Full Disclosure May 16, 2013
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Content Management.1 comment so far
For those of you that have followed Lee and I for a while, you know that while we post independent views, Big Men on Content is our “night job” and we have day jobs to pay the bills. Lee said it best a few years back.. So while I quietly exited from my old role at EMC, I wanted to be up front on recently joining Hyland. I stand behind Lee’s words on our writings and plan to maintain that integrity. What I think you will see from me in the future is a broader view on the mid-market and solutions approach.
EMC World – First Impressions and Partner Summit May 6, 2013
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: #emcworld, #mmtm13, Accenture, Big data, EMC
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I attended the Global Partner Summit this morning. First impressions at EMC World are great. There were several panel discussions from leadership and rather than a play by play I will just these take aways and random thoughts that stuck with me.
As an old airline guy I was pleasantly surprised to see that businesses technical challenges showing up over and over. The complexities of that market are ready made for everything we are doing with big data, analytics and unstructured information. From aircraft performance and customer service to my old stomping grounds in maintenance we are everywhere.
Anecdote from Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz : an airline CIO explained that a single trans-atlantic flight by a Boeing 777 could generate as much as 30 TB of data if we captured everything and that as more components become internet aware this will become a reality. Accenture’s subsidiary Navitarire for example is an ambitious offering taking on management all technology aspects of running an airline in the cloud and EMC technology is all over it. I will commit to learning more about this one.
In discussing the move to the cloud by our customers, Maritz also used the term third platform applications. I like this term much better than the weak attempts to get people ti use terms like Web 3.0. Certainly we see this in the content space as well and I’ll have more discussion on this front later in the week after the IIG keynotes and sessions get underway.
On the security front my take away is that we are witnessing the death of the perimeter. I would write a post on that but I have sworn off posts with death in the title. The RSA leadership called out the trend that soon the “internet of things” will result an expansion of the number of endpoints on the internet. Everything from refrigerators to jet engines (theres the airline reference) will have an IP address.While this expands our ability to understand what is happing to these devices in real time it also expands the risk. The industry focus in security needs to shift to accelerating the identification and responce to attack through real time intelligent analysis of the environment. Anti-virus and perimeter defenses are simply not able to defend your network at all of the potential points that the internet of things will create.
From a personal IIG perspective, we have certified over 75 partner solutions since relaunching that program and are seeing tremendous growth around solutions. Business models are changing and the partner ecosystem has to evolve with it and moving from a transactional services integration model to repeatable solution oriented relationships with our partners and customers is part of that transformation.
When I talk about partnering to people who don’t know what I do – I usually describe it in terms of being
- Entrepreneurial – It is symbiotic relationship where success of the business partner, the customer and EMC are equally important.
- Exponential – The reach and expertise of our partner ecosystem has the potential to take our joint solutions to levels we could never achieve on our own
- Essential – The market moves too fast for one organization to know everything about every opportunity and solve every problem alone.
These principles have not changed even as the platforms and business models do.
Lastly here is my personal list of sessions not to miss (check your schedule for time and location)
- Mike Mohen on Migrations and Upgrades
- Jeroen Van Rotterdam EMC Documentum Architecture & Overview
- Ed Bueche on Scalability and Performance
- Dave LeStrat on IIG Public Cloud Solutions
This is going to be an exciting week. Stop by the EMC Momentum section in the Solution Pavilion and don’t miss the hands on lab opportunities to see the products in action.
Will VACS be the End for ECM Platforms? April 18, 2013
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in box.net, Content Management, Documentum, ECM, EMC, IBM, KnowledgeTree, Open Text, Salesforce, SambaCloud, Selectica, SpringCM, VACS.Tags: box.net, Documentum, ECM, Enterprise content management, KnowledgeTree, Open Text, OpenText, Salesforce, SambaCloud, Selectica, VACS
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If we look back, ECM is a young space. It started back in 1998 at Documentum when they were the first vendor to look at both documents and web content together formally. Until then companies had either been documents (Documentum, FileNet, and OpenText) or web (Interwoven, Vignette, etc.). This transition was huge and really affected the players heavily. Having been in the starting line up during the second quarter of ECM it was an interesting time. And I see a lot of similarities today with a move to Value Added Content Solutions (VACS).
Successful conversations today are no longer about great library services or even content formats but how content adds value to existing business problems. It a shift in the conversation to how the content is being used rather than how it’s being created. It’s not about saving one person one hour of time once a week but rather how you save a thousand people one minute of time (quick math 52 hour in the former and 867 in the latter.) A great place to see this change is with VACS in the CRM (customer resource management) space.
ECM in 2013 – Winds of Change January 4, 2013
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management, Technology.Tags: 2013 Predictions, acquisition, Autonomy, Cloud Content Management, ECM, Enterprise content management, IBM, OpenText, SharePoint, xCP
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I am looking forward to 2013 in the ECM market more than in the last five years. The thing that interests me more than anything else is change and this year promises to be anything but dull. The status quo is not just boring – it is dangerous. What follows are my thoughts on the major trends in enterprise content management that will affect our careers and choices in the coming year. Standard disclaimer – these are my opinions, observations and speculations not those of my employer. (more…)
Autonomy & HP’s Autoimmune Response January 2, 2013
Posted by Lee Dallas in Acquisitions, Autonomy, Content Management.Tags: Autonomy, ECM, Hewlett Packard, Interwoven, Tower
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As I reflect on last year and look to 2013 (post to follow) here are a few year end thoughts on how the HP/Autonomy mess plays out. Autonomy and HP both had gathered an interesting collection of acquisitions in the the content, records, web and portal space before this questionable buy One thing two decades in business have taught me is that large organizations can be brutally vindictive when their honor is in question and their survival is challenged by a troubled acquisition. (more…)
2012 – Predictions Scorecard & Year in Review December 23, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in Acquisitions, Content Management, Documentum, Dropbox, ECM, EMC, Open Text.Tags: Cloud Computing, Documentum, Dropbox, ECM, EMC, Microsoft, Open Text Corporation, VMware
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Since we have averted the Mayan apocalypse I am collecting my 2013 predictions for the ECM market, Before that a few words about my scorecard for last year’s predictions. On average I have had better years. Still there was one or two predictions I can feel good about from last year’s post.
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Taking Time to Explore SambaCloud December 5, 2012
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Autonomy, box.net, Content Analytics, Content Management, Documentum, Dropbox, ECM, Open Text, Salesforce, SharePoint, SpringCM.1 comment so far
We’ve all been there, in a rush to get from point “A” to point “B” we end up missing the stops along the way. That’s the way I feel after first taking a look at Razmik Abnous and Ian Howells’ new start-up SambaCloud. My first cursory quick glance really did not show me what they were all about. So I’m glad I took some more time to really explore what SamabaCloud is about.
For those familiar with Documentum will recognize Razmik as a Founding Engineer for Documentum. So when his LinkedIn profile updated to say founder of SambaCloud, I had to take a look. I will say that as first glance I thought, “Oh. Ok. Interesting. Yet another content management company.” But after further digging and a presentation from Razmik and Ian I was thoroughly impressed. This was not Content Management but something a lot more. They had developed a tool that would cut repetitive research time within a collaborative interface.
Relationships in xCP – Part 2 November 9, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in Case Management, Content Management, Documentum, ECM, xCP2.Tags: Documentum, Enterprise content management, MMTM12, Rich Client Platform, xCP2
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This is the second in a three part series on how to make your relationships wonderful and full-filling using xCP2. Click here for part one.
One Tool To Model Them All
I have already mentioned that with xCPDesigner we have a consolidated tool to create xCP applications. Part of this shift is the move to model driven design, which is a lot like pig latin only instead of putting “a” after every word you use the word “model.” (more…)
Syncplicity – Sync Now,Integrate Later August 8, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management, Documentum, ECM, EMC.Tags: Cloud Content Management, Documentum, Dropbox, EMC, EMC Corporation, Microsoft SharePoint, ShareFile, SharePoint, Syncplicity
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[A friendly remember. I work for EMC but this is my own opinion and not reviewed or approved by the company.]
I have been spending a lot of time with Syncplicity getting used to the tool and understanding where it fits in my personal technology ecosystem. As I play with it I am finding that it really is the simplest of things that have the biggest impact on my productivity.
A few years ago I wrote a series on the evolution of ECM where I examined the nature of disruption introduced by SharePoint. The crux of the argument was that SharePoint’s success was due in large part to the fact that it addressed the most pervasive problem first – not the most complex.
In SharePoint’s case the pervasive problem targeted was the need in for work group file management. All other “ECMish” features were secondary and even though professional ECM practitioners argued that SharePoint was not a full fledged ECM, they failed to see it was enough of one to satisfy the broadest swath of the market. (Read ‘How SharePoint Captured ECM’ here)
The question for us now is – what is that next feature that is sufficiently pervasive, under-served, and tragically overcomplicated by current offerings? I have come to believe that sync not share is it.
All About Access
While the term Sync & Share has the marketing types giddy with alliterative glee I would argue that the share half of the equation is secondary to getting the value. You must realize that sharing necessarily drags a list of more complex features along. Everyone that does business using more than one device (smartphone, laptop, tablet, desktop) over the course of the day has a need for sync. I want my data to be available wherever I am without having to think about it.(read: What The Cloud Means to Real People)
Sharing on the other hand is more complex and more idiosyncratic. It is most always deliberate and dependent on the capabilities of the audience. The feature is important and supported in some way across the solutions in the space but following the principle of “solving the most pervasive problem first” sync not share is the linchpin.
Dropbox understood this well and did a good job getting everyone used to the idea of sync and even coming to depend on it. What they failed to anticipate is the needs of the collective buyer (i.e. IT) over the individual in the enterprise. More to the point I am not certain they expected a need to sell to businesses when they started. Corporate security requirements are very difficult to address architecturally after the fact. Concerns linger that it is not secure enough for business despite recently added stop gaps.
So what are we waiting for?
Laurence Hart has written an excellent post on the integration possibilities with Syncplicty and the rest of the EMC IIG portfolio. I do not have any issues with the ideas but personally I think we run the risk of waiting too long for an integration of the product into something that looks more like what we think content management is and missing the opportunity staring us in the face.
Syncplicity delivers something that companies can use right now by itself and add tremendous value. IT shops that have been forced through security or other concerns to block Dropbox or Box now have an alternative backed by EMC that is secure, simple and more important – is what the users are asking for instead of what we “professionals” have been trying to convince them they need for more than a decade.
In much the same way that ECM practitioners and vendors tried to make the argument that SharePoint wasn’t an ECM we may look at what Syncplicity does without any integration and be tempted to make the claim that it needs complex features to be “interesting” to us. This is completely wrongheaded thinking.
Sync is not about management. It is about access. It is not about metadata. It is about flexibility. Other tools may offer sync but where they do offer IT controls knowingly or not they require that you buy into their interpretation of ECM.(taxonomy, system of record, location on your filesystem, etc.) Time and experience has taught us most rational people don’t really want ECM.
ECM is essential in certain cases but real people just want ubiquitous access to their data. The vast majority of that data is outside formal management and there is often no business case to justify changing it. Syncplicity offers a straightforward implementation of secure sync (with share too) across the mobile ecosystem without encumbering it with more ECM than is needed to solve the most pervasive use cases.
The potential for integration is enormous. There is already a rich RESTfull API that we have done some interesting things with but my recommendation is that you do not need that to justify the product in any organization. Sync is the pervasive problem on the table. Go solve it with Syncplicty and the other features will follow when and if they are worth it on their own.
