The Enterprise Content Management Blog

The Enterprise 2.0 View From OpenText Executive Chairman Tom Jenkins

I'm three days into the enterprise 2.0 show and it's a bit of an overload so far.
As I entered the exhibit hall, one peer commented on the number of traditional or dare I say, enterprise 1.0 companies on hand. What did you expect? Like it or not, that's where the majority of corporate data resides. In my one on one session with OpenText's Tom Jenkins I wanted to dig a little deeper and explore that reality. And for the record, I have about 7 pages of notes from our discussion, so expect more later.

Jenkins comes across as confident as he describes the Canadian companies' place in the enterprise 2.0 world.

If you're thinking of aligning with OpenText for e2.0, Jenkins says his pitch is that "we'll make it safe and we have the 1.0 scars to be able to pull it off."

Twenty years of battle scars in software puts Jenkins in a good position to have a discourse around enterprise 2.0. He argues that companies need to have  a better perception of the risk and reward involved when jumping into the Web 2.0 world.We spoke about corporations' propensity to want to go off and experiment, something Jenkins described as "rogue developments"

The other interesting notion was even though online communities are emerging, traditional enterprise repositories and applications still contain a lot of the "water" Jenkins describes as being needed to create the internal water cooler. I asked him how he's positioning OpenText in the Mashup space, referring to the desire for early adopters (for now) to mix up and integrate applications with a nice GUI on top.

He says OpenText will evolve its Virtual Object Repositories allowing for users to see traditional line of business (LOB) apps in whatever GUI they like. Users can expose apps or services in Outlook, SAP, or any other IT-supported system.

Jenkins was adamant that many social networks will fail because of the lack of governance and well thought out strategies. He gave the example of someone posting how to engineer an airplane engine on YouTube. If that airplane goes down after heeding your rich media (video) advice, you're in a heap of trouble. Welcome to Web 2.0.

Technorati tags: open+text, ECM, enterprise+2.0, tom+jenkins, enterprise+software

Join Us At The Content Management Connection! Or,Here's Your Chance To Finally Blog.

  If you hadn't heard, we recently launched the Content Management Connection (CMC). It's, in our own words..

"..an online community for technology practitioners, software companies, and end users to share thoughts and ideas on the changing landscape of content management and collaboration."

 

Some of you will recognize the layout from your involvement in Social Media Today. It's built on the same platform, WordFrame, which if nothing else, is a damn good blog engine and aggregator.

And for the record, we're doing this kind of stuff because we're passionate about bringing people together and creating value from those interactions. 

So jump in if you'd like, we'd love to hear what you have to say.

Technorati Tags: content+management+connection,blog+neworks,social+networking,social+computing,blogs,online+communities

Brightidea.com Uses Social Networking To Drive Innovation

I spoke with Matthew Greeley, CEO of Brightidea.com, recently and came away impressed with its approach to delivering real value with Web 2.0 sizzle. It just released WebStorm 5.0, which uses social networking elements to capture information that companies can use to drive innovation.

You could think of it as a Facebook-like application with just the right amount of administrative flexibility to keep the IT guys happy.

A marquee client for BrightIdea.com is Cisco, which uses the platform to create custom portals that spark collaboration with customers, employees, or partners. According to Greeley, Cisco has seen impressive results using the platform, generating more than 700 ideas from almost 1,500 members in 100 countries. Try to do that with some Web-based surveys and polling widgets.

Greeley told me that many companies lack business focus when deploying a social computing strategy.

"Deploying generic social networks without a specific business objective is like putting up playgrounds at the office; it may be fun for a while, but don't expect it to improve the bottom line," said Greeley.

What I really like about Brightidea is how it has honed in on a particular business driver. By looking at how a company can manage innovation, Brightidea takes the best-of-breed approach instead of trying to be all things to all people. Greeley says once it perfects that piece, it can move on, driving deeper into the enterprise and affecting other more traditional areas of collaboration.

That focus should certainly give WebStorm 5.0 a leg up in the battles to provide social computing infrastructure to large corporations over the next few years.

Companies are finally realizing the more you can apply the fundamentals of Web 2.0 to specific business objectives, the better the chance at ROI.

Technorati Tags: brightidea,social+computing,ROI,social+networking,social+media,collaboration

BayNote Offering Brings Business Value To Social Search

The Long Tail, the now-famous reference to targeting customers that buy the hard-to-find or nonhit items, got a little shorter with the release of Baynote's Merchandizing and Editorial Console.

In an exclusive interview with InformationWeek, Baynote CEO Jack Jia demonstrated how companies like The Knot, US Appliance, and Education.com are using its new offering to tap the wisdom of the "invisible crowds" and deliver highly specialized content in real time.

"Leveraging crowd wisdom is especially important in content and product-rich long tail sites where manual merchandising and editorializing just isn't timely or cost effective," said Jia.

Jia's enthusiasm for what he calls "social search" is contagious, and with good reason. The young Bay Area company has quickly made a name for itself by taking an almost academic, if not scientific, approach to dealing with how to help customers engage Web users.

"We're really changing the paradigm of how a media or e-commerce site is run. Most of the time the community wisdom prevails, but in today's dynamic Web environments there are times when you may want to promote certain content to the top or even remove particular recommendations," said Jia.

In one example, Baynote described how US Appliance was able to quickly adjust its content and search results based on its users' true intent. The e-commerce company saw that most users were searching for "stoves" instead of "ranges." The internal Web team was able to not only quickly readjust which content to display, but it also gained valuable insight around complementary products its customers were interested in.

I was impressed with how easy it was to set up the business rules within the console (pictured below), something that Web marketers and overburdened content managers will certainly appreciate. The combination of Baynote's recommendation and affinity engine is powerful when you see it in action.

Baynote's product manager quickly demonstrated multiple e-commerce scenarios in a matter of minutes, altering search results and product descriptions on the fly, without any programming or back-end manipulation of databases or inventory systems. It's that type of flexibility that made the decision to partner with Baynote an easy one for wedding-oriented media company The Knot.

The company's VP of e-commerce, Kristin Savilia, described how her team was able to "pin" the results of a much-needed search result to the top of its site after it realized the particular product wasn't being found by shoppers. According to Savilia, that type of procedure would have taken at least two weeks to accomplish using its typical IT timeline. Savilia added The Knot now generates significantly higher average order value through Baynote recommendations.

I really like the direction Baynote's headed with its road map, particularly the attention to the user experience and flexibility it brings to managing complex and content-rich Web sites. Jia tells InformationWeek consistently that "the more you know someone, the harder they are to predict."

My prediction? Jia and company will be harder to catch over the next 12 to 18 months if its recent release is a sign of things to come.

 

Technorati Tags: baynote,social+search,crowdsourcing,kjack+jia,analytics,eCommerce,user+generated+content

Alfresco's Social Computing Slant Shows ECM's Evolution

I had an interesting discussion with John Newton, the co-founder of Alfresco, recently. I'm a little star-struck by this guy. It's hard to get much higher on the food chain when you look at Newton's credentials. Not only did he co-found Documentum, he's also less than five years into the launch of Alfresco, arguably one of the biggest disrupters to appear on the enterprise software radar in years.

We've covered Alfresco before, and each time I come away thinking I'd like to classify them as something other than an open source ECM company. It's hard to explain. Maybe it's because Newton makes everything sound so damn easy when he talks about enterprise content management. And when's the last time you heard the words "easy" and "ECM" in the same sentence? But, back to their classification for a moment.

Newton and company have the usual check-boxes for ECM, but have managed to separate themselves from ECM's shadowed legacy of big, unwieldy repositories and tough implementations. Perhaps it's because of its mashup-centric approach to looking at content or how it describes knowledge worker applications of the future. Whatever the case, I want to put them somewhere in the middle of Web platform providers and collaboration vendors. The point is, you need to have both those qualities if you intend to peg yourself as a player in the enterprise content space.

"ECM has a penetration of less than 10% and the demand for content is very high. The old model that ECM has to be a suite is obsolete, " said Newton.

If you take into account the way information increasingly lives inside and outside the firewall, ECM becomes even more complex. Companies now have to figure out how to consume and create content in both environments, something Newton says Alfresco accomplishes by adopting a "content-as-service" approach. He argues that most enterprises lay out their palette of required services based on the need to create content. The focal point shouldn't be centered so much on the ECM suite, he argues. It has more to do with looking at "how the Web browser can help knowledge workers do their jobs."

And that's where the mashup mentality comes into play. Alfresco is smart enough to realize that the needs of tomorrow's enterprise will be heavily tied to its ability to create and consume content in real-time, regardless of platform, place, or device. Browser-based mashups will ultimately be one of the ways to empower that type of manageability and manipulation of content. John described it as simply asking, "what are the Web applications people want to use"?

But don't forget about the collaborative life of that content. It needs to live on your intranet, your corporate Facebook group, or perhaps within your partner's forum or Wiki. Mashups play perfectly in those scenarios. While Facebook-ing the enterprise is out of most vendors' comfort zones, Newton thinks the key is giving that capability to users and letting them create the next-generation of social software applications.

While that may be too progressive for some enterprises to stomach, it does highlight the trend of diminishing "command and control" mentalities. If you deter newer ways of collaborating, you're digging your own grave with "here lies a content dinosaur" as the epitaph.

"Content services should just be accessible wherever knowledge workers are. We shouldn't be forcing workers to go into these ECM suites. In our view, collaboration spans far more than ECM."

I'm betting Alfresco's legacy won't have anything to do with being an ECM suite.

First posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati Tags: mashups,information+week,enterprise+content+management,facebook,social+software,alfresco,john+newton

Too Many Vendors Or Not Enough Innovation?

One of our contacts in the PR world sent over some thoughts after reading our continuing discussion about why content management companies fail. His remarks might not be terribly surprising for those of you that live and breathe content management, but they warrant a re-visit.

He got me thinking about an often-overlooked characteristic of the content management sector: the sheer saturation of vendors and solutions.

As he put it, "I think, from even just a pure economic perspective, the No. 1 reason a content management company will go out of business is because there's not enough room for all of them."

And why is that? Is it because of our propensity to view any company that touches content or manages data as a content management vendor? Or is it a classic case of the vendors' desires to be all things to all people? It's really a combination of both. It's just too easy to pass up a sales opportunity for companies that he says are "just trying to stay afloat."

That brings up the notion of innovation. If content management companies are just keeping their heads up above water, how can they think freely about what the next customer needs? And throw in the fact that the space has several publicly traded pure-plays along with what he described as the big dogs (Microsoft, IBM, EMC) and you have a sector on a quest for real differentiation.

The publicist to the CM stars also mentioned how tough it is to predict a long-term view of the industry, citing things like open source, SharePoint, and consolidation as potential speed bumps to growth and innovation. Open source has to be the one that looms the largest. As Alfresco's co-founder told me this week, "Open source is the only distribution model that can compete with Microsoft's distribution model."

Perhaps some of the CM vendors should take a page from the less-entrenched software companies building the knowledge worker apps of tomorrow. It's not just R&D tunnel vision and loads of cash that allow companies like Alfresco, Jive, and MindTouch to do what they do. It has more to do with taking a fresh look at your market and how you need to serve your customers. You see, Jen in Finance doesn't want another big repository that she has to search. She doesn't want to cut and paste content from different applications. She wants to mashup up her own content and she wants it to live and breathe in her own workspace.

I liked the way Jive's Sam Lawrence attacked the innovation thread earlier this week. He sent me his take on how enterprise software's heavyweights could eventually be overtaken by social software's up-and-comers.

This has obviously been debated ad nauseam, but the perfect storm of open source, cloud computing, and Web 2.0 certainly makes for interesting speculation.

The disruption he mentions already is being felt by CM vendors everywhere. When will it drive the innovation needed?

Technorati Tags: content+management,WCM,web+2.0,enterprise+2.0,mindtouch,jive+software,alfresco

5½ More Reasons That A Content Management Company Will Go Out Of Business

I seemed to have touched a nerve in my recent entry about the top five reasons a content management company will go out of business, judging by the feedback received via e-mail, tweets, IM, and the blog.

My wife helped me compile the original list based on comments that she says I've repeatedly made over the dinner table. While I'm a little surprised that she was actually listening, she was surprised that companies could make the same mistakes over and over.

The next five reasons on my list come from an ECM executive who asked to remain anonymous because he said it would be too obvious which company he's talking about, and he's already been accused of having a bad attitude. Because that was such an interesting comment, I've decided to add it in as reason 5-1/2 that a content management company will go out of business:

5-1/2: When someone suggests you have a problem, you accuse them of having a bad attitude. I know the company is your baby, your sweat, your dreams. But the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Most people do not want you to fail, especially if you're providing their paycheck. Pause, listen, count to 10 and then try to fix the problem.

The next five reasons were suggested by Mr. Anonymous:

6: You change your model, and abandon your network. One fine morning you wake up and decide that your future is in professional services, and that the partners who have built your customer base for you are just stupid little companies that no one will miss.

7: You change your model without making the appropriate employee staff increases and investment. In spite of #6, you decide that your marketing and professional services people are too valuable to spend time helping your sales force sell product. You try to convince your partners that your professional services organization really isn't a threat to them and that you need your partners to do all of your proposing and demonstrations for you. You hope that your partners won't notice the disparity between #6 and #7.

8: You decide that your ownership of the desktop is just too important to be traded away, and users aren't going to adopt SharePoint because Microsoft can't be trusted and real companies don't use SharePoint.

9: You believe that your customers are locked into your products, because so many of their strategic business processes use your tools. Your customers would never replace someone who has sent them as many Christmas cards as you have.

10: You believe all the things in your press releases, because you like the way the people who write them dress and they use real URLs inside of text.

Keep'em coming.

First posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati Tags: content+management,business+strategy,information+week,CMS,ECM

MindTouch Puts The Enterprise In 2.0

It's not often you hear terms like application integration and IT governance from companies building their businesses on Web 2.0 underpinnings such as blogs, wikis, and RSS. So I was somewhat surprised to be smacked in the face with just that from Aaron Fulkerson, the tech-talking co-founder and CEO of MindTouch, a company that wants to be the "tissue" that helps enterprises connect all those disparate systems.

I spoke with Fulkerson about MindTouch's platform (Deki Wiki) and how it's managing to penetrate the hallowed firewalls of corporate America, making friends with both IT and business users along the way.

My first thought was why isn't everybody doing this stuff? For starters, it's because creating scalable Web architectures isn't for the faint of heart. Fulkerson says the founders' backgrounds in distributed systems helps it deliver on the promise of easy-to-use interfaces and IT-friendly integration.

And it appears their sweat is paying off. According to him, Deki Wiki downloads on Sourceforge.net number more than 3,000 a day; something he says plays a big part in driving the "mad adoption" rates. But don't discount MindTouch as a fluffy Web 2.0 open source play. Companies like FedEx (NYSE: FDX), Siemens, Gannett, and other Fortune 500 clients have adopted its platform to deliver mashups, tie together applications, and deploy new collaborative capabilities across broad user bases.

So how is MindTouch making friends with both business and IT? For IT, the pitch is simple; make their lives easier by empowering them to add governance not just over the wiki, but over all of their applications. In that sense, Deki Wiki, says Fulkerson, becomes not only an integration layer but a common user interface across different applications. The heavy emphasis on integration is a calculated move by MindTouch, one it knows will not only pique the interest of CTOs across the land, but put it head-to-head with middleware heavyweights such as BEA Systems and IBM (NYSE: IBM).

"We're working with a major life sciences organization with more than 700K Web pages. They were going with BEA, but instead chose Deki Wiki. They're now writing all their custom code on top of our platform," said Fulkerson. As far as Big Blue, Fulkerson is confident that MindTouch has some breathing room as it continues to build out its social enterprise platform.

"IBM has a proof of concept similar to what we're doing, but we think we're at least 2 years ahead of anybody else in the space," added Fulkerson.

The other side of the social enterprise equation involves the user experience. I asked Fulkerson how MindTouch manages to appease business users.

"We're allowing customers to add this 2.0 social layer to existing enterprise applications. That adds a tremendous amount of value to the organization because users can interact with applications much easier through common interfaces and processes," he said.

Fulkerson compared its Web-friendly approach to integrating applications and mashups to more common ways Web users access services like Flickr and YouTube.

"Our architecture is made up of heterogeneous Web services with a PHP presentation layer," he explained. What Fulkerson describes is a theme I'm seeing related to how Web strategies are shifting these days. Service-oriented architecture is moving to Web-oriented architecture and SOAP and other Web protocols are being supplanted by the fast-appearing REST approach.

MindTouch's savvy in both of those areas, Web-oriented architecture and REST, enable it to help enterprise clients see external systems and internal data stores like you or I view our images stored on Flickr.

"The problem we're solving goes way past a wiki," said Fulkerson.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Cross-posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati tags: mindtouch, WOA, wikis, enterprise+2.0, social+enterprise+platforms, enterprise+social+computing, enterprise+social+media, enterprise+content, aaron+fulkerson, information+week

Baynote Doesn't Make The WCM System, They Make The WCM System Smarter

After writing about Vignette's Web Experience Platform, I thought it only fair to give some pub to one of the BASFs in the web content space, Baynote Inc.

And don't be ashamed if Baynote isn't a household name, it only recently emerged (2006) as a technology provider to some of the big brands building large websites. Baynote makes a living helping brands and web marketers use its infrastructure for what it calls "intent-driven product and content recommendations."

Talk to any vendor in the content management sector and you'll find all of them scampering to deliver a better web experience. The underpinnings of improving that experience are things like behavioral targeting, contextual search, and interaction patterns.

Baynote's expertise is apparently paying off as evidenced by a recent OEM partnership with Vignette Corp., the Austin-based provider of web content and delivery solutions. According to both companies, Vignette is using Baynote to power Vignette Recommendations, a new product that can help organizations deliver highly tailored online experiences.

According to Vignette's CEO Mike Aviles, Baynote's approach was unique enough to satisfy the needs of some of Vignette's most demanding customers.

“Savvy Web users are demanding dynamic online content that can recognize and adapt to their intention at any given time," said Aviles. The added capability of Baystone, says Aviles, will ensure its Vignette Recommendations product delivers online experiences that are more likely to keep users coming back, while also building brand loyalty.

Baynote is quick to point out that it looks at more than just click-through rates. Its technology measures more than 20 different user actions, something it says is more indicative of a visitor's true intent. Clients have access to such metrics as conversions, search context, page actions, and navigation patterns that represent the elusive "collective wisdom of the crowd."

AIIM's director of Market Intelligence, Dan Keldsen, commented on the applicability of Baynote's approach, describing the blurred lines of user-generated and internal content.

“Findability and Relevancy of content is key to users already swimming in scattered and increasingly user-contributed information," said Keldsen. He argues that in the end, things like implicit recommendations are key to tapping the collective wisdom of site visitors, something that can benefit both consumers and suppliers.

Kelsden makes a good point. As web content is increasingly mashed up internally and externally, the Achilles heel of inadequate search and personalization is even more magnified.

It's good to see a company hell bent on helping customers deliver the right content to the right person at the right time.

Technorati tags: baynote, personalization+2.0, vignette+village, AIIM, web+experience, mike+aviles, dan+kelsden

I'm Blogging at Information Week

Just in case you think The ECM Blog has become just a glorified link site, I wanted to let you know I've also started blogging for Information Week. So if you're inclined, I'd love to welcome you over there for content management (and information management) news and commentary.

Now, if you're a vendor, make your PR pros earn their money by sending along story ideas and vendor news. If you're a client and want to get some pub on your company and your team, you can also drop me a line.

Here's some of my latest posts..and as always, thanks for reading.

• Top 5 Content Management Trends For 2008
  
• Oracle’s BEA Acquisition Makes Things Interesting
  
• Oracle Captures A Key Component To Its ECM Strategy
  
• Clickability Clicks On All Cylinders
  
• How Web 2.0 Affects Content Management
  
• IBM Hints At FileNet 2.0
  
• Open Source Funding Signals CMS Shakeup
  
• Engineering Content Management For A Web 2.0 World
  
• Are Enterprises Finally Waking Up To RSS?
  
• SaaS Trendwatching With Clickability
  

Technorati tags: information+week, content+management, information+management, cmp+media, information+week+blogs, dearing+group

 
Explore The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Network (a FeedBurner Network)

Are Microsoft and IBM Your Future Social Media Vendors?

2008 will no doubt be a telling year in the corporate social media and Web 2.0 space. And if this CIO Insight story is any indication, the race will again pit David v. Goliath. But what's different this time around? Will the Web 2.0 shakeout be any different than all the other enterprise software battles?

What happens in 2008?

Here's some thoughts:

• The incumbent enterprise software vendors have the edge in total dollars spent in 2008 as they give away what Web 2.0 functionality they have.
  
• Pure-play social media and Web 2.0 vendors get out of the gate faster because their platforms are easier to stitch together -- the gap shortens in late 2008 as acquisitions are made.
  
• Bigger vendors will provide the underlying architecture and deep integration to existing apps.
  
• Enterprises will learn that mixing and matching Web 2.0 technologies with existing apps provides real value - advantage upstarts.
  
• Pure-play social media vendors will quickly evolve their alliance strategies -- the lines of coexistence or competition will be blurred.
  
• Enterprise software vendors will go wide while smaller vendors go deep. In other words, the small guys will do one or two things really well and the big boys will do a lot of stuff kind of well.
  
• Vertical expertise will take precedence very soon. Advantage: enterprise software vendors.
  
• Bigger vendors will sneak web 2.0 inside the enterprise. You'll get the content repository from IBM -- and it'll include publishing and subscription capabilities, AKA blog and RSS.
  
• Pure-plays will rely more heavily on 3rd-party services..similar to the early enterprise portal days and all those clunky content gadgets.

But don't count out the current crop of social media upstarts so fast, though. They can still can put their best enterprise foot forward when they have to. Below is Awareness Networks' (formerly iUpload) passage marketing to the deer-in-the-headlight IT decision-maker.

..if a corporation deploys separate tools for each form of social media (e.g., blogs, wikis, discussion groups, etc.) they will create disparate islands of information that later will have to be somehow integrated. A common approach to all forms of social media allows an organization to employ the most appropriate form of social media for each business need with the assurance of knowing that the content is re-purposable to any other form. In this mode, a user can generate content in one participation style (e.g., a blog) that later appears in another participation style (e.g., a wiki or a discussion group) . This maximizes the value of the user-generated content and avoids any silos of information.

What else do you see in the coming months?

Technorati Tags: enterprise+social+media, social+computing, awareness+networks, microsoft, web+2.0, enterprise+2.0, IBM

Mashup Vendor Kapow Technologies Pitches ECM Value-Add

It's interesting to see the Mashup vendors continue to develop their business strategy, nipping at the heels of enterprise customers like a cute puppy that just won't go away. I saw Kapow Technologies' release a while back and couldn't help but notice their shoutout to ECM customers. 

--------------------------------------------------------------

Content Migration Edition ::

This edition eliminates the traditional, expensive, cut-and-paste approach to migration of content between or into enterprise content management (ECM) systems, automating the process and significantly reducing the need for human intervention. Using the Kapow Mashup Server, source content can be quickly and easily collected and converted to the appropriate format that maps to the relevant target schema or template, all in an automated fashion. This unique approach allows any web-based content to be rapidly incorporated into a content management data store, greatly extending the reach and interoperability of an ECM solution.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I'm no expert when it comes to the mechanics of content integration (or migration) but you have to think Kapow can garner a few looks without trying too hard. 

Maybe reaching the oft resource-constrained ECM customers will finally help bring mashups to the business set.

Technorati tags: kapow+technologies, mashups, enterprise+2.0, enterprise+software, SOA, enterprise+content+management, ECM+vendors, content+management

Did Salesforce.com Find Its Next Killer App?

By now you've probably heard that Salesforce.com scooped up Koral Technologies,the Web 2.0 upstart that barely had a chance to get out of beta and supplant compete with incumbent content and doc management vendors. The more I've thought about this acquisition, the more it makes sense. Honestly, I wasn't blown away by Koral when I tested it a while back, but when you plug its capabilities into a broader community, the service becomes much more intriguing. I think Koral gives Salesforce some stickiness it's sought for some time, especially when you factor in the ability to consume and manage unstructured information. All of a sudden Salesforce isn't just your father's CRM system. 

If Salesforce can Koral corral other business lines outside of sales, look out. You also have to think they'll do well against some of the mid-market content management vendors just by pitching a business case built on adoption.

Forget about ECM-lite, they're really becoming an on-demand ERP provider aren't they?

More coverage ::

Read/Write

TechCrunch

John Newton

Red Herring

CMS Watch

BPM Today

Technorati tags: salesforce, koral, web+2.0, ECM, content+management, CRM, collaboration, ERP, enterprise+applications

OpenText is Blogging, uh, soon.

Oh what a small web world we live in..evidenced by what you can find trolling through your blog stats. I noticed a click-through came from ECM Briefs, the new blog launchpad from OpenText. Looks like Bill Forquer, head of biz dev, and top techie Brett Shellhammer will provide the commentary and news scraping. (Wonder if they'd join the newly formed Enterprise Content Management Network?)

"ECM Briefs are short, timely news items from around the world of enterprise content management. The Open Text communications team pulls together reports from events, news about customers, partners and new products, ECM industry trends and other topics. While much of the content is related to Open Text solutions, we strive to provide a broader industry perspective, as well."

OpenText obviously figured out you can accomplish a lot by by tapping into the stream of consciousness of your thought leaders. I bet there's not an OpenText customer out there who wouldn't subscribe to ECM briefs. If the conversation and insight fails to deliver any value, customers will kill it anyway. 

And for the remaining companies that haven't started channeling their insights, you're missing out on some huge opportunities. I recently saw a community develop right before my eyes, using a similar unified blogging approach.

Perhaps by eating their own blog and wiki dog food (powered by their own platforms), OpenText and others will open their eyes to the importance of creating a voice and fostering a sense of community.

P.S.

This is where I insert the shameless marketing widget for The ECM Network below: (email me if you think you should be included..there's almost 500 subscribers so far.) 

Technorati tags: open+text, ECM, ecm+vendors, blogs, business+blogs, marketing+2.0, enterprise+blogging, enterprise+software, ecm+briefs

FAST Times In San Diego

We arrived around noon in San Diego today for the FASTforward conference. I'm posting from the media room with a bunch of fellow media attendees bloggers and sitting close by is Tom Mandel of ConnectBeam. If you're not familiar with ConnectBeam, read Jerry Bowles recent post. 

The conference looks to get off to a good start with Ray Lane and FAST CEO John M. Lervik kicking off the key notes in about a half hour. And as you'd expect FAST is gearing up the press push. We'll see what else they announce, but so far they've already made some waves in the internet ad market. Here's a post I did a few days ago.

I'll be posting for the next few days so stay tuned...hasta from SD. 

Media Room

Seaside Village

 

San Diego Marriott

Technorati tags: FAST+forward+07, FAST, ConnectBeam, San+Diego

Cross-posted on WOW Feed::Tracking New Media and Technology

Enterprise 2.0 Adoption..Continued

Since adoption is such a hot ECM topic, I wanted to point to discussion over on the FASTforward blog. Another blogger challenged some of us a few days ago to contribute tips for driving enterprise 2.0 (e2.0) adoption. Clearly, ECM constitutes a big part of what's shaping e2.0. I think that's why you'll find much of what's been discussed can easily be applied to ECM environments....my take's below.

Join the discussion here, there, or send me a trackback.

____________________________________________________

The thing I've learned the most from my own adoption is that your e2.0 road is paved (or under construction) with all sorts of good intentions. You just have to dive in. Have you tried to explain how you learned to use social bookmarking? Or how you use RSS?

There's an undeniable simplicity to a lot of this enterprise 2.0 stuff. A lot of it boils down to exposure and a commitment to learn.

Think about why you became an expert on information management or blogging. Was it your quest for knowledge? Was it because your a tinkerer? Or was it your personal goal to make a comeback after failing at so many futile KM projects? Point is, our motivations for recognizing the importance and need for enterprise 2.0 are many and diverse. So taking a crack at what drives e2.0 is a shotgun blast at best. 

Most of what I've seen and heard throughout the discussions deals with the traditional enterprise battles we fight everyday. Business case, ROI, technology alignment with business strategy..all relevant but very tired and beaten down. As the beat down continues, I think you'll see larger forces start to supplant the more traditional triggers that drive corporate adoption.

Larger force #1 - The New Media Breakdown

What I'm seeing is what I'd call a "new media nervous breakdown". Clients are being pressured by their customers, their next door neighbor, or Joe in marketing to come into the fold. That fold is the internet. And like it or not, putting the web to work for business involves a lot of what we're classifying as enterprise and web 2.0. It's no coincidence we recommend so many Web 2.0 approaches to leveraging the web -- often they're the easiest way to take that first plunge.

Larger force #2 - Big software companies

Like it or not the Googles and Microsofts will drive a lot of the enterprise adoption. We've already seen the Google effect on everything from search to web-based email and collaboration. You can only ignore the "Docs & Spreadsheets" link in your GMail for so long. Show me someone that's used Google Docs a few times and I'll show you someone ready to carry the e2.0 torch. RSS adoption soon will also take a huge leap when users see it baked into every nook and cranny in Vista.

An as far as tips go, mine are:

1. Be an educator. People want to learn. As they learn about what's changing on the web, they'll naturally seek out a comfortable starting point.
2. Paint a picture and tell a story. Most folks have used Microsoft Word. Show them how publishing to a blog is akin to creating Word docs.
3. Start small and build value incrementally. We're all obsessed with speed, but doing it right the first time holds more water. There's no stopwatch on you.
4. Be painfully clear about the reason you've decided to adopt a certain approach.
   HINT: "Better collaboration" isn't enough. If you can't describe it in simple business terms, you're wasting your time.
5. Let go and break stuff. Assuming we've done our job, users shouldn't be able to mess things up under usual circumstances. Once people figure out they can back out of something and its integrity can easily be restored, adoption increases.
6. Show how enterprise 1.0 and 2.0 coexist. We could talk about this one for days. 
   If you show users how their workflow can peacefully live right beside the new gadget on the block, anxiety diminishes and the exploration begins.
7. Don't discuss or describe capabilities in vendor terms. If you're telling users the value of what they're doing lies in "private labeling a b2b MySpace that leverages user-generated content to build community" they'll probably label you a dotcommer and spew bubble 2.0 connotations.

Technorati tags: web+2.0, enterprise+2.0, end+users, google, microsoft+vista, RSS, collaboration, blogs, enterprise+software, fast+forward+blog, FAST+search, ECM+vendors, ecm+solutions

Originally posted on the FASTforward blog.

Half a Billion Up for Grabs in Document Collaboration and Nobody Wants It?

I ran across this ebizQ story (nice headline) on document collaboration and wanted to throw it out to the group. It looks like ebizQ references this Butler Group report.

"Butler Group estimates the size of the global Document Collaboration segment of the ECM market to be US$586 million in 2007."

OK, big need, lots of incumbent providers. So why does document collaboration suck? Are the enterprise vendors inept at pitching collaboration? Have users given up on the big software vendors for lack of integration and usability? Has everyone just developed a personal collaboration strategy using IM, email, and web 2.0 stuff until someone gets it right?

And specifically:

• What's everyone using these days for collaboration?
  
• Do the collaborative capabilities within your ECM platform satisfy your needs?
  
• What 3rd party collaboration tools have you plugged in?
  (BaseCamp, Zoho, Groove, Google Docs|JotSpot,cyn.in)

I'm curious.

Technorati tags: document+collaboration, collaboration, ECM, ecm+vendors, butler+group, analysts, collaboration+software

WOW, Good Stuff From Accenture (Sarcasm and Rant Alert)

I guess Accenture wants to sell enterprises more services to implement enterprise portals and intranets by telling us what we already know. 

(Sidebar alert:: I added a new category called "Tech Rants" recently to address the uselessness usefulness of data just like this ;) 

Here's my request for Accenture's next piece.

• How about gathering information on the things companies are considering to solve information overload, instead of telling us we have information overload?
  
• How about telling us how you're launching a series of Information Management Workshops in 2007 to help us put the processes in place to address information overload? 
  
• How about culling your customer base and publicizing some real world examples of companies combating information overload?

As hot a topic as information management is today, you'd think they could pull something out of the hat better than this:

"Information is becoming a burden on knowledge workers and will remain so until companies consolidate and streamline the stores and sources of intelligence.” - Greg Todd, AIMS executive.

Uhhhhh, OK, I'll get right on "streamlining those sources of intelligence".

And lastly guys, you're aligned with one of the innovators in the enterprise search space. Team up with your partner and give us something better next time.

Technorati tags: accenture, information+management, enterprise+2.0, enterprise+search, enterprise+software, ECM+2.0, ECM, FAST+Search, intranets, search

A Little Enterprise 2.0 Help From My Friends

Leading up to next month's big enterprise 2.0 (e2.0) conference, I thought I'd tap the collective wisdom of The ECM Blog community. You guys are in the trenches and have a first hand look at how the enterprise is being transformed by on-demand software, open source, social media, and web whatever dot "o".

So please take a moment and leave some comments or send me an email with your thoughts. Most likely I'll comment on your comments and post over at the Fastforward blog.

• How should we define Enterprise 2.0?
  
• What will an Enterprise 2.0 company look like? What will be its defining characteristics?
  
• What things will be instrumental in driving the next-generation enterprise?
  
• Are we starting to get the pieces in place for Enterprise 2.0 -- things like SOA, SaaS, web services, AJAX, open source?
  
• What are the inhibitors? Culture? Technology? What else?
  
• Who'll be the winners in the enterprise 2.0 race? Users? Software companies?

See you at Fastforward '07.

Technorati tags: enterprise+2.0, web+2.0, open+source, SaaS, fast+forward+07, FAST+forward+blog, enterprise+software

Will ECM Be Ready for Enterprise 2.0?

Enterprise 2.0 (e2.0). Think about that description for a few seconds. What comes to to your mind? Hosted enterprise apps? AJAX? Open Source? Social media? If you're reading this, probably all of the above. But I'll argue that e2.0 is about way more than just technology and social computing. It's really about an attitude, or a way of doing business.

Every time I hear e2.0, I think of people. Preparing, planning, pitching, creating, whatever the hell it takes to get ready for the profound effects e2.0 will have on the way they'll do business in the not so distant future.

So it got me thinking. With such a growing number of Enterprise 2.0-ish developments, what will happen to our 'ol  friend enterprise content management (ECM)?

The above was a longer segue than I anticipated for telling you that I asked some of those questions over on the FASTforward blog.

I was asked to contribute some Enterprise 2.0 thoughts over the next few months leading up to the big Enterprise 2.0 conference in February. I hope you'll join in. You'll recognize all the other contributors -- they're a talented bunch.

Technorati tags: fast+forward+blog, FAST+search, FAST, enterprise+2.0, e2.0, ECM+vendors, ECM, ajax, open+source, social+computing, social+media, web+2.0, FASTforward+07

FatWire Makes the Right Moves

Back in the enterprise portal glory days, I ran the biz dev and alliances group for a now defunct system integrator that partnered with FatWire. I always liked thei