough, they can take the cloud monkeys down.

Oh, and fix that user interface and work on a mobile strategy. Both of these can be handled with agile development processes that you can use to match the cloud guys.

Yes, the cloud guys aren’t there yet, but they are driving a Veyron.

Forrester’s Mobile Collaboration Wave Wipes Out

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Angry Birds To Nest On Consoles With A Focus On MultiplayerI always like looking over a new analyst report. While I don’t always put much faith in where the dots are on the graph, I can always count on:

  • Nuggets of information that I can re-use
  • A few comparatives that I can leverage later

Forrester has usually been pretty good. They list the categories and share the scores. While I don’t always agree with the weighting of the scores, it is always interesting.

Now I have an exception to prove the rule, the Mobile Collaboration Wave. It was, in short, nearly useless. I think the tone was set with these quotes:

We included vendors in four collaboration categories: document-based collaboration, webconferencing, videoconferencing, and activity streams.

…

We evaluated only the mobile characteristics, not the collaboration category features.

To sum up, they reviewed a lot of different products as tightly related as everything under the “Enterprise 2.0” banner and didn’t evaluate how well they actually worked.

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Crazy Uncle Owen Loses a Friend

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For years, I’ve had a crazy uncle, Owen Tedford. Now crazy Uncle Owen always like to collect baseball cards. I’ve always liked baseball cards so I always like to visit with Owen for short periods of time.

We always considered him eccentric and not crazy until he started buying other collections. While that wasn’t crazy in and of itself, it was what he did, or didn’t do, with the cards. He wouldn’t look at the collection for overlap before buying it. He would see one or two cards that he didn’t have and just buy.

Once uncle Owen got the collection, he would put the new collection in his shed and slowly cull it for individual cards to add to his main collection. The leftover parts of the collections slowly deteriorating outside in the shed.

We were worried about crazy Uncle Owen being crushed by his rotting collection of cards on a trip to the shed. We figured it was only a few more years until the sheer dead weight of it all collapsed. Then he met Artie, the town loon.

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Documentum Patch Process, Adding a Touch of Common Sense

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I haven’t been writing a lot as I’ve been going crazy at work and nothing has jumped out at me as time sensitive. I’ve starting writing some “expert” blogs for AIIM on Enterprise Content Management, their label, so you can get a small fix over in the AIIM Community.

It is the summer and things are pretty slow going in the industry, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t build-up to a good rant. I was doing a little research in some release notes for Documentum the other day and something that annoyed me last Spring hit me full in the face.

The proliferation of patches. WOW! Let’s look at this for a minute.

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Folders, A Nutritious Part of Your Content Management Diet

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Sean Hederman of Signate Document Management wrote a rebuttal of  my AIIM article defending folders. He admits a bias as he works for a Document Management vendor built around search. I thought of writing a short response saying that he missed the point of my article and that he had nothing to rebut, but where is the fun in that?

My article was itself a rebuttal against an AIIM article saying we should get rid of folders by Chris Riley. I never meant to imply that we should get rid of search, only that we shouldn’t get rid of folders. I like search, and metadata for that matter. I complain vocally when search doesn’t work well.

With that in mind, here are his points. Each heading is a direct quote of a heading from his post.

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