This is the event I have been waiting for all day. Mark Lewis is going to talk and hopefully share the story behind the new name for the Content Management and Archiving Group, the Information Intelligence Group.
SAP
CMIS and SharePoint
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.
The Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2008
[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.
Alfresco Thrashing the Wave
Now that I’ve reviewed Forrester’s Wave report on ECM, let’s tune into some specific criticism. Specifically Jeff Potts spoke up and took them to task on how they weight what they measure. Being a fan of Alfresco, his post is a little on the defensive side, but that doesn’t eliminate his points.
Word of Pie 