The Enterprise Content Management Blog

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

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

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

Top 5 Reasons A Content Management Company Will Go Out Of Business

Several months ago a content management vendor told me that the oncoming recession was causing it problems with revenue generation. I said perhaps, but it's also possible its problems were related to the fact that its customers were really angry and really vocal. It's too easy to blame market conditions without taking a hard look in the mirror sometimes.

For this top 5 list I won't name any names, but I encourage everyone to try to clean their own closets occasionally. Maybe these items will add up to survival in either a recession or peak market conditions. The top reasons a content management company will go out of business:

• No. 5: You forgot to eat your own dog food. I'm amazed at the number of companies that offer content management options while their own Web content and marketing materials haven't been updated since 1997. If you have the teams that can deliver for your customers, let them practice on your real estate first. Would you buy a suit from a man wearing rags? Maybe, but many people wouldn’t.

• No. 4: Your customers hate you. The best technology in the world won't save you if your own customers tell everyone that you're a jerk. Please don't ever tell your customers that it's their fault if they can't figure out how to use your products. Yes, content management is not rocket science, and yes, some people are amazingly nontechnical. That doesn't excuse elitism, and if the words "The customer is just stupid" have ever come out of your mouth, you may deserve to go out of business. It sounds like I'm making this up. I'm not.

• No. 3: You try to develop everything in-house. The market is moving fast, your R&D teams can't always keep up. This isn't necessarily a weakness -- sometimes you need to pick your differentiators and source the other items. If you find that you're missing release deadlines again and again on items readily available from other vendors or as open source, please evaluate your business model. You're burning cash for fun, not profit.

• No. 2: You disregard trends. I'll say it again. The market moves fast and what's on the horizon sometimes seems just plain silly at first. But we've all heard the famous miscalculation that the world only has need for about five computers -- the smartest people have made mistakes. For those who have told me that "Green is just a fad" and "Blogs are overrated," (both of those are direct, recent quotes) be careful of what you dismiss. Don't fall behind your competitors because you personally drive a Hummer and wear polar bear fur earmuffs (that's a green reference, people). Fads and trends have a way of catching on, becoming important, and filling real business needs. Be open to change, and maybe your revenue will grow.

• No. 1: Your employees turn over faster than the toilet paper is changed in the corporate restroom. Whether the job market is tight or technology workers seem a dime a dozen, employees are the face of your company. If they're leaving in droves, or you're replacing them quarterly, it's a morale killer and your customers sense it.

Send me your reasons for part two and we'll post them next week.

Cross-posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati tags: content+management, open+source, business+strategy, information+week, CMS

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

Enterprise 2.0 Is Not A Fad

 KPMG just released a paper titled, Enterprise 2.0: Fad or Future? Nice title, you almost had me. It's really comical to think a big consulting firm would even hint at the notion of a new set of  technologies being a fad. New technologies mean re-engineering, lots of heavy lifting, and lots of human resources, right? Not necessarily.

This enterprise is different than your father's enterprise. This one is lightweight, it's flexible, and it ignores long implementations. So why all the fuss over enterprise 2.0 and its older sibling Web 2.0?

Most analysts will tell you it's because this stuff is gonna  be big business -- and soon. The dollars set to pour into the so-called "Enterprise Social Software" market  is projected in 2011 to grow from US$ 226 million in 2007 to more than US$ 707 million.

It's interesting to see the big integrators putting on their best Gen X and Y impressions, all of sudden scrambling to be perceived as thought leaders. The reality is most big consulting firms will ride the enterprise coattails of the major software vendors, comfortably sitting back and cherry-picking the opportunities already seeded by vendors who've sprinkled bits and pieces of Web 2.0 throughout their platform.

For the record, I actually thought the paper was informative, especially the case studies from some of the big brands. What I couldn't figure out was why the social software categories were so light on content and were mainly geared towards the B2C side.

Download the full publication here.

Listen to the podcast (MP3, 7m48secs, 7.21MB)

Technorati Tags: KPMG, enterprise+2.0, e2.0, social+software, enterprise+social+software, social+media, social+computing, web+2.0

Still Not Convinced About RSS Behind The Firewall?

If you're not, take a look at a recent document I received from Scott Niesen, head marketer at Attensa. If you don't know Attensa, you're in for a treat. Their new feedreader tool sits nicely inside Outlook and brings a unique spin to feed reading via their "River of News" view and AttentionStream™ technology. 

 

Through ongoing analysis of AttentionStream™ data, including the time and frequency that feeds are accessed and articles read, deleted and ignored, Attensa displays feeds in a prioritized list based on the likelihood that they will be of interest to the reader. Subscriptions can be displayed in a "River of News" view that simulates a single news feed, regardless of how many RSS feeds

And Scott and I had a good exchange about sharing some of Attensa's inner RSS workings. When I told him I should just blog the whole document, he quickly fired back that "marketing is all about experiments and a little risk."

Well said.

 
Attensa Screenshot

Cross-posted on WOW Feed

Technorati Tags: Attensa, RSS, blogs, enterprise+RSS, tools, feedreaders, rss+readers

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

Enterprise 2.0 Rave Offers Readiness Survey

 If you want to get the ins and outs of Enterprise 2.0, jump over to the Enterprise 2.0 Rave and check out the program.The organizers have decided to host the event virtually (May 21-22) with webcasts featuring various roundtable discussions.You'll recognize most of the folks, even if you're just a casual observer of social media and Web 2.0.

They've also assembled an enterprise 2.0 readiness survey you can access here and plan to share the results during one of the sessions.

Technorati tags: enterprise+2.0, enterprise+2.0+rave, web+2.0, e2+0, tech+events, technology, business+2.0

Catching Up On Some AIIM Thoughts

I'm way behind getting this up but wanted to get some thoughts up for what it's worth.  Most of my AIIM updates a few weeks ago were via Twitter, which was a good exercise in conference blogging since most of it was done using my Samsung i-730 via SMS.

As far as the show,I came away sort of underwhelmed.I made some good contacts and met some fellow bloggers, but the show's excitement seemed muted. I kept digging for some real news or slivers of innovation as I circled the ECM vendor stations. Mostly I came up empty. Yeah, Oracle talked up Stellent and yes EMC was pitching platform updates, but that's just a day in the life of an enterprise software company. And outside of an audio announcement of FileNET's mock trial, they were incognito except for an IBM booth on the OnDemand (print) side. Yawn. Not surprisingly, most of the innovation came from hungrier solution providers and early-stage companies trying to make a name for themselves.

All that aside, I did get the sense there were real buyers roving the show floor. The Attensa guys (more on them later) confirmed my hunch saying the show provided real customers with real budgets..unlike what their colleagues experienced at the Web 2.0 Expo.

I only attended a few sessions and those were just as advertised - very focused and very topical. Luckily I was also fortunate enough to be in Xerox's eDiscovery roundtable, a very fluid session that was not only in-depth but also informative thanks to a good mix of analysts, columnists, and legal practitioners. Here's a link to the podcast. Thanks to Becky Dziedzic at Xerox for her hard work organizing the session.

< Photo | John Mancini and me >

The other thing I kept thinking was Questex Media, producer of the AIIM show, should take a page out of FAST's book and create an online community and year-round blog for the show. I just think it's ironic that one of the largest content shows around lacks any real online horsepower and savvy. There should be plenty of conversations taking place..where's the social networking? Here? Looks like that was for the press only. Note to the organizers: Give your audience a voice and let your community interact. We all might learn something.

The highlights for me were as followed:

• Xerox's new media push ( Ok, I'm sucking up a bit but their Second Life launch was interesting and their panel was impressive)
• Attensa's RSS platform - it's a three dog race between Newsgator, KnowNow, and Attensa.
• The Microsoft Solution Provider Pavilion - K2.Net, ClearView,  Meridio , and Russ Stalters' firm were a few that stood out. 
  
   
  < The Attensa team >

Technorati tags: AIIM, microsoft, ECM, ecm+vendors, oracle, stellent, EMC+documentum, john+mancini, attensa, clearview+ecm, k2.net, meridio, boston

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

Wanna Be a Part of The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Network?

I saw the powerful effects of activating a network recently in a matter of days.I guess we bloggers are a shameless bunch of self promoters. Give us a network badge or two, some portable JavaScript and we're in!

Case in point. I asked some reputable software and technology bloggers a short time ago to join the Enterprise Content Management Network, a FeedBurner-hosted network that aggregates members' blogs and splits the ad revenue. You regular readers will know most of the names, but recent additions you might not know include C3 Associates and the Tower Software guys.

Now none of us are getting rich anytime soon sharing ad revenues,but hopefully we'll give some fledgling bloggers a chance to be heard and learn some stuff about each other along the way. Maybe at some point we can have something like Social Media Today.(sigh)

On a side note, I noticed the network has a little Google juice as it's starting to appear organically. (roughly #25)

And if you haven't done so yet, grab this OPML file and you'll have a single RSS feed for some great insight and commentary. Thanks to everyone who joined thus far..you're a talented group.

P.S. Send me a note if you want to join. You'll look darn good with your blog featured in our widget ;)

Technorati tags: enterprise+content+management+network, ECM, feedburner+ad+network, feedburner, google+juice, internet+advertising, tower+software, C3+Associates, web+2.0, online+communities

Microsoft, The ECM Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

 I caught wind of this Microsoft landing page (Office Online) via one of Forrester's blogs written by Kyle McNabb.

I'm reading the first passage and I'm thinking this is good. I'll have access to my big unwieldy ECM islands with a warm and fuzzy Sharepoint interface configured just for my department.

"..existing FileNet customers can now take advantage of the ease of use, familiar interface, and favorable price points of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to extend the benefits of ECM to every employee in their organization.."
                                                                                          

But wait, keep reading and boom! The software wolf in sheep's clothing appears and pitches to replace your FileNET infrastructure with a discounted version of SharePoint.

"Until June 30th, 2007, Microsoft is running a promotion to offer a 25 percent discount off the regular price of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and CALs with purchase of three-year Software Assurance (SA) to FileNet customers that migrate their FileNet ECM solution to Microsoft's ECM solution."

I won't beat the dead horse when it comes to Redmond versus the other ECM vendors. Kyle describes at least one of Microsoft's characterizations well enough.

"Being good at managing business-content - project documents created in Word, financial plans created in Excel, sales presentations created in PowerPoint - doesn't automatically translate into being good in high volume transactional-content processes such as mortgage origination; new account opening; claims processing; case management; or underwriting."

Fair enough, although I'm sure there's some Microsoft solution providers who'd beg to differ. Kyle backed off a bit to close.

"To their credit, Microsoft's aligned themselves with a few vendors that understand these high volume transactional-content processes including Hyland Software, KnowledgeLake, Kofax, Captaris, and Tecmasters."

That's a respectable set of vendors but certainly not household enterprise software names. In any case, the wars between SharePoint and the incumbent ECM'ers is good for everyone..breeds competitiveness.  

Technorati tags: microsoft, ibm+filenet, ibm, ecm, microsoft+ecm, sharepoint, MOSS+2007, kofax, hyland, knowledgelake, captaris, tecmasters, forrester+research, emc+vendors, kyle+mcnabb

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

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

Web 2.0..The Machine is Us/ing Us

Browsing through Euan Semple's blog, whom I met for the first time in San Diego, I noticed this great Web 2.0 video from Michael Wesch of Kansas State University. It's a good depiction of how far we've progressed on the web. 

<BTW, Euan's the guy in the white shirt below>

Technorati tags: web2.0, user+generated+content, blogs, Euan+Semple, xml, social+computing

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