The Enterprise Content Management Blog

An ECM Company to Watch | CYA Technologies

 

One of the best things about The ECM Blog is hearing firsthand how software companies are reshaping tomorrow's enterprise. If I was actually a journalist by day, I might even break a story or two.(Sigh)

You know what I mean if you saw CYA Technologies' big IBM/FileNET announcement a few weeks ago.

I had a call with CEO Wayne Crandall and Mike Fernandes, who heads up the product group, and got a lot smarter on how they've built out their SmartRecovery Suite.

In a nutshell, the Connecticut-based company, who has relationships with most ECM companies, makes software that smartly monitors big ECM repositories and makes sure your content (documents, records,folders) can be restored to its original state.

But here's the kicker. CYA's SmartRecovery for FileNET insures all the metadata associated with that content is also restored. CYA describes it as "object-level integrity."

In case you missed their press release, here's what you IBM |FileNET folks should forward to your CTO or FileNET integrator.

1. Live Capture: CYA SmartRecovery captures changes in the object store in as little as every 15 minutes without any application or system down time.

2. Preservation: Using IntelliCapture™ technology, CYA SmartRecovery checks to ensure integrity between content and its metadata, and proactively flags inconsistencies.

3. Recoverability: CYA SmartRecovery recovers objects back to their last “original” state within FileNet P8's object store without any downtime.

4. Reduction of Data Loss Window: CYA SmartRecovery supports disaster recovery solutions such as IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, EMC NetWorker and Symantec Veritas NetBackup.
   

Lastly, the way CYA and their interactive agency handled their blogger outreach was classy. As someone who provides similar social media services to clients, it was refreshing to see a group that did their homework and was ready to engage without wasting anybody's time.

Technorati tags: CYA, CYA+technologies, ecm+vendors, ecm+solutions, ibm+filenet, filenet+p8, filenet, digital+influence+group

The Spin Cycle of the Software CEO

Some of you may have caught Red Herring's brief interview with Open Text CEO John Shackleton a few days ago. If you didn't, here's the link.

What I love about these "high-level" interviews is how the executive always dismisses the competition so eloquently. Maybe that's one of the signs you've got the right guy running the show.

Take this passage:

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Red Herring Q: There has been so much consolidation in the ECM market with IBM/FileNet and Oracle/Stellent. How is that impacting your company, financially and otherwise?

A: "FileNet mainly has a North America presence in the insurance space so outside of that we would rarely compete with them in, say, Europe, etc. So we don’t see a lot of difference.

Stellent is 3 percent of the market, so it’s fairly small and does more business in state and local governments so we didn’t see them a lot either. So from a competitor standpoint, we don’t see that as a big issue."

Hmm..granted FileNET has a good foothold in insurance, but I would guess the Big Blue / FileNET contingency would have a few things to say about that summation. I can see the FileNET folks gritting their collective teeth. 

And with all due respect Mr. Shackleton, the Stellent / Oracle show will be rolling into a town near you real (Open Text) soon.

And here's the other one that left me scratching my head.

Q: What about newer technologies like blogs and wikis? Will they also drive growth for content management software?

A: "I think they will be legal documents, so you’ve got to be careful about what is in there and how long it is retained and will proliferate in the market."

Come again? They'll be legal documents? ( big sigh) That pretty much validates my inclination to dismiss some of the ECM vendors as enterprise 2.0 thought leaders. Am I being too harsh?

Technorati tags: open+text, filenet, ibm+filenet, oracle, oracle+stellent, ecm+vendors, red+herring, web+2.0, enterprise+content+management, enterprise+2.0, john+shackleton, ecm+market

CIO Survey Shows ECM Security, Compliance As Top Concerns

SealedMedia released recent survey results from from 29 CIOs who invested more than $1 million in ECM systems. I was a bit surprised the workflow/process automation piece ranked so low.

The concerns were ranked on a scale of one to eight, eight being the most important. 

Guarantee ISO 17799 compliance: 6.03

Protection of intellectual property during offshoring or outsourcing: 5.52

Protection of high- and executive-level communications: 4.79

Improvement of workflow-process automation: 4.41

Reduce Compliance Costs with ECM

You can put the compliance content below into the "this is perfect for ECM" category. Two things here. The first is the added business benefit you get by documenting processes. Pretty obvious, but more importantly, it's how the processes are improved after heightened analysis.The second is how technology can automate some of the key elements in the compliance lifecycle. AMR Research says you can reduce SOX compliance by 25% with the right mix of technology. The right mix includes the usual suspects -- capture, imaging, records management -- all core components within ECM suites.

From the story :

"The area where companies may be a bit more vulnerable this year — because auditors may focus more intently on this issue — is on the ability of their IT systems to support controlled processes.""The ROI from documenting the processes is discovering ways to improve processes," said Robert D. Kugel CFA, vice president and research director at Ventana Research.

Technology to automate key parts of the process of repeatability, sustainability, and cost effectiveness can reduce the cost of SOX compliance upwards of 25 percent, according to John Hagerty, vice president of research, at AMR Research. In a January, 2005 report, he wrote that without new technology most companies will overspend on internal employees and external consultants while their manual processes will lead to higher external audit costs.

"To automate SOX compliance, you will need to spend between $100,000 and $1 million."

Growing Pains in Compliance Software

Sandy Kemsley over on Column 2 comments on the Compliance software market in the context of a recent webinar she attended with a slew of ECM / BPM vendors. "Chaotic " is a description we'd agree with. I'd be interested in her comments on FileNet's Records Management strategy.

From her post:

"If, like 1/3 of Doculabs' current customers, compliance is one of your highest priorities for 2005, it's worth your time to check out compliance solutions like this from ECM/BPM vendors. The whole compliance field is still chaotic; a Gartner report on compliance management software lists 26 vendors and clearly states that the compliance market is not mature:"

A key finding of our research is that there is no comprehensive compliance management application. Whether buying from one or many vendors to get a solution, you will need significant services for implementation and integration.

Study Pegs Imaging/Workflow as Labor-saving Technologies

According to a recent study Sarbox can be easier to digest for companies with a "shared services" strategy. And key findings point to Imaging and Workflow as "labor-saving" technologies in these environments.

"Shared services also makes it easier to justify investments in labor-saving technology such as imaging and workflow software that's needed to test and document controls."

"Shared-services organizations facilitate Sarbox compliance by concentrating financial processes in fewer locations. One Deloitte client had its accounting functions spread out over 300 locations.
It's hard to keep track of controls when you have 300 locations." ~ Susan Hogan, Leader of Deloitte's shared-services practice.

The Many Paths to ECM

Line56 highlights the ongoing attention ECM is gaining from the big application vendors.
Not much news there, but there was some newsworthiness in webMethods release today, one that Martin LaMonica talks about over on CNet's Enterprise Software blog. You can map webMethod's strategy directly to some of the larger ECM vendors trying to expand the applications built on their content and business process platforms. I think what everyone's saying is that it's just a matter of time before the Oracles and SAPs start eating away at the ECM budgets of the pure-play vendors. But don't start the death march yet. There's a lot of activity (ECM Strategies) happening on top of the large-scale Imaging and content repositories from the likes of FileNet, EMC/documentum, OpenText and others.

Forrester analyzes Sarbox vendors

If you're sensing a Compliance trend here on the ECM blog, you'd be correct. You really can't discuss ECM without a Compliance thread surfacing. And although many infrastructure vendors are pitching their Compliance wares, you really need to look outside of just the technology. Often, that's where a consultancy like Imagine comes in. We always start with the business issues, not the technology. When we understand a company's operating environment, we can better apply the technology pieces that address a client's overall compliance needs. Lastly, is it just me or is anyone else amazed that SOX has spawned a whole new category of service providers?

From the Line56 story ~

"Forrester divides the vendors into three boxes, enterprise applications (SAP and Oracle), ECM and infrastructure (IBM and Stellent), and specialists (HandySoft, Open Pages, Stellent, and Certus) and offers the following category evaluations:

Enterprise applications vendors: Strengths:"...very strong offering for initial software releases, with tight integration with ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems for documenting controls and risks and very good reporting and monitoring tools." Weaknesses: "...late to market, so the products had less time to mature. This group also has poorer integration with existing document and records management systems."

ECM and infrastructure vendors: Strengths:"...provide both SOX and compliance frameworks for building additional compliance applications. Integration... includes collaboration, document management, and records management." Weaknesses: "...a tendency to have lighter support for the COSO framework -- a major component of SOX applications."

Specialist vendors: Strengths:"...extensive track record of implementations and deep subject matter expertise...more mature products..." Weaknesses: "Integration with existing IT systems such as collaboration, document management, ERP, and records management varies widely."