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

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

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. 

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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.
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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

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

Big Blue Buys FileNET

So it wasn't HP after all. I'll have more on this later. George Dearing's Big Blue FileNet Blog? Hmmm.

Technorati Tags : ecm, filenet, ibm, ecm+vendors, content+management, open+text, emc, documentum

The value of Grids and SOA in Financial Services

FinanceTech has a quick piece on SOA and Grid adoption within financial services.
The scenario below paints the vision pretty well..

"Imagine being a credit risk analyst not having to log into six applications to get a single view of your client exposure. You run a risk model on your entire portfolio and get results within seconds, not minutes. As an end user, you just leveraged SOA, and grid computing helped you quickly marshal enormous computing resources. The IT group developed the application at a fraction of the cost and time it would otherwise need—that's what SOA and grid make possible."

Banks are Implementing SOA

SOA has taken hold in Financial Services, according to a report released Monday by BearingPoint and Datamonitor.
Five dimensions of change that will characterize the industry over the next five to ten years include:

• Worldwide expansion
• Process efficiency
• Greater customer sophistication
• Emergence of new competition
• Increased regulatory demands

And on an ECM note, capture and document management crept into the survey in a Check 21 context.

"Several large U.S. banks have begun the process of capturing images at the branch or ATM, and will begin exchanging images as soon as a critical mass of banks begins doing so. Workflow and document management technologies are being used to streamline the credit approval process.

ECM Strategies in Financial Services

FinanceTech asked industry experts to comment on ECM solutions in Financial Services.

What's Driving BPM Initiatives?

There's no lack of BPM activity over the airwaves. And since BPM is an important component of the larger ECM suites, you'll find us posting quite a bit of information on ways you can use BPM to create better processes and increase "enterprise visibility". As one of the Imagine employees likes to say, "Everything is a process".

And to that extent, we noticed Information Week has a nice piece on BPM, with some stats and metrics related to the forces driving BPM and some typical ROI scenarios.

"While the first waves of BPM adoption were about automation and integration, the focus today is increasingly on regulatory compliance, business and application agility, and optimization. Driven by mandates such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Basel II, companies are turning to BPM to enforce policies and procedures in financial reporting and other core processes that are material to company results. This is a natural for BPM because the systems are designed to document and model processes, apply explicit policies and procedures (as enforced by rules), execute in a consistent hands-off fashion, and track results."

ECM Helps Consolidate Content from Multiple Systems

Mark Vernon reports on the ECM consolidation practices of French insurer Macif.

The quote below references some of what we're doing with FileNet customers --using Content Federation Services to help roll out P8 functionality that can leverage other content repositiories. You'll see more descriptions of ECM technology as the "integration layer" as CFS matures and SOA takes a stronger hold in the enterprise.

"..the new integration technology—in this case, FileNet—acts as a layer over the legacy infrastructure, dipping into old repositories and databases, and presenting them to users from a single, integrated interface."

Enterprise Architecture and SOA drive savings

SOA-driven successes continue to emerge. And the overarching message continues to be the "reusability" of applications and development. And the catalyst for this reuse? You guessed it, Web services. Con-Way and Guardian both tout the cost savings gained by creating a standards-based enterprise architecture, with Guardian's chief architect clearly stating the ROI.

"We put a strong business case together, approved by the board and CEO, suggesting that we'd save 30 percent of our development costs going forward," he said. "It took 28 months—we finished in the first quarter of last year—and, since then, we've added more than 20 applications and we have seen the savings that we proposed."

Proposal to develop SOA Framework for ECM Emerges

AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) has announced a project to develop a service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework to speed the interoperability between ECM systems. In their words, the initiative "aims to develop standards to address the growing need for a common integration layer between different ECM-related systems and applications."

Sounds like a good idea, but I would guess a number of integration, SOA, and ESB vendors would tell you the standards and technologies already exist to achieve this. Even things like CMSPI (Content Manager Service Provider Interface) can help companies deploy FileNet and Documentum portlets inside of portal frameworks from BEA, Plumtree, and Vignette. We'll see where this goes. My guess is it won't be a technology issue with the SOA and Web services infrastructure, but a process and implementation challenge.

SOA promotes reuse in Professional Services

Periodically, you'll see posts on what I would call "ECM enablement". Things like industry standards, programming languages, and other best practices. In this case, it's Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). CNET's enterprise software blog had a quick snippet on how IBM's professional services group is seeing results from SOA-driven design and development. Conceptually, SOA is really simple. Figuring out the organizational impact of SOA and the change it will bring is not. One thing is certain however, the companies that begin to bulk up their SOA capabilities now will be better prepared to adapt to customers' needs and competitive pressures.