Well, I’m doing it again, making predictions for the next year. The sad thing is that I am even more cynical about making predictions this year than last. That is why I wrote an article for CMS Wire on Trends for 2011. I’m confident on trends but it is hard to determine if a trend will result in anything measureable.
Well, here we go. A list of predictions, and things to watch, in 2011.
One thing I haven’t really done with this blog is use it for any focused efforts to help my day job. I am going to break that trend for one day because I am looking for some smart people and I want to find them sooner rather than later.
There is an online posting for the type of person I am looking to hire. Before I share the link, I want to talk a little more in detail about what is going on behind the scenes.
My company, Washington Consulting, Inc., does a fair amount of consulting in both functional and technical areas. We do focus a lot on Information and Content Management, but it is far from the only thing that we do for our clients. We also work with a wide array of technologies, Documentum and SharePoint just being two of the more widely used technologies.
I’m sitting here reflecting upon a very productive Gilbane Conference in Boston this week. It was good to talk to people and see what people were thinking about in the Content Management industry. Engagement, Search, and Social were big, overlapping themes in the conference.
I was at Gilbane in order present my view on the future of Content Management. I thought I would share the slides here and talk a little about the recent research on the same topic from AIIM.
So 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…
Of course, it is full of useful/interesting facts, so let’s dive into it…[download a copy from Hyland Software.]
A couple of years ago, I attended a discussion on using SharePoint/MOSS 2007 for Web Content Management and wrote a well visited post, SP for WCM, The Movie. Well, as you may have noticed, Microsoft released a new version this year and they are starting to market it heavily with SharePoint Solutions for Internet Sites.
Well, this week I participated in the SharePoint Symposium 2010 as part of KM World. Specifically I was part of the panel discussing the question of whether or not you can use SharePoint for WCM.
I’ll give a simple answer at the bottom, but I’m going to share the thoughts and opinions that were shared by others and myself.
One thing that I have been meaning to do is to dive back into the state of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) as a useful term and the challenges facing its use. I’ve also been meaning to draw attention to some of the excellent posts in the new AIIM Communities. I am going to try and address both deficiencies today to some degree.
Let’s start with ECM, because that has been the point of my career for over a decade now. When we last saw it, I was talking about its future and how it is moving to becoming Omnipresent Content Management (OCM). While the term “Universal” is also apt, Oracle already stole it.
Before we get into more detail, and leave Steve McQueen, the question really is, Where does that leave ECM?
Okay, this is the finale that Peter Monks has been waiting on, and baiting me about, for quite some time. Let’s hash it out.
SharePoint has the traditional ECM Generation CMS vendors trying to figure out what they can do to maintain their “leadership” in Content Management. 
A 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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
Word of Pie 