Been a busy week on the ECM standards front. There has been a lot of discussions going around. I’ve been silent on the topic as I’ve been focusing on learning more about SAML and XACML so that I can respond to James’ question. Plus, the dialogs are going great and I haven’t needed to keep them going.
I am not ready to give James an answer on XACML, yet. I feel I am ready to start a dialog on SAML though.
Recently Mike Herrick asked a question on his blog about what formats should be supported for Form Data and storing Content for archival. James McGovern appears to have misinterpreted the question and asked which of these formats ECM Vendors should support and why they can’t convert between formats out of the box. His question has merit, so I am going to address both.
Hadn’t planned on this post today. Saw a post out there by Bex Huff that I wanted to comment upon. Bex basically rants in his post. I’m not being dismissive, he states that he is ranting. I like a good chunk of what he says, but I have two comments.
In regards to universal connectors created by third parties, Bex states that they were bought up and shut down by Documentum. This is not accurate in the least. There were two major players at the time in the US market and another in the European market. Here is what really happened.
There has been a lot of new discussion on ECM Standards of late. I’m pretty excited about it. I don’t agree with it all, but discussion is good. I can’t respond to everything in one post. Well, I can, but that will take a lot of time. So I am going to respond to lowest level observation. When I say “lowest level”, I mean that if you don’t buy into this detail, the rest are irrelevant.
Some have stated that ECM standards aren’t practicable. These reasons vary from the shifting technology to the fact that serving-up the lowest common denominator of functionality provides a nearly useless standard. These are valid concerns. The question that we need to ask is, What problem are we trying to solve?
Reaction to my previous two posts revealed two simple things about the Universe. Enterprise Architects want/need ECM standards now. Enterprise Content Management people don’t think that the ECM world is ready for them. They are both right, so let the fighting begin.
Brian “Bex” Huff wrote about the lack of useful ECM standards and how writing a standard to the lowest common denominator would leave it all but useless. He raises some excellent points, but I think there is an important thing here. If an ECM system doesn’t support a minimal level of functionality, is it really Enterprise worthy? If it isn’t ready for the Enterprise, do we care if it can’t integrate with everything else? I’m thinking No on both counts.
I’ve been discussing this topic of late. I haven’t been able to dive into SharePoint since my last post, but I have had some rather interesting things come up on this topic and wanted to share.
Josh Maher came up with quite an interesting view in his blog. SharePoint is for Microsoft people, and eRoom is for everyone else. His arguments seem sound until one detail comes forward, eRoom only works on Microsoft platforms. I don’t want to address the future here, just the present. eRoom requires:
Doesn’t sound very anti-Microsoft to me. The difference here, as Josh points out, is that SharePoint works closely with all the latest Microsoft products. However, the latest SharePoint server also needs those newer products to fully garner all of the benefits. Microsoft wants you to upgrade your Office suite. That is more money in their pocket. When eRoom makes a release, they don’t typically require you to have the latest version of all the integrated products.
Well, it didn’t take long, but my first post on Standards has drawn some attention. James McGovern deconstructs my post doesn’t appear to pull many punches (though he may very well have done so). If you are in the ECM space, read his post. It offers an interesting view on the ECM space from the outside. While I had thought about waiting to respond until I had heard from others, my faith that I will hear from others on this topic is not very high. I would love to be proven incorrect. I welcome the feedback, but I’d like to hear from some ECM people.
I think I will start by saying that I agree with James on most points and he has a lot of valid questions. For some of them I know the answer. For others I don’t but plan to find out. And for a few I’m not sure if I can get the answers. I will be posting more on Standards as I go forward and learn more. I need to learn more first so that I don’t completely cut anyone off at the knees unfairly. Those that deserve it on the other hand….
The point of my post was mostly to mention the little I know about EMC’s efforts and remark on how my view of Standards has changed over time and recently. They are important and we need them, yesterday. Now that I’ve had this realization, I plan on making others care as well.
I will answer one question, what my definition of leaders in the ECM marketplace is. It is a very narrow definition of leading. I was referring to those that lead in the vision of what ECM is. These are the people that developed an ECM platform that can serve all parts of the Enterprise, not necessarily a platform that works as a part of the Enterprise. The type of leader that is needed, that James refers to, may not exist yet. I reserve my final judgment until I can confirm my gut on this issue.
I have a bunch of things that I have wanted to talk about on this blog. I am going to be the first to admit, that standards wasn’t really on my radar to write about here. In years past, whenever I got to the standards portions of ECM presentations in years past, I only cared because saying a product met standards meant it might be easier to sell. More recently, I had begun to understand and care, but only enough to pay more attention and think about how it can help my current projects. In the past few weeks, the topic of standards has been showing up all over my radar, and then it hit me. I need to make everyone else care as well.
One of my favorite Documentum bloggers outside of yours truly, Johnny Gee, has been blogging of late on SharePoint and Documentum. He ran a three part series comparing the two. Yesterday, he posted an entry comparing SharePoint and eRoom. This was even commented upon by an Enterprise Architect blog that I regularly read by James McGovern. I read the entry, and it has drawn an interesting, and very dead-on, observation. The latest post has a very decided pro-eRoom stance. In Johnny’s defense, he was just posting some observations from a reader and not taking credit. One the other hand, it is a very biased view of the world.
First, let me say that I do not have the depth of knowledge to take up SharePoint’s defense in detail. I am also not as inclined to do so being a little pro-EMC. However, I will make two statements about eRoom and SharePoint:
Word of Pie 