Box

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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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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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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Collaboration, Just a Documentum Side Effect

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Last year I posted an article on how CenterStage was the Latest ex-Collaboration Tool from EMC. Turns out I understated the case. EMC isn’t going to be building a collaboration tool, at least not one purposely built to encourage collaboration.

In many ways the announcements at this year’s EMC World just reaffirmed the direction set last year. Last year I was sad. This year, I’m starting to lose my sense of humor.

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EMC World 2011: Jeetu’s Documentum Update

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Time for Jeetu Patel’s keynote. Expecting some more details on yesterday’s announcements. Not expecting anything earth-shattering, just some more insight into what questions I need to be asking next. Not going to repeat details from Rick’s keynote in these notes.

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Changes at info360, Yee Olde AIIM Conference

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I have traditional gone to the annual AIIM conference, info360, in order to quiz/grill/annoy the vendors and network with people. The presentations were always secondary. After all, how many times can you see a presentation on the ROI of an invoice processing system?image

The last two years, I was there evangelizing CMIS to the community, but I basically skipped most of the sessions because they were the same thing as past years. Oh, Real Story Group was always there offering some honest insights, but most of the information the present you can get just by following them throughout the year (which you ought to be doing).

This year was different. The first difference was I was presenting something that clearly wasn’t a case study or CMIS. What made it better was that mine wasn’t the only presentation that was different. There were tracks on Mobile, Cloud, and Social Media. You couldn’t escape those terms this year but in previous years they weren’t barely present.

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Throwing ECM Terminology Around Like Candy

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image Been a while since I posted anything. Having a new kid will do that to a person. I read an article last week that all but set me off. Luckily I didn’t have time to write it because I am going to be biting the hands that feed me, or at least ones that have been nice to me.

The article in question was published on CMSWire. When I saw the title, The Future of ECM: Looking Less and Less like SharePoint?, I was very interested. Then I started reading and nearly died.

SharePoint as “Traditional” ECM

First off, I’m going to state that SharePoint can readily be used as a Content Management System. When I compare SharePoint’s capabilities with features that I documented when I wasn’t thinking about SharePoint, it fairs well.

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Launching the New Box, Progress Made One Step at a Time

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imageSo a funny thing happened on my way to the West Coast this week, I was invited to a product launch at Box.net.  I’ve always been a fan of the concept of Content Management in the Cloud and the direction Box has taken in the Content Management space.

The established vendors are having to determine how to change both their business models and architecture before they more to the the cloud. Box is already there, they just need more features.

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The ECM Magic Quadrant, The 2010 Edition

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imageSo Gartner released the new Magic Quadrant last week.

Um…..

I’m a little torn here.  It is an important piece of research and of value and all that, but…

  • Those in the Leaders quadrant frequently aren’t leading.
  • Too many people look at the report and research the market no further.
  • Enterprise Content Management cannot be bought.  It is a strategy.  I can buy a Content Management platform or suite that supports my ECM strategy, but I cannot buy ECM.

Of course, it is full of useful/interesting facts, so let’s dive into it…[download a copy from Hyland Software.]

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License Fees Blocking the Future of ECM

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So in case  you’ve missed it, I’ve been talking about how fixation on license fees can have a negative impact on on both the customer relationships and on product development.   There has been a reason for this conversation, the need to transform Content Management into a commodity.

This was discussed at the EMC Writer’s Summit event earlier this month.  Led by Andrew Chapman, we tried to identify what we could accomplish if Content Management was commoditized and was just there to be used.  Johnny Gee followed up this discussion with a post about ECM as a Commodity, sharing some of his thoughts in more detail.

Before talking about the license fee impediment Content Management Commodization, I’m going to touch on the Commodity issue a bit.

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