C3 Associates Inc.

Hello from sunny Orlando, Florida. Although the sun is out the temperature is not cooperating, with highs in the low 20’s (that’s about 70 Farenheit for my American friends) which is downright cold for this part of the world.

The keynote address at the opening dinner was by symphony conductor Boris Brott. He gave an interesting talk comparing the way a symphony works together to the way an organization can get into synch enabled by technologies like ECM. If everyone goes their own way it’s chaos, but if everyone works together they can make beautiful music.

The conference itself is interesting for the shift in focus from past years. This year it’s all about Web 2.0. The basic premise is that content enables Web 2.0, but that in a corporate context this content has to be secured and managed throughout its lifecycle. Open Text is developing a series of new tools to enable Web 2.0 in the enterprise including an enhanced Communities module, digital media management and support for mobile devices like iPhones and BlackBerries.

This strategy is not surprising, really. Open Text has to respond to customer requests for Web 2.0-type functionality within the enterprise and they are clearly trying to do that while at the same time trying to stay current with emerging technical and social trends. For customers that are committed to the Open Text stack this approach makes a lot of sense. At the same time, it’s a bit of a confused strategy given the close alignment between Open Text and Microsoft. Support for SharePoint as a front-end social collaboration platform in line with Open Text’s back end repository closely mirrors the direction Open Text outlined today. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, it just adds a bit of complexity into the mix for organizations that have both applications.

The other interesting news is the announcement of the Open Text Developers Network (http://otdn.opentext.com). In my mind anything that can help the development community succeed with Open Text products is a good thing.

I’ll add more tomorrow after John and I attend the detailed roadmapping sessions.

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.

Open Text Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer Tom Jenkins was featured in an extensive article in the July 21 edition of the Globe and Mail. You can find the article along with an audio interview here.

In addition to several hockey references that underscore the company’s Canadian roots, Jenkins made a couple of interesting comments about the “acquire or be acquired” nature of the software business. Let’s just say he didn’t do anything to dispel the speculation that Open Text will someday be acquired. At the same time, I think he didn’t take enough credit for the good work Open Text has done to become (and remain) Canada’s largest software company. He put a lot of it down to luck and also the ability to operate in relative obscurity due to the overwhelming success of Research in Motion (the makers of the ubiquitous BlackBerry, in case you didn’t know).

In my mind, Open Text has done a good job of positioning its technology to address a growing need while at the same time marketing well. The supposed “threat” to Open Text posed by SharePoint has yet to materialize and as the market comes to better understand how each of the products are positioned it seems even less likely that SharePoint will erode Open Text’s market share. Open Text’s “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” strategy seems to be working. We’re certainly seeing a lot of interest in hybrid solutions (using both Livelink and SharePoint) here in Calgary and I imagine that is likely the case elsewhere as well.

I’m writing this as I sit in the final session of the first day of the 2008 SharePoint conference in rainy downtown Seattle. It’s been a big day and I definitely need a beer but I wanted to share some of my thoughts before I head for the pub.

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.

As I get ready to head off to Seattle for next week’s SharePoint conference I’m struck by how different my mindset will be from the recent Livelink work I’ve been doing. In Livelink, organizations are able to create highly controlled document management scenarios for things like engineering drawing management and records management. This is supported by rich and relatively mature vertical applications that can be tuned to a specific organization’s requirements (although they work pretty well out of the box).

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.