Going to an OpenSource ECM World....

Install and Test My Open Source ECM Family

2009-10-29T01:07:00.000-07:00

Hello Folks,

Do you know one main advantage of OpenSource ECM Solution ? You can test it !

As ECM consultant / Integrator, I have to install, test, configure, use, modify many different solutions in differnt environment. But I have a BIG problem... I just have my XP dev machine and no test Server... Of course I can install all of this things in my computer... But I'm very limited by my hard disk space... And I prefer to dedicate my machine for dev only! I fed up sparing time... Futhermore I can't share my installation and best pratice configuration and my colleague can't help me and can't share their experience.

So what's the solution ? Virtualization of course!

That's why, since a few moment now, I start a collection of virtual OpenSource ECM Solution.

How ?

First, I have to find "Ready" VMWare Images. Indeed, I don't always have time to download and burn ISO images of operating systems and then create a VM image. It could be very long. So I was looking for a way to get VMWare images and then use them directly without having a VMWare Workstation installed on my computer. So I opted to retrieve images on sites like Http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ I have an external 320GB hard drive and a good ADSL internet connection.

Then to use them, I download VMWare (FREE) Player http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

I have all I want to start my collection. All of this for 0 € free of taxes and legally!

Now what's the menu boss ? SHARING !

Below, you can find presentation (or simple HOW-TO) to install my collection of OpenSource CM Solution. You will also find some important links.
PS : This installation is only for test purpose!

Configure Your Virtual Server

Ubuntu 9.04

Simple Installation

Alfresco
EzPublish (Work in progress)
Drupal (Work in progress)
GateIn
Jahia
KnowledgeTree
Nuxeo

Advanced Installation

Alfresco (Work in progress)
Nuxeo (Work in progress)

In a near future(If all goes right...), I will share other presentations on specific aspect...(LDAP Connexion, Database configuration, continuous integration, clustering...)

With all my CM family, I can create my private network! Test combination, configuration, new version or just create prototype and share it.

Of course, I can't start all of this virtual machine at the same time. But it's enough to me :-)

Hope it will help you!

Interview : Daniel Tellez, CTO & Owner of Yerbabuena Software

2009-10-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias a todo el mundo !

This time we make a travel to Spain.

Today, I have the honor and pleasure to interview Daniel Tellez, CTO & Owner of Yerbabuena Software.

Hello Daniel,

Hello Jean Marie. I'm very pleased to answer all your questions and to appear in your blog. I've been following your blog for some time because of your interesting posts about ECM, specially in the opensource world.

To begin this interview, I wanted to thank you for giving me a little of your time to answer this interview and to share your knowledge of open source ECM and specially Nuxeo.

First Daniel, what's the purpose and objectives of Yerbabuena Software ? What kind of services do you offer?

We, Yerbabuena Software, are a very young company, and we are very proud to count with a staff of young professionals who want to do very big things in their career. I tell you that because this is one of the main reasons because we have embarked in many interesting and great projects, like the one that will let us annotate semmantically and classify contents in Nuxeo, or access to its repositories through a smartphone.

Our mission and goals fit perfectly with all of these, and can be summarized in the next sentence: to be a leading and international company, reference in the field of development, research and innovation based on opensource enterprise content management solutions. This mission has not been chosen randomly, but has been the result of a hard but funny process or rediscovering of our ideas and goals. You can find a picture here, in the form of a roadmap that drives our actions to that goal:
http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.yerbabuena.es%2F2009%2F04%2Fmapa-estrategico.html&langpair=es|en

Sorry, we still have to translate it. ;-)

About our services portfolio, I have to say that our company provides mainly consulting, training and development services over opensource ecm software solutions. It is in this field where we can add more value to our ecosystem, and where we can deploy more freely our ideas and innovation, to apply them to our customers.

As Owner and CTO can you describe your work in Yerbabuena Software ? What's your role and your work day after day ?

In Yerbabuena Software we have a very horizontal organization. We are all folks, in and out of the office, in the most of times. So, my daily work is mainly to help my colleagues in the three development teams we have, to care for the methodologies used (always agile) and to provide a seamless connection between development and comercial sides.

Why did you choose CM ecosystem ? Is there some opportunities ?

Well, as I said before, we have a small company that knows perfectly the problems of small companies. In the earlier days of Yerbabuena Software, we had to face with all these problems, decisions and investments like all the companies do. How easy it looks when you are in college !

We thought it will be a good way to earn money to sell ECM solutions to SMEs, because we are convinced that this is not a field of software that could only fit in great organizations. All the companies have to manage papers and documents. We have seen very little companies with whole rooms full of boxes full of papers. Yes, very hard.

Web content management and opensource is a good entry point to begin to work with SMEs. Basically because of the simplicity of the WCM concepts and the cheaper costs of opensource. It can begin publishing news, events and descriptive web pages, and sooner the need to share and generate documentation comes through this tool, as so does the need to deliver it with other departments, with companies, with customers. Very soon the need of applying workflows, auditing, etcetera comes.

Actually we are jumping from SMEs to bigger organizations with large amounts of documents and users, like Diputación de Malaga (regional government of Malaga) or La Salle colleges.

Definitively, in Yerbabuena we are always researching these gaps not covered for common ECM providers, from earlier days by offering ECM to SMEs, until today, when we develop solutions for problems like accesibility and usability in reading documents ( http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.yerbabuena.es%2F2009%2F05%2Fprimera-beta-de-easyreader-desarrollada.html&langpair=es|en ), or increasing ubiquity in the access to the repository ( http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.yerbabuena.es%2F2009%2F07%2Fprimera-beta-de-yerbabuena-ercp.html&langpair=es|en).

What are the main trends in ECM in Spain?

Well, in the last months we are hearing very much noise around ECM like some time before, at least in Spain. This is good. The market of ECM is becoming bigger in Spain. And the companies that did know ECM before, are replanning its resources to change to a more opensource scenario. In these crisis days, harder in our country, the companies are realizing that it is not easy to justify licenses costs.

Now, we can see how many companies knows about the leading ECM providers in the open source side, like Nuxeo and Alfresco. The first mainly because of us ;-)

Now, let's talk about Nuxeo. Why did you choose to use Nuxeo for CM problematics?

When we began to plan our business strategy around document management, more or less in 2006, Alfresco was a little toy, while a french company called Nuxeo few years working with a very cool document management and web content management tool. We loved it. And we did many projects with that foundation. And we continue doing it. (Nuxeo CPS)

After, Nuxeo decided to switch to JavaEE technologies. This was a full reimplementation of the previous tool, maintaining all they learned before about ECM.

But we are an independent consultancy company, so we didn't take the JavaEE option given by Nuxeo 5, but we decided to take a look at the tools around ECM in this year. I will not go into much detail, but we couldn't find no one platform that fits so well than Nuxeo: we loved its architecture, we loved the real opensource policy, we loved that all of the CPSLovers like me didn't have to face many troubles to understand Nuxeo 5 concepts.

On the technical side, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this solution ?

The more important technical advantage of Nuxeo over any other document management system is its transparency and easyer way to fit it in any existing information system. This can be checked in many aspects, like:
- It is totally and really open source, like no other ECM application in the market.
- The active participation in CMIS technical committee of specification, in which the other big players in the ECM world participates also, like EMC, Microsoft, Alfresco, etcetera.
Nuxeo participates also in the development of Apache Chemistry, in partnership with Day Software.
- Nuxeo 5 provides different types of APIs, making easier the integration with third parties software.
- The use of standars and wide used technologies ensure the interoperability with other systems, the easy of access to the system to software professionals, the low chance to get into a vender lock-in strategy, etcetera.

Is very difficult for me to find a technical disadvantage over other content management systems. Maybe we could go into the typical discussion about the systems needed by JavaEE based technologies, more expensive than in others like Python or PHP.
But JavaEE has shown that it is a more reliable framework, resolving common problems for enterprise software.

Did you make some contribution ?

We started to contribute to Nuxeo 5 in the typical starting way: reporting issues and providing translations to the system, like iberian languages: castilian, gallego, catalá, euskera, portuguese and from others places like vietnamese.

Today, we have a very interesting project, commented before. We want to build two great components to Nuxeo 5: one rich interface to access document management repositories and most functions, and another component to annotate semmantically the contents and to automatically classify docs in Nuxeo 5. This is being the most important contribution for us in the project.

Like a non-technical contrib, we have to say that Yerbabuena have been, and still is, the main driver in the spanish-speaking community for Nuxeo 5 and one leader in evangelism of open source content management in this community and also in others like Viet Nam. To do it, we have participated in events and programs like Open Source World Conference last summer in Málaga, FOSS Bridge program or Open World Forum in Paris.

Personally, are you part of another open source community? Do you have examples of participation (Animation, articles, forums ...)?

Me and my colleagues have participated actively mostly in Nuxeo 5 and Nuxeo CPS projects. The main proofs of it can be viewed in the mailing lists of both projects.
Although Nuxeo CPS has lost great part of its strength as a community in favor of its elder brother Nuxeo 5, it continues to be an interesting project and a very powerful option for ECM and WCM, competing greatly with more popular platforms. So I participate yet in this project all the times I can by reporting new incidences or patches.

Our contributions feed also our blog posts, so I recommend you to visit frecquently ;-)

In the other hand, we have an own product, Bluesearch, that can be viewed as totally independent of ECM business line. This is a project oriented to marketing, which relates user profiles of mobile phones, so if they match in preferences or likes, it lets them connect to talk or so. This product is also totally open and our other great contribution to open source community.

To conclude this interview, what's your favorite blogs and links on IT in general?

Well, I follow many ECM related blogs, although in the latests days I prefer to use twitter to be in touch with the latest technologies and news. I know you also like twitter ;-) Here I can link you and interesting resource to follow the list of the main ECM gurus:
http://jonontech.com/2009/07/21/follow-forty-twitter-cms-gurus-in-three-clicks/

... BTW, Jean Marie... you are also here ;-D

In the blogsphere, I follow specially and recommend the Nuxeo one, the John Mancini's blog ( http://aiim.typepad.com/aiim_blog ), and the Word of pie ( http://wordofpie.com/ ), the three highly recommended, and of course yours ;-D

One last word before leaving?

Don't forget to visit our blog. We are starting publishing our only english blog, in the way you do it with http://www.open-source-ecm.com/ , and where we publish very frecquently our contributions to the community.

It's in http://blog.yerbabuenasoftware.com (english)
http://blog.yerbabuena.es (spanish)

And, of course, that the world of opensource ECM continue doing great!!

Thank you again Daniel for this interview and we wish you a nice and exciting journey on Open Source ECM Road!

Ps: As usual, you can download this interview at this url : http://www.scribd.com/doc/21070811/Open-Source-ECM-Interview-ENG-Daniel-Tellez-Yerbabuena

Interview Laurence Hart, Senior Manager/Information Management Solution Lead at Washington Consulting

2009-09-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

Hello Everybody !

For the next interview, we will go to U.S.A.

Today, I have the great privilege to interview Laurence Hart, Senior Manager/Information Management Solution Lead at Washington Consulting, Documentum Expert, blogger of www.wordofpie.com, ECM philosopher and twitter junkie.

Hello Laurence !

First of all as usual, let me thank you for the time you take to share your knowledge about ECM.

So Laurence, where content management experience has begun for you ? What was your first CM project and which solutions did you take?

Coincidently enough, I recently wrote about this very topic on my blog. My first system was a correspondence tracking system for the U.S. Air Force. I was brought onto the project as the database expert and was tossed the content management piece. It was DOCS Open from PC DOCS (later acquired by Hummingbird and then Open Text). We used a custom interface, but all of the content and search was powered by DOCS Open. cf. http://wordofpie.com/2009/09/08/my-first-content-management-application/

Nowadays, Is there an evolution of CM needs or is it the same as your first experience ?

The needs are the same, but the context and scale are changing. Users still need to track and manage their content, but now we are dealing with images and web content in addition to the scanned images and Word documents. Before, we were juggling between a network share and the new repository, now we are juggling SharePoint, multiple legacy repositories, and content stored in non-content focused business applications. I used to just worry about securing a document, but now I have to consider records management and eDiscovery when determining how to handle some content.

Sometimes I miss the old days.

Let's back to you for a moment, Can you tell us more about your position? What's your role and what are you doing day after day?

I run the Information Management Solution for Washington Consulting, Inc. I'm the leading subject matter expert for our company and I provide guidance to multiple projects and clients on how to address their needs. On good days, I'm sitting with clients and talking about how to solve their problems and designing solutions for them. Quite often, I am writing proposals and finding good people to work with on delivering solutions. I still keep my hands dirty by playing with the latest releases of software in the ECM space. I say it is to keep current, but I really do it because I find it relaxing and fun.

Could you present Washington Consulting ? What's the purpose and objectives? What kind of services do you offer?

We are a Management and Technology consulting firm located in Washington, DC. Information Management is a big piece of what we do, and that ranges from developing strategic roadmaps to "simple" Documentum and SharePoint work. However, we also have ERP implementations, Project Management Office (PMO) support, Organizational Change Management, and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) practices. They joy of my piece is that I get to work with all the different groups because everybody is trying to solve the content "problem".

You have worked with Documentum, since 2000. For my readers, who essentially love Open Source :o) , could you present this historical CM Solution (its history, its functionality and its architecture)?

No problem. Founded in 1991, Documentum has been one of the "big-three" ECM vendors for years, even as that membership has evolved. It is immensely scalable (I have a system with 40TB of content) and is free of proprietary languages or interfaces. It is very strong in core content management, RM, and BPM. It's collaboration efforts had been withering for a few years as eRoom grew old, but their new CenterStage product shows some promise. While they deliver on WCM and Digital Asset Management, those offerings are stronger when viewed in combination with the rest of their suite.

I think one area that shows great promise is their work with XML content. Their acquisition of X-Hive has really helped them here and I think that could become a big differentiators between the big ECM vendors, assuming that SharePoint doesn't wipe them all out.

Now if only they could simplify their license model.

Can you tell us what are the strengths and weaknesses of this solution from your point of view?

I think I covered that to some extent, but I think Documentum has two weaknesses, the user interface and the complexity. My most successful projects do not utilize the standard user interface. We use it as a content platform. This is also where it gets complex. I keep learning things about Documentum everyday. A Document expert is someone that knows enough to get through any client meeting and can then quickly look-up detailed answers to the things that they had to bluff their way through. I, and others in the community like Scott Roth and Johnny Gee, have forgotten more about Documentum than many with 3-4 years experience.

As for strengths, it is strong. I can throw users and content at it without fears that it will scale. I think that it's object-oriented approach to modeling content is flexible and powerful. They've extended this to allow custom behaviors on actions, and with version 6.x, they support aspects. Their is very little that the Documentum platform cannot do, as long as you understand the complexity.

Now let's start some philosophy :o), during this summer (and last years), you have post on your blog some information about your vision of ECM ? Could you resume your vision ? Why have you your personal ECM definition?

My vision for ECM is more than the tools. That is a problem with the AIIM definition, it talks about tools. Content is everywhere. We need it accessible from everywhere without emailing it to other companies or having to take it out of one system and placing it in another. ECM is a platform that provides content to users in the business context where they need it most. Users shouldn't know about Nuxeo, Alfresco, or Documentum. They should only know that if I scan this document, I can grab it and the presentation I made yesterday and share it with my business partner without worrying about the "how".

The technology isn't there yet, but we should be aiming for that target. When ECM was first coined 10 years ago, no vendor could state that they met the definition.

During this year, you also worked on CMIS. Why are you enthusiastic whith this future standard and Is it a revolution ?

I'm enthusiastic because the CMIS standard is the first step to making my vision for ECM complete. Applications need to access content without worrying about the specifics of the repository in which it is contained. It will allow legacy systems to stay in place longer and help separate the business application decision from the platform decision.

Is CMIS a revolution? That is a tough question. It is still early to tell as it is just approaching the Public Review stage. It is already starting to gain traction with vendors and customers, so I would say that it has the makings of a revolution. If Microsoft continues to support it, and incorporates it into SharePoint, then I see a revolution as being entirely possible.

What's your feelings about Open Source solution and open source move in CM ecosystem ?

I'm glad that Open Source is gaining ground. I think it will force the ECM "leaders" to focus more on simplicity and responding to users. I already see the vendors starting to be more responsive to user feedback than they had in the past. To be honest, I think the Open Source movement is a blessing for small to medium organizations that needed content management but couldn't afford the license fees. I am also beginning to strongly believe that the Open Source approach is the only way to deliver WCM systems that can keep up with the rapidly changing face of the Web.

For you what was the worst and best idea on content management area?

The worst idea is simple, moving everyone to a web interface in the 90s. Users had a tightly integrated desktop environment until IT management fell in love with using web interfaces for content management. Bad move. We are just now getting to the point where the integration is as tight with the desktop applications, and that seriously hurt user adoption across the board. The browsers and web applications just weren't advanced enough, but everyone fell in love with the sexy new kid on the block.

The best ideas are a toss-up. I think standards like ODMA and CMIS are some of the better ideas. XML has also been a great idea for changing the way content exists, but the adoption has been incredibly slow. The best idea may boil down to going electronic and forgetting about all of that microfiche.

Why have you started wordofpie.com ?

I started the blog back in 2007 because I wanted to rant about a recent Documentum conference. Luckily I started engaging in dialog with other bloggers and turned it into something far more constructive. Now I use it to expand on opinions initially shared on Twitter and to share news and other insights. I wish I had more time to write for it, but my day job and family keep me very busy.

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

For news and analysis, I keep close tabs on CMS Watch (www.cmswatch.com). I've met several of the analysts and they always give you their honest opinion. I enjoy reading the Big Men on Content (http://bigmenoncontent.com/) for their insightful view into events around the industry. They aren't as active since EMC hired them, but they always have some great reads. Billy Cripe's Fusion ECM blog (http://blogs.oracle.com/fusionecm/) and Cheryl McKinnon's Candy and Aspiring (http://candyandaspirin.blogspot.com/) are also favorites.

Oh, and I seem to recall enjoying your blog as well. :)

What would you say to conclude this interview?

Thanks for being patient with me in getting these responses and reading through them. If you've made it this far, it is fair to say that you have a passion for Content Management. Use that passion to help guide the industry towards your vision of ECM. You can sit by, watch things change, and point out issues, but don't stop there. Get involved. Offer solutions. Offer to help. It doesn't have to take much time. That is how I got involved with CMIS through AIIM. I saw a problem and realized that AIIM's iECM committee was chartered to find a solution. Go out and do the same thing so that our kids aren't solving the same content problems that we are solving today.

Many thanks, Laurence, for this interview. We wish you a nice and exciting journey on Open Source (or not) ECM Road! If you want to follow ideas and thinking of Laurence, you can follow this links :

Blog : http://wordofpie.com
Twitter : http://twitter.com/piewords
and his company : http://www.washingtonconsulting.com/

PS : you can download this interview at http://www.scribd.com/doc/20438655/Open-Source-ECM-Interview-ENG-Laurence-Hart-Word-Of-Pie-

Open Source ECM Interview : French to English

2009-08-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody !

As you know, I have two blogs : one in french (www.opensourceecm.fr) and another in english (www.open-source-ecm.com). I try to have same posts in both of them but due to time crisis it's really hard. Conclusion : I have some interesting post ONLY in French... I think it's really really sad for you my sympathic english readers... and futhermore I always made a link between my english to my french post but rarely in the other way... It's not acceptable!!

That's why, I decided to recap french interview here and, with my Google translator friend, I propose direct link to english translation.

08.09 : Julien Viet, Product Manager eXo SAS
06.09 : Benjamin Jean, legal advisor Linagora
06.09 : Nicolas De Loof, Architect Software Solution Capgemini
02.09 : Herve Quiroz, Lead Architect Componize
01.09 : Jean Marc Orliaguet, Contributor of Nuxeo Theme
11.08 : Jean Christophe Dichant, IBM collaborator & Blogger (bpmbulletin.com)
11.08 : Jean Philippe Clair, Commercial Leader Knowings
07.08 : Michael Harlaut, Solution Engineer Alfresco
07.08 : Christophe Bec, Senior Architect ECM Capgemini Sud
07.08 : Romain GUINOT (Atos Origin), Contributor of the month Alfresco
06.08 : Thomas CHOPPY, ECM Consultant Smile

Enjoy! :o)

Interview : Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer, Managing Director and Founder of PROJECT CONSULT

2009-08-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

„Guten Tag“ everybody !

Today we make a travel to Germany.

Today, I have the great honor to interview Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer, Managing Director and Founder of PROJECT CONSULT in Hamburg, Germany. He is as well a member of the Board of Managers of the DLM Network EEIG, the organization which administers the new records management standard MoReq2, published by the European Commission. He was also founder and chair oft he German association VOI and held different positions within the international association AIIM. In other words, he know the meaning of content and information.

Guten Tag Dr. Ulrich !

First of all, let me thank you for the time you take to make this interview reality and to share your knowledge about ECM.

So Ulrich, as usual I read information about my interviewee and I find a number : 30. You have been in the document, content and knowledge management industry now for over 30 years... For a young happy-go-lucky ecm consultant like me it's "Woooowww". Could you present yourself and main facts of your experience ?

Well JM, it is not „in the industry“ because we both know that our industry, described as document management or enterprise content management, is not that old. Since 1976 I have been working with software in the field of analysis and documentation. My first computer projects were in the archaeology and soil sciences domain. I developed software for cartography, automatic classification of objects, statistics, video acquisition, documentation, classification and reconstruction system for archaeological findings. So my first document management projects were for museums and research institutes.

Later on, I was working for scientific research institutions, document management vendors, universities and consulting companies. This led me to combine theoretical academic, programming and system design skills with project management, business process analysis, moderation and solution design advising. July 1st, 1992, I founded my own consulting company, which is working in Enterprise Content, Records, and Knowledge Management field for end user organizations only. Beside that I was active in associations like AIIM, VOI, DLM Forum and others, and wrote some books, studies, lots of articles and other publications like our PROJECT CONSULT Newsletter.

And now what's your work day after day ?

Part of the day – when I am not under a tone of our customers sites – is filled with administrative work. I have to perform as Managing Director. In regard to projects I have to control quality of final versions of documents where I have the role of quality manager in the project. A lot of time is taken by email correspondence and phoning with prospects, customers, staff, freelance consultants, journalists and so. I try to reserve blocks of hours for writing reports for my customers, research or just contemplation. Some hours a day, when I'm in the office, I go to the internet – communities like XING, Informationzen.org, facebook, bloglines, publishing sites, industry portals a.s.o. When I'm travelling for seminare, customer workshops, or congresses, most of this work is delegated to the traveling and waiting hours. But most important of my time is spent with my customers in workshops, discussions, or meetings. It's not only to give advice but also to learn each day as well.

You have found project-consult, in 1992. Could you present your firm ? What kinf of services do you offers ?

PROJECT CONSULT Unternehmensberatung GmbH works in the field of archive, document, content, records, business process, information lifecycle, and knowledge management only. With my colleagues at PROJECT CONSULT we have been running more than 200 projects designing information management strategies, carrying out analysis and design of organisation and processes, writing tenders, selecting products, solutions and system integrators, running projects as project managers or as quality control managers, conducting workshops, writing policies and legal expertises and so on...

We are small company combining hired staff with speciliazed free lance consulters. Our customers mainly come from Germany and Switzerland, but we have as well worked for supra-international organizations like UNEP or ESA, international companies in Europe and other clients from abroad. Clients come from all industries and our main task is to help them to solve organisational problems related to documents.

Beside projects work, we were engaged in the creation of standards like GEVER in Switzerland, the electronic archiving standards for the Federal Savings Banks Group, and the ECM standards for the Social Insurance Group in Germany, we engaged in MoReq2, ISO 15489 and ISO 19005, and more.

Let's back to future, I know it will be quite long but is it possible to summarize the computerization and dematerialization of information since you started your experience ?

In the last 30 years I faced a lot of changes from host computers with character-only display, the first PCs, early networks, evolving internet and now all this 2.0 stuff. I looked on all the short-sighted developments of the hardware and software industry in the early years.

Imaging was born because host and early PCs could not display and handle images.Document management was born due to the restrictions of hierarchical file manager.Workflow was born to support collaboration and to conncect the users.

Our industry in the past lived by the errors and niches created by the IT mainstream vendors. This time is gone and our industry is loosing its USPs, Unique Selling Propositions. Document and enterprise content management is becoming IT infrastructure, dissolving at the middleware layer, becoming services, being no longer visible at the user desktop. Modern clients and web interfaces are enabled with the capabilities to handle documents, processes and other information assets.

We are living in a digital world and I sometimes suffer as digital native. Especially the last ten years have changed the perception of how we handle and how we use information. With 2.0 it is beyond everything our industry had developed as assets in the past. Document related technologies become integral part of every software application.

For you what was the worst and best idea on content management area?

The worst idea in the CMS arena was to re-develop everything which had already been developed in the document management arena. The web guys often re-invented the wheel and created solutions, which didn't take care about compliance, documentation, consistency, authenticity, persistance and other issues. The web generated more problems for document management, records management and electronic archival than we had before and these problems are not solved today.

The best idea of content management was lately skipping the barriers between structured and unstructured information. The key is, to look at digital information as an integrative concept – data in an database is just information, content in an WCM is just another form of digital information, and records and documents are as well only different by format, legal or business value, it is all digital information, that may become - combined with logic, context and meaning - even knowledge. Modern information and content management solutions must and can handle any type and format of information. This is the important step to overcome the differences in systems and concepts of the past, which will lead to the development, that ECM and WCM will disappear inside the IT infrastructure. Their functionality will become part of standard software and operating systems, and will be a commodity in the near future

In functional domain is there the same or have you noticed an evolution? Is it possible to illustrate it with your own project experience?

Yes ! There have been some interesting developments in the past years. On the one hand vendors add more and more functionality to their products or their products suite. End users often get overwhelmed with un-needed functionality. The big shots are offering suites which include almost every function somebody wants. Smaller vendors have been moving towards integrated solutions which special applications for certain industries.

There's some kind of special markets like the capture industry, compliance software offerings, email-management or archiving solutions for certain standard ERP or CRM products, and others, which are common to most vendors. And there's another trend in functionality to cover the gap in big software vendors product offerings like Microsoft with Exchange and Sharepoint, IBM, SAP or others. Business process management developed to an industry of its own like output management always has been – both are major components of the overall ECM concept. Although Enterprise Content Management has something like an universal approach, a lot of vendors focus on „filling-the-gap“ of Microsoft. If we look on all of these developments – standalone products, complete suites, “Gap”-solutions and new functionality entering from the Web 2.0 world, a lot of mid size vendors are in the danger of overstretching their resources. And even the big players do not manage to get their product offerings consolidated.

Today the most important applications in Europe are
• electronic virtual folders,
• “in-bound” capture systems for unified acquisition and distribution of information,
• automated classification and categorization,
• electronic long term archival (call it digital preservation in the archivists realm),
• collaboration,
• Web-2.0-functionality inside traditional document management solutions,
• standardised records management for paper and electronic records combined,
• enhanced business process management including business intelligence,
• compliance,
• ediscovery and auditings solutions,
• portals with integrated document management and similar advanced ECM solutions.

Now let's talk about ECM, do you have your personal ECM definition?

Yes and no, I have a definition for ECM. I'm supporting the definition of AIIM international now for nearly a decade. It changed a little bit over time, but the message and the core ideas are still the same. You will find some books I wrote (for example the synchronized-three-lingual publication ECM Enterprise Content Management), lots of articles (even the entries in the German and English Wikipedia) lots of seminars and lots of presentation about this definition.

It is important that the industry sticks to one definition. A lot of vendors, analysts and consultants came up with definitions of their own – no better, no worse. But to help the market to identify itself with this complex software and technology environment, to position ECM besides other IT topics like ERP, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, and to help the end users finding the right solutions, to make them familiar with ECM, it is important, that we all tell the same story, have the same definition, and here it goes: „Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists.“

I had the opportunity to read one of your report on ECM and I learned many good things about content management. Does your work participate to the elaboration of ECM Definition ? Do you work for a standardization of ECM with AIIM ?

I was fortunate to be one of the members of the AIIM Europe and the AIIM international boards of directors when AIIM developed ECM as new strategy for the future. So I had the chance to discuss issues of re-positioning the industry in 1999 (after the first internet wave) with AIIM officials and other industry peers. My first presentations about the new vision of the market where already in 2000 in London and Berlin. The roadmap was always developed by AIIM but it took the liberty to add some features and create my own image of the ECM message.

Today there are a lot of discussions if we should stick to ECM or if the community should move on the EIM Enterprise Information Management or Enterprise 2.0. The image of ECM is blurring at the edges as the big vendors like Oracle or Microsoft introduced their own interpretation of ECM (based on what their products do). So we might stick for a while to the current idea of ECM, but this will change within this decade and ECM will become history like microforms – still surving in niches, but no longer mainstream.

Do you make other contribution (Animation, articles, posts, forums ...) ?

Thank you for this question – the answer is YES! I wrote some books and studies – have a look on Amazon.de (German Amazon!). I was editor for a whitepaper series by AIIM with seven booklets. I have been member of the editorial board of MoReq2 standard. I am editor of the PROJECT CONSULT Newsletter, which covers the ECM industry in middle Europe since 1999. The newsletter is as well available as fill text database and on several social publishing platforms. There are lots of white papers I wrote for vendors like IBM, EMC, SER, HP and more.

And there lots of presentations including the slides, videos, multimedia and handouts. Most of the material can be accessed using our website http://www.PROJECT-CONSULT.com (in German), but I published as well quite a lot on www.scribd.com, www.slideshare.net, www.doxtop.com and other platforms (look for „DrUKff“ …).

I am running a discussion group about information & document management in four languages and with around 6.000 members on www.XING.com. Sorry, most of the material is only available in German language, but I have as well some whitepapers and presentations in English and French.

Do you have an explanation of ECM needs ? Is it normal the way of consolidation in content management (Document management, Web Content Management, Records Management, Information management...) into one system ?

It's not only about the integration of different components into one suite or system. The real challenge is, to make ECM known with the decision makers in the companies, who should by ECM solutions. I believe that quite a lot of components may be used as well stand alone in the future because ECM, as a whole, might be too complex for the users within a “normal” business organisation. And I already mentioned that ECM will become infrastructure/services. It will be important to avoid islands of information and to create universal federated repositories which can be used by every application, not only by ECM applications. To get a grip on information, to control information, to assure quality and correctness, to implement transparency, to support end-to-end processes, to bridge the existing applications and to help the organisation to be compliant – these are true ECM needs and ECM assets.

What's your feelings about Open Source solution and open source move in CM ecosystem ?

OpenSource has been playing a very important role in the WCM (Web Content Management) market from the beginning. It took some time before the first ECM open source products appeared. People find the interesting especially because there is a mix up of the terms freeware and opensource. Open source can be free ware, but it must. The market thinks of Open Source ECM products being cheap, being publicly available, being easy to adopt. This is not always true and I remember projects where the open source implementation was more expensive than a standard product solution!

In middle Europe most people think of Alfresco when considering an open source product. Other solutions like Knowledgetree etc. are not much known. I think open source will gain a little more importance in the ECM market in the near future, but the real thread for the traditional industry is SaaS, software as a service. We see the first ECM SaaS solutions on the market and more and more applications are moving into the cloud. Google is adding pressure and Microsoft is starting as well. So records management, long term digital preservation, document management, workflow, colloboration and other tools will be offered as well via the web. This will change the market in the next ten years because ECM installations at the customer site are known to be complex : you have to care for migration on your own, you hardly can afford a redundant backup solution, a.s.o. The same way project management and CRM customer relationship management is moving to web today, we will see all the ECM components and applications move into the cloud tomorrow.

In 2009, can you advise us on public meeting/ event or conference we must not miss ? Will you be present ?

The most important fair with a congress on site is the DMS EXPO in Cologne, Germany, September 15th to 17th, 2009. Nearly all vendors (IBM; Open Text, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Alfresco, Optimal Systems, Iron Mountain, ELO, Docuware, Ceyoniq, ITESOFT, COI, windream, Readsoft, Autonomy, Docuportal, Coremedia ...and integrators are present. ). There will be about 400 exhibitors and the KoelnMesse expects about 20.000 visitors. In the exhibition hall and as well in seminar rooms there are conferences and free presentations. The entrance and the catalogue is free of charge if you register in advance : www.DMSEXPO.com

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

First of all – internationally – there is www.AIIM.org. I am as well a member of the AIIM community www.informationzen.org. Most of my activities ist he the group on XING https://www.xing.com/net/informationlifecyclemanagement both communities are free.

There are a lot of blogs about ECM and related topics, so for consolidation and overview I use Bloglines and Delicious (you can subscribe to http://www.bloglines.com/public/DrUKff and http://delicious.com/DruKff).

If you are looking for sources in Germany and in German language, check on www.ECMGUIDE.de, www.ContentManager.de, or www.Documanager.de.

If you are looking for new records management standards and archiving practices, have a look at the DLM Forum www.dlm-network.org.

Groups on publishing sites with ECM related content are http://www.doxtop.com/groups/view/feb95ada/ecm-enterprise-content-management.aspx or http://www.slideshare.net/group/ecm.

And not to forget my own sites www.PROJECT-CONSULT.com, http://pcnewsletter.coextant.info/ and www.MoReq2.de.

What would you say to conclude this interview?

First of all – thank you for giving me the chance to participate in your series of interviews. To conclude this interview – the growth of information, the speed of development in the ITC industry and restrictions of human nature and brain capacity create together one of the most interesting mass experiments in mankinds existance. We moved in one generation from an analogue world of information management to a digital world of information management with new rules, new behaviours, new visions. I am glad living in this interesting era and being able to contribute a little bit to solve the big challenge to save the memory of the information society - in this early, still dark age.

Many thanks, Ulrich, for this interview. We wish you a nice and exciting journey on Open Source (or not) ECM Road!

To find out more about Project Consult : http://www.PROJECT-CONSULT.com
and if you want more information, you can follow this links :

If you want to download this interview, follow this link : http://www.scribd.com/doc/18551640/Open-Source-ECM-Interview-FR-Dr-Ulrich-Kampffmeyer-ProjectConsult-

CMIS SQL : Tutorial & Presentation

2009-08-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone !

Since CMIS was created, I'm interessted in CMIS-SQL. That's why I decided to search some documentation on it. Except CMIS Specification, I found very few documentation. I just want some CMIS SQL query sample...

Yes I know, it's normal there's no document.. It's a young idea! Nevertheless I decided to test it and to share my discovery with you.

So below, you can find my presentation about CMIS-SQL and how to test it with Alfresco ! As usual you can view, download, distribute and comment the presentation!

CMIS - CMIS SQL Search Tutorial - ENG

To be continued...

Nuxeo Tips : Installation and configuration

2009-07-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Hello Readers and Followers.

Today I would like to share some information about how to install and configure Nuxeo 5.2.
Indeed, recently I help a customer to install, configure and customize this OpenSource ECM System in its Windows environment. So let's share :o)

Nuxeo Installation

How to install Nuxeo ?
In general manner, you should download and use Nuxeo 5.2 Windows Installer. You can find it at this url : http://www.nuxeo.com/en/downloads/

This installer is a good starting point to begin a Nuxeo Project. Moreover it also incorporates Nuxeo Shell (a beautiful gift for ECM Administrators). However it embed a java light database (Derby). This database is for demonstration , developments or experiments environments. It's NOT a production database! That's why we have to change Nuxeo settings.

How to configure Nuxeo and PostgreSQL ?

For step by step explanation, have a look at the :

FAQ : http://www.nuxeo.org/xwiki/bin/view/FAQ/

How to configure Nuxeo for a production environment?

For Nuxeo, the information is here : http://www.nuxeo.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/NuxeoProdSetup/
For PostgreSQL, the information is there: http://www.nuxeo.org/xwiki/bin/view/FAQ/PostgreSQLSettings/

If you follow all advices and recommendations, you have a good foundation to start a production server. So it's time to consider the functionallity side, ie different features that we want appear or not.

Configure Nuxeo

Short Introduction

I usually say, in Open Source ECM context, there are 3 possible ways.

User approach : User only know how to click on buttons (This is not a criticism or an insult but it huge caricature...)
Administrator approach : Administrator know how to use and modify humanly comprehensible files (XML, Properties, txt)
Developer / Integrator approach : Developer is omniscient and omnipotent. He understands and knows everything in programming, configuration and utilization.

In our case we will look only at the administrator level. Indeed many features are configurable through XML files in Nuxeo.

To illustrate this point, I propose the following use case: I want to increase the number of documents displayed in a space/folder/workspace. By default this value is set at 10. If the space contains more than 10 documents, then the user interface will create an automatic 10 to 10 pagination. For ergonomic purpose, I wan to set this value at 25.

Let's explore what are the possible approaches to meet this need

First of all, Nuxeo has 3 IMPORTANT directories :

NuxeoEP5 \ NuxeoServer \ server \ default \ deploy \ nuxeo.ear \ System
This directory contains Nuxeo heart.
NuxeoEP5 \ NuxeoServer \ server \ default \ deploy \ nuxeo.ear \ plugins
This directory contains all the modules/ addons / plugins / extensions that are not part of the heart Nuxeo. In general this addons are your addons.
NuxeoEP5 \ NuxeoServer \ server \ default \ deploy \ nuxeo.ear \ config
This directory contains all Nuxeo configuration files.

These 3 directories will illustrate 3 ways to configure Nuxeo.

System directory
If you already explore Nuxeo files and folder, you've noticed that most files inside System folder are Jar. For those who are not familiar with this file format, take a look at wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAR . To generalize, it is a ZIP file wich contains java-like files.
So if you have a zip utility like winZip or 7-zip... you can unzip a jar file! So... you can open it and therefore ... you can change the contents of the ZIP!

To complete our task, we have to focus on : Nuxeo-platform-webapp-core-5.2.0.jar
It is located in : NuxeoEP5 \ NuxeoServer \ server \ default \ deploy \ nuxeo.ear \
Open it (with 7-zip in my case) and locate the file OSGI-INF/querymodel-contrib.xml. Edit (or just extract) the file and replace the value 10 by 25 in the next block:

Next, save the file (or import it into the Jar).

You can now restart Nuxeo, importing more than 10 documents in a space and see that there is no pagination creation. We have to import 26 document to see this component.

Now to the second method:

Config directory
As you can see, this directory is composed primarily by configuration XML files. The main purpose of this directory is to configure the global parameters of Nuxeo application. So if we think 5 seconds, it's what we want : we want to set the number of items displayed in a space.

Before all, if you have tested the previous method, you have to remove your change. Then create a configuration-ui-config.xml (the name does not change anything except -config.xml part which should remain unchanged) in the config directory and add the block below:

The most important part is the tag REQUIRE. In this tag we will set the default component name value (which we saw in the previous method). This allows us to "overwrite" or "replace" the default component.

You can now restart Nuxeo, import more than 10 documents in a space and see that there is no default pagination creation.

You just learn a method that works for most of Nuxeo default component.

If we have to create a procedure (a recipe), it would be:

Open and explore jar files in system directory (with your zip utility: 7zip for me ...).
Search outXML files (especially files ending with-contrib.xml) in OSGI-INF directories.
Copy the block you want and remember the name of the component (in general it's the 2nd line of the -contrib.xml file).
Create your own config.xml file in the config directory .
Insert the block and change default parameters to match our requirements.
Remember : you have to respect XML validity and declare it as a XML file.
Restart your instance.
You can serve, it is ready! :o) : o)

Finally the last method
Plugins directory
This method (recommanded by Nuxeo) is more scalable, modular, but also the most complicated! (Everything is not allowed particulary in computer science...). I will not going deeper in details with this approach because it is well documented. Remember, if you're interested in the topic, I advise you to read the Nuxeo book draft at: http://www.nuxeo.org/static/dev-tutorial/

Everybody doesn't have time and skills to install and configure Eclipse, JDK, Maven etc ... It's one criticism of this method. It can be a complex task which can sometimes take quite some time ... and therefore money.

On the one hand : Is it advisable to install a development environment for our need ? The answer is NO of course. On the other hand : I want to add and modify many default Nuxeo components and functionality. Do I have to install Eclipse ? Answer is YES ! This environment is necessary.

As often: Everythin depends on your requirements and needs.

Conclusion
To simplify, this is my recommendations (to save time!)

Banish editing Jar files in system directory !! Sometimes this seems to be the easiest solution but it is the least profitable in the long term. And in the world of opensource change are everywhere (migration, upgrade ...)! The only possible case concerns feature removal. If you have identified a feature that does not interest you, it may be useful to remove associated jar (simplify your installation, gain of time when application start...)

If you want to change a default Nuxeo component parameters, choose the method based on the configuration directory. It will be in long term the best method.

If you need to change a component Nuxeo + add files (. Java, images, defining a workflow) or add a component, the preferred method is Plugins.

Finally, if I have an advice : Be curious, navigate and explore the depths of Nuxeo jars!

Have a good journey and see U

News of the week via twitter

2009-06-12T05:34:00.001-07:00

Hello everybody !

It's time to share some news finding on twitter. Did i mention Twitter is THE genial tools to find informations about ECM ? Yes ...? Ok! Let's begin.

eXo Portal & JBoss Portal : Happy Union !
First important news of this week is the union of eXo Portal and JBoss Portal project.

Business Wire : eXo Platform Merges Portal Software Development into JBoss Community
Reuters : eXo PlatformMerges Portal Software Development into JBoss Community
J.Boye : eXo Portal and JBoss Portal join forces
eXoPlatform Blog : Julien Viet Post
Red Hat : JBoss.org Community Grows
JBoss Portal Blog : Welcome eXo !
JBoss FAQ : http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/JBossPortal-eXoPortalFAQ
CMSWatch : http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1615-eXo-JBoss-Merger

Twitter Source :

Tugdual Grall : http://twitter.com/tgrall
Julien Viet : http://twitter.com/julienviet
Benjamin Mestrallet : http://twitter.com/benjmestrallet

New version of KnowledgeTree
KnowledgeTree Releases New Version of Its Commercial Open Source Solution as well as a Microsoft® Office Add-In.

This release focuses on helping companies ease the burden of compliance, provides improved usability and ensures increased interoperability between KnowledgeTree and other productivity tools. Significant new features and enhancements include:

· Document Type Alerts make it possible to manage document retention policies, contracts and other time-based events with less effort by applying alerts to groups of documents.

· Configurable Electronic Signatures ensure accountability and compliance with regulations such as the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 11, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and others by requiring a user to re-authenticate when changing a document.

“KnowledgeTree can significantly ease the compliance burden for smaller companies,” said Daniel Chalef, CEO of KnowledgeTree. “The combination of electronic signatures with a complete audit trail fulfills regulatory requirements, while the affordable price appeals to decision-makers.”

Also featured prominently in this release is the Microsoft Office Add-in, which integrates KnowledgeTree seamlessly with the entire Office suite. Microsoft users can open, edit, save and email documents that reside in the KnowledgeTree repository from within Office applications, exactly as they would if that document was located on a shared drive. In addition, a powerful built-in search makes it even easier to find documents in the repository from within Office applications.

“The Microsoft Office Add-in allows users to enjoy the benefits of collaboration and version control afforded by KnowledgeTree without changing the way they work,” noted Philip Arkcoll, product manager at KnowledgeTree. “Customers using this feature report enhanced productivity as a result of the streamlined process.”

For more informations visit KT website : http://www.knowledgetree.com/

Other Links

CMSWire : KnowledgeTree Updates Open Source ECM, Adds Key Enterprise Features
Read Write Web : KnowledgeTree Makes Upgrades to its Open Source Document Manager

Twitter source :

KnowledgeTree : http://twitter.com/knowledgetreesw
Daniel Chalef : http://twitter.com/danielchalef

PS : If you are curious and want to know who are behind technology and sales in KnowledgeTree, let's take a look at this 2 posts :

New Alfresco Book
If you search a book to learn how to customize, use, and administer Alfresco, I think the last new book : "Alfresco 3 Enterprise Content Management Implementation" is the best one !

For further information visit Packtpub : http://www.packtpub.com/alfresco-3-enterprise-content-management-implementation/book

Twitter source :

DRB : http://twitter.com/DRB

Bunch of links

Twitter List : Capgemini & Sogeti

2009-06-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

After my ECM Twitter list, I'm going to create a Capgemini (official account) Twitter List :

Capgemini

Capgemini : http://twitter.com/Capgemini
Capgemini North America (Us/Canada) : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiNA
Capgemini Cloud, Global Center of Excellence : http://twitter.com/Capgemini_cloud
Capgemini Outsourcing : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiOS
Capgemini Espagna : http://twitter.com/capgemini_es
Capgemini Espagna : http://twitter.com/capgemini_rrhh
Capgemini OutSourcing UK : http://twitter.com/osukcto
Capgemini Norway : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiNorge
Capgemini FR ADC Toulouse : http://twitter.com/ADC_Toulouse
Capgemini UK Public Relation : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiUKPR
Capgemini Netherlands Global Services : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiGSCAPS
Capgemini RMG team : http://twitter.com/capgeminijobs

Capgemini Group
If you work @ capgemini, don't hesitate to join us at :

Sogeti

Sogeti France : http://twitter.com/sogeti_fr
Sogeti NetherLands : http://twitter.com/sogeti_nl
Sogeti NetherLands High Tech : http://twitter.com/sogeti_nl_ht
Sogeti USA : http://twitter.com/sogeti_usa
Sogeti Seattle Sogeti : http://twitter.com/SeattleSogeti
Sogeti Espagna : http://twitter.com/sogeti_es
Sogeti SAP Ireland : http://twitter.com/SAP_IN_IRELAND

Of course this listing is not thorough and extra hands are always welcome to complete this list!

Finally, if you want to follow me ?

http://twitter.com/jeanmariepascal

Happy One Year !

2009-06-10T04:46:00.001-07:00

Hello Readers !

Today it's a special day.
Today I celebrate the first year of this blog !

Happy One Year !

Licence Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smcgee/264384675/

For this event, I want to share some stats about this blog :

74 posts
Number of visits : > 9800
Number of unique visitors : > 6900
Number of viewed pages : >15000
Visits duration : 2 min (approx)
Country Stats and Repartition (USA, France India, Spain UK...)

For all of this result, I have just 2 words

Licence Creative Commons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vernhart/1574355646/

Thank you for your visit !
Thank you for your share !
Thank you for everything !

And of course,
don't hesitate to come on the road to an Open Source ECM World !

Evolution of Content Management : Thoughts and Ideas

2009-05-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to share one of my recent philosophical... technical... functionnal... reflections in content management world. Particularly I want to speak about content creation ...

Today's theme (if you wish) is focus on the evolution of content creation best practices ... To be more explicit, I'll use a comparison with the world of software development (yes ... I will talk about code! ^^)

So if I had to ask a question:
to draw one's inspiration from.

How content production can draw inspiration from software code's production ?
Does content production should take the same path and adopt the same principles?

First, an observation
In non-structured information world (ie in the functionnal world generally...)

Users enjoy the use of desktop tools (MS Office, Open Office ...) to create the vast majority of content (Report, documentation, manual, form ...) inside the company.
They store information locally on their computer (hard drive).
They share content via network shares (shared hard drives in a network) or via an e-mail attachment.
Sometimes content will be grouped, merged with other content to form for example a multilingual advertising campaign, a response to prospect, a manual for mounting a furniture, a booklet, a catalog ...
One of the best practices in content creation is to create a template to re-use it. In general we want to re-use the style of the document (PowerPoint template), or content (word document template ...)
To share these models, we publish the file in a shared directory or website

In technical information world (eg software development)

Developers enjoy the use of development tools (Eclipse, Visual Studio ...) to create the vast majority of code file (.java, .c, .html ....).
They store files locally on their computer (hard drive)
They share code via a management system version (SVN, Hg, CVS ...).
With all code, developers create a project which will be compiled using automated environments (Maven, Continuous Integration...) to produce a program (software solution)
When code can be reused, developers include this code in a library(.NET, Java, Spring ...) This library can then be used in new code.
To share libraries, they publish it in a system directory or a website.

Now it's game time ! Let's spot the difference ! ... ie try to find the differences between the two worlds. You have 5 minutes!

Ok... let's forge ahead ...

My vision

I think best practices and principles acquired through development (or other) will be increasingly used in content creation.

It's time to explain ...

As you can see, there are differences in how to create / share / edit content between functional and technical domain.

In software development world, we assist in last few decades :

Local code
Shared code
Shared code in a version management system
Shared code in a standardized code management system

In content creation world, we assist :

Local file
Shared file
File in a content management system
File in a component management system

In other words, content management will know (and already knows... I have to be precise ! ) the same changes than development with programming had with object-oriented approach and continuous integration !

We try to apply to content the well-known principles :

Write Once, Deploy Everywhere
Stop Reinventing the Wheel

This new idea tries to create and use tools like :

A management tool for configuring multi-dimensional content (how to manage versioned content composed by other versioned content which are composed by other versioned content)
A generation platform
An editor (integrated in office tools or not)
A coherent system to rule them all !

What are benefits of this approach?

Take the example of "response to a call for tender" (Sorry if it's the wrong term...)

For those who are not familiar here is the principle.

A call for tender is a procedure by which a potential buyer requests different suppliers to make a commercial proposition to the detailed formulation (specification) of buyer's need (product or service). Of course all communication between the parties is usually done with documents in office format (printed or not). Response to a call for tenders is the technical proposal and commercial office format.

Let's explore the difference between a company called A which owns a component management tool and a company called B which have no tool.

Company A has made an habit of creating components. That's why it has a catalog of

Client references
Architecture and methodology
Proposals
Resources
Stylesheets

User, who are reponsible for the response, will simply assemble major components (up to 80% of the document) in a few clicks and work on the last 20% (the heart of the response...)

Company B does not have such a system. User must seek in his old one example the one that will serve as start model. It should then do a lot of copying and pasting, checking the different information, may update or ask to update ...
And usually, this person finds few hours before the deadline he had forgotten to take the right stylesheet or the last reference ...

To conclude, according to this quick example, the gains are many:

Gain of time
Gain of money (because time is money!)
Gain of modularity
Gain of efficiency ...

What's this system?

I do not know if there is still a true acronym, but the term CCMS for Component Content Management System (CCMS) is the one who is closest!
So don't hesitate to inquire about it! (And me too at the same time ....)

And future term may be ECCMS (Enterprise Component Content Management System) ...

Special Thanks to Componize.com (and staff cf. [FR] Interview of Herve Quiroz ) which help me to understand Component Content Management and don't hesitate to try their CCM solution !

Note
The only problem I find with CCM adoption would still the graphical interfaces and user experience. The man (and woman) still remain the key and most important variable...

Thanks to everyone and don't hesitate to post a comment !

Alfresco Meetup Paris : Review and Feedbacks

2009-05-06T02:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

On Thursday 30.04 I was in Paris at the Alfresco Meetup.

First the planning : the day was divided into 2 parts.
Part 1 : Alfresco "Crew" (Morning)
Part 2 : Alfresco Partners (afternoon).

Alfresco Morning
The first presentation session was devoted to ...........? Alfresco of course!

Submitted by Denis Dorval Vice President EMEA Alfresco, the session was about Alfresco, ECM and the ECM market in general.

I noted some interesting key points like :

A person who uses Alfresco is called: "Alfrescan(s)" (I didn't know I had this name too...)
Alfresco community represents 90 000 people worldwide.
France is the 2nd community after the USA.
Alfresco won 270 customers, 90 partners and 18 OEM 2008.
2009 is the year of open source acceptation.
2009 is a consolidation year for the software market.
More than a dozen clients manage more than 10 million documents with Alfresco.
Adobe (with acrobat.com) manages the largest number of documents with Alfresco: over 120 million documents.
Alfresco want to test its application to cover one billion of documents.

If you want more informations : Support Alfresco

Then I attended a case study entitled: "EADS (Astrium & EPS) paperless HR solution or UBIC project (Atol CD / Astrium)".
During this presentation, we discovered how it's possible to dematerialize all HR processes of a large company such Astrium (and EADS in the future).

Interesting points were :

2008 : Project Initiation
600,000 : Number of documents managed in a first step,
10 million : Number of documents managed in a near future.
Alfresco 2.2E, GWT, Red Hat Linux, Oracle 10g, JBPM, WebDav, Webscripts: Main components of architecture and implementation.

For more information, you can see a screencast of the application at this url : http://www.atolcd.com/ubic-demo-flash.html

At the end, UBIC will become a plug-in that can be added in Alfresco for HR document management. This project will also be supported by Astrium and Atol CD.

To learn more about UBIC project: http://www.atolcd.com/btn-ll/alfresco-ecm-ged/personnalisation-avancee.html

To conclude morning sessions, Mike Farman, Director of Product Management at Alfresco presented Alfresco Roadmap, Vision and Strategy.
Important points were :

Record Management: DOD5015.2 Certification in September 2009
Managing and archiving e-mails. (MUST-SEE!)
IMAP Implementation and creation of Virtualized Repository (MUST-SEE!)
Alfresco SURF means .... NOTHING! (always good to know ...)
Admin tools for Alfresco Enterprise subscribers (Enterprise Only Capabilities: clustering, monitoring ...)
Share Service Forms
Web Delivery Runtime
Alfresco Query Language (based on CMIS + Alfresco Extensions)
Index Consistency Check
Alfresco Mobile (Example:iPhone integration)

If I had to summarize, Alfresco continues to spread its perimeter on corporate documents life cycle. Next targets are e-mails and legal archiving. These 2 aspects are strongly expected by functional people. To support inevitable and unavoidable document spread, Enterprise customers will benefit tools for managing Alfresco clusters !
Did you say Alfresco continue its evolution ?

Partners Afternoon
The afternoon was devoted to technical presentations from Alfresco partners. Overview :

NB: "Alfresco Partner of the Year" to Sopra Group: http://www.sopragroup.fr/

Componize and XML document management solution.
As a neighbor(Marseille, France), I finally discovered Componize solution! It is based on components principle. Indeed when we create office or technical documents by default we create documents by components without realizing it.
A paragraph is a component of a chapter.
A chapter is a component of a book.
A book is a component of a library
etc ...

And often, we realize these components are the same in a lot of documents!
and what happend when we decide to modify one ? We have to go back over ALL the documents having this component! Lost time guarantee!
To optimize document management, we have to use a tool like Componize!

For more information: http://www.componize.com/overview/overview-home.html

Xenit and Castor integration .
Firstly if you do not know what is CAStor Caringo, let's have a look at : http://www.caringo.com/products_castor.html
Now try to make links with document management system like Alfresco. Next, use an addon developped by Xenit...
You have a solution that can easily manage millions of documents with high-scalability and high performance guaranteed!
Impressive!

For more information on Xenit: http://www.xenit.eu/

Openwide and data migration with ETL (Talend)
Generally, when we start an ECM project, there are always existing documents. So, we have to find a way to transfer this documentation to Alfresco.
How? With an ETL (Talend in our case) and a component developed by Openwide. This one allows you to create and integrate content within Alfresco through "jobs" (automated).

For more information on Openwide: http://www.openwide.fr/

Atol CD and SURF applications :
JSF is dead, long live REST! It's the main idea or slogan of this presentation which explains how to create a new user experience with Alfresco.

For more information about this presentation : http://www.atolcd.com/fileadmin/Publications/Alfresco_Meetup_RIA_et_SURF.pdf
and Atol CD: http://www.atolcd.com/

Workflow conception with BlueXML
How is it possible to generate 1200 lines of code to create and setup a workflow in Alfresco in a few minutes?
The answer is simple: You have to user BlueXMl Alfresco Generator !
This tool, based on Eclipse, allows via drag & drop (and forms) to create all necessary files for setting up a workflow Alfresco.
The dream of every developer!

For more information on BlueXML: http://www.bluexml.com/v2/alfresco-generator/

Finally

First as its logo suggests, Alfresco can be compared to a flower that has evolved in its ecosystem (content management).
In this ecosystem, it met

Bees (OEM) who have created their miels (solution) from the pollen of the flower (Alfresco. ..)
Florists (OEMs) who used the flower (Alfresco. ..) to create compositions (specific solutions)
Horticulturalists (Partners / Integrator / Community) who took the flower to make it evolve (Alfresco. ..) and make it even stronger.
Enthusiasts (Communitu) who think this flower is beautiful.

Then, if you want to live happy, you have to live hidden. This idea is THE fundamental trend of Alfresco, integrators and partners.
They are abandoning more and more history JSF interface to more responsive and more 2.0 interfaces. Goodbye Java, Hello Java... script! (I am exaggerating but the idea is here ...)

Finally Alfresco continues to integrate its application seamlessly with tools that the user knows and uses every day!
Yesterday CIFS for sharing documents in a Windows folder. Today Windows Office suite via Sharepoint Protocol integration. Tomorrow IMAP for sharing and managing emails in Microsoft Outlook ...

And me ?

For my first participation in an event Alfresco (my second for an ECM community event), I think I have to improve "networking" between sessions :o)
It is important that I improve my "commercial" side.

Then I totally confirms my interest for integration and information (content) systems.
Indeed, if you have read all of this article you can:

Manage your documents and e-mails (Alfresco ECM)
Collaborate (Alfresco Share)
Create and manage websites (Alfresco WCM)
Manage technical documentation and XML (Componize)
Divide your data in high availability (Castor - Xenit) with tools (Enterprise Capabilities Only)
Integrate existing data via ETL (Talend - Openwide)
Create rich interfaces (Alfresco SURF) for specific business needs
Create workflows in a simple and intuitive way (BlueXML)
Archive everything (Alfresco RM)

And who are the people with this kind of abilities ?

Integrators (like me ...)!!!

Finally, when I was young I loved playing with Lego ... I think I'll continue on this path ...

As you can see, the road is still long.

Thank you for everything. And see you soon!

PS: You can find some pictures I took during the event at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36931301@N03/sets/72157617655796047/

Open Source ECM : This is my way...

2009-04-02T06:12:00.000-07:00

JM.PASCAL - This is my way...

View more presentations from Pascal Jean marie.

Twitter - ECM Links of the week

2009-04-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hello,

In addition to my technical focus and post, I will try resume different information that I found with Twitter.

In fact if you want to follow me: http://twitter.com/jeanmariepascal

CMIS
iECM CMIS Demonstrator

http://aiim-iecm.org/CMISDemoE

Alfresco
CMIS Presentation :

http://www.slideshare.net/johnnewton/cmis-and-interoperability-aiim-2009

Alfresco 3.1 Enterprise :

http://www.alfresco.com/media/releases/2009/03/ent3-1/

John Newton Blog :

http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/03/building-a-stronger-open-source-product.html

Fujitsu Scanner integration with Alfresco built with CMIS video demo :

http://s3.alfrescodemo.com/video/AlfrescoFujitsuScanSnapDemo.mp4

KnowledgeTree
Sucess Story :

http://writepoint.com/blog/?p=583

KnowledgeTree Office Add-in 1.0 Release Candidate 2 available

http://ff.im/-1RD5S

Jahia
Jahia v6 :

http://www.jahia.com/jahia/Jahia/Home/products/download/eap

Community WebSite :

http://jahia-howto.blogspot.com/

JSR 283

http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/pfd/jsr283/index.html

Humor

http://www.cmswatch.com/About/Press/0409-ECM-AIIM/

Optaros

Evaluating Social Software? Don't Underestimate Open Source

http://www.optaros.com/blogs/evaluating-social-software-dont-underestimate-open-source

CMS Meme John On Tech
Celebrity CMS DeathMatch

http://jonontech.com/2009/03/25/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-3/

Enjoy it !

Open Source or Proprietary ? A perspective question...

2009-03-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

Hey,

Since I read articles upon Open Source, Business Model, licences... many ideas and principles are scrambling in my head and I create this post to share my ideas and opinions.

Simple question :

Open Source or Proprietary ?

Increasingly, I think (and I am convinced ...) that everything depends on perspective and point of view. ("Everything is relative" Einstein would say!).

Let's take a car. I'm sure you know someone in your social network(consultant, project manager, colleague, client ...) who often compare Information Technology with automotive.
PS: I bought all little or huge anecdotes between car and IT ecosystem. I plan to start a collection ...

So if I have to compare open source and car ecosystem, I would say : maintenance.

Maintenance ?

Questions : How do you maintain / repair your car?
Do you let your mechanic/repairman do all the work?
Do you drain off your waste oil, change your tyre or spark plugs ... ?
Have you a mechanic car insurance or guaranty for 3 years ?

Well... Open Source = maintenance = support ...

How do you plan to take care of your car (IT solutions) ? Following answers, you will take (or not) a support contract.

If you are a good mechanician, you will probably pass.
If you are resourceful but afraid to do special operations, you will ask a simple support.
If you don't want to do mechanic and let other people do the work, you will take an all-inclusive contract.

And this is the main (and major) difference between proprietary and open source solutions.

In open source world, you can take care of your car (if you like), ask a friend (the community) to help you AND / OR you can apply for a maintenance contract.
In Proprietary world, you can't take car of your car alone ! You must apply a "nearly-exclusive" maintenance contract.

Finally, all depends (well almost...) on your profile to choose a solution.

And it is at this precise moment where the perspective (point of view) is important ...

From a strategic layer (manager, chief, decision maker...), it's important to have a support contract with the editor. It guarantee performance and service quality of your application (even if a software developper has changed one parameter without knowing impacts... In general, we often say it's the solution fault... ^^' ). Whether open or not, the support of a solution is something vital. As quoted in the article, it is not because we has not been stolen this year that we should not take out insurance against theft. So be prudent, take the support!

From a technical layer (developer, engineer, consultant, architect ...), Open Source as its name suggests, means literally "open source"! As a technician and code explorer, you can learn, understand the code and architecture of the greatest (or not) developers! It is something like having cookbooks of the greatest (or not) French cooks. Typically for a young curious consultant/developer like me, it is often useful to learn best practices from open source solutions. Unfortunately, this reflex is not fully exploited tough this is THE main advantage!

From a commercial layer (accounting, commercial ....), open source equals free or huge margin! But I repeat again, this is not strictly true! In fact, It has been shown by numerous studies that Open Source solutions are cheaper than their proprietary competitors. However we have to compare features! Some proprietary modules are clearly very expensive, and that's normal due to the business functionnality. Care must be taken as usual with the requirements and needs of each user!

From a quality layer (Quality ...), Open source often equals Standard! Usually (it's not a golden rule... be careful!), open source development and open source solution respect standards (OASIS, ISO, W3C...) . It helps to create interoperability, flexibility, continuity and simpler evolution.

To conclude: From my simple view, the real difference between proprietary and open source is the capacity to watch, understand and study the source code of the application. Everything else is not discriminatory.

So remember, needs and requirements are the only REAL criteria for selecting a solution!

If you have something to add or if you want to continue the discussion, I invite you to leave a comment at this post!

In any case Have fun !

Interview : Dan Keldsen, Co-founder, Principal, Analyst, Blogger, Educator, Innovator at Information Architected, Inc.

2009-03-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody !

Today let's go to USA.

Remember : The subjects I focused on for these interviews are
1. To introduce men and women playing a role in ECM environment
2. To discover the ECM community
3. To explore ECM Solutions
4. To learn more about technologies and content management practices.

Today, I have the great oppportunity to interview Dan Keldsen, Co-founder, Principal, Analyst, Blogger, Educator, Innovator at Information Architected, Inc. and a long-time player in the ECM world.

Hello Dan !

First of all, let me thank you for the time you take to make this interview reality.

Certainly, my pleasure to be involved.

So Dan, you have a lot of roles and titles. But among all of that, what's your favourite one and why ?

Ah, so difficult to chose only one - but if I were to choose one aspect of my working life that drives me the most, it would be as an educator.

Regardless of the work I'm engaged in at any particular time, I always strive to be learning for my own ongoing improvement, and to make sure that when I'm consulting, writing, blogging, presenting, that I'm helping to educate others, and most importantly, to get others to a spark questions that THEY should be tackling to further their education and awareness of the topic at hand.

My belief is that unless you are continuously learning, you are only going to fall farther and farther behind what is possible in this world - and who can afford to do that?

In December 2008, you have founded Information Architected, Inc. What's the purpose of this entity? Could you describe it ?

Sure, Information Architected is a phrase that is meant to flip conversations around from their typical TECHNOLOGY focus - such as "we need a wiki!" - to the business goals that need to be accomplished, such as needing to rapidly assemble a distributed project team in a professional services firm. Deciding what tool is appropriate comes AFTER the business need, not before.

This becomes a flexible question that can help people get to the root of what they're looking to do.

What is YOUR Information Architected for?

To increase sales? To reduce customer support calls? To engage your customers in conversations? To move faster than your competition? None of that happens by accident, and unless the technologies you put in place to SOLVE those problems is put together, purposefully, to create the end result, it will be far more difficult to guarantee that result.

If you run the question out a bit further, it becomes, for example, Is your information architected for collaboration? with your customers? to co-create new products? in a "crowd-sourced" social community? And how does that system connect to any other systems that might be "behind the firewall?" How does compliance factor into this? How many languages need to be handled? Is access necessary via mobile?

People don't want more tools, they want to solve their problems, but all too often, technology leads the discussion, causing serious limitations in the ways that organizations are thinking about how to solve their business problems. It seems trivial, but it's a battle fought every day in the business world, and frequently, lost.

What's your work day after day ?

Ah, the life of a startup! The glamorous side is over-rated, for those who haven't tried it. Fortunately, between the background of my partner, long-time colleague Carl Frappaolo, who had started two companies prior to this, and myself, with a varied background including marketing and hands-on development, we don't have to spend much time in running the details of the business. The great benefit of starting up a company these days is that nearly every service we need can easily be bought and activated in a matter of minutes, for example, our website was literally up and running with branding and initial content, in a matter of hours.

Which of course, in this economy, allows us to not focus on the plumbing of the business, and instead identify and serve clients. I have to say, as a former day-to-day IT guy, running racks of servers, this is quite a refreshing change! As I've said for a long time, even when I was a day-to-day IT guy coding and fixing, the less you have to do to get your technology to do your work, the more you can focus on whatever your business ACTUALLY does - creating new drugs, more fuel efficient cars, etc.. When technology becomes a burden, plain and simple, you're doing IT wrong.

The client-facing work varies - providing strategic consulting, at this point, most often on decreasing costs of operations, and increasing delivering value to customers more quickly and effectively through collaboration, keynoting and presenting at various conferences and events, rewriting and delivering the 2009 edition of AIIM's 4-day ECM Course - including a focus on MIKE2 (an open source methodology for ECM implementation which I've become intimately familiar with over the last year), creating some of the newest and deepest SharePoint research available on the web as of this writing, and more.

More succinctly, we provide Analysis, Consulting and Education - or you could think of us as ACEs for short. ;)

Analysis feeds our Consulting work, which is frequently part Education as we work at "teaching a man to fish" rather than stay on site for months, and the entire set of offerings loops back around to refresh itself with each engagement.

If you are not aware of what ECM can do for you, you've been sold a bill of goods that didn't deliver - by a solution provider or integrator, are looking to improve HOW you're using your current investment, or looking to replace all or some portion of your ECM environment - we can drop into your environment, assess this situation, and provide pointed guidance on how to quickly start making progress, whether towards a long-term or short-term strategy.

I visited your site : http://www.informationarchitected.com/ and It's the first time I found the term Innovation Management. Could you explain this term and the link with content management ?

Innovation Management is a relatively new term - the basic premise is that "Innovation" is not magic, it shouldn't be accidental, and if organizations are going to succeed at any point, and specifically NOW, in this economy, then innovation needs to be addressed and managed, in order to actually make it happen at all, let alone consistently.

The tie to ECM is that the process of innovation management can be greatly improved by layering many of the core components of ECM. For instance, the "front end" of innovation, where as many ideas as possible are generated, are generated and feed into some place where it is "captured" - just as a form, contract, or other piece of content would. That front-end is then moved through a process or workflow, to allow others in the organization to collaborate around improving, validating or dropping the idea. The actual implementation of the idea, if it makes it this far, could shoot into another process, perhaps separate from the ECM system, such as to set a new automobile design into motion. By capturing this entire process in an electronic system, it can be thoroughly tracked, made visible to all who are participating in that process, and undestood how long it takes to bring a new idea to market, who is best at this, and so on.

This is fairly cutting edge, although the core concepts that support innovation management are not new. My interest in this topic began when I was working in the Innovation Lab of Perot Systems about 4 years ago. It's a fascinating area, and an area that organizations need significant help in seeing how it is possible to manage innovation in a systematic way.

While I am happy to help people with the more typical day-to-day uses of ECM, such as streamlining e-commerce, improving intranets, designing systems to allow distributed collaboration, creating publishing systems that allow distribution across paper, websites, mobile devices, etc., it is quite useful to be able to point to the larger and more thoroughly modern ideas that innovation management represents. IBM or Google, for example, are prime examples of addressing innovation in a serious way from a cultural standpoint, and in building the technical environment to innovate all the time, with as broad participation as possible from their employees, at the least, out to their customers and partners.

By the way, where did the "ECM Experience" begin for you ?

I accidentally stumbled into the world of ECM. Prior to my "official" introduction into ECM when I first started working at Delphi Group in 1994, I'd built an internal solution for a previous employer to track library clippings in the pharmaceutical press, and to manage marketing and sales materials for a distributed workforce. What we now talk about as tagging or metadata, and content re-use, I'd accidentally "invented" (not really, but it was certainly seen as a new invention to my employer at the time) as a way to save myself and my colleagues time. Who knew I'd make a career out of ECM after that?

The journey I've made since then is something that I try to condense and infect others with - and that is the simple fact that unless business and technical people are working together, they are only doing their organizations harm.

Until business people and technical people can translate what they are mutually looking for, placing blame on either side does nobody any good. I'd started in the IT world as what I'd call a "classic IT guy" - focused more on operations and tactics rather than in supporting what the business would need to grow to meet tomorrow. At some point I realized I'd better be part of the solution or I was going to be a boat anchor to the growth of the business, and once that lightbulb went off, I did everything that I could to be the "go to guy" and speak both in business and technical terms. Having people on staff, or at hand, that can translate between the business and technical worlds is a KEY to getting the right things done for businesses. Unfortunately, it's still fairly rare to find companies that have people with such skills.

It's been a long, strange, yet rewarding journey since then. We're only just beginning to realize what is possible given a hyperlinked, collaboratively-driven world - I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds - and to help bring people along the path as it unfolds.

What's your feelings about Open Source solution and open source movement in the CM ecosystem ?

Whether the topic is open source, SaaS or MOSS/SharePoint, the more options that potential buyers have, at a variety of price points, and with choices for whether they have to buy, build, rent, lease or deploy in some other manner - having far MORE options, and as a result, more competition, can only do good things for this industry.

Open source solutions that provide a "full suite" of capabilities for ECM are not nearly as easy to find as it is to find open source solutions that "only" provide blogging, wikis, social networking, and so on.

I've found that most of my clients, or discussions with buyers/users of technology still have more fear than acceptance of open source. Understanding the licensing models, setting the expectations for customer support, all serve to provide a bit of an uncomfortable feeling for many people. I'm not saying that SHOULD be the case, but for all of the positive benefits shown by the investment IBM or Sun, for example, have made in their own cost-savings in open source, the general corporate public world has not yet reached the "tipping point" in seeing open source as a real option.

That said, in working with a federal agency recently, they were quite willing to embrace open source, and had just begun to ramp up their development staff, as some recent RFP responses had quite an expensive price tag that they were not prepared to accept.

When presenting potential solutions to clients, all options are available in my toolbox - whatever set of tools will serve the client, I will suggest as valid options. I will say, in the face of economic mayhem, solutions that are cheaper and faster to deploy, rather than expensive and complicated, are beginning to make a lot more sense to people. Why that didn't make sense BEFORE, well, that's a topic for another day.

On the technical front, I've long said that ECM environments have some of the most hostile interfaces both for "normal" users, as well as for administrators and developers. Open source providers have helped to change that perception to a certain degree, as the individual pieces underlying the open source "stack" have been pulled into single installers, and unified frameworks, but there is still quite a bit that can be done in open source and the traditional commercial ECM world to make the interfaces and overall management MUCH more streamlined.

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

At this point, there are very few blogs that I regularly read. Most of the blogs that I read are those entries that are specifically pointed out to me by people I'm following or who reply to me on Twitter (I'm @dankeldsen, incidentally) - or entries that I find, regardless of where they are posted, by various agents and alerts I have, setup on topics such as SharePoint, ECM, Enterprise 2.0, and so on.

I've been a longtime user of LinkedIn as well, and have begun to see many interesting questions and concerns posted to various ECM, search/findability, BPM and Enterprise 2.0 groups.

Whether content is on a blog, forum, community or generically a "web site" - it's all content to me. Wherever useful insights are arising, and discussion are being had, if it's of interest to me or clients I'm working with at the time, I'll be there. I strive to point out "the best" content as I find it, and post these finds via Twitter, my blog, and social bookmarking sites such as delicious and Diigo. All of those resources are likely to be more useful, and more current than any single list I could provide here. My sources change on a daily basis.

What would you say to conclude this interview?

The many benefits and possibilities of ECM are still not well understood by most businesses, although that has begun to change due to the increasing adoption and use of web content, as well as the rise of open source, SaaS and SharePoint. Whenever I interact with companies who are still driven by paper-based forms, cold calls, direct mail and faxes, I wince - they are missing huge opportunities. If we can all work to help raise awareness of what ECM can do for them, in language they understand, then we can ALL look forward to much better experiences as customers, patients, workers, teachers, students, and on and on. Anything I can do to help you and your readers to that end, my virtual door is wide open!

Many thanks, Dan, for this interview. We wish you an exciting journey on the ECM Road!

Thank you, Jean Marie, and great to be a part of your journey as well.

Find out more about Information Architected at:
http://www.informationarchitected.com/

You can find Dan's blog at:
http://www.BizTechTalk.com/

Follow him on twitter at:
http://twitter.com/dankeldsen

Sample his presentations at:
http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen

Or connect with him on LinkedIn at:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dankeldsen

PS : You can download this interview at this url : http://www.scribd.com/doc/13658395/InterviewInformationArchitected-DKeldsen-ENG-Open-Source-ECM-Interview-ENG-Dan-Keldsen-Information-Architected-Inc

Nuxeo 5.2 RC1 is available

2009-03-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

Nuxeo EP 5.2

Official announcement :

ChangeLog :

http://jira.nuxeo.org/browse/NXP?report=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.project:changelog-panel

Packages :

http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0-RC1-jboss-all.jar (installer for the “full-fledged” document management server, based on jboss)
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-we-5.2.0-RC1-jetty.zip (lightweight WebEngine server, embedding the Jetty web container).
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-we-5.2.0-RC1-glassfish.zip (lightweight WebEngine server, embedding the GlassFish v3 application server).

Now it's time to test!

Twitter : a new way to follow ECM news

2009-03-19T02:22:00.000-07:00

Do you twit? Have you aTwitter account ? I often read this kind of messages in recent time. So that's why (I'm curious...), I started to test this new communication way. And my first impressions are very good! So I will share my findings.

First, What's twitter ?

Then, Who am I supposed to follow ?

Now that you know the principle, below you can find links about

ECM solutions :

Acquia

Acquia : http://twitter.com/acquia
Bryan House, Marketing Director : http://twitter.com/bryanhouse
Linea Rowe, Director of Product Management : http://twitter.com/linearowe
Kent Gale, Sr. Director, Customer Support : http://twitter.com/kentgale
Joshua Brauer, Support Specialist : http://twitter.com/jbrauer
Kieran Lal, Drupal community adventure guide : http://twitter.com/amazonk
Chris Brookins, Vice President, Engineering : http://twitter.com/chrisbrookins
Chuck D'Antonio, Senior Director, Professional Services : http://twitter.com/crdant
Brenda Boggs, Support Specialist : http://twitter.com/brenda003

Drupal : http://twitter.com/Drupal

Alfresco

Alfresco: alfresco1
John Newton, CTO: johnnewton
John Powell, CEO: JohnPowell996
Paul Holmes-Higgin, VP of Engineering: paulrhh
Nancy Garrity, Alfresco Community Director: nancygarrity
Brian Robinson, Consulting: br524
Jessica Sant, Developer Alfresco Network: jsant
Peter Monks, Consulting: pmonks
Scott Davis, Director of Services: sdavis139
Mike Hatfield, Senior Software Engineer, UI Team: mikehatfield
Luis Sala: luissala
Gavin Cornwell, Senior Software Engineer, Services Team: gcornwell
Roy Wetherall, Senior Software Engineer, Services Team: rwetherall
David Caruana, Chief Architect: dcaruana
Jared Ottley, Solutions Engineer: jottley
Ashutosh Dandavate, Program Manager: ashuda
Michael Uzquiano, Director of WCM and Network: uzquiano
Linton Baddeley, UX Designer: lintonb
Kevin Roast, UI Team Leader: kevinroast
Derek Hulley, Senior Software Engineer, Repository Team: derekhulley
Yong Qu, Chief Solutions Architect: quyong2000
Lee Faus, Director of Solutions Engineering: Ronin_Warrior
Natasha Woodhouse, Training Coordinator: tashawoodhouse
Paul Hampton, Director of Product Marketing: pauldhampton
Nikki Tyson, Director of Corporate Marketing: ntyson

Twibe : http://www.twibes.com/group/alfresco

Day Software

Day Software : http://twitter.com/daysoftware
Kevin Cochrane, Chief Marketing Officer : http://twitter.com/kevinc2003
Lars Triellof, Product Manager Collaboration and Digital Asset Management : http://twitter.com/trieloff
David Nuescheler, Computer Software Professional : http://twitter.com/davidnuescheler
Bertrand Delacretaz, Senior developer : http://twitter.com/bdelacretaz
Jukka Zitting, Senior Developer : http://twitter.com/jukkaz
Ryan R Sciandri, Manager, Technical Solutions : http://twitter.com/sciandri
Michael Marth, Software Architect : http://twitter.com/michaelmarth
Gerd Handke, Director Product Management : http://twitter.com/gd_h
Jeff Cowen, Senior Account Manager : http://twitter.com/jtcowen
Lucas Whittaker, Client Services Director : http://twitter.com/lucaswhittaker
Florian Schaulin, Sen Dir Global Education : http://twitter.com/schaulinsan
Cédric Hüsler, Product Marketing Manager : http://twitter.com/keepthebyte
Michael Eppelheimer, Creative Director : http://twitter.com/michaelepp
Frank Schmiedle, Presales Consultant : http://twitter.com/schmiedle

eZ Systems

eZ systems : http://twitter.com/ezsystems
Bertrand Dunogier, Software engineer : http://twitter.com/bdunogier
Nicolas Pastorino, Consultant - Trainer - System Developer : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye
Roland Benedetti, Product Management : http://twitter.com/rolandbenedetti
Ole Marius Smestad, Product manager : http://twitter.com/dotten
Mariko Toyoshima, Country Manager Japan : http://twitter.com/marikotoyoshima
Derick Rethans, Project Manager eZ components : http://twitter.com/derickr
Paul Borgermans, Head of Development : http://twitter.com/paulborgermans

eXoPlatform

eXoPlatform : http://twitter.com/eXoPlatform
Benjamin Mestrallet, Founder : http://twitter.com/benjmestrallet
Julien Viet, Portal Product Manager : http://twitter.com/julienviet
Nicolas Filotto, DMS Product Manager : http://twitter.com/essobedo
Julien Brulland, Web Marketing and Communication : http://twitter.com/JulienBrulland
Tugdual Grall, VP of Business and Product Strategy : http://twitter.com/tgrall
Brice Revenant, Director South East Asia : http://twitter.com/bricerevenant
Oualid Chaker, General Manager, Middle East & Africa Office : http://twitter.com/oualid
Peter Nedonosko, Project Leader : http://twitter.com/peterneo
Patrice Lamarque, Product Manager : http://twitter.com/plamarque
Gennady Azarenkov, Managing director Ukraine : http://twitter.com/gazarenkov
Dimitri Baeli, Usability Manager : http://twitter.com/dbaeli

Twibe : http://www.twibes.com/group/eXoPlatform

IBM

Interwoven

Interwoven : http://twitter.com/Interwoven_Inc

Jahia

Jahia : http://twitter.com/Jahia
Elie Auvray, CEO : http://twitter.com/elieauvray
Serge Huber, CTO : http://twitter.com/bhillou
Tristan Renaud, VP sales : http://twitter.com/tristanrenaud
Emmanuel Garcin, VP north USA : http://twitter.com/emmanuelgarcin
Clement Eggier, Manager : http://twitter.com/TheKlem
David Griffon, Software Enginneer : http://twitter.com/David_Griffon
Stefane Croisier, Head of Products : http://twitter.com/scroisier
Amine Tazi, Presales Manager: http://twitter.com/atazi_jahia
Stefane Monier, Business Development : http://twitter.com/trezi
Cédric Mailleux, Software Architect : http://twitter.com/aillas
Sergiy Shyrkov, Software Engineer : http://twitter.com/shyrkov
Fancois Laize, Financial Controller : http://twitter.com/flaize

KnowledgeTree

KnowledgeTree : http://twitter.com/knowledgetreesw
Daniel Chalef, CEO : http://twitter.com/danielchalef
Serge Meunier, Software Engineer : http://twitter.com/sergemeunier
Damien Williams, Software Community Evangelist : http://twitter.com/Damien_Williams
Monique Chavda, Support Team : http://twitter.com/moniquech
Philip Arkcoll, Product Manager : http://twitter.com/parkcoll
Kevin Fourie, Director of Product Development : http://twitter.com/kevinfourie
Mark Holtzhausen, Senior Software Engineer : http://twitter.com/MarkH_KT

Twibe : http://www.twibes.com/group/KnowledgeTree

Nuxeo

Nuxeo : http://twitter.com/nuxeo
Eric Barroca, CEO : http://twitter.com/ebarroca
Stefane Fermigier, Founder and Chairman : http://twitter.com/sfermigier
Alexandre Russel, software engineer : http://twitter.com/arussel
Bassem Asseh, Consulting director : http://twitter.com/asseh
Florent Guillaume, Director of R&D : http://twitter.com/efge
Ian Smith, cloud guy : http://twitter.com/iansmith
Olivier Grisel, Software Engineer : http://twitter.com/ogrisel
Marjolaine Weibel, Human Ressource : http://twitter.com/Marjolainew
Anne de Forsan, Communication Director : http://twitter.com/adeforsan
Alain Escaffre, Technical sales/project manager : http://twitter.com/aescaffre
http://twitter.com/alnuxeo

Twibe : http://www.twibes.com/group/nuxeo

Open Text

Open Text : http://twitter.com/OpenText
Open Text WCM : http://twitter.com/OpenTextWCM
Open Text Content World : http://twitter.com/OTContentWorld
Martin Sumner Smith, VP, Enterprise Architecture : http://www.twitter.com/MartinSS
Cheryl McKinnon, Director E2.0 : http://www.twitter.com/CherylMcKinnon
Kimberly Edwards, Product Marketing Manager for the collaborative solutions : http://twitter.com/KimberlyEdwards
Cheryl Alden, Director of Marketing : http://twitter.com/cherylalden
Jason Varmazis, Senior Consultant : http://twitter.com/hydrogenbob
Adam Lee, Public Relations - EMEA : http://twitter.com/photo_ad
Richard Maganini, Director, Corporate Communications : http://twitter.com/rtmaganini
Daniel Kraft, SVP Corporate Strategy : http://twitter.com/DanielKraft
Owen Brandt, Director of Professional Services and Customer Care : http://twitter.com/owenbrandt
Michael Griebenow, Field Marketing Coordinator : http://twitter.com/grieben
Tucker Elliott, Senior Sales Engineer : http://twitter.com/tuckerelliott
Stephanie Fazio, Corporate Communications Specialist : http://twitter.com/sdfazio
Craig Hepburn, Senior Marketing Manager : http://twitter.com/craighepburn
Brigid Greenway, Field Marketing Manager, Sales Services : http://www.twitter.com/brigidgreenway
Dave Chalmers, Enterprise Strategy : http://www.twitter.com/DaveChalmers1
Lubor Ptacek, Vice President, Product Marketing : http://twitter.com/lptacek
Jeremy Reed, Director, Program Management : http://twitter.com/Jeremy_Reed
Jim Rieder, Director of Sales : http://twitter.com/riederj
Stewart Lynch, Senior Services Engineer : http://twitter.com/StewartLynch
Werner de Jong, Senior services engineer : http://twitter.com/wernerdejong
Kimberly Proudfoot, Marketing Manager : http://twitter.com/proudfootk
Orla Conaway, Director, Office of the President : http://twitter.com/orlaconaway
Bill Forquer, EVP : http://twitter.com/billforquer
Joyce Hostyn, Senior Director, Experience Design : http://twitter.com/joyce_hostyn
Wendy Chung : Senior Manager, Corporate Marketing : http://twitter.com/wendychung
Steve Currie, Director Marketing : http://twitter.com/stevecurrie
James Cleaver, Manager of Human Resources : http://twitter.com/youngjames44
Jody White, Program Manager, Extended ECM for SAP : http://twitter.com/JodyWhite
Elizabeth Torrie, Analyst Relations : http://twitter.com/bethtorrie
Ginny Bartosek, Marketing Programs Manager : http://twitter.com/GinnyBartosek
http://twitter.com/otex_brig

Twibe : http://www.twibes.com/group/opentext

Vignette

Vignette : http://twitter.com/vignettecorp

25.03.09 : A new list of CMS Vendor

Gilbane Group Blog : http://gilbane.com/blog/2009/03/content_management_vendors_on_twitter.html

Organization/Analyst/NetWork/Press :

AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management)

John Mancini, President of AIIM : http://www.twitter.com/jmancini77
Atle Skjekkeland, Vice President : http://www.twitter.com/skjekkeland
Hanns Köhler-Krüner, Director Education EMEA : http://www.twitter.com/HannsKK
Peggy Winton, Vice President : http://www.twitter.com/pwwinton
Bryant Hudon, editor : http://www.twitter.com/bduhon
Betsy Fanning, director : http://www.twitter.com/bfanning
Amy Michalski, Marketing Strategist : http://www.twitter.com/amichalski
Georgina Clelland, Director Global Education Services : http://www.twitter.com/gzclelland
Thedra White, Director Global Education Services : http://www.twitter.com/tgwhite1
Theresa Resek, Director, Webinars & Data Analysis: http://www.twitter.com/tmresek
Bob Larrivee, Director/Industry Advisor : http://www.twitter.com/BobLarrivee
Joe Ryan, Manager, Global Relations : http://www.twitter.com/jryanaiim

CMSWire

http://twitter.com/cmswire

CMSWatch

http://twitter.com/cmswatch

451Group

http://twitter.com/the451group

FierceCM

http://twitter.com/FierceCM

CMSGroup

http://twitter.com/cmpros

Blogger/Experts/Consultants/Independant

Seth Gottlieb, Founder, Content Here : http://twitter.com/sggottlieb
Dan Keldsen, Co-founder, Principal at Information Architected, Inc. : http://twitter.com/dankeldsen

Of course this listing is not thorough and extra hands are always welcome to complete this list!

Finally, if you want to follow me ?

http://twitter.com/jeanmariepascal

Rich Client, Alfresco and me...

2009-03-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

Hi!

Since the beginning of this year, I'm trying to create and develop "rich client" connected to Alfresco services (in other terms : ECM services). When I speak about "rich client", I speak about RDA: Rich Desktop Application and RIA: Rich Internet Application.

For my first tests, I used an excellent graphics library that some of you already know : Ext js. This library allows to create rich user interfaces with high quality components. For those who are part of the Alfresco community, you can find some Ext implementation in projects as:

Opsoro: http://www.opsoro.org/
Docasu: http://docasu.sourceforge.net
Web Studio: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Web_Studio
ExtAlf: http://louise.hu/poet/?p=753

For my part and to keep simple, I used this library to create a graphical documentary process designer based on nodes. Simple isn't it?

In architectural point of view, the solution is composed by:

Specific Java API for treatment,
Javascript API (API Java Export to be used by webscripts) (BaseScopableProcessorExtension for coders ...)
A lot of Webscripts for REST,
Extjs for presentation layer,
SVG forworkflow graphical representation,

Ps: This solution is totally specific and is not in linked with JBPM! (but nothing forbid to plug services JBPM with this king of GUI...)
Ps 2: Thanks to RCO and MDU for teaching me the art of SVG and Javascript!

In any case to see the result you can see the video below:

Record your screencast online

Why have we to create rich client for Alfresco ? It already has a customizable User interface...
It is a good question! But the answer is simple: Everybody has different tastes. :)

Indeed, Alfresco's interfaces does not necessarily match needs and expectations of all users. Design too complex ... Non corporate graphic style... There are plenty reasons to change interfaces! and to be honest... Although Alfresco default interface is customizable, it's quite limited. And if we decide to change many components, it can become very tedious and dangerous if we are not careful!

Or a content management system must provide the ability to access and consolidate all the content. It must deliver them in various formats to fit user screens (computer screen, tablet, mobile, smartphone, pda ...).

As integrator, we need to create new interfaces from scratch! In fact ... not completely... Alfresco offers the ability to display and export most of its content management services via APIs like Java, JavaScript, PHP, REST and display content in several formats like XML, HTML, CMIS, ATON, JSON... In the end, it's developper's role to choose the right service and the right format. He can later link it to a graphical library like Ext to improve user experience (see You Experience Technovision in 2012).

My point of view
Rich Interfaces in a ECM system are solutions to specific business problems. They represent a vision of the company content repository.

For example :

An HTML form with data preview and javascript fields validation.
A desktop widget based on Adobe AIR to follow a community activity.
An external JSR 168 portlet to publish papers on a portal.
An Ext graphical interface for managing the lifecycle of a special content type ...

Sometimes, it is (really!!!) better to create an interface from scratch than to modify the existing!

For my part, I am currently working with Ext and Adobe Air. I'm testing integration capabilities between this framework.
In this area you can see a demonstrator by Luis Sala at: http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/luissala/2009/03/05/my-adobe air-project-writing-an-alfresco-desktop-app /
or
in a different category, you should view the CMIS Explorer by Shane Johnson (blog).

At the end, I'm (maybe) in on it...

Have fun !

Technovision 2012 and me...

2009-02-11T02:16:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Since I worked in a large technology services group such as Capgemini (South to be precise), I had the opportunity to discover and understand really interesting informations and methodologies.

I recently had the opportunity (I was advised to be too precise) to read and see the methodology TechnoVision 2012.

TechnoVision few points in 2012 (source capgemini.com):

TechnoVision 2012 is Capgemini’s strategic framework to help our clients develop the most relevant innovations for their organizations. It enables us to map the latest technologies, trends and innovations to our clients’ business drivers.

With TechnoVision 2012, Capgemini responds to current changes in the economic climate and addresses the demands and expectations of our clients. We aim to help our clients answer important questions, such as:

How will technology evolve?
Where should we invest?
What is the most effective information technology strategy for our business?

TechnoVision is Capgemini’s way of mapping technology trends to determine which ones meet the needs of a particular business or industry. The rapidly growing number of technology innovations is confusing for many clients. TechnoVision simplifies this complexity.

To learn more, for more information and to download your copy of Technovision , follow one of these links:

Technovision 2012 and me ?

I'm sure you have a question now : What is the relationship between this methodology and I (and my blogs ) ?

Well... Actually I would like to share personnal ideas that can link some aspects of the methodology and the open source ECM world.
In this post, I'm trying to create an association between Technovision clusters and my ideas about open source ECM. I will NOT apply the methodology! I will simply illustrate the clusters with my knowledge of Alfresco and Nuxeo largely ...

Technovision clusters

You Experience

Simple definition: New technologies make highly interactive user experiences possible.

Question: Does Open Source ECM can create a richer user experience? If so, how?

Answer: The answer is obviously YES! Solutions such as Alfresco and Nuxeo illustrate this trend. User experience is illustrated by the following points:

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs): We see more and more solutions (community or editor) based on these solutions with Interfaces and rich clients built on technologies like Flex .
Examples: FLEX Interface Alfresco, Nuxeo RCP
Role-based user portals: Implementing REST architectures, ATOM protocol , RSS, JSR 168 standard, netvibes portlets/widget or Google widget in solutions allowed easy access to contents and informations. Users can organize easily .
Examples: Integration JSR 168 portlets Alfresco / Nuxeo, WebWidgets Nuxeo, Alfresco Webscript
IPodification: The community has demonstrated the integration of these solutions through new user interfaces such as mobile terminals.
Examples: Alfresco integration with iPhone
Mashup applications: composite applications are not left behind in the world of ECM.
Examples: Alfresco integration with FaceBook

Transaction To Interaction

Simple definition: Predefined business transactions become ongoing relationships with clients and partners.

Question: Does Open Source ECM cacan create an collaboration and exchange environment ?

Answer: One of the components of ECM is (of course) collaboration . It's also possible with integration of another collaborative solution like an opensource blog engine. Indeed the main goal is to make easier the interaction between the various users and document/content around one community.

Social collaboration tools of Web 2.0: Wikis, forums, blogs, tags, shared calendar ... All these components of the collaborative Web 2.0 are natively integrated in solutions such Alfresco or Nuxeo.
Example: Share Alfresco, Nuxeo WebEngine.

Process On The Fly

Simple definition: A new wave of service-oriented solutions increases our ability to manage and execute processes.

Question: How are business processes managed? Does each solution offers services ? In what forms they are exposed? Can we control them?

Answer: In this answer there are several possibilities.

First each solutions embeds a workflow engine (usually based on JBPM). It allows the execution of documentary workflows depending on type of content. We can also note rules engines presence that enable easier document management .
Example: JBPM engine in Alfresco / Nuxeo, Alfresco Rules engine

Then there are services exposed by the solutions. This is referred to Web services, REST services, services exposed via a programming language such as PHP, Javascript, Java, JCR ... The vast majority of all public services are exposed. They can be "controlled" by a third party.
Example: Web Services REST for Alfresco / Nuxeo, Alfresco PHP

Thriving On Data

Simple definition: Insight into key data and events helps us navigate a rapidly changing, information-rich environment.

Question: Does ECM allows access to all information and indicators within the company? How is information managed?

Answer: If the solutions is associated with BI (Business Intelligence), the ECM performs as THE manager of unstructured information (the structured part is managed by ERP systems). By combining ERP information, we can have a global vision of all corporate information.
Example: Integrating ERP-SAP Connector integration BIRT

Sector As A Service

Simple definition: Core, commoditized business solutions delivered as customized, standard software on demand.

Question: Here I am a little dry ...

Answer: ...

Invisible Infostructure

Simple definition: Services supplied increasingly from the 'cloud' hide the details of technologies and systems.

Question: Here I am a little dry too...

Answer: ...

Open Standards / Service Orientation

Simple definition: This approach underpins and facilitates all other clusters.

Question: Are ECM services standardized or normalized? What is the interoperability between ECM solutions ?

Answer: We can notice in this part the creation of CMIS (Content Management Interoperability System) that will standardize the exchange of information between different systems.
Example: Alfresco CMIS Integration

That's all!

Now it's your turn ! Don't forget, if you want more information, to read and download Technovision 2012.

This article is could be change in a near future depending on my understanding and my findings on each point. Nevertheless, I invite you to continue this discussion via the comments!

Have a good trip !

News about Open Source Solutions

2009-02-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Since few weeks, I was mainly focused on interviews. I dropped the news about our favorite ECM Open Source solutions !

I will fix this bug immediately :

From Alfresco Side

Release of a stable community: Labs 3 Final

Alfresco has officially announced the release of a "stable" community version. In other words if you start a project based on Alfresco, it is the version to use!

By reading Alfresco forums , it is truly a breakthrough. So don't hesitate to try it!

This version is available for download at: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Labs

New features ?
Well the same things in previous versions with fixes and improvement of webstudio.

To go further:

Alfresco Sites
http://www.alfresco.com/media/releases/2009/01/final-labs-3/
http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/01/alfresco-labs-3-special-inaugural-release.html

Do you want surfing ?

If you are curious or Alfresco developer, Jeff Potts (interview) has published on his blog and on his SlideShare all media-training about Alfresco Surf Camp sessions .

MUST SEE if you try to understand how to surf with Alfresco.

How much does it cost?

When you search for an ECM solution, one of the key is, of course, the total cost of ownership of the solution (license, support ...). In other words how much it cost? To demonstrate the power of open source (and therefore Alfresco), Alfresco has made a comparison in a specific use case of its TCO against proprietary ECM solution
A number to remember: 96% reduction in cost of Alfresco ownership compared to a large proprietary vendor.

For more information you can
download the white paper: http://www.alfresco.com/products/whitepapers/
see a webinar: http://www.alfresco.com/about/events/2009/01/reduce-ecm-cost-15jan09/
see the presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/alfresco/webinar-slides-total-cost-of-ownership-for-ecm-ian-howells-alfresco-presentation

From Nuxeo Side

Release of version 5.2m4

The new Nuxeo has arrived! You can download it at:

Packaged Version
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0.m4-1.tar.gz
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0.m4-1.zip

Installers:
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0.m4-installer-1.jar [Generic]
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0.m4-setup.exe [Windows 32-bit]
http://www.nuxeo.org/static/NuxeoEP/nuxeo-ep-5.2.0.m4_64-setup.exe [Windows 64 bit]

New features ?

There are many changes and improvements in this version, therefore I advise you to take a look on the announcement made by S. Fermigier on the Nuxeo mailing list: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.cms.nuxeo.general/5579

Annotations

If you know the online service diigo then you can understand the interest of annotations. Otherwise what is it? We all love to make little notes, little "scribbling" on a document or put a highlighter on the neck of an idea or a relevant phrase . This useful practice in the real world is not necessarily available in the digital world. Well in its new version, Nuxeo incorporate this new feature!

Try it!

For more information:
http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/ian_smith/2009_02_03_annotations : Practical informations and how to use annotations
http://doc.nuxeo.org/5.2/books/nuxeo-book/html/annotation-service.html : For Developers!

A book to learn Nuxeo

Nuxeo has a rich literature for developer / administrator with the Nuxeo Book and other documentation for users through the users guide or evaluation guide.
However there was a "gap" in this documentation. It was the intersection between this two worlds (user / developer). This gap will soon be filled with the creation of a new book called "Learning Nuxeo EP 5".

You can now find the evolution of this book at: http://www.nuxeo.org/static/book-draft/

Note : You can post comments to help editors and writers (if you find errors or if you have an idea...)

Nuxeo made in USA

A small brief : Nuxeo announces the creation of Nuxeo Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.
Our American friends will now be able to discover the different services and support delivred by Nuxeo. Good luck!
You can find the announcement at: http://www.nuxeo.com/news/ouverture-boston/

From KnowledgeTree Side

I will start slowly to give you information about this solution.

You want to know more about KnowledgeTree and how KT can be used in a context of document management. So we can find a video presentation knowledgeTree at: http://www.knowledgetree.com/blog/document-management-ramp-up

During 20 minutes, Sean Tierney demonstrates how to use KT.

MUST SEE !

From CMIS Side

The first meeting on the future CMIS specification was recently held in Redmond (USA).
If you want more informations, you can found here and there on the web the notes of the participants:

John Newton (Alfresco): http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/01/cmis-face-to-face-at-microsoft-in-redmond.html

Florent Guillaume (Nuxeo): http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/florent_guillaume/2009_02_02_cmis-meeting-notes

OASIS: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

Now we're no longer out of date!

Have fun!

Interview : Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Principal and Lead Analyst CMSWatch

2009-02-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

Hello readers!

Today I continue interviews around the ECM ecosystem. After a CEO, a Vice President, an Architect, a Consultant, a founder and bloggers... I have the great opportunity to interview an independant Analyst.

Remember : The subjects I focused on for these interviews are
1. To introduce men and women playing a role in ECM environment
2. To discover the ECM community
3. To explore ECM Solutions
4. To learn more about technologies and content management practices.

So today, I interview Alan Pelz-Sharpe Principal and lead Analyst on The ECM Suites Report at CMS Watch

Hello Alan !

First of all, many thanks for the time you are spending to share your knowledge about ECM.

First of all, let's present yourself, what's your role at CMSWatch and what are you doing day after day ?

I am a Principal Analyst and Partner at CMS Watch. I research the ECM market, and write technical evaluations of the leading tools for our customers. I also consult directly and spend a lot of my time talking to buyers and users of ECM technology. At CMS Watch we never work with or for vendors - all of our work is for buyers and users - I travel a great deal and spend a lot of time on the road either consulting, researching or speaking at conferences.

I read recently an old article from you about the relationship between Vendor/Analyst/Buyer... It's incredibly hard to be neutral in your job. Could you resume and present those relations ? How it works ? What's your tips and tools to be neutral ?

It is very difficult indeed, and frankly it is a lot easier to make money if you work with vendors. That is a sacrifice we make, and I think it is the right one to make. Being neutral, writing what we believe to be true and staying free of ethical conflict is central to our work at CMS Watch, but that does not mean that we have bad relationships with vendors. Most vendors like what we do and are very supportive of our work, one or two do not - and that's ok. Remember that for vendors, the craziness of paying an analyst firm to write a favorable/independent report is not something they like to do. The whole machine of analysts consulting to vendors, vendors paying the same analysts, and the analysts then trying to give honest and bias free advice is a broken model, but its a very profitable one!

By the way, Could you present CMSWatch ?

Certainly, at CMS Watch we cover what we call 'Content Technologies' so that is everything from Document Management to Web Content Management to Web Analytics to Digital Asset Management and Search - and all things in between. Our goal is to give detailed technical evaluation advise to buyers of technology - and we feel that we offer real value. Value in that we save people many weeks of time in selecting the right product, and value in that we help people avoid major mistakes in their projects - ECM projects are notorious for falling short of expectations. We all do this because we have all been there before, we are long term practitioners - I myself have been in the Document/Records/ECM space for 20 years.

Let's back to the past... in 2008-2006. What was the main trend of ECM Market ?

Difficult to say to be honest - on the one hand we could argue it was consolidation (IBM acquired FileNet, Open Text bought a bunch of companies, HP acquired Tower etc) - but I think really the main trend was SharePoint. Both SharePoint as a toolset in its own right, and SharePoint as a threat/opportunity/partner for the established ECM vendors.

and in 2009 ? What will the main trend ? (CMIS Adoption, Vendor Consolidation, Open Source Explosion, Web2.0 style...)

I think the big trend in 2009 will be a return to basics - document processing, the web as self service - in other words projects that realize a solid return on their investments. Clearly in a recession price is an issue and Open Source and SaaS will have their role to play but I don't see an explosion. CMIS though I think will start to become more important, we are already seeing buyers adding this requirement to RFP's.

I want to buy an ECM solution. Is there a methodology to make a choice between all ECM products ? Is it really possible to compare ECM solutions ?

Yes there is a methodology, and it is perfectly possible to compare ECM solutions - but you have to buy our report to know the secret ;-) But seriously you must compare ECM solutions - and accept and be aware that there are wide differences between them. You need the one that is the right fit for your needs, not 'the market leader' or best known name. Factors such as their industry specific expertise, regional support etc are just as important technical considerations.

Based on your experience, do you notice a difference on content management between country (Europe, US, Asia...) ? Is there a different way to manage contentdue to location ?

Oh there are huge differences - I have been blessed to live in the US for 8 years yet I am a European and spend lots of time there - in addition over the years I have travelled regularly to Asia, so this is in fact an area that I find particularly fascinating. If I were to summarize (and stereotype) in the US there is a tendency to swap technology out on a regular basis (and add more technology to the mix), in Europe investments tend to be long term, and in Asia there is a tendency to custom develop.

Do you make a difference between Open Source ECM solution and Proprietary? Why ?

Yes I do, and I do so simply because buyers and vendors alike make that distinction. At CMS Watch we are followers not market leaders - we leave the crystal ball gazing to our friends at Gartner and Forrester (who do a very good job at market predictions). So if the market makes a distinction we will follow. That being said it is a very common conversation for me to have with buyers - explaining to them the differences between different open source options, some are true community supported and developed, some are very proprietary and only open source in terms of some vague licensing terms....

Is it really important for buyers to know this difference in the open source solution ? The most important thing is not simply support ?

Yes its important - and I say this as somebody who often recommends open source options to his clients. Its important because cultures have to resonate. Some firms are just not going to buy into the open source way and are never going to be comfortable with reliance on the community - they want (and need) the support of a major software firm. Though this is difficult for many in the open source community to swallow, its nonetheless true. Conversely there are many who thrive with open source solutions. But my bigger concern these days is not in pointing out the differences, but more the similarities. There are some good true to the source open source solutions out there (particularly in WCM) but more and more 'open source' solutions are simply proprietary solutions that don't charge an up front fee for software but simply rely on maintenance fees for their livelihood, nothing wrong with that - but its not the open source ideal I first encountered circa 1999....

I had the opportunity to read The ECM Suites Report 2009 and I was really impressed by the number of technical and commercial informations (I also learn a lot about ECM...). Could you present this report ? How long does it take to create one?

To create a report like The ECM Suites Report can take anything from six months and it is an ongoing task to keep it up to date - many many interviews are conducted with users of the technology we review, as well as sitting through product demonstrations etc. It is a big job, and though it is one I have done on many occasions now, it is not something I would recommend to anyone else - it can add many years to your life! Our goal with all our reports is to ensure that you have a solid understanding of the topic as well as the individual software solutions - we try and balance it so that both the IT person and the Business person can gain value. The purpose of each product evaluation is not to give you what you can get from the vendors marketing, but to provide a critical analysis. Where it works well and where it doesn't - allowing you the buyer and user to enter into relationships with suppliers with a full understanding of their limitations.

Could it be possible to know the methodology used to realize this kind of report ? Do you make a lot of debates with vendors ? Do you test hundreds servers with product demonstrators ? Do you listen client feeedbacks ? others...

The methodology is simple but very thorough - in that we construct an evaluation matrix at the beginning so that there is consistency between each evaluation - we then usually start by undertaking a lot of desk research, reviewing everything we can get our hands on - demonstrations of the product with the vendor or one of their partners - and then (most important) we interview buyers and users of the products. Client/customer feedback is central to what we do - we are there solely for buyers and users, so in many ways they dictate what we do. For example some vendors complain that they are not included in our reports but their competitors are included. We include vendors solely based on their visibility in the market and requests from our customers. If we don't see a vendor appearing on buyer shortlists then they will not be included.

After all that works, have you your personal ECM definition? (or is ECM just a marketing term?)

ECM is a marketing term - but there is nothing wrong with that. To me ECM is about controlling information - information and process management. I (and we at CMS Watch) separate out Web Content Management as distinct from ECM. I think this is right to do - managing web content and processes is very different to managing document processes - hence we have different services and reports. But ECM as a term is sticking and it is as good a term as any I think.

In 2009, can you advise us on public meeting/ event or conference we must not miss ? Will you be present ?

I speak at a lot of conferences and there are a few that I really enjoy, I enjoy them because they offer a great opportunity for buyers and users to interact. The big one is AIIM Expo in Philadelphia this spring, AIIM Expo is the grand daddy of them all and actually a lot of fun to attend and speak at. In the UK I like Online Information later in the year (usually Dec), a different crowd but again very good. The events run by Janus Boye in Denmark in the winter is (IMHO) the best for Web Content Management.

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

I subscribe to over 500 blogs that are ECM specific - most are not that great, but have flashes of brilliance and insight. I guess if I were to mention a couple I would point people to the AIIM blogs, as well as Big Men on Content and Word of Pie. There are some other really good ones and I hope I haven't offended anyone by not mentioning them - of course the CMS Watch blog is pretty good too :-)

What would you say to conclude this interview?

Nothing, other than to say that I think in this economy ECM is not a bad place to be - what we do with ECM is essential and its need grows ever stronger.

Many thanks, Alan, for this interview. We wish you a nice and exciting journey on Open Source (or not) ECM Road!

To find out more about CMSWatch : http://cmswatch.com/

and if you want to follow Alan, read his blog : http://cmswatch.com/ECM/Trends/

PS : You can download this interview at this url : http://www.scribd.com/doc/11639533/Open-Source-ECM-Interview-ENG-Alan-PelzSharpe-CMSWatch

Interview : Seth Gottlieb, founder and principal of Content Here

2009-01-20T01:02:00.000-08:00

Hello readers!

Today is a new interview day !

Remember : The subjects I focused on for these interviews are
1. To introduce men and women playing a role in ECM environment
2. To discover the ECM community
3. To explore ECM Solutions
4. To learn more about technologies and content management practices.

Today, I interview Seth Gottlieb founder and principal of Content Here.

Hello Seth!

First of all, many thanks for the time you are spending to answer this interview.

Seth, you have recently created Content Here.

Could you present it ? What's the purpose and objectives ? What kind of services do you offer ?

Content Her e is a vendor-neutral analyst and consulting firm with a focus on content management technologies. Most of my work is helping clients evaluate and select web content management systems. Many of my clients are from the media and publishing industry but I also work with higher education, technology, and government.

I started Content Here to fill a large gap between analyst firms and systems integrators. I was not satisfied with the level of depth provided by most analyst firms and systems integrators cannot realistically keep up with enough products to give a vendor neutral recommendation of which one to use. In order to know a technology to reliably implement it, you need to keep your focus. Content Here is a compromise between those extremes. My implementation background helps me understand how the different platforms work and my focus on selection helps me from getting too immersed in any one system. I also have a network of systems integrators that I regularly get briefings from so I can hear their war stories and successes.

And you what's your role and what are you doing day after day ?

Content Here is a one man show so I do everything. I spend a lot of time keeping up with the 50 or so technologies that I follow. That includes connecting with my network of systems integrators, playing around with the technologies when I am able, and getting demos when I can't get access to the software. I have a well defined process for taking a client through a software selection and I do roughly 12 of those per year. I also have some longer term projects where I advise clients as they progress along a roadmap of implementing and enhancing their solution.

Another exciting part of my job is writing reports. I have one report out called Open Source Web Content Management in Java that I wrote last year. This summer I will release and updated version. I am also working on a new report that focuses on web content management for media and publishers.

Let's talk about Content Management.
I followed you since I'm working and I learned a lot of things with you and your blog. Could you identify the (hi)story of content management based on your experience ? What was the main trend ?

I have been working in content management for the better part of the last 14 years. My first exposure was at a research company that turned out around 800 reports per week. The key challenges then were workflow and managing the repository so that the researchers could leverage what had been written before. My next job was with a Internet consultancy where my first project was to implement Vignette for a very large computer company. Since then, I have implemented many content management platforms. In fact, I rarely had the luxury of implementing a system more than once.

As for the industry as a whole, things have been much more chaotic - especially on the web content management side. On the document management (or ECM) side, the industry has followed more typical path of leadership by big companies (EMC, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft). On the WCM side, no one appears to be dominating and the companies there is not enough attrition. As a result, the industry is fragmented. Maybe the current economic climate will change that but who knows. One of the things that hurt the upper tier WCM players was their interest in competing in the ECM space and their loss of focus on WCM at precisely the wrong time - when the Web 2.0 momentum was starting to build. If they were leaders before Web 2.0, failure to react to this new wave of innovation made them lose their leadership position. The pure play WCM companies were able to respond and capitalize on new functionality and opportunities much better than the ECM aspirants.

And finally we have ECM ! Can you tell us more about the difference between ECM and WCM ?

When ECM was positioned as the union of all forms of content management, I was pretty vocal in my skepticism. I thought it was unrealistic to expect one system to uniformly handle all four content management disciplines: web content management, document management, records management, and digital asset management. Even if one system could be designed, it would be impossible for a customer to implement and manage a single solution that made every group happy. How would you manage the competing interests of the legal contracts team and the marketing team? If you could abstract your model to the level that it applied to both these business domains, would it make any sense? Also, the document management companies didn't understand that web content management is more than deploying a bunch of documents to the doc root of a web server.

I can live with the more modest vision that ECM has become: the management of the information assets that are used to run an enterprise. In practical terms, what this really means is document management plus process and governance. I say documents because documents have been the de-facto currency of information within companies since the invention of the manilla folder. I am happy to see that tradition change with document-less collaboration tools like wikis and I think that it would be wise for ECM to keep up with the evolution of how we share information.

I think of web content management as tools that manage a website (or a collection of websites). In addition to managing the information itself, a web content management system manages the organization, layout, and branding of the information. Web content management systems also control the visitor facing interaction with that information.

Throughout this history, has content management project evolved ? In functionnal domain is there the same or have you noticed an evolution ? Is it possible to illustrate it with your own project experience ?

As an insider, I see lots of different and exciting trends like AJAX enable contributer interfaces, user generated content, and faceted navigation and other ways to enrich the user experience. I am also excited by social media and its ability to create a dialog *around* the content. Content is turning from a static informational asset to an exchange of information. Finally, thanks to services like Delicous and Flickr, the average user is starting to see the value of tagging. I think that it is great that RSS is becoming so ubiquitous.

On the down side, I am also surprised by the lack of progress. Most companies manage their web content in Word documents passed around as email attachments. It is not until *the end* of the workflow that the content gets into the CMS. Of course, that undermines all the workflow that has been configured in the system. I think that is changing but I expected it to happen faster. One thing that is helping facilitate the change is that the technologies are getting less formal and rigid about process. They are better designed for the average knowledge worker who is more exception driven rather than process driven.

From a publishing perspective, I am very interested in the monetization of content. Something new has to supplement the flaws in the traditional banner advertising model - in particular, in syndication and on small-screened mobile devices.

What's your pronostic for 2009 in content management area (functionnality and technology) ? Only products based on Standard (CMIS for example) ? Ajax only ? RIA ?

I think that user interfaces are going to continue to leverage AJAX. In 2007 many products started to use drag and drop for ordering of assets. In 2008 we started to see drag and drop linking and image placement. We will probably see more of that. I am also interested in thicker clients. For example, one of my customers has a custom built WCM platform and the UI is all in Flex which makes it amazingly responsive for assembling packages of content. One thing that would be really great is a Flash-based WYSIWYG editor. Nuxeo is also doing interesting things with their RCP client.

I think that REST based API's will facilitate content integration and customers will demand more functionality in the APIs. Alfresco's web scripts is a great model.

As for CMIS, I would like to see that become a standard before I get too excited about it.

In your blog, you have often speak about the difference between open source and proprietary business model. What's the main difference from your point of view between them ?

I think there is a lot of confusion still in the marketplace about open source. This is an improvement over the fear of open source that once dominated. From a typical buyers perspective, there are two key concepts to understand; and by "buyer," I mean someone who intends to use the software not resell it.

First, I should clarify that, strictly speaking, open source is a licensing model and not a business model. What I mean by that is that a company can behave like a traditional software vendor and still distribute some of their software under an open source license. The business strategy that tends to leverage the open source licensing model the best (what I often call an "open source business model") is one that uses open source distribution to get the software out there and create a market for services around that that product. This is a huge cost reduction over a traditional software sales model that spends a lot of money on sales and marketing staff (and their T&E expenses). Open source licensing allows customers (and system integrators) to do the work of qualifying themselves as a customer. If the vendor does all that pre-sales work on just the chance of a sale, it is probably expecting some upside in the form of a lucrative, all profit software deal. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth the gamble.

Second, just because the supplier identifies as an open source software vendor, doesn't mean they are selling you open source software. Take, for example, Alfresco. Their Enterprise Edition has a commercial software license. They actively discourage the use of their GPL licensed Community Edition. You can't get support for Community Edition. Alfresco partners are not supposed to help customers who are using Community Edition. Because they are solely in the business of selling a commercial software product (that is their only revenue stream), I consider Alfresco to be a commercial software vendor. That is not to say that I don't like the product. I like lots of commercial software products. I like the Alfresco's technology and think it can be a good value if it meets your requirements. Jahia is another example, they identify as an open source vendor but, today, none of the products are open source licensed.

Is there an obstacle for open source company to have double licence Enterprise(commercial)/GPL (open source) ?

I think the key challenge is around positioning. First, a vendor has to decide how two the versions are different. There has to be a reason to buy the commercially licensed version. The primary dimensions that I have seen the two products differ is in quality and functionality. Alfresco's Community Edition is neither tested nor patched. Enterprise Edition is certified and supported. Magnolia's Community Edition is the same code line as the Enterprise Edition but Enterprise Edition is bundled with components that provide additional functionality. Alkacon develops OpenCms and distributes it under the LGPL. They sell a commercial bundle of modules (OpenCms Enterpise Extensions) that enhance the scalability of the application.

Second, the company needs to figure out how the two products fit into their business. A critical part of that is whether the open source version is part of the revenue side of the balance sheet. As mentioned earlier, Alfresco Community Edition is not part of their revenue model. Many companies will offer support packages for the open source versions of their software. eZ Systems offers a commercial license for eZ Publish (which hardly anyone buys) for other companies to OEM but they make all their revenue from services around the GPL licensees.

By the way, Why have you started blogging ? What is the goal ? Is it possible to know some anecdotes?

I started blogging after a colleague (Dave Gynn who never blogs) told me to blog. I signed up for a Blogger account and wrote my first post that night. I couldn't think of a good title and that is how I can up with "Enter Content Here." The name just stuck. Blogging has been very valuable to me. It is the most efficient and effective way for me to think through and learn how to express ideas. It helps me remember things that I learned. I think I would blog even if was just me reading. What puts the value over the top for me is my readership. I really love getting feedback on what I write and hearing that I helped people.

Are you a member of an open source community promoting WCM or ECM? Do you make other contributions (Animation, articles, posts, forums ...) ?

Being vendor neutral, I don't actively participate in any projects. However, I do subscribe to a lot of mailing lists and from time to time jump into an IRC channel. I have also spoken at conferences for OpenCms, Daisy, and Plone to inform them what is happening outside of their respective projects. Before becoming an industry analyst, I participated a little on forums and I even wrote the workflow documentation for an open source WCM product. 100 MB of software off Source Forge for any one of your readers that can comment in with the name of the project!

In 2009, Can you advise us on public meeting/ event or conference we must not miss ? Will you be present ?

I try to make it to Jboye in Århus every year. This spring JBoye is holding conference in Philadelphia.

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

Here is a short list of what I follow:

CMSWire (http://www.cmswire.com)
ContentCentric (http://www.contentcentric.org/)
Dave Kellogg (http://marklogic.blogspot.com/)
Gadgetopia (http://gadgetopia)
JBoye (http://www.jboye.com/)
Jeff Potts (http://ecmarchitect.com/)
John Eckman (http://www.openparenthesis.org/)
Ostatic (http://ostatic.com/)
Planet Plone (http://planet.plone.org/)
Planet Drupal (http://drupal.org/planet)
Ron Miller (http://byronmiller.typepad.com/byronmiller/)
Stefano Mazzocchi (http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/)

And, of course...

Going to an OpenSource ECM World (http://www.open-source-ecm.com/)

What would you say to conclude this interview?

Thanks for having me. Your questions really made me think. Hopefully my answers will do the same for your audience. Keep on blogging!

Many thanks, Seth, for this interview. We wish you a nice and exciting journey on Open Source ECM Road!

To find out more about Content Here : http://www.contenthere.net/

PS :
You can download this interview at this url : http://www.scribd.com/doc/10965460/Open-Source-ECM-Interview-ENG-Seth-Gottlieb-Enter-Content-Here

Slidecast : What's ECM ?

2009-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome readers!

Today it's another first time day!

I have the great honor to present my first slidecast !

The subject of this presentation is "ECM" (in a simplify and different way...)

Indeed, since I discover ECM, I try to explain what's ECM means for my family, friends and non-geek person. It's clearly not easy...

So I decided to make a simple, rapid and easy presentation to explain the main principle of ECM.
This slidecast follow one (and very important for me) idea :
If you can simplify what you do day after day, you have understand what you do :o)

So let's take a look and enjoy...

ECM - Simple Definition ENG

PS : Sorry for my prononciation and accent... I'm a poor non-native english guy... But I'm working on it and I will create a new version... Me too, i will be able to speak easily shakespeare language (one day...).

PS 2 : If you have any sound/image synchronization problem, don't hesitate to press any of play button under the slide.

Interview : Jeff Potts, Experienced ECM architect at Optaros & ECMArchitect blogger

2009-01-12T00:48:00.000-08:00

Today, it’s a real great day!

For the first interview of the year, I interviewed one of my "Guru"!

I read his blog (ecmarchitect.com), his tutorials (Alfresco Developer Series) and finally his book (Alfresco Developer Guide)... He participated (indirectly) to the creation of my blog and presentation.

That's why readers, I'm proud to interview Jeff Potts, Experienced ECM architect at Optaros, blogger and writer.

Hello Jeff!

First of all, as usual, many many thanks for the time you are spending to answer this interview and to share your knowledge about ECM.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity, Jean Marie, I'm happy to do it.

So Jeff, where the "ECM Experience" has begun for you? How was your first date with ECM?

Back in the early 1990's, I began going deep into Lotus Notes development. What I liked about it was the unstructured nature of the content, the focus on people, how they worked together, and how they could become more efficient, and the rapid application development that the Notes platform provided. At the time, business people who needed to get a solution in place were finding that they could go around their IT shops and implement their own systems by using a platform like Notes so there was a lot of uptake in the market. From a techie point-of-view, it wasn't just an end-user tool--you could really dig your hands in there and work on some interesting technical problems.

Notes added a web server just when businesses started exploring the web. The server was later branded as Lotus Domino and we were doing some really cool web apps on that platform in the very early days of the commercial web.

Interest in WCM grew as interest in the web grew and before long I was working on custom WCM solutions first on Domino and then using purpose-built packages like Interwoven and Documentum. Interest in Notes began to fade so I shifted my focus to Documentum and broadened the solutions to include broader document management--not just WCM. At the same time I was exploring all kinds of open source software including dev tools, of course, but also packages that were further up the stack like blogging tools, wikis, search engines, and content management. That's when I found Alfresco and it wasn't long after that, I decided to get behind open source full-time.

Could you identify the ECM birth? Is it a new notion or an old idea?

The idea of "Enterprise Content Management" is really used in a couple of different ways. When it is used as a term to describe software that really came about by folks like Gartner AIIM, and big vendors like Documentum and IBM looking to be one-stop-shops for their customers. They were acquiring or developing document management-related packages like imaging, collaboration, and records management, and they really wanted to tell customers, "Hey, you should let us solve your content management problem for ALL of the content in your enterprise by buying our suite of software."

The second way it is used is to describe an approach or a strategy in how a company deals with its rich content. You can look at books like Rockley's "Managing Enterprise Content" or Boiko's "Content Management Bible" to get a feel for what I'm talking about there.

Either way, I think it is an old idea. The bottom line is that you have data that doesn't fit neatly into rows and columns. It needs to be secure, discoverable, taggable, accessible, reusable, etc. And there are many different types of content-centric applications that need to deal with this rich content which includes the types of systems typically lumped under "ECM" like WCM, imaging, records management, document management, digital asset management, etc.

Is there a difference between Open Source ECM solution and Proprietary?

I think the difference is getting smaller all of the time in terms of functionality provided. When I think back across the different systems I've implemented on commercial ECM platforms, there are very few--almost none--that I couldn't do using an open source alternative today. Now the disclaimer there is that most of the solutions I've implemented have been either WCM or custom content-centric apps with a significant workflow component which are both sweet spots for open source ECM. Open source ECM still has a ways to go in some of the other ECM areas (like imaging and records management), which, just aren't that interesting to me, to be honest.

Have you your personal ECM definition?

Sure. To me ECM is about how you leverage your rich content assets with the entire content domain (which might actually go beyond the enterprise, BTW) in mind. It means at a minimum providing "basic content services" like search, security, metadata, check-in/check-out, and workflow--these are "table stakes" for any ECM repository. But it also requires that it be drop-dead simple for both people and systems to get content into and out of the repository in the right way (user interface, API, protocols) and the right format that is useful to them. The "E" in ECM also implies something about scalability and performance--we're talking about solutions that scale beyond departments to handle very large data and transaction volumes.

Let's back to you, Can you tell us more about your position? What's your role and what are you doing day after day?

Well I'm the ECM Practice Lead at Optaros so I wear a lot of different hats which is something I really like about my job. On any given day (and sometimes any given hour in a day) I might be:

Ø Writing code for a client project or an Optaros product/solution

Ø Contributing to an open source project by writing code, documentation, or bug reports

Ø Providing architectural or technical support to an Optaros client or solution team

Ø Providing feedback to a partner about strategic product direction

Ø Following numerous news feeds on ECM, related technology, and open source

Ø Blogging internally, on optaros.com, or on ecmarchitect.com

Ø Presenting at a conference or a webinar

Ø Mentoring colleagues

Ø Pitching a client, building a demo, or scoping work as part of a pursuit team

Ø Learning about and trying out a new piece of ECM-related technology

All of these buckets of work can be summarized as:

Ø Grow Optaros,

Ø Grow the ECM Practice,

Ø Grow the Open Source Community.

Everything I do should fit in one of those three categories.

Could you present your company: Optaros?

Optaros is a global consulting firm focused on assembling Next Generation Internet (NGI) solutions--more on those in a minute--from open source components. We're about 4 years old. We're headquartered in Boston, which is one of four "development centers". The other three are Austin, Geneva, and Bucharest. We have other offices in San Francisco, Dallas, New York City, Zurich, Munich, and London.

We have an impressive list of well-known, happy clients from all industries.

I often read on your documentation the NGI term ? Is it an Optaros term? What's this exactly ?

NGI stands for Next Generation Internet. It's about building web-based solutions with rich interfaces, loosely-coupled, services-oriented architectures, and open source componentry. We want to help clients think beyond just a single web site and think more about their overall web presence. We do that a lot for Media & Publishing and eCommerce companies but really it applies across all verticals.

Why have you started ecmarchitect.com ? What is the goal? Is it possible to know some anecdotes?

I started blogging in 2001 with a tool called Radio UserLand. When I started out it was something I did for myself--a way to take notes on what I was working on and to have a bit of a creative outlet. Those early posts were all over the place--music, general interest, personal stories, travel logs. Then I started dialing it in a bit. I had seen how Michael Trafton and a little outfit in Austin called BlueFish had not only provided a good resource for the community of Documentum Developers but had also become a well-known name in Documentum circles through their site called dmdeveloper.com. I figured I could do the same thing with open source ECM. The worst case was that I'd document what I was learning about open source ECM for myself, my colleagues, and others. The upside was that if it became popular, I'd become more established in that market which would hopefully lead to better projects for my practice and more compelling content for the blog.

So I decided to focus a bit more on it. I moved from UserLand to Wordpress on a hosted server and bought a domain. I had tried to come up with something catchy but I thought, "Why not just call it what I do?" which is how ECM Architect was born. To be honest, I'm not crazy about the name but that ship has sailed.

The blog has not only been a creative outlet and a useful communication tool. I also credit it with hooking me up with Optaros. Seth Gottlieb (contenthere.net) and I met through our blogs. He was working at Optaros at the time. We later met face-to-face at a conference and stayed in touch. When it was time to move into open source full-time, I already had a good feel for the great culture at Optaros and the kind of work they were doing. And Optaros had a good feel for my interests and experience from reading the blog.

The book also came about because of the blog. The publisher, Packt, approached me after reading the Alfresco Developer Series. So that's another great opportunity that's come through ecmarchitect.com. Every once in a while I'll get some credible leads directly from a blog reader, but from a business development perspective, the benefit is mostly indirect.

I'm a young blogger and for me it's difficult to know where is the border between personal and professional view. Do you have any clue to understand what's a good professional blog?

That's a great question. People forget (or don't care) that what you write and post on the web is indelible. It's all out there for colleagues, employers (current and future), and customers (current and future) to see. I've seen some--ahem--interesting stuff when Googling job applicants. If you want your blog to be an asset rather than a liability to your career, you have to keep that in mind. At the same time, your blog needs a voice--your voice--so you don't want to be so formal or correct (politically, grammatically) that that gets lost. I just try to be myself. Or at least my "work self". I don't write anything I wouldn't say over lunch with colleagues or a client. So I self-censor a bit, but not any more than I do when I'm in a business meeting.

I don't write as much personal or off-topic stuff as I used to. Some of my shorter off-topic posts now go through Facebook or Twitter. When I do blog off-topic I don't feel too bad about it. I figure if someone doesn't want to read about my sailing trips or the concert I saw last night they can subscribe to just the stuff tagged as "Content Management" or whatever their interest is. I feel like someone's blog ought to give you a good feel for the author as a person. I do spend a lot of time thinking about and working on ECM-related problems. But if you and I have a beer, that's not all we're going to talk about, so that's not the only thing I blog about.

Nice :o)

Alfresco community knows you for your Alfresco Developer Series and Alfresco Developer Guide, can you tell us more about the origin and if possible to have some statistics (number of download, geographic repartition...) ?

The Alfresco Developer Series is a set of tutorials I wrote over an extended period of time--it was about a year. I had been doing some work with custom actions and had found the documentation to be a little lacking. I figured I could write a tutorial on it that a lot of people would find useful. I got a lot of good feedback on it so I made a list of the fundamentals I'd go over with someone if they wanted to get ramped up on Alfresco in roughly the order that would make sense. I worked on the Custom Content Types tutorial in my spare time and posted it in June of 2007, six months after the first one. It immediately drew the most traffic I had seen and continues to draw a decent amount. I realized there was pent up demand for Alfresco how-to content. I also realized that one tutorial every six months wasn't going to cut it so I stepped up my focus and posted three more--Behaviors, Web Scripts, and Workflows--in September, October, and November. That work along with some other stuff I was doing in the community got me recognized as Alfresco's Community Contributor of the Year in 2007 which I thought was pretty cool, especially in light of all of the other very active members of that community.

By the time the Alfresco Developer Series was out I still had topics left to cover and began toying with the idea of writing a book. Based on the popularity of the tutorials, I knew people were really looking for that kind of content--the only question was should I do it as additional tutorials as I was able or do something a little more cohesive. That's when Packt reached out to me. I also got a lot of support and encouragement from my boss, Mavis Chin, as well as several others at Optaros and from my family who knew that if I didn't do it, I'd regret it.

I used the tutorials as a starting point for the book and filled in the missing topics. I was originally hoping reusing those would save me a lot of time but I ended up revising and rewriting them fairly heavily to be consistent with the new material. I was also able to leverage some work I had done on an internal Alfresco training curriculum so I didn't have to write all of the example code from scratch.

How and when did you met Alfresco ?

I started playing with Alfresco in late 2005. Having spent roughly three years leading up to that in the Documentum world, their story intrigued me. I had also been doing some work with Zope, Plone, Apache Cocoon, and a few other open source content management technologies so I was pretty much an open source convert by that point. What was obvious even then was that Alfresco had serious momentum in terms of both marketing hype and actually delivering working code. Zope, Plone, and the others were/are great products but at the time they weren't realistic alternatives to legacy solutions for most big enterprises. Alfresco, on the other hand, was a direct shot across the bow--if it wasn't making the short list for clients at that time I knew it wouldn't be long before they were based on their trajectory.

Can you tell us what are the strengths and weaknesses of this solution from your point of view?

Alfresco's main strength is that of being a solid repository with lots of ways to get content into and out of the system. If you want to use JCR, go for it. If you want to use RESTful or SOAP web services, they are there for you. The other thing is that the presentation is completely de-coupled from the repository which means you've got all sorts of choices for implementing the front-end. You can use Alfresco's Surf framework or their out-of-the-box clients or you can do your own thing.

In terms of weaknesses, I'd say horizontal scalability has been a challenge, although we're starting to see live examples of people who have multi-node Alfresco clusters working. The fact that the DM and AVM repository implementations haven't been merged (or at least made functionally equivalent) is irritating. I'm not sure it is a weakness per se, but I wish Alfresco was more purely open source. I'd like to see committers that aren't Alfresco employees, for example.

What do you think about the recent announcement of the CMIS specification (Content Management Interoperability Services)? Is it a real advance?

Yes, this is an important standard. We're already seeing ways we can leverage it by providing solutions to our clients that could conceivably work for any CMIS compliant repository, not just one in particular. Adding to the REST API and providing a SQL-like query language is something Alfresco needed to do anyway so it's pretty serindipidous that the draft came out when it did.

All of the right players are behind it. It'll be interesting to see how fast the legacy vendors can add CMIS implementations of their own. Once that starts to happen, I think you're going to see an explosion of "ECM add-on" tools because it suddenly becomes worth someone's while if they can build a tool once that will work with multiple repositories. Plus there are things you'll be able to do (like moving objects between repositories) that become a lot easier.

To conclude, I'm a junior consultant (as many other) and I'm just starting to walk on the ECM Road, Have you an advice for me ?

If ECM is something you are interested in, try to get repetition within ECM but mix it up with different aspects of ECM, if that makes any sense. For example, don't just dive deep into Alfresco. Learn about other open source ECM and WCM offerings. That's one of the great things about open source--it doesn't cost anything to learn. Just jump in. And don't necessarily limit yourself to content repositories. Learn about XML, XML Schema, and XSLT. Learn about Lucene, Solr, and Nutch. Read standards/specs like ATOM/ATOM Pub and CMIS. Explore portal and presentation frameworks. Find out how workflow engines work. Basically, if you are in to ECM you need to immerse yourself in all things unstructured and process-oriented. There are so many related technologies. ECM solutions are rarely just about the repository.

And as you learn and explore, by all means, share what you're finding out--it helps solidify your understanding when you have to explain it to someone else, and we're all interested in what you have to say.

Finally, can you recommend us weblinks or blogs about ECM or IT in general ?

Here's a subset of what's in my Google Reader:

Ø John Newton's blog

Ø Matt Asay's blog

Ø Big Men On Content

Ø CMS Report

Ø CMS Wire

Ø CMSWatch

Ø Column Two

Ø Drupal.org

Ø Enter Content Here

Ø Gilbane Report News