The ECM Innovator’s Dilemma

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So I promised an ECM specific follow-up to my book review on Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma.  There is a lot to talk about, so I’m not going to blather on with a long intro (though this sentence seems to be compounding the issue) and get right to it.

Or not…I have some disclaimers/notes:

  • Going to try and use as much of Chistensen’s terminlogy as possible.  This isn’t to say that he has a perfect model, or even 80% model, of what is happening.  It just helps to keep the terminology consistent during this particular post.
  • Every Content Management company is different and the observations will not apply universally.  Every company reacts differently.  That said, if I didn’t think that this applied to a large number of vendors, I would have targeted this post at particular vendors.

NOW we can get started.

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Review: The Innovator’s Dilemma

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image The Innovator’s Dilemma

Clayton M. Christensen

Before I went to EMC World and marveled at how the management was missing the boat on the cloud and was diving wholesale into Case Management, I was told that I had to read this book.  After EMC World, I broke down, purchased it, and then fought to find time for it.  The book is over a decade old, so what was the rush? Let me tell you, I am glad I found the time.

I was told before I read the book that it was going to make me a little sad and despair for the future of Documentum.  It did in a way, but it also helped explain everything that was happening.  It actually increased my opinion of some people at EMC.  I am going to talk about the specifics to EMC, and other legacy Content Management vendors, in a subsequent post.  For now, let’s dive into the book itself.

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Quality of Documentum Over the Years

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I recently received an email from someone whom I will call…Socrates.  He asked a question and I wanted to share it for discussion publicly.  First the question, then my reasons for the public discourse.

Laurence, I have been working on Documentum since version 2. I am now working on DCM 6.5 sp3. I find that the quality of the product is going down every release. What do you think?

The reason that I am bringing it up publically is because I don’t have a clear-cut answer.  As with products from most vendors, some releases are better than others.  I also only have direct experience with Documentum since the 4i release at the end of ’99.  To top it off, I haven’t used every component, much less every component of every release.

Of course, I have some concerns.  I saw Rick Devenuti speak at EMC World and he seemed preoccupied with addressing quality issues.  Whether these are long-standing or new is something we can discuss at the end, where I have a couple more thoughts.

In between, I am going to share some of my “quality” stories here, both good and bad.  I’m hoping that Johnny, Scott, Lee, and Robin all chime into the conversation.  Please do so yourself.

Remember, there is no “right” answer.  We are merely looking for experiences.

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Change of Publishing Strategy with my Tips

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I have published a fair number of Tips over the life of this blog, pretty much all centered around Documentum.  While I am not going to change my writing of Tips, I am going to do a few things:

  1. Publish Documentum Tips on the EMC Developer Network: I started a blog there, Pie on Content Management, which I have infrequently used.  I am going to keep my tips there so that they are searchable by the community by the average user.
  2. Link to Remote Tips: As I create these new tips, I will continue to add links to them from my Tips page.  If I create other Tips posts in other locations, I will add those as well.
  3. Notification: If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you can still track the tips.  I will try and keep the alert on this page updated with any recent remotely posted tips.

I have just posted my first tip on the EDN titled Tips: Installing Documentum 6.6 on SQL Server 2008 and 64-bit.  I recently performed this feat and wanted to share some specific things that I learned.

Enjoy.

Content Management as a Commodity

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SharePoint has the traditional ECM Generation CMS vendors trying to figure out what they can do to maintain their “leadership” in Content Management.  imageA lot are looking to Case Management, a long-time need, to provide a differentiating factor for growth.

Meanwhile, other, newer CMS vendors are working to build solutions in the cloud.  What they lack in functionality/scalability, they make up for in drive, vision, and price.  They also have a plan to match, and surpass in some cases, the capabilities of SharePoint and the big boys.

These two new challengers to the CMS throne are making basic Content Management available to the masses.  The traditional vendors don’t see profit in the commodity game.  We’ll explain why this is a problem for them in a bit…

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Acquisition Fever

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image There is a lot of acquisition talk these days, both anticipated and real.  When you think on it, it isn’t really news.  Acquisitions are a constant in this industry, but there are two of late that indicate how things may be getting ready to change.  People keep asking me my thoughts, so I thought I would jot them down.

Keep in mind that I’m not an analyst or expert and I don’t play one on TV.  I can write a mean Haiku though.

Adobe Buys Day

If you don’t follow the CMS open source world and/or the CMS industry at large, this announcement may leave you scratching your head wondering “So what?”  Day Software has been one of the leading open source companies in the Content Management world.  They are headquartered in Europe and have been working to build a footprint here in the states.

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Upgrading to SharePoint 2010

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No, I haven’t converted into a SharePoint fanboi.  I am merely acknowledging that it is here to stay, at least for two more versions.  Realizing that, my company has been doing quite a bit of SharePoint work in the past few years.  We have recently been looking at SP2010 and just upgraded a customer to the new version.

This dalliance with SharePoint has not gone unnoticed by some people in the local area.  I was asked to co-present with Wyn Van Devanter to the Washington, DC Web Content Mavens group on what web managers need to know before making the move from 2007 to 2010.

I thought I would share my slides and offer a few additional notes for people.  For the record, Wyn tackled the first part of the presentation and I handled the second portion.  We could probably each speak to the other half, but we each presented to our strengths.

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Be Nice, It’s a Small World

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Over my career, I have seen quite a bit of turnover on my various projects and companies, from both sides.  Normally, things remain professional, and the companies and clients involved are impacted as little as possible given the circumstances.

Let’s face it, if an architect leaves, it is hard to replace that skill and knowledge.  Regardless, attempts are made to try and minimize the change.  Obviously there is not a lot transition when someone is fired versus their resigning, but that is hopefully a case of addition by subtraction.

Every now and then, you come across an example that reminds you of the importance of the social skills you learned in kindergarten.  Before we get into that though, let’s look at the reality of our industry.

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What ECM Vendors Can Do for Case Management Solutions

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image I just wrote on why we need Content Management for effective Case Management.  It really is more of a background into defining the challenges.  Now I am going to focus on how Content Management vendors can help solve this problem.

This is a little like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.  Most of the vendors out there have announced Case Management strategies.  After my comments on EMC’s approach, many have felt that I thought that Content Management vendors should stay out of Case Management.

That is completely wrong.  They need to be involved.  So lets talk about the how…

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Why Case Management Needs Content Management

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One thing that I have observed in the last month or so is that people think that I either don’t understand Case Management or think that Content Management vendors shouldn’t be messing around with Case Management.  Well, both those observations would be wrong.

I thought I would take a moment to share some of my Case Management experiences and why I think that Content Management vendors NEED to be involved in solving the problem.

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