Last year, I didn’t write a prediction post. That is a shame because evaluating last year’s predictions is an easy post to write. Of course, that’s not why I write prediction posts. I usually write them to highlight other predictions that I feel are really good, really wrong, or just plain silly. I then mix in a few creative ideas and Bingo!, instant post.
So without further ado, here is what you can expect in 2013.
Life as a Chief Information Office used to be simple. They would hear about a new challenge facing the business. After learning the details, the CIO would go out and find a solution that would make the organization stronger than ever before. Systems weren’t perfect but they added value and everyone was happy.
Then Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
Oh sure, it started out wonderfully. He created the iPod which made the CD collection that had been built-up over the years dramatically more portable. Sure, the artistic vision that is the album started taking a hit but that wasn’t your problem unless you were in the music industry.
Then came the iPhone.
The last few weeks have been very interesting. Oracle held their annual conference, followed by SalesForce, and then Box. It was a good time to be in San Francisco as you had three distinct approaches to helping the Enterprise.
What you have are two suites and a best of breed approach. A recent NY Times blog post on Open vs Closed covered the two approaches well. What is the right choice? What is the future?
It should be obvious to you if you’ve spent any time on this blog that I firmly believe the cloud is the future. It solves so many of the stumbling blocks and time consuming tasks that people face during implementations and ongoing growth that it is silly to think of a different future in the face of overwhelming volumes of information.
Still, things aren’t perfect in the world of the cloud. As of this writing, there is no system with solid Records Management (RM) capabilities. Sure, some older vendors offer hosted solutions but those aren’t cloud solutions, merely hosted.
The reason for this is two-fold. The first is that the current crop of cloud vendors are growing fairly quickly without RM features. The second, the calling card of vendors like Box is simplicity and Records Management is traditionally not simple.
The first reason is going to fade over the next couple of years. Before that happens, how do cloud vendors address the second issue? How do they make it simple for the users?
By changing the equation.
One of the joys of working for AIIM is attending a wide variety of events. In fact, one of the unexpected joys is is the board meeting.
The reason is it brings a lot of smart people in one room to talk about the Information industry’s direction. Every single person there genuinely cares about the future of the industry.
As a result, we have a lot of good discussions on the drivers moving the industry forward. Last year, prior to my joining AIIM, it was observed that Big Data, Social, Cloud, and Mobile were emerging and important issues that Information Professionals are having to start addressing.
This year, as we reviewed the list to see if the items were still relevant, we turned these concepts on their head.
This morning I was on a call with a vendor. Doesn’t matter who it was. Suffice it to say they wanted to sell me IT services of some kind. The conversation was quite similar to conversations I’ve had over the past six months.
Vendor: I’d like to talk to you about X.
Me: No thanks. I’m getting out of that business, moving everything to the cloud.
Vendor: Oh? Who is your provider?
Me: We are taking different approaches based upon the application needs. [Some examples here.] If something changes I’ll be sure to give you a call.
It is amazing that they all think that going to the cloud is a one vendor style of approach. This leaves me wondering, are a lot of people taking that approach? Why?
This post has been a long time coming but it really took me a while to come to grips with all the implications of the Synplicity acquisition, and there are many. (Plus there is this whole day-job thing with AIIM). There are really three angles to take when looking at the acquisition.
Without further adieu, let’s dive in and see what we can figure out.
In the last week, I’ve been busy getting a more hands-on feel for the systems at AIIM. Our system engineer/admin left for greener pastures. This is a fact of life in any organization, people leave.
During the course of the past week, I’ve been busy transitioning control over various systems to other staff members. During the course of this we’ve been updating passwords and performing a quick audit for old user accounts.
Doing something bizarre, skipping an Ed Bueche session. Going to listen to Mark Arbour talk about the OnDemand offering. While not true cloud, theoretically it can deliver some of the same benefits to consumers. Will be interesting.
Here we, as in the whole gang, are at Jeroen van Rotterdam’s session on Documentum Architecture. I have to see this, even if I never implement Documentum again. I am just too curious to not attend, plus Jeroen is a very entertaining speaker.
Word of Pie 