AIIM

Update on the AIIM CMIS Demo

At the end of January, I talked about the proposed effort being undertaken by the iECM committee to create a CMIS demonstration for the AIIM Expo. Things are going well and I am working with others to build the demonstration. I wanted to share a few details with you.

  • We are implementing the Web Service binding for CMIS. While REST would be better for what we are doing, it was felt that the Web Services binding would be easier for the development team to churn out.
  • As a result of that, the participating vendors are Alfresco, EMC, IBM, and Nuxeo. Microsoft wanted to participate was not sure that their Web Services binding would be complete in time.
  • Each vendor will have a two issues worth of articles from AIIM’s bi-monthly publication, Infonomics.  In addition, each vendor is welcome to add their own white papers and collateral to the system.
  • Users will search on metadata and/or full text. All searches will be round-robin sorted so that each repository has multiple hits on the first page, assuming that they have any content that meets the criteria.
  • The system is being developed in .NET because we were able to identify a free hosting server that could support the effort.
  • We, including myself, are going to be at the Expo on April 2nd to talk about it. I’ll share the exact time when I have it.

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CMIS and SharePoint

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This is a critical subject.  As I said when the CMIS standard was released, the key to its success will be vendor adoption.  This means more than just signing off on the standard.  The vendors have to incorporate it into their message and start to show clients, partners, and analysts how they plan to support and implement CMIS.  Based on how the ECM marketplace has begun to revolve around SharePoint, I consider Microsoft’s support a major component for success.  CMIS can succeed without them at first, but it will be a much steeper hill to climb without Microsoft.

Well, Microsoft appears to be doing things right so far.  In addition to showing a desire to participate in the AIIM effort (along with EMC, Alfresco, IBM, and Nuxeo), they hosted the first OASIS CMIS Technical Committee meeting out in Redmond, WA.  More important than either of those actions is the implications of this MSDN article, Integrating External Document Repositories with SharePoint Server 2007.

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AIIM’s iECM Committee, Validating CMIS

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As you may have heard, I’ve been a member of AIIM’s iECM committee for over a year.  I’ve been more of a lurker as I was a little nonplused at the efforts of the committee, but I stayed with it to learn more about their efforts in detail and hoping to one day be able to help in a substantive way.

Well, that day has arrived.  We are taking on the creation of a prototype, CMIS-based, system to store the presentation from the 2009 AIIM Expo.  The basic premise is to have one or more CMIS back-end systems storing content with a central interface that would provide content, seamlessly, to users.  Rather than explain the details, I’m publishing the “official” write-up.

Before you dive in, if you are a vendor with a CMIS implementation, we want to speak to you.  You can contact me or the people listed below.

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The ECM Community Meets Web 2.0

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In the last month, two different social networking communities have popped-up in the ECM space. One is the new Information Zen community sponsored by AIIM. The other is The Content Management Connection created by George Dearing. There are lots of pros and cons, but lets keep it simple…

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ECM, SOA, and Bees

I am glad that Billy responded to my earlier post critiquing his article for AIIM. I meant it to be constructive, and I wanted it to lead to further discussion. It was a difficult post for me to write because I respect Billy and didn’t want to alienate him. It seems he gave me the benefit of the doubt, at least in print, and for that Billy, I thank you.

The funny thing was that when I read the name of his post, Poking the Bee Hive, I was watching a Dr Who episode featuring a giant wasp. Weird stuff.

I’m going to bypass the editorial stuff discussion for the most part. That is a matter of opinion and Billy had a co-author and editorial staff to answer to when writing the article. Like Billy, I want to focus on the intersection of Enterprise 2.0, SOA, and ECM. That is the meat of his article and the part that can actually lead to greater understanding on everyone’s part.

So while I wait for Billy to start his side of the discussion, I will poke the bee’s nest some more.

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Billy Cripe on ECM and SOA

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I had two thoughts competing for my next topic. It being late in the day, I decided to pick the one that would be the easiest to write as all I had to do was read an article by someone with whom I typically agree and compose a simple post.

I chose poorly…

Billy Cripe has just had an article published in the May/June edition of AIIM E-DOC. I was excited. I usually see one or two articles in each issue that catch my interest, but I am always underwhelmed by the content. I wasn’t this time, I was just disappointed.

It All Falls Apart

I want to start with the simple disclaimer. I respect Billy and I firmly believe that we have the same vision of ECM 2.0 and where it is going. He always has seemed to have a firm grasp on all the relevant technologies. That didn’t really change after reading his article. I am disappointed in the way he delivered the message.

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The Rumors of My Promotion are Greatly Exaggerated

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I was just relaxing with my first cup of coffee, reading the morning news and blogs, when I stumbled across this post by James saying that Laurence Hart will be the lead of a new standards body focused on ECM. The quick answer is that it is not true. James heard it through the grapevine, so let me list some facts that could easily lead to this fact occurring. Note that I met a colleague of James at the conference and we talked about everything below.

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Alfresco Thrashing the Wave

Now that I’ve reviewed Forrester’s Wave report on ECM, let’s tune into some specific criticism. Specifically Jeff Potts spoke up and took them to task on how they weight what they measure. Being a fan of Alfresco, his post is a little on the defensive side, but that doesn’t eliminate his points.

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Co-Existence of SharePoint and ECM

A few weeks ago, I attended the AIIM seminar SharePoint meets ECM. When I registered, I received Doculabs’ White Paper, The Co-existence of Microsoft SharePoint and Advanced ECM Platforms: What You Need to Know. I hinted in my post about the event that I would write another post specifically addressed to this White Paper and I have finally gotten around to it.

Before I dive into the nitty-gritty details, I wanted to share an interesting observation. I started this blog to talk about things that were of interest to the EMC/Documentum crowd. That has expanded to encompass broader ECM issues such as standards. I think these topics are of interest to Documentum Architects, so it isn’t a reach. However, I’ve noticed a trend. Whenever I post on SharePoint, my hits jump way up. If I was just after hits, I’d just switch to SharePoint all the time. However, I expect this to be one of my last posts on the topic for a while as I have bigger fish to fry and I think I’ll have covered most of what I feel I need to cover for the short term.

It does make one think. I wonder how far my hit rate would jump if I included the name of a celebrity who is named after a French city? I’m not shameless enough to find out. Now on to the meat of the post…

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ECM Standards for SOA

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The current gap that I see in the ECM standards is in the world of SOA. I’ve tried to make a case for having such a standard in the past. However, Bex Huff said that we don’t need another ECM standard. Let’s look at the existing standards and see if one of them can fill the void.

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