No Surprise, Iron Mountain Sells Records Management to Autonomy. May 17, 2011
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Acquisitions, Records Management.Tags: Autonomy, ECM, Iron Mountain, Mimosa, Records Management
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Some may have been surprised to see Iron Mountain selling it’s digital assets (read source code) for records management to Autonomy. But not if you were looking at the big picture it’s not a surprise. Well really it’s only the price tag that was a surprise. For what Iron Mountain bought Mimosa last year for $112 million and their Accutrac Software acquisition back in 2007 they just got $380 Million or a 300% return in one year. We’ve been pointing out that Autonomy has a billion dollar war chest, well $700 million now.
Why Re-Branding Makes Us Crazy May 2, 2011
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: Documentum, ECM, EMC Corporation, filenet, IBM, Open Text Corporation
3 comments
Lubor Ptacek wrote and excellent piece today on the different approaches to branding strategy and why it sometimes makes sense to re-brand after an acquisition. I agree with everything he said and it is so reasonable it makes you wonder – why would there be so much angst when it happens. In my experience, negative reaction to post acquisition re-branding often comes from a loss of something personal rather than any real business reason. (more…)
eDisovery Reviews used for potential Corporate Manslaughter case? March 30, 2011
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in ECM, eDiscovery.Tags: Content Management, ECM, eDiscovery
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A rather interesting report by Bloomberg, BP Executives may be charged with manslaughter from the Gulf Oil Spill. According to Bloomberg, “investigators are scrutinizing e-mails and other documents to determine what BP officials and the company’s drilling partners knew when they testified before Congress.” Document discovery is not new but since Enron we’re hearing more and more about it. Usually convictions or rulings have resulted in fines. But, “prosecutors have been looking at charges of involuntary manslaughter or seaman’s manslaughter”. meaning this situation may be the first highly visible manslaughter conviction of corporate executives done through eDiscovery. About 18 months ago I hypostasized that a murder conviction could be concluded from eDiscovery. That was seven months before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (On a side note New Orleans’s restaurant Drago’s still serves the best chargrilled oysters made with Gulf oysters.)
The Mother of All Acronymns (MAA) March 29, 2011
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: ECM, Stan Lee
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I have a large number of posts to finish in my queue but this one can’t wait. Having just returned from the info360 show in DC last week my mind is overwhelmed with the buzzwords and acronyms. Sadly over the weekend the debate over the accuracy, relevance and relative deceptive nature of ECM reared its ugly head again and quickly spiraled into the same tired parsing and argument over semantic nuance. The last time this happened I ended up writing about 3000 words on the topic and I refuse to do that again. Today @mcboof is again railing against WEM and I predict before the day is done somebody will make the same arguments against WCM DAM and every other TLA related to our business – AGAIN.
As much as we like to debate and deride them – acronyms are useful. They are short hand time savers and very powerful communication tools. As the great philosopher Stan Lee once wrote though – with much power comes much responsibility. Human beings have a unique ability to ignore what they have been told and hear what they want to hear. It doesn’t matter how many times you explain something – if someone WANTS to believe an acronym stands for more or less than you think it should – you cannot argue them semantically out of that position because at the end of the day – an acronym is in the eye of the beholder.
So to simplify our lives I am offering for consideration a replacement for every acronym we use today. I offer to replace them with a single uber acronym. One that you can debate with equal ferocity and accomplish exactly the same thing. The principle advantage being that we can save time by saving our arguments and cutting and pasting them into the twitter stream unedited when the debate flares up again – regardless of topic. So here are the terms that add up to the 42 of acronyms with my explanations.
- Global – Enterprise is too small and universal is too big. Global is just right.
- Omibus -The legal definition of this word is “Having many purposes or treating with numerous things at the same time; including many things.”
- Operations – If you do anything with anything else it can be considered an operation so this can be applied without debate.
There you have it – The mother of all acronyms – GOO. We are all experts in GOO. GOO is in every company and government. Nothing happens without GOO. Even as I write this I am looking forward to the first GOO Conference. In three years or so some consultant will decide we need GOO 2.0.
If you need to talk to GOO – you do what make sense – you interact with it giving you appropriately: GOO-i
If users need to see your GOO to interact with it – you have ui-GOO-i
No need to thank me. I am just doing my part to make the world a better place.
Watson, Go Away. We don’t need you. March 17, 2011
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Content Analytics, Content Management, Technology.Tags: Content Analytics, Content Management, ECM, Watson
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If there’s one thing I hate more than “Barney” press releases, it’s technology PR stunts. Most recently to the top of my list is IBM’s Watson. I’ve heard about Watson’s capabilities and possibilities from so many different people both inside and outside technology. Each not realizing what it is, a technology daredevil. I remember TV’s “Fall Guy” saying a daredevil needs to make something work once. I’ve had a few people proclaiming it’s validity to ECM, but after seeing an article from American Medical News Fresh from “Jeopardy!” Victory , Watson to take on health care”, I decided it was time to speak up.
Weird Idea of the Day – What if RIM Bought OpenText March 5, 2011
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: acquisition, Android, Apple, Apple Inc, BlackBerry, ECM, Open Text Corporation, Research In Motion, RIM
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I was reading about the rumor that BlackBerry might soon support Android apps and I looked at my company provided Curve and started musing – what would I do if I were in RIM‘s shoes? The obvious problem is that Blackberry has lost its cool. It is now the phone of the stodgy midlife crisis set. No amount of ads with twenty-somethings talking admiringly about messaging on a beach will make these devices hip or even remotely interesting. And yes I used the word hip – proving I am old and unsophisticated.
So if you are RIM what do you do? You acquire enterprise applications to deliver on your platform that your customer base needs while you still have them. But who to buy? Why not OpenText? (more…)
Is Box.net Collaborative Enough? February 25, 2011
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: Aaron Levie, box.net, Cloud Computing, ECM, Microsoft SharePoint, SharePoint
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Box.net has announced a new round of funding that brought in close to $50mil USD. Watching some of the comments on twitter it was clear that some don’t think they have a feature set that rises to the level of true collaboration. It reminds me of another argument not so long ago when industry experts argued that SharePoint wasn’t really ECM. The accepted position today seems to be that SharePoint is “enough ECM” for most. I believe what the team over at Box.net have tapped into is the same thing in collaboration. At the end of the day – it matters much more what paying customers think about the completeness of a feature set than the arbitrary boundaries of analysts and competitors.
As we learned from SharePoint the first rule in overtaking a market is solve the most pervasive problem first – rudimentary file sharing – and they have done a fine job with that. With this investment they plan to drive hard into the mobile space without the baggage of legacy licensing models, backward compatibility, upgrades or analysts expectations. Sure taking on SharePoint in the enterprise is audacious – but even with the VC’s to answer to they are in a much better position to take risks than the larger, older and far less nimble old world players.
COE – Just another word for bottleneck February 8, 2011
Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management.Tags: Business, Center of Excellence, COE, ECM, Management
3 comments
Experience in and out of them has taught me that Centers of Excellence are rarely if ever that – excellent. They are the most well intentioned of things at the beginning and often add value. The problem is the concept never really goes away on its own once in place. COE’s are more often than not created because there is a useful skill set, technology or process that has value – but not enough value for any one budgetary unit to fund it alone. (more…)
