Brilliant Leap

Islands of Incompatible ECM Systems BE GONE!

Islands of incompatible ECM systems be gone! so say the major (IBM, EMC, Alfresco, OpenText, SAP (an ECM vendor?), and Oracle) ECM vendors. (Would Microsoft even been known as an ECM vendor two years ago?) These vendors, who have traditionally competed for bandwidth at client sites, have come together to launch an Enterprise Content Management standards effort called "Content Management Interoperability Services" (CMIS, for short).

Once adopted and implemented, CMIS promises to make it easier to move content across disparate content repositories. It will also make it less costly and burdensome for developers to create applications that leverage Content Management repositories.

Why have competing companies decided to play nice? It could be that they've put what's good for the ECM industry ahead of fighting for market share; but it's more likely that they've come to believe that the "E" in ECM can't be fully realized (and capitalized upon) until interoperability is made possible.

Free Toy Friday

While nearly all the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) bloggers are celebrating the birth of CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services), I've decided to blog about something else. (I'll cover CMIS over the weekend.) It's Friday, after all, and if you're anything like me, you're tired, and something fun has a much better chance of winning your attention. 

Documentum Documentation Uncovered

For those of you who may not be logging in to the EMC developer network, you may want to do so this week. EMC evangelist Alan Z. has made two interesting announcements:

The eCTD/ Document Management Connection- What say the vendors

I asked a question on Linkedin a few weeks back, namely "What questions would you ask an eCTD publisher to determine a high level of expertise?"  I got some interesting answers.

Before I go on, it may be worthwhile to explain what an eCTD (Electronic Common Technical Document) is; it's the vehicle that Pharmaceutical,  Biotechnology, and other Life Sciences firms use to transfer regulatory information to the FDA and its international counterparts. It's made up of five modules:

1. Administrative Information and Prescribing Information
2. Common Technical Document Summaries
3. Safety
4. Nonclinical Study Reports
5. Clinical Study Reports

Each of these modules contains a host of documents and making sure that the right information is put in the right place in the right format is an ordeal. Consider that one eCTD can be made up of nearly 6000 files and that an eCTD supplement can be made up of as many as 15,000. Put the wrong stuff in the wrong place and the FDA rejects it; the approval of the new drug application is delayed, stock holders get angry, and those who might benefit from the therapy have to suffer and wait.