My most important learning has been definitive confirmation that Microsoft takes a different view of ECM than traditional ECM vendors. The ‘tone from the top’ was set by Bill Gates himself in his opening keynote. He reiterated Microsoft’s focus on the end user as the primary goal of SharePoint and related applications. This vision manifests itself in the expectation that users should be able to own team sites in SharePoint. Here’s a quote from Bill to back this up which came as part of a discussion about the horizontal focus of SharePoint. He said that “you should just allow sites to spring up in a broad fashion”. In my experience, people who want to be successful in their organizations will follow the lead of their boss, which is why SharePoint works the way it does.

A further indication of Microsoft’s unique view of ECM is the fact that this conference is opposite the 2008 AIIM Conference, which tells me that Microsoft is either deliberately trying to draw attendees from that event or simply didn’t realize that AIIM was going on at the same time. It’s probably the latter but either way, to me this is an indication that Microsoft sees SharePoint as more than an ECM application tasked with managing documents and other unstructured content. Bill Gates talked about SharePoint as the place that workers will go to access all of the information they need to do their jobs. This includes documents, structured data from line-of-business applications like CRM systems, tasks, and information about other people. By definition, a platform that is intended to give users the power to create ad hoc information structures is a platform that’s difficult to control. To make up for this, a big focus of this conference is how SharePoint deployment team can reign in the application before it gets out of control.

I am not saying any of this is a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably a very good thing because the vast majority of business use cases are inherently ad hoc. What it tells me, however, is that there are a few very clear use cases that are best supported by traditional ECM applications like Livelink, Documentum, etc. My last blog post discussed the differences in approach and application two of my clients are taking based on the use cases they are trying to address and the tool they are using. To cut a long story short, Livelink is being used to manage a highly controlled process where SharePoint is the platform of choice for a more collaborative process. The analysts in attendance at this conference seem to agree with this (probably to the chagrin of most of the Microsoft personnel in the room), when they universally discounted the records management capabilities of SharePoint and suggested that it is not even in the same ballpark as existing RM tools. I’m not sure that’s true, but there is some legitimacy to saying that a tool that’s only had RM capabilities for a year can’t be considered as robust as applications that have been around for 15+ years.

Finally, I’ve noticed an interesting convergence between the Microsoft approach to ECM and the response by traditional ECM vendors to the emergence of social networking in the enterprise. Open Text announced Livelink ECM – Extended Collaboration at the AIIM conference today. The tool is intended to bring a free-form collaboration layer to the Livelink platform. Here’s a brief synopsis from the news release:

…[the tool] encourages people to work together, while capturing critical project information in an underlying ECM framework. Security, access control, and retention policies are strictly enforced using the native security mechanisms already in place, without adding another administrative layer.

The question organizations have to ask is whether they think a platform rooted in strong records management and content governance (like Livelink) that adds on a collaborative layer is more likely to meet their needs than is a collaborative platform (like SharePoint) that builds out content governance features over time. I don’t have a short answer to which approach is better. I suppose the best I can do is to give you the stock consultant’s response: it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Over time, we also need to consider whether SharePoint will truly dominate the space or whether there will continue to be room for applications like Livelink to continue to provide strong records management and compliance requirements even if the presentation layer ultimately becomes SharePoint. My guess is that’s exactly how things will evolve over the next decade or so. Let’s chat again in 2018 to see if I’m right.

There will be a lot to blog about over the next couple of days and I look forward to seeing if my perspective changes while here.

Looking at the sessions I’ll be attending next week the focus is decidedly more on collaboration and ease of use. And even where sessions address issues like RM or high-volume document management, the tone seems to suggest that they’re just getting started in these areas, which, in fact, they are. This isn’t a negative thing; I’m personally very excited by Microsoft’s interest and commitment to the ECM space.

As I’ve said before, Microsoft takes a very different approach to ECM than traditional vendors like Open Text. The focus of SharePoint is on enabling Information Workers to work collaboratively and, by extension, expose more of an organization’s information to formal management practices like records management. Traditional vendors take largely the opposite approach, focusing primarily on controlling information with collaboration an outcome of good information management. This may seem like a subtle difference but it’s an important one. I hasten to add that it doesn’t mean you can manage records in SharePoint or that Livelink has no collaborative capabilities. Far from it; each has an offering in both areas and can meet certain business scenarios that include both formal document management and ad hoc collaboration. If your organization is considering which ECM tool (or tools) are right for you, my recommendation is to identify what problem you’re setting out to solve today and in the future. If compliance and control are your focus, consider Livelink or another traditional ECM application; if you’re looking to enable collaboration across your organization and / or you do a lot of project work, take a close look at SharePoint.

All of this said I look forward to learning more about real-world SharePoint implementations and also about Microsoft’s future direction for the product and will happily share what I learn with all of you. I’m also curious about your perspective on this question so please feel free to leave a comment.

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.

Suncor uses a combination of Open Text‘s Livelink and Cimmetry Systems AutoVue to manage and access drawing files. The article is an interesting read and provides a good illustration of the excellent work that’s going on in the Calgary ECM community.

Open Text Content Services enable information workers to manage and exploit all content types in a unified way at three critical levels and are comprised of the following core elements:

Open Text Enterprise Library Services – providing a trusted repository to consistently enforce and manage retention schedules, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance policies for all content types enterprise-wide.

What strikes me about these announcements (which you can find here) is that they all seem to be a response to the emergence of Microsoft as a force in the ECM market. Some may say that this is a sign of weakness on the part of Open Text (i.e. that they’ve completely given up on the UI) but I see it as a bridge to a future where best-of-breed ECM applications are tied together.

First off, they haven’t given up on the UI; the Enterprise Connect tool improves access to the Livelink repository from desktop applications and browser interfaces alike and provides a drag-and-drop capabilities between platforms and repositories. Even if organizations find that SharePoint or another application offers a more user-friendly front end, Open Text is positioning themselves as an interface-agnostic repository of record. I think it’s a smart move and, frankly, one in which Open Text had little choice.

As everyone in the ECM industry knows, Microsoft is making a big push into the ECM space with MOSS and have done an excellent job of selling the collaborative capabilities of the tool. Where SharePoint currently falls down is in its ability to meet hard-core compliance and records management requirements. Tools like the ones on offer by Open Text help bridge that gap and should keep the company relevant for some time to come.

Does this mean that Microsoft will never have an enterprise-class RM tool? Or that MOSS won’t start to displace some pure-play SOX compliance tools? Definitely not, because they will at some point. However, I see this as a long and winding road and that organizations are better off to pursue a coexistence strategy until such time as best practice about the deployment of SharePoint as a tool that can help organizations meet stringent regulatory requirements is more widely known.

At the end of the day, I see this as an opportunity. The Open Text Content Services toolset allows organizations to take a best-of-both-worlds approach to ECM. Companies get to take advantage of the slick user experience of SharePoint (slickest when Office 2007 is in use) but can still rely on the tried and true records management, audit and regulatory compliance features of Livelink.

I’ll be talking more about this topic at the Calgary AIIM Conference which is coming next week on November 1st and 2nd. You can find out more about the event and sign up here. Hope to see you there.

I say ‘to the surprise of many’ because there has been a lot of speculation about the impact that SharePoint would have on incumbent ECM vendors. This very blog predicted a couple of challenging quarters for incumbent ECM vendors through the middle part of 2007 as organizations considering ECM figured out whether SharePoint was up to the task. Based on my observations here in Calgary I stand by my earlier comments about organizations delaying their purchasing decisions about ECM tools. If this is true elsewhere, as I suspect it is, how is it that Open Text has managed to post such impressive results?

My take on this is that Gartner’s predictions about the growth in the ECM market are accurate and that there is enough to go around for everyone. Microsoft reports that SharePoint revenues topped $800 million in 2007 which exceeds Open Text’s revenues by more than $200 million. My math tells me that this gives Microsoft about 28% market share in the ECM space and Open Text 20% (that’s $800 million and $595 million of the $2.9 billion that Gartner predicted). I may be wrong about how long organizations are delaying their purchasing decisions or it may be that they’re approaching their ECM solution as an “and” when it comes to SharePoint instead of an “or”. I’d appreciate any comments you, my loyal readers (both of you), might have about this one.

In terms of the overall ECM market, for companies that have already deployed a non-SharePoint ECM solution the question is how and where does SharePoint fit in (if at all in some cases). For those that have not yet deployed an ECM tool, the question is, firstly, why the heck not and second, does SharePoint give me everything I need? To me, the more important issue is to identify what problems your organization is trying to solve. It is very easy (and very common) to start talking technology before figuring out the business problem you are expecting an ECM tool to help address.

While it is difficult to distil a complex discussion about the ECM market into a single blog post, my view on this hasn’t changed. Incumbent ECM vendors will very likely continue to have success meeting the needs of organizations with a heavy regulatory requirement to manage their content and also in areas where they own mature vertical markets. SharePoint will gain ground in these areas over time as third party applications providing strong compliance management, engineering drawing management, legal matter management etc. are developed and bolted on to SharePoint. Maturing integrations between traditional ECM apps and SharePoint will also help. SharePoint clearly owns the collaborative space and will continue to dominate the desktop. It’s easy to use and viral in nature and is hard to stop once it gets a toehold in an organization. Whether this is a good thing or not is a topic for another day, but again the bottom line is to identify your business need and find the tool (or tools) that fit the bill.

I’ll give another plug to my friends at AIIM who have recognized that many organizations both inside and outside the world of ECM are asking these very questions. Their SharePoint Meets ECM sessions are scheduled for this fall and I suggest you attend if you can. For those of you in and around Calgary, I’ll be speaking more on this topic this fall as well.