I know. It has been a really long time since I posted on this blog. It has been a very busy last four years. Four years!!! I know!

Anyway, some things I was working on prevented me from blogging for most of that time and I needed to make sure I was ready. Once you get off the horse it can take a lot before you can get jump back on.

With that said I am launching a new presence on the web called “Getting Information Done”. My new home will attempt to discuss a broader set of topics related to managing information and data at significant scale. This will be bigger than ECM and not just about “Big Data”. I am thinking bigger than both of these.

I will be launching “Getting Information Done” on September 1, 2014. Keep a look out for some posts over the next couple of months as we put the finishing touches on “Getting Information Done”.

I look forward to the real race. For now, I’m taking practice laps.

For anyone who attended the 2010 AIIM expo + conference last week you had to wonder if this were really the “SharePoint Conference”. As I walked around the expo floor, besides the large SharePoint 2010 booth from Microsoft and large adjacent KnowledgeLake booth, almost every booth referred to SharePoint on their signs or signaled that their product or service offering supported SharePoint. Additionally, with an entire track (the SharePoint 2010 Summit) dedicated to SharePoint related topics one might wonder what the future holds for the AIIM expo + conference.

One thing surprising to me was the way Microsoft chose to configure their booth with only an “experience classroom” and partner pavilion. They did not have any Microsoft manned stations to highlight, discuss, and demonstrate how SharePoint 2010 supported ECM and records management in a much deeper way with the upcoming release. Another surprising omission was lack of promotion for Microsoft’s cloud Software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). I would have though Microsoft would have really focused on BPOS as an offering to take advantage of the interest in cloud computing offerings.

The cloudiest vendor was SpringCM. This SaaS vendor was completely focused on Cloud as the answer to fast and easy deployment of ECM. Their offering sounds pretty compelling but I wonder how this offering play with large global enterprises that have a significant investment in SharePoint or some other ECM solution like Documentum or Livelink. I think SpringCM has a window of opportunity but will start bumping up against the Microsoft BPOS offering when Microsoft releases the SharePoint 2010 version of BPOS.

I did not see any other vendors who really talked about a credible cloud based offerings (delivered in a “pay-per-use and self-service way” as defined in my previous post) on the exposition floor. Alfresco points to hosting partners which provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for hosting Alfresco “in the cloud” but after a quick look at the partner sites it looks like most are really just providing off premise hosting for an Alfresco implementations as opposed to a true pay-per-use cloud offering.

I attended the keynote session entitled “Reinvent Work, Collaboration, and Innovation in the 21st Century” by Google’s Cyrus Mistry. I was somewhat disappointed since his talk really did not focus on leveraging the Cloud to transform how businesses manage information. He really focused more on how Google is using Gmail and Google Apps to create a culture of information sharing which is a very laudable goal.

What was disappointing was Cyrus’ recommendation “not to waste time” deciding which files to keep and which to delete and to just keep everything. Just because storage is getting cheaper and for Google the solution to any search problem is Google Search does not relieve organization from sound records management accountability. James Watson’s recent post on the AIIM ERM Community talks about the rationale for appropriately deleting unneeded content regularly. I think the folks at Google should read the blogs and Wikis at the AIIM ERM Community regularly.

Until next year…

Will the 2010 AIIM expo + conference be cloudy?

I am looking forward to the 2010 AIIM expo + conference this year after missing the conference the last two years. I always learn something new and it is a great chance to meet some really smart people.

One topic I am interested exploring extensively is how the ECM market is responding to the “Cloud Computing”. There has been quite a bit of hype over the last couple of years and it will be interesting to see how far the ECM vendors have gone to close the gap between myth and reality.

First let’s make sure we are all on the same page. I will use Forrester’s definition for cloud computing: “A standardized IT capability, such as software, application platform, or infrastructure, delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use and self-service way.” Pretty straight forward, right, then why all the confusion?

Microsoft and the Cloud

Microsoft has been heavily promoting both their Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Windows Azure. These are two distinctly different offerings with BPOS delivered as software as a service (SaaS) and Windows Azure delivered as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). So how are these two offerings different? Here is a simple definition of these two offerings:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

IaaS (Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Microsoft’s Azure) provide virtual computing environments allowing customers to use web service interfaces to launch instances of operating systems and associated blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider’s administrative console to start, stop, and access and configure their virtual servers and storage.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS):

With SaaS the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure and their software product over the internet for use as a service on demand. Good examples of SaaS offerings include web-based email and applications from Google, CRM (sales management & reporting) from SalesForce.com, SharePoint, Exchange Email and Office Communicator from Microsoft with BPOS.

Other ECM Vendors and The Cloud

No doubt the other ECM vendors at the 2010 AIIM conference will be talking about their Cloud offerings. Looking at the conference agenda and reading the descriptions of the keynote sessions the only session which discusses the Cloud is the keynote entitled “Reinvent Work, Collaboration, and Innovation in the 21st Century” by Google’s Cyrus Mistry.

Reviewing the conference sessions, I did not really see many sessions (only a few) addressing ECM in the Cloud. So it will be interesting to see what is being talked about on the exposition floor by the ECM vendors. When I searched for “Cloud Strategy” on EMC’s website the recommended link in the search results was Virtual Computing Environment coalition (VCE) which looks like it is targeted at enterprises who want to create a “cloud-like” utility computing capability within their firewalls also known as a “Private Cloud”. I will be interested to see if EMC is working on a similar SaaS offerings to Microsoft’s BPOS.

My goal this week will be to see who really “get’s it” and understands the implications and challenges of managing your corporate information in the Cloud. I want to see who has already thought through the personal data privacy and e-Discovery implications. I will be really excited if I find someone who has gone the extra mile and defined an implementation pattern and methodology for leveraging the Cloud for ECM. I am not holding my breath on this one.

I’ll let you know what I find out this week.

The following is the first post I made on the AIIM ERM Community Expert Blogs last week.

Why I do this? (Part 1)

Ever wonder how or why you wind up doing what you do? Sometimes people set out on their career journey with a very specific destination in mind and carefully plan the development of that career along with very specific goals. That is not what happened for me.

I fell into the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business purely by chance. Over 30 years ago my career goal was to become a pilot and I achieved that goal after completing my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering and successfully completing flight training in the US Navy.

I had an interesting career in the Navy, got to see the world, had some amazing experiences, and met some amazing people. Through my experiences I decided that flying for one of the airlines was not something I would enjoy once I retired. In 1988 as I looked at what might be the next big thing, I decided to go back to school and retool. I went back to my alma mater, University of Florida (Go Gators!), and completed a Master of Science in Computer Science.

I was lucky enough to serve as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a Navy aircraft research and development organization before I retired from the Navy. During my time as CIO I saw how critical the “I” in that job title really was. Information was critical to the success of the research and testing of the next generation aircraft and weapon systems.

After retiring I joined an IT software and services company that had a very robust workflow solution. This is the part where serendipity comes in. The DoD 5015.2 records management standard had just been issued and one of our customers wanted a document management solution, which would also comply with the brand new DoD 5015.2 standard. This was my chance to create a new integrated document, records, and workflow management solution using PC Docs, Provenance’s ForeMost, and our workflow software. This became one of the first integrated document management suites (IDAM as coined by Gartner) on the market and was the first integrated suite to become DoD 5015.2 certified. I guess I was a pioneer of sorts.

Anyway, I went on to become the President of the records management company (which became TrueArc), created AutoRecords and was awarded a patent, and provided the first DoD 5015.2 certified integrated records management solution for Microsoft’s SharePoint 2001 (version 1). I also successfully led the acquisition of TrueArc by Documentum in late 2002.

Over the last 8 years or so I have been focused on creating solutions, which help businesses effectively manage information and extract the most value from one of their most important assets. Although I have focused primarily on leveraging SharePoint as an information management platform over the last couple of years I have been working on effective ways of using Documentum and SharePoint together.

So, as you can see, I never really started out planning to be in the ECM business. In some way I fell into this career. But I really didn’t answer the hypothetical question “Why I do this?” yet. But I will.

In Part 2, I will delve more deeply into the answer to this question…

The new AIIM Communities online platform went live today. Most of the AIIM Expert Bloggers already have made posts to the Electronic Records Management (ERM) and Enterprise 2.0 communities.

I am honored to join such a distinguished group of expert bloggers. We will be writing regularly and I really look forward to reading my fellow bloggers’ posts. My first post, “Why I do this: Part 1”, is up and I will have another post up later today. I plan to write about the AIIM expo + conference next week.

Let me know what you think!

Some Volume Licensing Customers will be able to download the English products starting April 27 and customers will be able to purchase the new products through Microsoft partners starting May 1.

BetterECM will be in Philadelphia this week at the AIIM expo + conference and will be spending some time with the Microsoft team and Partners.

So, besides trying to climb back up on the BetterECM blog horse and start writing more frequently, I now will have Bryant Duhon cracking the whip to make sure I get my weekly AIIM ERM Expert Blog post in on time. This should be fun and the most exciting thing will be to see what my “expert” colleagues will have to say.

If you have topics that you would like me to tackle or questions you would like me to try and answer please add a comment and let me know. As most of my readers know, I am not bashful and love to take on challenging topics and issues head-on.

This should be fun!

For those of you who attended my presentation in New York at LegalTech  this year I wanted to thank you for your patience. I had planned to make my slides available some time ago but was overcome by “life” and the demands of my “day job”.

Anyway, the presentation was well attended and I had some great feedback from a many people. Thanks for your thoughtful comments and ideas related to my presentation.

I have uploaded the slides along with my notes which can be downloaded here.

I would love to hear what you think of the ideas I presented and the approach of opening a Greenfield and closing down the Landfill. I am thinking of taking these concepts even further and wonder if you think that would be useful. Maybe a book????  Not sure but would love to hear what you think.

Well, looks like 2010 may usher in the resumption of  the consolidation in the ECM marketplace. It will be interesting to see who will be next.

With this acquisition of Mimosa Systems, Iron Mountain moves more closer to a credible Cloud provider of long term electronic records storage by providing a robust on-ramp onto the Cloud storage infrastructure.

The question will be, “Can Iron Mountain provide a credible Cloud based solution which includes the necessary services to successfully move customers into the Cloud? Having the storage infrastructure and now the onramp for email, SharePoint, and files is one thing. The real test will be delivering the end-to-end services necessary for large organizations to adopt the Cloud and adapt information management practices. These services need to help address data privacy concerns and e-Discovery practices for example.

Here is the link: Introducing Document Management in SharePoint 2010

Thanks Adam!

I will be presenting the opening keynote at LegalTech 2010 in New York city on February 1st.

My presentation entitled "Don’t Build Your E-Discovery Program on a Digital Landfill" will highlight some of the challenges in addressing information management within the EDRM model, show the correlation between sound practices and successful E-Discovery programs, and to provide specific action steps attendees can use to manage digital information overflow.

I feel like I will be preaching to the choir since most attendees already know how challenging this problem is but they will come away from my session with some actionable recommendations to help get control of the mounds of information at their companies.

Hope to see you there…

I participated on the morning panel, “ECM as a Career – Defining the Profession”, with Connie Moore from Forrester and Stuart Hubbard with Schiff Hardin. Jeetu Patel from Doculabs moderated and did a good job of keeping things moving.

One way I judge the value of events I am asked to participate in is if I learn something new. I learned a lot and found the questions from the over 100 attendees in the audience thought provoking and interesting. As panelists we strived to share our experiences and provide help and guidance for those looking to advance their careers in what I called “Information Governance”.

Stacey and Joyce did a fantastic job organizing the event by inviting interesting panelists and providing a great opportunity for the attendees to learn and network with others in the industry.

They are planning to do this next year and I encourage anyone to who is interested in advancing their Information Governance career to plan and attend.

Well done!

Hat tip to Arpan Shah who has a great post with his top Office 2010 Tech Preview Features.

One of things I am working on is building a business case from the business perspective on migrating from older versions of Office to Office 2010. I know the business case is there but would love your feedback and help to start identifying business scenarios and the potential ROI from a business user perspective which would benefit from the Office 2007 and new Office 2010 features.

On the surface, implementing SharePoint as an enterprise content management solution seems simple and straightforward. After all, pop in your disk and, voila, SharePoint is installed. Yet, like every other single piece of information technology, deciding the proper role for SharePoint in your organization becomes complicated. Fast. How do you determine the role that SharePoint can play in your ECM strategy? We’re here to help.

SharePoint can, and will, play a key role in many organizations’ enterprise content management strategy. However, other than for some smaller companies, SharePoint is not an ECM infrastructure in and of itself; it needs to integrate with and be extended by other products for issues such as compliance, storage management, document imaging, etc. Discover how to leverage the capabilities of both SharePoint and ECM tools, including issues around interoperability. We’ll conclude with a look at potential return on investment.

To view the archived event click HERE. Hope you find it useful.

There is a new destination for those looking for SharePoint governance best practices and lessons learned from those of us in the trenches implementing SharePoint.

Check it out at: www.sharepointgovernance.org

I am pleased that I was asked to be one of the  peers on the site and look forward to sharing some of the lessons and best practices we have developed. I also look forward to learning form other peers and the “gurus” about how best to leverage SharePoint for managing information effectively.

The resulting environment provides the common framework required to ensure that system use aligns with organizational priorities and streamlines document and records management and collaboration efforts across the organization. This is not an application that is installed on some giant server in the the sky. Moving to a CII becomes a strategy and involves the journey to migrate from current reality to the future CII realization along with defining and providing services and support to the consumers and customers of the CII.

The primary characteristic of the CII is the ability to effectively manage electronic documents, electronic records, and other electronic information commonly referred to as unstructured data through their entire lifecycle. That lifecycle begins at creation or receipt and extends to the appropriate destruction at the end of that information asset’s life, based on business and compliance requirements.

The CII is not just technology but includes the necessary common processes and support models to effectively translate business requirements into information solutions by leveraging a consistent, predictable, and centrally managed set of technologies.

Typically the technical foundation of the CII will emerge based on the predominate technology deployed and in use within an enterprise. For many enterprises that technology will be Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, which is an integrated solution for managing the entire life cycle of different types of content, including documents, forms, images, email messages, instant messages, and more. Thanks to an intuitive user interface that integrates with common Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Office and Outlook, user acceptance and adoption should be high. This integration with familiar tools allows users to effectively manage information as an extension of their normal workload without having to significantly change the way they work.

In my next post I will discuss some of the dependencies and critical enablers for realizing the promise of moving to a Common Information Infrastructure.

With this post I wish all my readers a happy New Year and look forward to increasing the conversation about Better ECM in 2009.

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Why do I make this claim?

Well, in some instances small to midsize organizations will be able to deploy an ECM solution on one vendors’ technology. But in reality, most larger organizations have many different document management, web content management, records management, etc. technologies deployed.

Typically this happens because of mergers and acquisitions where each organization deployed different technologies over time. Or it happens because technologies were chosen at different time periods over the last 10-15 years. A good example of this phenomenon happens when an organization implemented web content management many years ago and then chose an ECM solution several years later. The ECM solution may not be from the same web content management chosen. Now most ECM vendors provide a complete set of functionality. Most have done this through acquisition of the different capabilities, but 10 years ago the most ECM leaders (EMC Documentum, IBM (FileNet), Oracle, Microsoft, and Open Text) did not have web content management.

My organization uses both Documentum and SharePoint. We also have a some Open Text, Interwoven, and Vingette deployed.

So what can you do? Pick one vendors’ technology and throw out the others over time? In some cases this strategy is not realistic.

In the next series of posts I will talk about moving to what I call a “Common Information Infrastructure”.

You must be thinking “Is this blog going to die?”

Well, 2008 has been a very busy and challenging year. I am finally taking some time off to rest and recharge. I have missed writing and sharing my thoughts and experiences.

I’ve found that writing posts for BetterECM helps me focus my thoughts and gain clarity around the challenges of making ECM better for a global company.  I also plan to share some of what I have been working on.

For those who kept checking and who did not delete the BetterECM RSS feed from their reader, I thank you!

So, with this new experience since moving to Houston under my belt I guess I can say I am really a Houstonian now.

Hat tip to Michael Gannotti for identifying this fantastic list of SharePoint Public Web Sites. I tune into Mike’s blog  regularly for great tips and innovative ideas on how to use SharePoint.

The real hat tip goes to Ian Morrish at Ian’s SharePoint Blog for compiling this list of public sites built on MOSS 2007. Ian also has a lists of great resources for SharePoint including a pretty extensive blog listing.

Thanks Ian!