Yes We Can!

By now it's clear that those three words are the chant of the American majority. The promise of possibility has won over the voice of fear; and the idea that big business can keep you safe and secure (think about your 401k, your job, your insurance company) has all but vanished.

So why am I talking about this on an ECM blog? Because I think that Generation X,Y and the Millenials have been saying "Yes We Can" in the workplace for quite a long time. They've stuck their noses up at, or simply ignored, the corporate voices who have tried to keep it all behind the firewall; they've installed third-party applications like AIM and Talk and accessed their Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts on company hardware regardless of policy. I've heard IT Managers from companies as large as Pfizer say that they know that people are sharing their music collections at the office and admit that they can't police it all. And even if IT policies could keep folks from free-wheeling on their desktops, there are always iPhone, Blackberrys, or PALMs that are becoming more and more able to get the job done. And if you try to tell these generations that they can't use their personal devices in the workplace. they won't argue, their behavior will speak for them, "Yes We Can."

So what are Corporate Officers to do when they're charged with the duties of keeping Information safe, secure, and compliant; when it's their responsibility to insure that only certain folks get to view/and or alter certain documents, when "sharing" and collaboration and workflow have to be controlled?

They can try buying bigger and bigger sticks or building thicker and taller walls OR they can acquire new toys that will let their end users play safely.

That's what EMC's banking on with CenterStage.

Now the hard part about introducing a new 2.0 technology (be it enterprise or web) from an end-user's perspective, is that the new offering has to be at least as cool as what they're using right now. People will be reluctant to surrender their freedom in exchange for compliance. The good news is that if the new toy is better than what they've already got; they'll jump all over it, they'll do it in masses, and they'll do it now. No one will have to walk around with a yard stick. They'll be no need for an evangelist. Think about how many people flocked from MySpace to FaceBook. If ECM vendors do the 2.0 stuff right, this can be their story.

That being said, I'm waiting to see how EMC customers take to CenterStage. IT folks clearly love the concept because they haven't gotten to play with WEB 2.0 toys in the workplace. But in an enterprise 2.0 world success is going to be about end-user adoption; and those end-users aren't going to be the folks who went to the library to check-out books as kids, they're going to be the ones who watched their moms go to Barnes and Noble, the ones who use Amazon Kindles today.

This leaves EMC, EMC-enthusiasts and EMC competitors with quite a challenge. XConomy said this about EMC's introduction of CenterStage:

Depending on what kind of person you are, you can see this as an ironic co-opting and watering-down of the Web 2.0 movement's ideals of open collaboration-many Web 2.0 technologies were born, after all, in direct opposition to the rigid communication structures of big-company bureaucracies-or as an encouraging vindication of those ideals, and as a sign that corporate America is finally listening to its workers.

And EMC seems to be aware of the fact that they are/were in need of a better front-end. In fact maybe that's partly why CenterStage's Essentials edition is/will be FREE.

"It's critical that we come out with something like this, just to keep people engaged," says Karin Ondricek, an EMC senior manager for product marketing who recently walked me through today's "6.5? release of Documentum. "You can have the world's greatest content management system but if people aren't using it, you have a lot of great information not getting into the system, and a lot of checks and balances not getting used, and a lot of human error and waste."

-from XConomy

I'm eager to see what end-users think of CenterStage and Documentum 6.5. Will EMC pay as much attention to the words "Yes We Can" as it does to "Keep Us Safe". The latter may pay the bills, and even win a bunch of sales in a "necessary purchases only recessionary moment;  but it won't build a big future.

 

TAGS: Documentum, EMC, CenterStage, MySpace, FaceBook, XConomy, "Yes We Can", AIM, TALK, Twitter

Comments

[shiningarts]

CenterStage. At first glance I thought what a grandiose name! I expected your article to be as lightweight as the "Yes We Can" crowd of mindless youngsters we see floating around. As one of the "Keep Us Safe" generation, I could not imagine that the demogogueing power of rapid mass communications could completely change the political landscape almost overnight.

Even as a former EMC consultant, I did not understand the real intent of eRoom. All I could see was that it requires carting around zillions of login IDs and passwords to be a part of the paltry eRoom offerings, which hardly provided any significant benefits. I am glad to see EMC is introducing CenterStage to replace eRoom finally.

In light of some of the Twitter applications through which the "Yes We Can" zombies were able to successfully mount last year's historical changes, I should have faith that CenterStage can transform EMC into a household name. However, EMC can't compete with the other popular Twitter applications out in the open, instead, it can be successful by promoting the "Keep Us Safe" framework integrating CenterStage, Documentum, and its premiere storage architecture seamlessly.

I know there are a lot of disagreements about whether Documentum is indeed a leading CMS system or not, in part, due to its ornery performance and interface. Remember, before Microsoft was established as a household name, it was cranky and it still is. Since Microsoft Sharepoint is too busy to become a sharable thick client point, it does not have any chance to be a Twitter any time soon. Whereas, if EMC can mash the "YWC" and "KUS" camps together successfully, then it can potentially become the next new three letter kid on the block, EMC.

Considering EMC's fairly consistent track record of integrating acquired applications, Chuck Hollis' Twitter theory and Joe Tucci's ILM strategy are not sounding too bad after all.