Finally pulling out the analogy to end all analogies in the argument of whether or not Enterprise Content Management is dead or alive. Honestly, it never existed and we need to focus on Content Services. Dan Antion, an AIIM Board Member, disagrees with me. While I never let someone disagreeing with me slow me down, Dan is a smart guy and a friend. When he feels that ECM is alive and real, I pay attention.
I have one question for Dan. How is his Enterprise Data Management system working out?
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.
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?
There is going to be no shortage of analysis of Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer. I’m not going to take time to parse it all. I do want to share some quick thoughts on the acquisition while everything is still fresh on my mind and the deal seems more likely to be completed.
Yammer was one of the pioneers in the the Enterprise 2.0/Social Business space. The issue that over the years as the space has evolved, the amount of evolution coming from Yammer has been limited. Their product has gotten better but they remain, at their core, a micro blogging service.
The space has been moving on though. People have been learning that all these Social Business tools work best when they are part of the business process, not when they are on their own. With Yammer, you may produce less email and generate greater visibility into what people are doing in the organization, but you also have a new inbox to check. It is just one more window to keep open.
Let’s face it. Chatter turned SalesForce into a social platform. Yammer has been stuck in tool mode.
Yammer was facing a stiff uphill battle to remain relevant over the next several years. They seem to have been heading in the right direction, but there were a lot of questions about whether or not they could evolve fast enough to keep up.
Word of Pie 