Much has gone on in the ECM World in the past six weeks:
- AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management(aka the ECM association) held its international conference in Philadelphia
- EMC hosted EMC World where it rebranded its ECM product offerings as Information Intelligence Group and announced new, deeper and/or more integrated relationships with SAP, Microsoft Sharepoint and Informatica
- Alfresco, not only held a capacity-filled Meetup in New York City (and in other cities around the world), but it also released a book, Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise Content Management
- Microsoft launched Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 for the Enterprise
- Open Text won the 2010 SAP® Pinnacle Award, announced full support for Sharepoint 2010 ,bought long-time Documentum partner Burntsand, and showed a 5% loss in license revenue.
As far as I know, the only things these independent events have in common is that they occurred during the same general time period, that they are all ECM-related. and that they, in combination,shed light on what could impact anyone who works with, or uses, ECM technologies. To cut to the chase, be it good or bad, this is a time of big change.
Newer ECM technologies are finding their places under the spotlight while older technologies are abandoning ship, changing their names, and/or latching on to the coat tails of others so that they might remain relevant. Still, they're losing market share. This is happening not so much because the technologies are outdated, but because their caretakers are either so indifferent, or so confused, that they have forgotten to champion their products' most powerful features.
Here's a quick rundown of recent happenings:
At the AIIM Conference, Sharepoint was the undisputed belle of the ball. Microsoft's keynote and breakout sessions were jam-packed; and, in one case, not even a third simulcast-overflow room had enough seating. The attendees lined-up to see Redmond's dog and pony show and they weren't disappointed.
Microsoft's vision for Sharepoint is clear, "ECM for the masses." They presented their road map and a slew of user-friendly applications and interfaces which make the content creation and collaboration experience look more pleasurable than burdensome.
Wearing my journalist's hat, I took part in a Customer Immersion Experience demo. I was delighted with what I found. I wanted to take Sharepoint back to the office, so that we could first play with it (it has a feature like Facetime)and then use it to start working together more efficiently in real time.
And while my Microsoft nay-sayer friends might cringe about my new-found enthusiasm for Sharepoint and Office 2010, they'll have to get used to it. I predict the masses will follow. I'll get into the specifics of why in another post.
Now, Microsoft didn't create the only ECM-related splash at AIIM. There was a CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) panel whose participants included Alfresco CTO (and Documentum co-founder) John Newton; IBM's Emerging Standards Manager Al Brown; Microsoft's Sharepoint ECM Program Manager Ethan Gur-esh, and Oracle's WebCenter & WebLogic Portal Manager Ryan McVeigh. For many, this was a great opportunity to find an answer to a question I hear asked pretty often- namely, what's all the fuss about CMIS? It was also a great opportunity to catch a few laughs; the panelists not only made their points but they also ribbed one another as they discussed the new standard.
I spent a few minutes talking with the Alfresco team and was amazed to hear at how quickly they are amassing clients. Clients like Harvard Business School Publishing (I remember seeing them at (Documentum) Momentum Conferences years ago), Cisco, FOX and even the U.S. Government.
To any one who knows Java, Spring and Document Management, I say think about learning Alfresco; there will be an unsatisfied demand for skilled workers for quite a while.
EMC was also at AIIM. Their PR Department had sent me an invite to meet with Whitney Tidmarsh to get a "sneak peak", of some sort. I was thrilled to receive it. I figured that maybe someone at the company had read my blog and wanted to give me something good to say about Documentum . I offered them a spot in my schedule, but they never replied.
Still, I wondered what the scoop might be, so I went to listen to Whitney's announcement the next day. What was it? Tidmarsh announced the formation of a Leadership Council for Information Advantage which will offer expert guidance and best practices as to how information can be transformed to deliver business value. It seems that the council will release reports and write white papers.
I'm sorry to say that I didn't hear any hoots and hollers at this session, but the release of a report or case study would have to be exceptional to render that sort of response. This is somewhat unfortunate because while the idea of leveraging information to gain strategic advantage isn't revolutionary(think about your most basic, undergrad business course), the introduction of new, powerful tools to manipulate and usurp value from the data could be. Imagine Steve Jobs introducing something like this, there would be an iPad and graphs and pinch technology. IT pro's would be psyched to show it iff to their users.
This was nothing like that; instead it was a kind of dry conversation. I'm not suggesting that there wasn't value in what was said, it was simply too hard to hear it. Former Documentum CEO, Jeff Miller never had these sort of problems.
And please note, I'm not pointing my finger at Whitney for this. I blame the packaging of the message (assuming the content was there) and the lack of imagination. After all, how many peopleline up to read reports/white-papers? E-mail me if you'd stand in line to be in that audience.
A few other things at AIIM caught me by surprise. The first was when I heard someone(Alan Pelz-Sharpe?) say that Content Management has finally arrived and claimed its place in the enterprise. The second was when Pelz Sharpe predicted that those at the conference (AIIM members) would probably enjoy job security throughout their lifetimes (because of their ECM expertise.)
I wanted to ask him if he was including Documentum specialists. Has he not seen the chart from Indeed.com that illustrates a steady decline in the number of Documentum job postings? (I never did catch up with Alan but I'd bet that he'd say that what happens with Documentum isn't necessarily indicative of what goes on in the rest of the industry.
So, is ECM dead or alive? I think it depends on whom you ask, what benefits and features a vendor has to offer, and on how the vendor positions its offerings.
Customers want to (and must) do more and more with their content and ECM is finally a term that they recognize. The opportunity for vendors is to deliver and delight (or not).
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