Microsoft

CMIS has Arrived, Demo Anyone?

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[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=finish+line+olympics&iid=1345446″ src=”e/3/3/a/Olympics_Day_8_e351.jpg?adImageId=12737081&imageId=1345446″ width=”380″ height=”262″ /]The news today?  CMIS is now an official standard! I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing.  When I started this blog, after I got through my initial list of topics, it was the desire for a SOA-based standard for ECM that provided the desire.  Now that my desire has been met, almost three years later, what will I do for inspiration?

Simple, push for CMIS 2.0! In all seriousness, that is a post for another day. I want to focus on the actual release of the standard and the Demo where you can see it in action.

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ECM Industry Goals: Move the ECM Industry Forward

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I started this on Monday discussing the importance of goals in general, using the setting of goals for yourself as a starting point.  The same logic applies to a company, and its industry, as well.

Think about it, why is a company in business?  Yes, to make money, but that goal will only get you so far, just ask the gnomes.  You have to have something to offer and the ability to convince your customers that you can deliver and still be around in the future.

So in order to inspire your employees and your customers, you create a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).  For example, maybe you want to create the market leading ECM solution.  Ten years ago, that was a challenge.  No one company had all the capabilities in house and the leadership of the market was in flux.  Now, to hit the same goal, you just take aim at the big boys and go forward.

But what does that really get you?  Are you leading or just following the trail already blazed?

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CMIS is Helping Application Separation, Today

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It is already happening, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are CMIS-base custom clients being developed and released that are taking some of the pain out of using ECM systems.  I’m not talking about open source clients, but commercial clients with dedicated teams and one goal, to make money.

I know that there is pain in the use of ECM systems, and not just because I use them.  I know this because of one simple metric; In my list my most successful ECM projects, the top of the list is dominated by systems that do not use the default user interface.  I’m not talking about customized clients.  I’m talking CUSTOM clients.

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Forrester Makes Gartner Look Inclusive

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A couple months ago, Gartner released their annual ECM Magic Quadrant (which I looked at).  Sure enough, being an odd year, Forrester released their ECM Wave.  I see the pros of waiting two years as the larger vendors take that long, or longer, for a significant release.  On the other hand, you have longer to wait for new members to show up.

Well not in Forrester’s world.  Only one new vendor (HP) was added and a few were cut, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

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SharePoint 2010, Live from Vegas

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I didn’t get to go to the SharePoint conference this year, or any other year for that matter, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t represented. My company sent three people, including Jed Carr, our SharePoint Solution Lead. After much cajoling, I convinced him to share his thoughts on the conference for everyone to enjoy.

So without further ado…here’s Jed.

SharePoint Conference 2009

Anytime you get a chance to go to Vegas, it usually turns out to be a good time. This trip, although work related, was no different…plus it was free. My company flew me out and put me up for this year’s SharePoint Conference. Overall, I thought Mandalay did a great job of managing the 7000+ attendees, most of which really wanted to be there. Also, to my surprise, I barely managed to miss a session. I thought there would be more down time, but every time a session ended, I usually found another one I didn’t want to miss.

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The 2009 Magic Quadrant for ECM

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[Note that my post on the 2010 Quadrant is now available.]

Thanks to the Documentum voters splitting their time between two topics, discussing the recent Gartner MQ for ECM is today’s topic.  The voting was an interesting little diversion that I’ll revisit later.

I’m going to talk about the report here.  The recent controversy around Gartner is a post for another day.

Staying Out of Trouble

image Last year I was threatened (my word) by Gartner for putting a copy of the MQ here.  I was also chastised for several other nitpicks. So I will only link to Oracle’s courtesy copy of the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management this year to avoid wrath.

One thing to remember is Gartner really doesn’t want you to compare a vendor’s location in the MQ from year to year. That is both well-advised and unrealistic.  To be fair, as the measurements and industry change, scores change.  Movement isn’t just dependent on vendor action, or inaction.

However, we are human and we like to perform comparisons. I have a copy to perform the comparison for my own interest.  The link I had online to last year’s report is no longer valid, so you’ll have to take my Word on it.

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My Day at AIIM Expo 2009 with CMIS

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Okay, let’s be clear.  I didn’t travel around with CMIS all day. On the other hand, CMIS got me to the AIIM Expo this year, opened a few doors, and started many a conversation. It is amazing what standing on a soapbox for a year and a half can accomplish. It was an interesting day that was well spent and I wish I had two days at the conference.  I was always rushing trying to get to see everyone and talk to everyone, and I failed. I did accomplish my primary objective, and that was a success.

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Update on the AIIM CMIS Demo

At the end of January, I talked about the proposed effort being undertaken by the iECM committee to create a CMIS demonstration for the AIIM Expo. Things are going well and I am working with others to build the demonstration. I wanted to share a few details with you.

  • We are implementing the Web Service binding for CMIS. While REST would be better for what we are doing, it was felt that the Web Services binding would be easier for the development team to churn out.
  • As a result of that, the participating vendors are Alfresco, EMC, IBM, and Nuxeo. Microsoft wanted to participate was not sure that their Web Services binding would be complete in time.
  • Each vendor will have a two issues worth of articles from AIIM’s bi-monthly publication, Infonomics.  In addition, each vendor is welcome to add their own white papers and collateral to the system.
  • Users will search on metadata and/or full text. All searches will be round-robin sorted so that each repository has multiple hits on the first page, assuming that they have any content that meets the criteria.
  • The system is being developed in .NET because we were able to identify a free hosting server that could support the effort.
  • We, including myself, are going to be at the Expo on April 2nd to talk about it. I’ll share the exact time when I have it.

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CMIS and SharePoint

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This is a critical subject.  As I said when the CMIS standard was released, the key to its success will be vendor adoption.  This means more than just signing off on the standard.  The vendors have to incorporate it into their message and start to show clients, partners, and analysts how they plan to support and implement CMIS.  Based on how the ECM marketplace has begun to revolve around SharePoint, I consider Microsoft’s support a major component for success.  CMIS can succeed without them at first, but it will be a much steeper hill to climb without Microsoft.

Well, Microsoft appears to be doing things right so far.  In addition to showing a desire to participate in the AIIM effort (along with EMC, Alfresco, IBM, and Nuxeo), they hosted the first OASIS CMIS Technical Committee meeting out in Redmond, WA.  More important than either of those actions is the implications of this MSDN article, Integrating External Document Repositories with SharePoint Server 2007.

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The Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2008

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[Updated 11/10/2008 in order to make Gartner, Inc. happier, or at least less angry.]

One thing about writing entries on public transportation, no Internet.  This make is tough to refer to web sites that haven’t been opened and cached.  As a result, today (I’m optimistic, so I’m not saying “this week”) brings you Gartner, Inc.’s 2008 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management review.  Released on September 23, 2008, the biggest surprise was the number of vendors that didn’t hype it.

An important note from Gartner, Inc., Gartner advises readers not to compare the placement of vendors from last year to this year.  With that in mind, since I’m human, here is a link to my post about last year’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management titled, The ECM Magic Quadrant, for reference.

Enter Open Source

Before we get to the chart, there are two big developments to take note of this year.  The biggest is the inclusion of Alfresco.  That’s right, an open source vendor has arrived.  They are listed categorized as a niche player so far in this report.  Considering limited, but growing, adoption and their evolving product, that is understandable.  I think that their vision got dinged because they have been taking a stronger collaboration (read Enterprise 2.0) tack as of late, but that is just conjecture.

I think they may be selling Alfresco short, but marketplace adoption and confidence is a factor in this study.  It will be interesting to see how the perception, and reality, evolves over the next year.

Other open source vendors will be slow in appearing here as Records Management is considered a core requirement to be in the chart report.  I agree with this, but I may set the bar lower for compliance than Gartner, Inc. does as I think basic retention policies are all that is required.

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