About 1 month ago, I left Delphi Group, a company I founded nearly 2 decades ago. Along with Tom Koulopoulos, and an amazing team of people (including Dan Keldsen (blog), who has joined me at AIIM), Delphi helped to grow the information management industry from a small group looking at a new "revolutionary" tool known as Imaging, and Boolean-based text retrieval systems, into a multi-faceted major component of virtually every IT strategy.
For several reasons, I left to join another industry force, AIIM International, The ECM Industry Association (Again - I am no longer now with AIIM). I am excited by the proposition to build a new division within AIIM, Market Intelligence. I am, however, somewhat surprised by the frequency with which colleagues have asked me "Why AIIM?". The focus of their question is on their perception of ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and AIIM's "exclusive focus on it". So, in this opening posting on TakingAIIM, let me explain my decision, plans and the purpose of this blog.
[OK, here is the heart of that original message that is still most relevant]
What's in a Name – ECM
Unlike some of my colleagues, my definition of ECM is not a subset of vendors and functionality focused exclusively on storage, retention and access to online, non-web content. I take ECM literally and broadly:
Enterprise – business focused across the organization;
Content – in today's digital age virtually everything, from text to video, from web-based html to PDF'd contracts;
Management – the manipulation of content to promote and/or accelerate education, decision making and collaboration and full lifecycle control from authoring and scanning to myriad electronic displays;
In this definition, ECM includes: tactical technologies such as e-records management, imaging, search and retrieval, digital rights management, enterprise rights management, web content management; related technologies such as workflow and BPM; and broader applications and disciplines such as Information Architecture, Knowledge Management, Innovation Management and Enterprise 2.0.
What's in a Name TakingAIIM
And that leads me to the naming of this blog and its purpose.
In TakingAIIM:
- I am announcing taking AIIM as my new home, [OK - so it is not my home any longer - Home now = www.informationarchitected.com] from which I will be part of the AIIM team in delivering research, consulting and thought leadership on ECM.
- I will be working with that team to take the AIIM community into all aspects of ECM from web to paper; innovation management to e-discovery.
- I will focus on the latest developments within the cross hairs of business and technology.
Please join me in TakingAIIM, in placing different technologies, applications, solution providers and industry trends into the cross hairs of TakingAIIM.
