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This is the work part. Posts here relate to the craft of my career and profession.

The AIIM iECM CMIS Demo, 2010 Remix

Last year, AIIM‘s iECM Committee put together a demonstration of the proposed CMIS 1.0 standard for the AIIM Conference in Philly.  Well, we are at it again for a bigger and better demo.

How is it going to be better?  I am glad you asked.  Here is what we are aiming for this year:

  • More vendors:  Last year we had three vendors (Alfresco, EMC, and Nuxeo) participating.  This year we already have four vendor commitments and we haven’t started groveling for more participants yet!
  • More CMIS scenarios:  Last year we only showed CMIS in the Federation scenario.  This year we are going to be showing TWO Federation scenarios AND, as a bonus, an Application to Repository scenario.  That’s right, we are going to be switching our front-end application between the different repositories ON THE FLY!
  • Real-world use cases: Okay, maybe not “real” world, but we are going to be using the Health Care Industry as a basis for this year’s demonstration.  Our meta-data model and use cases will focus on the management of content of a patients health care record.  Things will be simplified, this is a CMIS demo after-all, but you will be able to see a real-world application for CMIS that doesn’t involve a generic ECM interface.
  • CMIS Version 1.0: This is really just for me.  Last year everything was draft this and beta that.  I’m expecting a much more streamlined development process this year.

You want more?  How about this…there is going to be a session on the demo at the AIIM Conference this year presented by myself and Thomas Pole, the iECM Committee Chair talking about the demo and a whitepaper that will be developed in conjunction.

In the next few days, you will see a more detailed description of this year’s demonstration and a whitepaper that Thomas and I have written about the status of the standard, the story of last year’s demo, and what we are planning for this year.

Exciting times people, exciting times.

ECM or Document Management?

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imageI’ve been working to help re-define ECM these days.  It has been a matter of using the term Enterprise Content Management versus creating a new term.  My theory is use the term that a lot of people know and don’t start the education process over.  John Mancini, the president of AIIM, talked the ECM label on his Digital Landfill blog.

A more important question has arisen…is ECM even relevant as a concept?  CMS Watch really kicked this thought process off by saying that the term should be reserved for that rare breed of big, complex, and typically very expensive platforms that actually merit such a grandiose term.  For other systems that may aspire to ECM, but aren’t there, Document Management is the term.

I’m thinking Yes and No.

Before we look at Document Management, let’s look at ECM as a platform.

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Top Predictions For 2010

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Everyone seems to be making a looking back post and/or a predictions post.  I thought I would throw one against the wall and see if it stuck.

Enjoy…

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Documentum Renewal: Identity Management

Continuing my Christmas present to EMC.  I’ve talked about Application Separation and the need to Focus on the Core.  Now it is time to revisit a critical piece of the puzzle, Identity Management.

This is not a new topic for me. One of my most popular posts this year is the Single Sign-On, SAML, and Authentication in Documentum post that I wrote back in 2007.  I’ve talked to EMC engineers and product managers about this issue repeatedly over the years.  It was one of those things that James McGovern always pinged EMC on when he was a regular blogger.

This is the reason that I feel eRoom died. This is what will stop application developers from using just any ECM platform.

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Turning the ECM Definition Around

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Taking a little break before getting back to the Documentum series, I wanted to write a quick post on the definition of Enterprise Content Management.

Back in October, there was some debate on updating the definition of ECM.  Since then, there has been discussions out there about whether the term ECM should even be used anymore.  My basic opinion is, and has been, that we need to fix/update the definition, not the term.  Changing the term would require a lot of work to educate people for very little gain.

With that in mind….

ECM Redefined, Updated

So here is my updated definition as it stands now:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the coordinated management of all content throughout an organization, allowing for people and systems to access and manage content from within any business context using platform agnostic standards.

I took some advice from before, replacing centralized with coordinated and removing the phrase empowerment of all content from the definition.  I still like the concept behind "empower", but until I can find a better way to express it, here we go.

Thinking of stealing a phrase from Andrew McAfee and adding "to achieve business goals" to the end of the definition, but I don’t want the sentence to get too wordy.

One last note, it doesn’t talk about applications, just about managing content.  This maintains that separation of platform and application.

Thoughts?

Documentum Renewal: Application Separation

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This is the first in a series that I am writing as a Christmas present to EMC.  I want them to think about Documentum as a platform for the future and not on just adding on chunks that can be used to drive revenue.  Revenue is important, but investment now means revenue in the future.

After all, if they want their vision of SkyNet to come true, they need to get to work.

Why Web Publisher Sucks

I talked recently about how there are many ECM vendors out there that have sub-par applications, like Web Publisher from Documentum, that shouldn’t be required to be an ECM vendor.  It isn’t that they aren’t capable of writing good applications.  It is that the landscape changes faster than the release cycles for the platform.

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Redefining the Core Tech of ECM

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For several months, I’ve been tinkering with an idea in my head.  I’ve watched as EMC and other large ECM vendors fell further behind in the WCM space.  For every advancement that has been made, there were losses to the market.  It is at the point that if you aren’t deploying massive websites to server farms, you wouldn’t even look at the larger vendors.image

And yet, nothing changes.  The large vendors keep taking one step for every two that the market makes.  I think there will be a change, and CMS Watch, in their excellent 2010 Predictions, made a prediction similar to my thought process:

1) Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways

When you read the description, it is clear that they are seeing the same things, but they appear to be throwing the emphasis in the wrong direction.

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Looking at CMIS 1.0, Thinking of 2.0

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As you hopefully know by now, CMIS 1.0 was released for public comment thru December 22nd, and the excitement is building in the community and the press.  If you haven’t looked at it, and want to provide feedback on the CMIS standard, the time is now.image

For more information on what CMIS can do for you, here are some useful references, including three of my posts on the topic (newest first):

I’ve been looking at CMIS 1.0 from a functional perspective, along with some others in the community.  If I want to solve business problem X using a CMIS-based application, what do I need?  What would make things easier?  Using my experience from building the AIIM iECM demo and many discussions with others in the industry, I’ve come up with a few things that I’d like to see CMIS support in 2.0.

Note the assumed nature of the next version of the spec.  If there isn’t another version coming, then what is the point?

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What Can We Expect from ECM Analysts?

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There has been a lot of talk the last few months about the integrity, and completeness, of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports.  While the lawsuit against Gartner from ZL Technologies was dismissed, at least for now, there are a lot of questions being asked about the level of influence upon the market by Gartner, and upon Gartner by the market.

The questions can also be applied to Forrester and other analyst reports in the ECM industry, and other industries for that matter.  I’m confining my discussion today to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester’s Wave for ECM as I know them best.

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Nuxeo Comes Courting

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This year, Nuxeo has been working pretty hard to increase awareness of their offering in the ECM marketplace.  They have taken a prominent role in the Apache Chemistry implementation for CMIS and were one of three vendors, Alfresco and EMC being the other two, that were able to get a CMIS-ready repository up in time to support the AIIM CMIS demo for the conference this year.

Then came September when they hired Cheryl McKinnon to be their Chief Marketing Officer. Cheryl and I had both come from the world of PC DOCS and had worked for the same boss back in 1999 (she was in training and I was a consultant).  Cheryl, knowing my love for all things ECM, offered to give my team and I a briefing on Nuxeo, complete with a demo by CEO Eric Barroca.  I accepted the offer and was glad that I did…

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