TakingAIIM

EMC Writers Summit: Third Time is a Charm

For those that followed the Twitter stream (#EMCSummit), you know that last Friday I had the honor of emceeing the third annual EMC Documentum writers summit. This was my third time (see blogs from 2009 and 2008).  Once again, a great group of fellow ECMers assembled to enjoy a thought provoking day of discussion and shared vision.  This year I was joined by return participants: Ralph Losey, Bryant Duhon, Gabe Acevedo, Virginia Backaitis; and welcomed first-timers: Laurence Hart, Melissa Webster Johnny Gee, Susan Nunziata,  Joab Jackson, Mike Vizard,and Bob Boeri.

Additionally,the group was rounded out by several EMC Documentum people including Whitney Tidmarsh,  Marko Sillanpaa,  Andrew Chapman, Chris Preston, Natalie Aijluni, Andrea Alfonso, and Dave De Jear.

The topics we focused on this year seem to reflect the "next generation" of the topics we focused on last year - showing that the ECM Market has indeed progressed, although, rather slowly in the past year.

In fact, a focus on the state of the market is how we kicked off the day, with a presentation from Melissa Webster, who provided the latest research from IDC.  Discussion immediately ensued when Melissa proposed that there is no ECM market, per se, but rather a compound market comprised of multiple individual technology markets such as enterprise search, workflow, BPM, social platforms, document management, records management, etc..   Like many IT departments, Melissa conceded that IDC is heavily siloed in the way it approaches ECM. Perhaps while not a big problem for IDC, this can be a big issue for IT shops and their respective organizations, who do not appreciate that the silos need to be torn down, figuratively, and integrated to work as a single system, in order to achieve maximum benefit. That "end result", a few of us proposed, is "ECM". This of course led to a sub-topic near and dear to my heart, and a handful of other participants, "Should the industry look for a term beyond ECM?". Readers of this blog know what I have to say about that. Similarly Laurence Hart shared his often stated opinion on the matter - in favor of keeping the term, lest he have to re-educate his market on a new term - and for what value?

Melissa, with encouragement from EMC, brought up the phrase "case management" as a way to describe application specific instances of ECM, a term currently in use within EMC. The term does not seem to offer any more clarity on labeling ECM ... We moved on ...

Melissa shared that SharePoint users as a subgroup of the survey population emerged as the most vocal concerning the lack of content management in the organization. SharePoint was characterized not so much as a content management tool, as a content creation and sharing tool - often leading to proliferation of unmanaged content.

Interestingly enough, despite technology advances in the ECM world, the business drivers behind investments in ECM have not changed for years: securing intellectual property, creating a repository of record and compliance. Despite the many forward thinking benefits that are possible with a robust ECM system, business investments stay mired in mundane security issues.  Despite the efforts of many analysts (including yours truly) the norm in the market is to invest in these technologies when content security and compliance are at issue, as opposed to a way to radically change publishing models and the value derived from enterprise content.

There was a glimmer of hope. Mobility of the workforce and ECM-sharing devices are creating an impetus to re-examine the value and potential of ECM. (Another issue I have blogged about many times.)

This was a great segueway into Andrew Chapman's presentation, which was really more of a discussion on "If all the obstacles to ECM adoption - e.g., user/culture acceptance, networks bandwidth, cost, security, etc.- were to go away, what would you do with ECM?" 

Some discussion ensued around the possibilities of providing ECM as a consumer-oriented commodity. Most of us believed that there was a market potential for a personal ECM platform dor "everyday users" of the web who face fragmented functionality and repositories such as FliCkr, FaceBook, SlideShare, etc.  Mike Vizard even offered a product name - "MyCrap.com".  Beyond this however, the discussion fell back on issues regarding SharePoint and other "real word/mundane" issues, despite ongoing encouragement from Andrew to ignore these. I guess that similar to many business managers, it is difficult to think of ECM in a vision for the future when there are so many immediate issues and problems to deal with.

This provided the perfect segueway to Ralph's presentation on eDiscovery (talk  about real and present issues). Ralph's presentation was the most repetitive from the year before - but that was very telling in and of itself. Talk about not applying ECM in new ways. Despite the importance of the issue, most organizations have yet to really effectively address eDiscovery, especially applying advanced search technology to the situation. As Ralph shared, the situation is only getting worse as business users (and their personal life alter egos) find more and more ways to create and save content online. The picture that Ralph paints is frightening, as he explains that without proper management, the sheer cost of discovery can undermine the administration of justice. I encourage those of you who would like to better understand this issue to view his excellent video.

Whitney however, offered a ray of sunshine. Not all organizations are under-utilizing ECM. EMC Documentum has assembled a Leadership Council for Information Advantage, an advisory group made up of global information leaders from brand-name enterprises. These individuals are visionaries and have taken ECM in their respective organizations beyond "the usual."  They have already published a report, available for download in which they share lessons learned, best practices, and expert guidance on how to transform information into business value. One finding that jumped out of Whitney's overview was that Cloud was a game changer that cannot be ignored.

We concluded our day with a presentation from Bryant Duhon, in which he painted a "realistic" picture of social media. Bryant started by agreeing with comments made by Ralph earlier, that social media and social computing are very real and increasingly popular. But, as an early practitioner, he felt there were no real best practices to speak of. There are no  "experts" in Bryant's opinion as the technology and its application is nascent.

Ah yes, and so the growth and impact of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 from a business, legal challenge and technology perspective is very likely to be a focal point for next year's summit.  Stay tuned...

Email Management and Government: Do as I say not as I do

Nearly a year ago I posted a blog on the Bush Administration's attempt to not comply with a court ordered discovery of e-mails. In the blog entitled You Can Fight City Hall, I drew attention to the power of the courts in requiring compliance with e-mail records management mandates, "If such mandates can be successfully argued against the While House, is there any doubt in your mind regarding the ultimate fate your corporate e-mail management policy will meet? "

Well, apparently not everyone was listening. "City Hall" once again tried to circumvent e-mail retention policies, and this time I am embarrassed to say it is my own City Hall, Boston.

Questions were raised after a public records request by the Boston Globe unearthed only 18 e-mails to or from mayor Menino's top, Mr. Kineavy, between Oct. 1. 2008 and March 31 2009. Apparently Kineavy deleted hundreds of work e-mails before they were archived - a violation of laws regulating public records - which yes include email. Menino stated that the deleted emails were a "glitch" in the system and "sometimes technology breaks down."  A glitch? This city famous for its high-tech industry and research was not going to swallow this. A glitch?  Could you imagine how city officials  would react if the glitch were on the other foot. Oh I am sorry mister Mayor, I would have paid my taxes, but there must have been a glitch in my laptop andonline banking system. 

The City of Boston has done the right thing though (article). It has seized  Kineavy's computer and hired  outside experts in e-mail management. 

It amazes me when the governments that are behind the compliance laws that are at the root of corporate records compliance, ignore those rules and practices themselves. But it is encouraging that we have public officials that apply the same letter of the law no matter the owner of the records. It is also exciting to know that the ECM industry provides the means with which to control such situations.

Many eyes will be watching as the drama unfolds and once again ECM technologies will be part of the center stage - at least to ECM geeks like me.

It Ain't the Medium Its the Message or - Its the Content that Counts

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase " The medium is the message."  I have often quoted McLuhan in my writings and presentations, in agreement.  But, I fear far too many take his message the wrong way, which can and has lead to serious repercussions.

Yesterday I was watching a video podcast interview between two colleagues.  Both will remain anonymous.  Who they are is not important.  Their posture and what they said are important. Both are noted industry advocates in the ECM and Enterprise 2.0 space. Both provide advice to the market, which is what concerns me. One of them made a statement that was simply naive and misleading, and the other one did not correct or modify it.

My angst is grounded in the further worry that history will repeat itself, and not in a positive way. The interview was focused on the use of collaborative social technologies in an Enterprise 2.0 setting. The comment made that caused my concern - and I paraphrase - was that many enterprise users are using tools such as Twitter (Twitter was specifically mentioned in the discussion),  without any real thought as to the management of the content created.

There were two distinct points made that were misleading - possibly downright wrong.

1. My colleagues casually pondered who will "own' the content and if indeed it will be considered subject to discovery. I believe that the courts, at least in the United States, have already ruled on this. As I stated in an earlier blog post, in a class action suit regarding patient/individual privacy rights, the courts ruled that content in "FaceBook, MySpace, instant-messaging threads, blog posts and whatever else the plaintiffs might have done online" was discoverable. The plaintiffs' objection that this violated the plaintiffs’ privacy was shot down. These tools and their content were viewed as public, not on a private network, but the public world wide web. Who "owns" the content.  Apparently Twitter, in the example given by my colleagues, and, Twitter content is "public" content and therefore discoverable.  There should be no speculation about this. 

I believe part of the reason these individuals got it wrong was that they confused Web 2.0 tools with Enterprise 2.0 tools.  This is an issue that also caused frustration for me and Ron Miller during the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, an issue we both blogged about.

2. The second statement that caused angst was the more serious one.  In further discussing how and why organizations should take a proactive approach to managing Twitter content (again - I am being liberal here in accepting their example of Twitter as an Enterprise 2.0 tool, my commentary is more focused on Enterprise 2.0 content - not public-based Web 2.0 content),  a statement was made that organizations need to take a specific look at the Enterprise 2.0 content and develop a management strategy specific to it.  A comment was made along the lines of "You should not want to apply the same rules and policies to the Twitter threads that you do your contracts."  WRONG.  As stated in the title of this blog post, it ain't the medium it's the message.

This perspective and advice was the same naive opinion that got too many organizations in trouble with e-mail.  You should not have a different management policy for e-mail, or blogs, or microblogs. The medium or format should not dictate policy (other than acceptable use of the tool of course). It is the content that matters no matter what format or tool it was created in.  My two colleagues made somewhat light reference to "Twitter streams" as if they could not really contain any mission critical content.  This was the same way many felt decades ago when e-mail was emerging as an "unofficial and casual" means of communication.  If commentary regarding contract terms (sticking with their example) are made in a Twitter stream then they should most definitely be subjected to the same policy and scrutiny as the contract - just as any relevant and related e-mail is now subjected to e-discovery.

Do not trivialize Twitter or any other form of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 created content.  The tools used do not determine the value of or discoverability of the content - the content does.

ECM Writers Summit Looks at Web 2.0, Text Analytics, SharePoint, Cloud Computing and e-Discovery

I have Twittered about it, as have many others in attendance - but now its time for the "beyond the 140 words-at-a-time" input.

Last week I had the distinct honor of moderating the 2nd Annual Content
Management & Archiving Writers Summit (#ECMWriters), sponsored by EMC Documentum.  (I was also the moderator of last year's Summit.)

Over 30 industry analysts, consultants and practitioners assembled in New York City to discuss the current state of:

• Content Management in the Cloud
• Text Analytics
• Web 2.0
• SharePoint
• e-Discovery.

Those in attendance included Ralph Losey, Ron Miller, Bryant Duhon, Dan Woods, Jerome Wendt, Fern Halper, Gabe Acevedo, Virginia Backaitis, Geoffrey Bock, John Webster, Annette Weller-Collison, Theodora Blanchfield, Kemal Carr,  Vincent Berdot, Leonid Chernyak, Yuval Dror, Fred Van Der Molen, Philippe Niewbourg, Marta Oldani, Markus Gross, and Daniel Alguacil.

Additionally, the group was rounded out by several EMC strategists and leaders:  Mark Lewis, Whitney Tidmarsh, Razmik Abnous,  Matt Coblentz, and Marko Sillanpaa.  (I apologize for the inevitable omission of others who were there, whose name I fail to recall.)

With such a crowd, you can imagine the activity level. The room never went silent. The day was structured around the 5 topics listed above, each initiated by a formal but short presentation, and followed by open discussion and debate.

There was a subtle difference from last year, with discussion much more focused on business - less on technology, per se. With few exceptions, the discussion focused on real world business applications and case studies.  In this regard, the group often concurred that the change in the market has been subtle and more evolutionary of late.  Many of the technologies we focused on, from text analytics to SharePoint (soem even argued that the cloud was the latest iteration of time-sharing/ondemand/SaaS), have been available for several years, but the group felt that it was within the last year or so that their application within a business setting was being realized and appreciated beyond IT.  We agreed this was a positive sign of market maturity - though there is still a ways to go.

A major exception was Cloud computing, which we agreed is still a technical value proposition, but one whose value can be appealing to the business manager (in terms of greater agility, lower costs, and greener processing)

Razmik Abnous led this part of the discussion, and he continuously brought the conversation back to the business impact Cloud computing could have on ECM.  The group concurred that there is an erroneous preponderance of thought in the market that cloud computing is an all-or-nothing situation.  Razmik felt it was important to appreciate that in reality ECM can be deployed flexibly in a cloud, supporting many different architectures. The underlying ECM application, for example,  could reside in the cloud but the content may not.  Ron Miller shared an example of the US Military who is aggressively using cloud computing to enable dynamic creation of collaborative ECM sites around the globe, in an agile AND secure manner. (Miller learned of the program "from the horse's mouth - Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, at the recent MIT CIO Symposium).  Perhaps the strongest value statement discussed for ECM in the cloud was its potential as a connector, a means to provide transparent access across repositories and applications. 

Connection was a major theme of the day.  In fact, Mark Lewis kicked-off the day by stating connection was the single biggest challenge for ECM today. While the issue of content and application silos is not new, Mark proposed that other facets of ECM are fairly stable, and focus for both solution providers and business users needs to turn to connectivity.   While the group agreed, the message took on additional meaning (beyond bridging access to content silos), as the day proceeded.  As we proceeded through the various topics du jour, the degree to which these technologies need to be connected  in order to reach their full potential became apparent.  (The most powerful example of this was the role that text analytics can play within e-discovery.)

Fern Halper, who kicked-off the discussion on text analytics had just been at the Text Analytics Summit in Boston a week earlier.  Her presentation was peppered with real-world examples, garnered from the summit. Though some in our group started from a perspective that text analytics was still not practical, Fern's anecdotes, as well as those from others in the group, dispelled that sentiment.

Dan Woods provided a  review of the success of Web 2.0 and how it is ushering in Enterprise 2.0.  It was interesting for me to observe how some in the room (a room of ECM industry analysts and consultants), were still somewhat unclear on the role and value of Enterprise 2.0, separate and distinct from Web 2.0.   Dan's main message, which many, including myself concurred with is that although Web 2.0 has been somewhat successful in accelerating adoption of Enterprise 2.0, there is often a tendency for enterprise adopters to adopt not only the underlying technologies, but also metaphors, models, techniques and strategies. This often leads to failure. The subtle differences between communities, goals and objectives inside the firewall require a targeted fresh look at how technologies such as wikis, blogs and mashups should most effectively be used, and what it takes to foster user adoption.

There was much agreement among the participants concerning the state of SharePoint.  Bryant Duhon shared with the group a wealth of data regarding current SharePoint market trends.  Most users leverage SharePoint as a front-end to a larger ECM deployments. Nonetheless, given the extent of penetration across organizations, SharePoint is viewed as a near ubiquitous component of ECM platforms within organizations. While we agreed that SharePoint still lacked much functionality that keeps it from being an all encompassing ECM system,  we also agreed that Microsoft is likely to continue adding functionality, both through acquisition and development. There was much speculation regarding how far it might go, and how quickly. Some felt current utilization of FAST search indicated a poor understanding of search within Microsoft.  Others felt that Microsoft's roots and strengths are in consumer-oriented, small scale applications, and as such, SharePoint would remain a "good enough for the masses", "not good enough for the enterprise"  player in the market.  (This attitude of "good enough" is supported by the findings of a study I did on SharePoint on behalf of Oracle earlier this year.)  It was interesting to watch the body language and listen to the comments from the EMC Documentum folk in the room.  There were moments of defensiveness and squirming, but there were also moments of confidence and a clear strategy for how to complement SharePoint, and leverage the fact that it is raising the business community's awareness of ECM - albeit at a elementary level.  Perhaps it was Ralph Losey (an attorney and our e-Discovery discussion leader) who exhibited the greatest frustration with SharePoint providing a "good enough" approach to ECM.

Though SharePoint is not fully to blame, Losey felt that far too many organizations  under estimate what good content management is really all about, and that lack of adequate management leads to impractical, and perhaps unnecessary challenges for e-discovery. Ralph quipped that when it comes to ECM - most organizations have the "E" and "C" (there are Enterprises and they certainly know how to create Content), but there is little "M" (too few have solid management practices.) Losey challenged records management proponents in the room, stating that a good records practice is simply no longer enough.  In the electronic world - everything is potentially discoverable - record or not, and thus good management must apply to all content.  Ralph boldly proposed that the rising costs associated with e-Discovery are killing the American judicial system, but that this can change if technology (and practices) were properly leveraged.  Here, he challenged not the business users, however, but the technology providers. In his opinion, solution providers do a terrible job in educating legal and management executives on the benefits of ECM, and as a result technology goes much under utilized.

The discussion that ensued on e-Discovery was a great culmination of the day. E-discovery most obviously related to all the other topics of the day. E-discovery is most certainly more about business than IT.  Tools such as SharePoint and Web/Enterprise 2.0 are accelerating user command and speed of content creation, but offer little to nothing in the way of management.  The virtualization of ECM in the cloud is also an issue that needs careful scrutiny from a discovery standpoint before adoption. The power of text analytics within a e-Discovery system was recognized by everyone, but again some felt that there was more promise than results.  Most concurred that the big ECM solution providers do a poor job of incorporating text analytics techniques into their systems.

Someone (I forget who) shared how the field of ECM has become more exciting.  Following discussion on text analytics in particular,  it was observed "Library services and document management is boring, but  this, this is sexy." Yeah baby.

On a final note, it is highly likely that next year's ECM Writers Summit will focus much more on Documentum's upcoming CentreStage.  Both EMC and non-EMC participants several times alluded to CentreStage as a product that will have a significant impact on redefining state-of-the-industry, and will likely incorporate much of the technologies discussed throughout the day. So stay tuned - we'll see.

IAM Alert: Autonomy Weaves Tighter ECM Package with Interwoven

Information Architected Market Alert (IAM Alert):

The field of "independent" ECM vendors just shrank again, as Autonomy announced that it plans on acquiring ECM vendor Interwoven for US$775 million.  In a word - WOW.

This announcement is loaded with sub-plots and interesting twists and turns.

It underscores the financial strength of Autonomy, who also just posted their best quarter ever.  Autonomy expects to have a cash balance of at least $75 million after the deal.  What recession??

Armed with this level of cash, if properly and effectively used to launch a frontal assault on competitors such as EMC Documentum, OpenText, IBM/Filenet and Oracle(Stellent), Autonomy could be the biggest shaker that the ECM market has seen in several years, especially in the legal and compliance sectors.

That said, this acquisition reduces the direct (i.e. standalone ECM providers) competition faced by OpenText, further strengthening their position in this sub-market. The combination of Interwoven with Autonomy's IDOL clearly rivals the rich mix of functionality of OpenText, and the IDOL platform rivals the OpenText Bloom philosophy.

Back to Autonomy:  The Interwoven technology will likely be integrated into the Autonomy  IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) search technology.  Leveraging Interwoven's core competencies/product strengths and customer base, Autonomy will be thrust into being a major contender in the ECM for legal and compliance applications.  Interwoven has a long history in this market niche of ECM, complementing Autonomy's other acquistions targeted at legal and compliance including Zantaz and Meridio.

The consolidated group will have a client base of 20,000 businesses. Businesses using both Interwoven and Autonomy include Bank of America, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, DLA Piper, Shell and Tesco.  This is a heck of a starting point from which Autonomy can go forward to make its mark on the ECM market.

While the Interwoven name and product names are likely to be fully consumed (aka disappear) in the Autonomy mix, (Does anyone remember Verity and the K2 server), this is actually good news for customers, as integration is likely to be swift. Autonomy has consistently demonstrated the ability to do just that with other acquisitions such as the aforementioned Verity, Meridio, Zantaz and Virage.

I had more or less written Interwoven off as an "also ran", in the ECM space, but with this acquisition, they are likely to remain a major player,  albeit under the name of Autonomy.

KM, E2.0 and The Law

In my last post I shared a recent conversation I had, regarding KM, with a group of graduate students.  I concluded, "Life is Good", commenting on how enjoyable the experience was.  I also indicated that today, Dan Keldsen and I would be discussing KM with a group of attorneys involved in KM practices.  Oh Life is Good.  Yes, it was a most enjoyable experience.

Specifically we spoke on the relationship of KM to Enterprise 2.0 (E.20).  The slides we used are posted here. 

Knowledge Management and Enterprise 2.0

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: enterprise 2.0)

Additionally, for those who wish to review a synopsis of the entire presentation, including an exercise we conducted, see Ron Friedman's blog.  Ron is an attorney and fellow blogger, avid blogger, who had the event posted to his site before I returned to  the office, just blocks away.
 

What made today's discussion so enjoyable were two things.  First, the group was KM aware. There was a higher level of appreciation and understanding of basic KM tenets overall. (There was a mixed level of awareness regarding E2.0 - from well seasoned to no experience, which accounted for much of the learning and discussion.) Second, there was a high level of appreciation for the issues of risk, privacy, liability etc., associated with content.  This was a room full of attorneys after all.  So maybe it was a bit of preaching to the choir, but I found it invigorating and self-assuring to be discussing this "dark side" of enterprise 2.0 with like-minded "experts".

To top it off, as the perfect footnote to today's activities, there appeared an article in The Economist about e-Discovery and web 2.0.  Its a great article - worth a read.  But its bottom line is that for anyone who thinks that Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0  content is "personal", or in any way above the law - think again. In a class action suite between a group of families with daughters suffering from anorexia nervosa, and their  medical insurance company, the courts ruled in favor of the insurance company, that any and all content posted by the daughters ("Facebook and MySpace profiles, instant-messaging threads, text messages, e-mails, blog posts and whatever else the girls might have done online") was discoverable. The plaintiff's objection that this violated the girls’ privacy was shot down.

So while I have warned about this before, and had confirmation from a roomful of KM colleagues/attorneys today, - don't just take our word for it.  Read the article, it really is a good read.

Q&A: Market IQ on Findability

This is my third and final post in which I answer questions that were posed but not answered during the AIIM Market intelligence webinar on its Market IQ on Findability.

Readers may still listen to the recorded webinar during which many other questions were answered and issues discussed. Previous posts also provide additional Q&A on Findability.

Q:  What role does findability play in an organization's taxonomy design and how does it play in the arena of records retention?

A:  Previous posts have dealt with this issue in great detail. What makes this particular question interesting is the way it is posed.  It demonstrates a clear appreciation for the fact that point technologies such as taxonomy and records management  are often incorporated into a Findability strategy.  Findability has a high degree of relevancy and reach across users and technology components.  Corporate taxonomy(ies) is likely a major component to a Findability strategy.  While such taxonomies can be used independently, more than likely they can be positioned complementary to search technology, as both a back-end and front-end complement.  integrated component to search and user interface.  With regards to records management, a Findability strategy may include technology and functionality that will enable some degree of auto-classification and declaration of records, as well as a way to retrieve records.

Q:  Where do you see Automatic Categorization and text analytics in the marketplace?

A:  Text analytics is part science and part art, and as such subject to potentially eternal development and refinement.  But, the technology has evolved  that it is reliable enough, to be positioned in some situations as a first pass to categorizing content (subject to human review).  Text analytics is also foundational to sentiment analysis (used in some BI settings), trends analysis (also used in some BI settings) and in various forms of natural language processing. Automatic categorization based on text analytics is also being use din some eDiscovery applications.

Q:  Should the search and findability tools be embedded in an organization's line-of-business applications or provided as external links, outside of the line-of-business applications?

A:  This is just an opinion – but Findability strategy would likely indicate that search be separated from the business applications and be linked to any and all of them.  This provides a single point of search and access, as discussed in my earlier posts. 

Q:  Discuss the complexity of enterprise search where there are multiple authorizations required (LDAP may be in place but SSO is not) and the search engine needs access to all of these repositories and still manage the access to those authorized but also not display to those not authorized.

A:  Security was the number one ranked feature and technology of a Findability strategy.  It is interesting that Findability is about access, and yet users point to security as the greatest feature.  Do not get me wrong, I agree with user opinion. Security does need to be looked at.  At a recent AIIM roadshow, soemoen shared with me that at his organization they had recently enabled Sharepoint search.  An inquisitive fellow employee issues a query for "social security number or SSN", and was amazed at the amount of content exposed - among it things they should not have been seeing.  While Findability is all about access, it must be reliable, and responsible access. Security is a critical component to a Findability strategy, and should be investigated from many perspectives including technical and interface. Section 5 of our Market IQ report goes into this in great detail.   

Q:  Do you know of organizations that were doing a great job with findability inside the firewall, and what exactly were they doing?

A:  I know of several.  They are all doing different things, but they did have a few things in common.  Each had an internal champion or sponsor who owned Findability (they called it many things, not necessarily Findability). The sponsor was not from IT – tough each worked very closely with IT.  They used a variety of tools and interfaces.  To be honest some of them did not standardize on a single set of tools, but did create a governance concerning which tool(s) were used when.  By the way, the companies I am thinking of come from many different vertical industries: Financial services, consumer food goods manufacturing, legal services and automotive.

Q:  What impact does limiting application integration with our ECM solution have on search across the enterprise?

A:  This can be very large issue. If an ECM system does not simplify (or allow at all) integration of third party functionality such as search and tagging, the content within that repository may remain an island from a Findability perspective. I know of one company whose Findability strategy was short-circuited by an ECM product that did not open up its index or search capability. 

Q:  With an end-to-end set of components being (possibly) Search - Find - Aggregate - Analyze - Actionable - in a informatics methodology, which one has the most well developed tools to select and expand into the other components?

A:  I would have to say search – it is oldest and many tools and techniques are available.  Some of these already offer integration with the others.  Analyze is perhaps the most limited.

Q: Should companies concentrate on Portals for one central UI to access content?

A:  Not necessarily.  There is no harm in this – but Findability can be achieved without a portal. Furthermore I have seen portals where several search scenarios are exposed – not hidden, and thus were not providing a facilitated approach to Findability, but a fragmented non-strategic approach to Findability.

Q&A: Market IQ on Findability

This is my second post in which I answer questions that were posed but not answered during the AIIM Market Intelligence webinar on its Market IQ on Findability.

Readers may still listen to the recorded webinar during which many other questions were answered and issues discussed. Previous posts also provide additional Q&A on Findability.

Q: Is there an application which can fulfill the scheduling and classification needs of a records management system plus advanced querying using complex Boolean searching (multiple keywords, thesauri, nested queries, etc.)? It seems that library software developers need to speak to records software developers to integrate both functions.

A: There are several applications in the market today that provide integrated sophisticated records management capabilities and advanced Findability capabilities.  Two of these providers, Vignette and  OpenText, underwrote this report.  These “solutions” have typically been developed though the integration of “standalone” content management and search tools with records management tools.  In the case of OpenText for example, the OpenText search and Findability product was integrated with the records management software from PSSoftware, and Vignette acquired Tower Technology. Open Text was actually the first of the ECM vendors to integrate with records management products by acquisition. However, many ECM vendors have now also done so.

Q: Does findability collide with records management or does it enable RM to be successful?

A:  Obviously this question is related to the one above.  There is great synergy between RM and Findability technology, which led to the acquisition of many RM products by many ECM/Findability vendors.  Advanced Findability techniques can be used as a front-end to RM, providing automated approaches to classification and declaration.  Findability can also be used as a back-end providing enhanced and varied approaches to retrieving records.

Q:  (This is actually two separate questions that have been merged) Why do you think that organizations lack a champion for Findability? Is there a lack of ownership for intranet initiatives, metrics and accountability?

A:  One of the fundamental obstacles to developing and deploying an enterprise Findability strategy is the lack of a champion and owner.  There is no ownership of a Findability strategy because no one is held accountable for Findability.  It is a feature of many IT strategies that slips through the accountability cracks.  The lack stems from the fact that Findability is not, in most organizations, viewed as a centralized capability.  It is too often viewed as a function of the content – each repository and content-related application has its own approach to Findability.  These embedded approaches are usually after thoughts, or features tacked onto an underlying tool. Most organizations have yet to realize the benefits that can be achieved trough a centralized managed approach to Findability.  This of course is related to the fact that metrics for measuring the impact and benefits of Findability  can be difficult to define and measure. What is the bottom-line value of faster, more effective, and accurate retrieval of content in your organization?  They exist, but are most often associated with soft benefits – not directly tied to hard-dollar gains or savings.   

Q:  Can you define "Parametric search"?

A: Parametric search is search based on meta-tags. If content is associated with one or more tags (i.e. data values associated with a body of content but not necessarily stored within the content itself such as a date, author name, or contract number), parametric search enables the query and retrieval of the content based on user specific values within the meta-tags. For example, “Retrieve all documents published between January 2007 and January 2008,” is a parametric search leveraging a published date tag.

Q:  Please comment on the pros/cons of a faceted taxonomy of metadata to organize unstructured information.

A:  Faceted taxonomies can be very valuable facets of a Findability strategy.  Based on metadata values, or tags, content can be associated with various categories.  These tags can be leveraged by a user interface to display content in a taxonomy, which aids understanding of the collection of content and enables navigation through the content.  The faceted taxonomies can be used as both a precursor to search (enabling a user to identify categories of interest and limit the search to those categories), and/or as a back-end to search, used as a way to display retrieved content via categories.  Faceted taxonomies are particularly flexible and dynamic.  They can be used to arrange or dipaly content in many different ways, based on user preferences and/or business objectives.

As for cons, I cannot think of many, except for the fact that these taxonomies must be designed manually, and subsequently, content added to the repository must be tagged, which is also a manual process, or in some cases a semi-automated process.

Q:  Is it your contention that a Search Appliance/tool should be part of an organization's overall technology infrastructure with hooks into all deployed applications?

A:  I do believe that this is a Findability best practice, yes.  In most situations, it would behoove an organization to develop a Findability platform, and then integrate that platform/capability across all applications and content repositories.

Q: Would following the aforementioned strategy does this lessen the necessity of ERP and ECM applications have robust search engines?

A:  Yes.  In fact this approach to Findability potentially removes the need to seek, integrate and support separate search tools in individual business applications.  Not only does this provide the users with a common user interface (reducing training), but can also eliminate the costs associated with supporting and maintaining multiple search tools.

Q: So how do we get a Google like functions into the business organization?

A:  Interestingly enough, this is not simply a matter of buying a search appliance.  To achieve a level of effectiveness similar to Google on the internet, within your firewall, you need to do a needs assessment and develop a Findability strategy specifically for the enterprise (inside the fire wall) and then implement the appropriate Findability tools.  Section 5 of the AIIM Market IQ on Findability provides more detail on this process.

Q: (This is two questions merged together.) Can you expand on Enterprise Taxonomy? How do we get enterprises to devote time & thought to library sciences for taxonomy?

A: Taxonomies are a hierarchical or poly-hierarchical listing of topics or subject categories. A taxonomy may not contain a definition of the topics it covers, but only the hierarchical relationship of the topics to one another. An enterprise taxonomy is a taxonomy that is developed specifically for the content within the firewall.  It provides a centralized singular view or organization of the enterprise content. As discussed in the webinar and the Market IQ on Findability, an Enterprise taxonomy can be a fundamental component of a Findability strategy, providing a navigational aid to content and a precision enhancing (front and back end) complement to search. 
Getting enterprises to devote time and thought to library science and taxonomy construction is not necessarily a simple lask.  If there is no pre-disposition or appreciation for the value of library science  and taxonomies, you may have to start with some fundamental education and enlightenment.  You might start by using examples of taxonomies on the commercial web as examples of how such approaches to library science can enhance the interaction with content.  It is also sometimes easier to make the case for outward facing web sites, and then using their success to drive adoption of taxonomies inside the firewall as well.

Q:  What is the best business case basis that works to secure funding for Findability?

A: Unfortunately there is no one best business case.  Each organization and situation warrants its own business case.  Start by looking at the existing business situation, and look for areas where ineffective or inconsistent means to access content is impacting the business bottom line.  Some examples are: Loss of customers/decreased customer satisfaction, non-compliance with industry and/or government regulations, non-compliance with internal best practices/governance, inconsistency in communication between functional areas, increased costs associated with duplication of efforts, poor decision making and decrease in competitive standing/delayed market responsiveness.  Then demonstrate how a proposed Findability strategy would positively impact these issues.

Q:  How does purposing the content and/or proactively providing the content through applications fit in this approach?

A:  This is a great question because it helps to highlight the fact that a Findability strategy is more than just effective search.  A thorough Findability strategy not only looks at how users will search for content, but business scenarios in which the content should search out the user (or application).  Thus if processes in which tasks involve the retrieval of content based on certain dynamic criteria exist, the  Findability tools can be integrated into the workflow/BPM tools to automate the retrieval of the content, in the context of the process.  Search agents can also be used to proactively provide content to a user.  Findability also can be used a means to monitor and “pluck” content in applications such as e-mail security/monitoring, eDiscovery and trends analysis.  These are all examples of proactive use of Findability within a given business application.

Stay tuned - thereare several more questions, and answers to come...

ECM Finds a Web 2.0 Home

Like many of you, I am a member of many online communities; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, not to mention the many sub-communities within each of these.  So why would you or I need to join another?  In a word FOCUS. 

AIIM has created a Web 2.0 environment focused exclusively on the issues of Enterprise Content Management. Known as Information Zen; this platform allows us ECM zealots and aficionados to congregate, collaborate and commiserate.  This is a no holes barred platform where you can share ideas, propose suggestions, air your product experiences - just about anything ECM related, and get feedback and support from your peers. 

So join Information Zen  now.

View my page on Information Zen

Once you join, you can choose to participate, or simply monitor any or all of the focus groups, which already include:

Compliance & eDiscovery

PDF

Enterprise 2.0

Email Management

Business Process Management

Enterprise Search

Electronic Records Management

Enterprise Content Management.

AND - you can create your own groups as well.  Be the first to create a product users community, or a community of ECMers from a particular vertical. 

While I hope you continue to read and comment on this blog, I also hope to see you soon in the Information Zen garden - where the level of interaction is much greater.

Thought Leaders Meet at ECM Writers Summit

What a great week for ECM, Enterprise 2.0, SaaS and me.

Looking back on the past week, I have to say the ECM techno-geek side of me is smiling.  As I posted earlier, the week stated off with participating in a AIIM New England chapter event that included a panel of users that have adopted a SaaS model to ECM.  As if that wasn’t enough fun and education, the week ended with my moderating and participating in a thought leadership writer’s summit on SaaS & cloud computing, SOA & BPM, Social Computing & ECM, and Text Analytics.

The event was sponsored by EMC.  I again thank them for inviting me to co-host this summit. Some of the brightest strategists and technologists from EMC were there including Howard Shao, Mark Lewis, Whitney Tidmarsh, Razmik Abnous, Michael Hackney, Matt Coblentz,   and Lubor Ptacek.  More importantly, we were joined by a variety of ECM industry thought leaders including Nathaniel Palmer, Barclay Blair, David DeLong, Margie Semilof, Mary Cohodas, Geoff Bock, Bill Trippe, Vincent Berdot, Stephen Cameron, Christian Daems, Christos Varelas, Ron Miller and Beth Pariseau (see her post on this event).  (I apologize for he inevitable omission of others who were there, whose name I fail to recall at the moment.)

Well, as you can imagine, with such a crowd, the discussion of was lively and full of opinion (sometimes agreeing and sometimes differing.) The purpose of this post is to provide my recollection of the key points that came for the discussion.

Despite the variety of topics (SaaS & cloud computing, SOA & BPM, Social Computing & ECM, and Text Analytics), discussion almost always came back to a basic value proposition for ECM, striking a balance between increased access/collaboration, and content governance and security. (See the AIIM Market IQ on Content Security for more on this idea, and a post by summit participant Ron Miller.) Terms frequently uttered in discussion included mobility, social networks, collaboration, agility, flexibility, e-discovery, compliance and risk. Collectively these seem to represent the potential benefits associated with ECM.

ECM was frequently discussed not as a technology, or a single implementation, but as a platform, a competency that should be available across the entire enterprise. In this regard, the group often reiterated that solution providers and pundits of ECM all too often talk in terms of unstructured content, and that this is wrong.  ECM is about all forms of content – and therefore should provide a single integrated interface to the unstructured content (e.g. documents), as well as structured content (e.g. databases associated with ERP and payroll systems.)  Too much focus has been paid to the unstructured content separately and distinctly from the structured.

This single interface was extended to the concept of enterprise search.  We discussed that enterprise search has erroneously been discussed in the market far too often as a product.  The often touted single enterprise master taxonomy and search tool is not most effective.  In reality effective search across the enterprise will likely involve multiple search tools, taxonomies, relevancy rankings, etc., each finely tailored and tuned to specific content and use cases, but presented and managed as a single interface to the user.  The group agreed that this requires great complexity on the part of IT, but that complexity can and needs to be hidden for the user.   

We all acknowledged that the rules of publishing have changed.  On the positive side this has allowed faster and more wide scale dissemination of knowledge and experience.  On the other, this has created a demand for new approaches to demonstrate reliability and trust in “discovered” content.

Similarly, the long tail of electronic content (compared to the much shorter tail of paper content), necessitates more powerful approaches to management, retention, and findability.  Without it enterprise content can quickly become chaotic and/or grossly under utilized.

In this regard, Matt Coblentz of EMC proposed that “Content is Stupid”.  The group agreed, (or at least some did), with the addition that Content Management is intelligent.

We thought that overall culture was ahead of technology with regards to collaboration, but behind technology with regards to security and compliance.   

Some of us saw ECM in a state of evolution, progressively increasing functionality and ease of use over time.  Others argued that the advent of functionality such as SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 represents a hockey stick inflection point for the industry, that will be viewed as a revolutionary point in the market in time to come.

I for one walked away with a sense that ECM is once again a very exciting marketplace.  Ron Miller reminded us, that in his review of the AIIM 2008 show, he had indicated that the show was buzzing with excitement.

With that, the realm of ECM has become increasingly complex.  ECM is not just about technology, nor just about content.  The ECM practitioner MUST be concerned and involved in people, process and content (EMC’s words), or content, community and context (my words.) This is what keeps this market place alive and vibrant.  This is what affords careers and debates that go far beyond technology alone.

On a final note, I will share a light moment. To a large degree there was much reaffirming among this  group, as opposed to learning. There were some exceptions. Two new technologies were introduced:  “blockies and wigs.”  These terms were coined by one of the speakers in a slip of the tongue in his excitement over the power of “wikis and blogs”.  We all got a good laugh out of it. OK – maybe you had to be there, or maybe you just aren’t ECM-geeky enough.