Oracle

Reports from the Content Management Frontier

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The following are excerpts from an explorer hiking the Gartner Hype Cycle for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies.

Day 1, Reached the Peak

Today we finally reached the Peak of Inflated Expectations. The view is simply amazing. This technology is going to revolutionize everything. Everyone is excited and  teaming up with their friends. Documentum just got some great new equipment from EMC. I suspect that those two will be very happy together for a long time.

Life is good.

Day 2, Getting Crowded

Apparently everyone is excited and more and more people are joining us on the Peak. While the view is still lovely, the ground is starting to get muddy from all the people trampling everywhere.

Stellent showed up with their new pal Oracle. Everyone thinks they are a bunch of posers but they are mostly keeping quiet because Oracle has a bit of a temper.

There seems to be a new noise. I’m going to go check it out.

Day 4, Ooops

That noise from the other day? That was the beginning of an avalanche that carried the entire group off of the Peak. According to our maps we are in the Trough of Disillusionment. It is hard to validate because nobody can get a clear signal anymore. It is a bit gloomy but some people seem to think we can get out.

OMG! Open Text ate Hummingbird while we were sleeping! They must be panicking already.

Tensions are very high.

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2013: Waiting for the Culmination of Everything

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New Picture (2)In 2013, one trend that I had been watching for years finally culminated in the next stage. I got a position with Alfresco that will allow me to make a difference in the future of the industry. While it took longer than I thought it would, the future arrived.

In looking at my Predictions for 2013, I didn’t do well…at all. If it wasn’t for a slam-dunk prediction, I would have failed to even be half right.

Let’s see how poorly I did.

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Looking at the Legacy Content Management Vendors

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In my predictions for 2013, I made the following prediction on the future of the traditional “leaders” in the Content Management space.

First Major On-Premises Traditional ECM Vendor will become Obsolete: I know, obvious right? Statistically speaking, one of those vendors will likely still be a market leader in 10 years. In 2013, we’ll see our next elimination for that spot (though they will be in denial). To make this easier to measure, I’ll name the contenders: EMC, IBM, Open Text, and Oracle. Microsoft falls into this category but it won’t be them, at least not in 2013.

Aside from simple statistical probability, I saw a few things this fall that led to this prediction.

  1. Talked to people attending the IBM Information OnDemand while I was in Las Vegas.
  2. Attended the Open Text conference in Orlando.
  3. Watched the news out of Momentum Europe.
  4. Kept my eyes open.

What I’ve seen is a scary amount of consistency among the players.

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Future of the Cloud, Suite or Best of Breed?

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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.

  • Oracle, for all the jokes around them “discovering” the cloud this year, offered a story about their tight stack of hardware and software.
  • SalesForce announced Chatterbox which makes Content Management a native feature to their platform.
  • Box announced new partners and new tools for integrating Box with all sorts of other cloud-based applications.

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?

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Oracle Buys FatWire, Now What?

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If you missed it, Oracle bought FatWire yesterday. Whether or not this was a shock depends on who you ask. In fact, I suspect that the tension of the sale has been rippling though events for several months.

This acquisition raises several questions, such as, does anyone care, that is, outside of the FatWire install base and those competing against FatWire? I think it matters. Not because of the actual purchase, but because of what Oracle does with FatWire. That will show us volumes about their long-term Content Management strategy.

Before proceeding into my world of hypotheticals, you should read Real Story Group’s collection of thoughts on the deal.

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The ECM Magic Quadrant, The 2010 Edition

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imageSo 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…

  • Those in the Leaders quadrant frequently aren’t leading.
  • Too many people look at the report and research the market no further.
  • Enterprise Content Management cannot be bought.  It is a strategy.  I can buy a Content Management platform or suite that supports my ECM strategy, but I cannot buy ECM.

Of course, it is full of useful/interesting facts, so let’s dive into it…[download a copy from Hyland Software.]

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The ECM Innovator’s Dilemma

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So I promised an ECM specific follow-up to my book review on Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma.  There is a lot to talk about, so I’m not going to blather on with a long intro (though this sentence seems to be compounding the issue) and get right to it.

Or not…I have some disclaimers/notes:

  • Going to try and use as much of Chistensen’s terminlogy as possible.  This isn’t to say that he has a perfect model, or even 80% model, of what is happening.  It just helps to keep the terminology consistent during this particular post.
  • Every Content Management company is different and the observations will not apply universally.  Every company reacts differently.  That said, if I didn’t think that this applied to a large number of vendors, I would have targeted this post at particular vendors.

NOW we can get started.

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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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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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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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