C3 Associates Inc.

The hype cycle has started for the upcoming release of SharePoint 2010 and I’m certainly not the only one to get caught up in it. I’m excited about anything that can help my clients better manage their information and I’ve always seen SharePoint as a potentially transformative platform bridging structured content, unstructured content and social computing in one flexible package. The current release of SharePoint does a decent job of this but in my opinion and the opinions of others (here and here) it has some shortcomings when it comes to its capabilities as a true Enterprise Content Management platform.

While this post is all about SharePoint as a technology, I want to be clear that technology is about the very last thing that should be considered when implementing ECM. It should start with a good business case, appropriate sponsorship, choosing the right areas of focus then building capacity within the organization to truly succeed with ECM. Technology is only the last piece of this puzzle. All of that said, there has been an incredible amount of interest in SharePoint and many of my clients have questions about where (or whether) this tool should fit into their ECM strategy.

For SharePoint 2010 to become the ECM category killer and truly threaten the market share of Open Text, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet and others, the new version should have the following eight things:

1. Persistent links – I’ve told anyone who would listen over the past two years (and many people who wouldn’t…hi mom!) that the single biggest shortcoming of SharePoint 2007 is the inability to link directly to a unique object ID. One of the greatest benefits of ECM systems is the ability to send content via a link rather than relying on email attachments. In traditional ECM applications this isn’t a problem; each content object has its own unique ID that doesn’t change regardless of where it lives in the repository. In SharePoint links will break if you rename or move a file. The other benefit of persistent linking is that it enables the management of compound documents (a container that stores multiple documents like the chapters of a book) and the ability to link directly to an older version of a document. Rumor has it that SharePoint 2010 will include persistent linking and if it does the tool will have taken a big step forward.

2. Store once, use many – SharePoint has a nasty habit of copying content throughout the system rather than using pointers to a single source of the truth (because content links might break as noted above). Yes, yes, I know that you can “Send to…Other Location” and link that new doc back to the original but this linkage is easy to break and experience tells me that the content falls out of synch very quickly. Perhaps the best example of the misguided use of “copy” capabilities in SharePoint is the “Send to…Records Center” feature where a copy of a document is sent to the Records Center while leaving the original in place rather than either moving the document and leaving a pointer or changing the state of the document to indicate its changed status (see the next point for more on the RM capabilities of SharePoint). The propagation of copies of documents throughout a repository is very bad mojo from an ECM and records management perspective and it is something that Microsoft must fix if SharePoint is going to replace traditional ECM applications.

3. Honest-to-goodness Records Management – I recognize that that SharePoint 2007 is DoD 5015.2 certified but the statement from the product development team that the DoD 5015.2 components are “not intended for customers…who would like to enhance the records management functionality of MOSS 2007 with particular 5015.2 oriented features but are not required to run their system in a certified configuration” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Add to this the fact that SharePoint doesn’t allow users to manage physical objects out of the box and it is clear that Microsoft needs to decide if they are really serious about the records management space or if they will leave it to partners.

4. Better metadata management – Metadata in SharePoint 2007 took a quantum leap forward with the introduction of Content Types. However, managing metadata in SharePoint 2007 can be difficult especially when dealing with multiple site collections. An ECM system should be able to easily manage relationships between data in the form of cascading attributes and parent-child relationships throughout the entire repository and should also support inheritance of metadata from the container level (eg. folder) to the content within that container. I’m hopeful that we’ll see improvements to the SharePoint Business Data Catalogue (BDC) that make this possible. The other option appears to be Microsoft’s Master Data Management tool (codenamed “Bulldog”) which is rumoured to be included in SharePoint 2010.

5. Reusable search templates and stored search results – There is no question that search is a focus for Microsoft based on their acquisition of FAST and their push into public internet search with the recent launch of Bing. Search in SharePoint 2007 is reasonably good but the tool does not have the ability to either store a “snapshot” of search results for future reference nor does SharePoint 2007 allow users to create reusable search templates. This feature would save users time by allowing them to create a search query then either re-execute that query in the future or add new criteria without having to rebuild the entire search.

6. More granular security – This is one area where SharePoint was already reasonably strong but truly deep ECM systems include advanced security features like the ability to deny permission to certain objects on an as-needed basis. The current process for managing security is a bit cumbersome but I expect this is something Microsoft is working on. It will be interesting to see if what changes, if any, make it into the final release of the product.

7. Surface the audit trail – One of the things I like the best about established ECM applications is the ability to see who has opened my documents. I find this particularly handy on status report day when I inevitably discover that I’ve made a mistake in the document I’ve just sent out (as an unbreakable persistent link of course). I can check the audit trail to see if anyone has opened the document and if not, make my changes without anyone knowing I’d messed up in the first place. While SharePoint tracks most major audit events, the list of events is not as extensive as in a traditional ECM application nor is this information surfaced through the function menu of the content object.

8. More and more mature line-of-business integrations – This should be a strength of SharePoint given the sizeable .NET developer community as well as the extensive Microsoft partner ecosystem, but SharePoint still has a lot of catching up to do in this area. Organizations deploying SharePoint won’t be able to hold a single vendor to account for a series of modules (or Content Enabled Vertical Applications, as Gartner likes to call them). This may or may not be a bad thing depending on your perspective but established ECM vendors have offerings that satisfy a variety of industry verticals and business functions. To achieve the same thing with SharePoint customers will need to research, purchase and deploy modules from a variety of Microsoft partners. CMS Watch offers a good summary of the issues associated with third party add-ons for SharePoint.

It will be interesting to see whether SharePoint 2010 includes some or all of these features. Microsoft has done a good job of capturing a new market without significantly eroding the market share of traditional ECM vendors; as SharePoint adoption has increased the overall market has grown and, as they say on Wall Street, “a rising tide floats all boats.” Whether Microsoft’s ship will sail away from the rest remains to be seen (as does my ability to stretch a bad metaphor) but they were clearly not able to do so with SharePoint 2007.

As I learn more about SharePoint 2010 I will share my thoughts here and on Twitter (GregClarkC3). I also plan to attend the 2009 SharePoint Conference this coming October where I’m sure I’ll find out more. In the meantime I’d appreciate any feedback, additional information or opinions you have to share about SharePoint 2010 or ECM in general.

A special thanks to C3 Principal John Meilleur and C3 Associates Ankur Gupta and Lam Huynh for sharing their expertise in the creation of this article.

There’s been an interesting convergence of opinion pieces and hard news over the past 24 hours that speak to the future of Enterprise Content Management as we know it. I know that sounds a bit melodramatic but I sense that we’re in the midst of a seismic shift in the way organizations view ECM applications and the way vendors are providing those applications.

Yesterday, Matt Asay of CNet compared the recenty hype about Google’s Chrome browser to the quiet (or maybe not so quiet if you’ve been paying attention to the ECM blogosphere) reality of SharePoint’s massive expansion within the enterprise. His suggestion that Google has a long way to go to grab the attention of corporate IT groups and displace Microsoft is an understatement to say the least. He goes on to say that the trick for Google and others is to focus on interoperability if they have any hope of challenging SharePoint.

Matt is either incredibly astute or just plain lucky because it looks like Microsoft and friends have beaten Google to that punch as well. Today, Microsoft, EMC and IBM, supported by other key ECM vendors including Open Text, Alfresco, SAP and Oracle announced the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard (see also the Yahoo Finance article on this).

At this point in the history of ECM, I think Google Chrome and Google Sites are just noise from an enterprise point of view. Until we see significant adoption in the real world and some acknowledgement from Google that content has a lifecycle, I’m not going to consider Google tools as part of the ECM equation.

And that equation, in my mind, includes both collaboration and control. All true ECM tools enable both but each tool does some things better than others. Traditional ECM applications like Livelink, Documentum and FileNet are very strong when it comes to controlling content but have not been noted for their ease-of-use when it comes to collaboration. SharePoint, on the other hand, is not the first choice amongst the records management community but provides arguably the best enterprise-ready collaboration platform on the market.

Which brings me back to the CMIS Standard.

My first impression about the impact CMIS will have in the ECM market is that it validates what I’ve been saying for a while. SharePoint will not be the video that kills ECM’s radio stars (hands up all you Buggles fans; be honest). CMIS allows organizations to legitimately pursue an “all of the above” ECM strategy and removes any impediments they may have in deploying SharePoint to supplement an existing ECM application. At the same time, traditional ECM vendors will continue to survive and thrive as they support content that requires more rigorous controls.

Ultimately, as the news release announcing the CMIS standard says, this should be all about the customer. Of course we all know that vendors don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts, there’s clearly something in it for them as well. Here’s hoping that the CMIS standard will help break down barriers to successful content management by providing the best of both collaboration and control to the benefit of everyone.

Andrew Chapman has started a great series on the options and considerations when integrating traditional ECM systems like Documentum, Livelink, etc. into SharePoint. Here’s a link to an overview of his seven reference architectures for integrating SharePoint with traditional ECM systems. He’s also created a handy reference architecture organizer so we can keep tabs on all of his detailed posts as they happen.

This is great stuff and captures the two main options our clients have been exploring. For us, we’ve had the most success with architectures number two or three. Chapman’s architecture number two is a loosely coupled solution where critical content is moved from SharePoint to the traditional ECM system and three is using SharePoint as the portal container, where a custom web part displays content from the ECM repository. Documentum and Livelink ECM eDOCS (aka the ex Hummingbird DM) users interested in pursuing this option might want to consider the web parts available from SeeUnity, which we’ve had some success with.

The Principals of C3 have been having a bit of a debate as to whether Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 can be considered a true ECM system. Obviously Microsoft thinks it is as they’ve branded the tool as such. But others like Gartner disagree, calling it Basic Content Services rather than a full-blown ECM tool. So who’s right?

There’s a school of thought that says while MOSS is a huge step forward from SharePoint 2003, it still has too many shortcomings to be considered a true ECM suite. These include a lack of vertical applications for things like SOX compliance and CAD drawing management (for now, anyway), no ability to send a persistent link to an object, no end user-accessible audit trail, and the fact that the default RM functionality is to copy a document to the records center while leaving the original file behind.

It’s hard to disagree with this; these are all true when using SharePoint out of the box. There’s no question that Open Text Livelink, EMC Documentum, IBM / FileNet or any of the other established “pure play” ECM tools provide this functionality as part of their base offerings, and a whole lot more. There are a couple of good articles in this month’s AIIM eDOC magazine that examine the issue of exactly how SharePoint measures up to traditional ECM tools; What’s the Deal with Basic Content Services by Janelle Julien and the second half of a detailed examination of SharePoint by Mike Alsup. I encourage you to have a look.

As for my take on this, like any good consultant I’ll say the answer is “it depends”. I personally wouldn’t trust my SOX audit to a v1.0 RM tool like SharePoint. That isn’t to say it isn’t up to the job, I’d just rather let someone else go first. SharePoint also wouldn’t be my first choice as a back-end repository for highly structured documents that are part of a well-established business process like AP scanning and workflow. Again, I have no doubt that SharePoint will get there eventually, but I’m not confident that it can scale to handle the load of tens of thousands of invoices a month. Established ECM tools can do this before most of us have finished our first cup of coffee.

Where I see SharePoint playing a prominent role is as an ad-hoc collaborative tool. Its ease of use and tight Office integration is an area where most ECM tools can’t keep up. SharePoint is intended to work the way the worker works, allowing them to use familiar tools to structure information in a way that makes sense in their world. These are things that make MOSS the leading BCS tool, but many of the new features available in SharePoint 2007 mean that it is on the road to becoming a true ECM application. While RM in SharePoint is brand new, experience tells me that Microsoft doesn’t do things half-way. The tool will mature and will likely meet 80% of the needs of 80% of organizations, with the missing 20% of functionality added in by the very large developer community out there. I’m certain this is how the document-copy issue noted above will be addressed, along with most other functional gaps.

The issue for any organization considering an enterprise MOSS deployment today is whether they’re willing to endure the bumps that come from deploying software that is still in its formative stages. It is also very important to understand the problem an organization is trying to solve with an ECM solution; if your goal is to simply enable communication amongst members of a project team, SharePoint is your tool. If you need to comply with stringent regulations or are at serious risk of litigation, you want to consider a more robust ECM tool. For those organizations that already have an ECM tool in place but are starting to think about SharePoint, integration might be your best bet. And that will be the topic of my next post later this week.