July 2008 -- SharePoint: Why is it so darn popular?

Part One of a Four-Part Series

When I first began my SharePoint evangelism within the ECM community, I was clearly one of a distinct few who recognized the coming wave of impact SharePoint would have on this market and in the general IT ecosystem.  Today, I am literally one of hundreds sharing either positive or negative perspectives (perhaps reflective of his/her own company’s SharePoint position) on SharePoint as a technology, a solution, an application, or a platform.  It could be that a majority of these are simply highly effective marketers that want to be part of the “in crowd”, or that they feel like it’s the technology trend du jour.  In either case, there is no arguing with the fact (and numbers) that SharePoint has made a significant impact on the entire business technology landscape and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  Microsoft proudly shares SharePoint sales and market traction by highlighting and labeling SharePoint the most successful server product to be released in Microsoft history.  The last I heard—directly from the mouth of Mr. Gates himself—was that Microsoft anticipated sales of SharePoint licenses to exceed $100 million by the end of fiscal year 2008 (June 30, 2008 on Microsoft’s corporate calendar).  It is certainly hard to argue with those numbers. So why is SharePoint having such a large impact on the technology market, and how has that extended into the ECM landscape?  Let’s explore some of the elements that I’ve heard directly from end users as to why they have such a strong interest in this new technology platform from Microsoft.

Enhanced Governance and Control:  Solving “File share-itis”

In today’s challenging business environment, organizations of every size have either internal or external concerns about their information control and management.  This can range from simply being concerned about losing information or information leaking outside of the organization; to who has access to sensitive or controlled information; to extensive and sophisticated regulatory requirements governing the way an organization must manage, protect, use, and track their critical business information.  These have all been traditional benefits associated with ECM and the value it offers to
an organization. 

One very specific and increasingly alarming issue that I hear from my customers is that they are highly concerned about what they don’t know that might be contained in their vast corporate network shared drives.  This particular issue is now being referred to as “file share-itis.” 

Of course, companies have for years used shared network drives or shared file paths as a pseudo-collaboration and information storage mechanism.  As we all know, necessity is the mother of invention, and through our technology evolution, these have become the de facto methodology used by so many organizations to store, share, and “manage” their business documents and information. Even organizations that have deployed ECM applications continue to use file shares pervasively.  I attribute this trend to the unfortunate reality that ECM solutions have fallen short of opportunities because of high license fees, complexity, cumbersome user experiences, and low enterprise-wide adoption rates. 

The problem that exists with file shares is that we can’t control or manage content we don’t know about.  Most organizations will candidly admit that this is a growing fear and discomfort because over the years, the sheer volume of information stored on these drives has reached overwhelming volumes.

Herein lies one of the fundamental interests and business value opportunities for SharePoint.  Unlike legacy ECM vendors, Microsoft has attempted to delicately balance controlling information with the resources and manageability required to support the governance and controlling system.  Companies want control, but without exorbitant costs and resource/support requirements.  SharePoint is being positioned to provide control at an attractive cost with a reduced managed system as a key benefit.  And this is one of the reasons that SharePoint resonates with so many organizations today and is being so carefully and diligently explored as a new business technology.  It can provide organizations with the ability to eliminate “file share-itis” by providing security controlled access, management, and policy administration (including retention policies) for information—all readily available to users on their desktops within a Microsoft-centric user experience. 

This is only one of a number of key value propositions that is attracting business organizations of all sizes to SharePoint as a technology platform.  In this four-part series, I will continue to explore and discuss some of the other trends that I’ve gathered throughout our evangelism and SharePoint community participation.  I think you’ll find this to be an interesting and worthwhile series.

 

May 2008 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

SharePoint and ECM: Is "integration" really all you need for your business?

In this edition of my continuing column on the impact of SharePoint on the ECM community, I’d like to focus on what I will refer to as the "integration phenomenon." And what is this? Well, having now been on the road for the past few weeks presenting Clearview’s SharePoint-based ECM suite to audiences at the AIIM ECM Spring Solutions Seminar, I have now lost count of the number of legacy ECM vendors who have announced or talk about
their "SharePoint integration." This vast sea of companies includes not only ECM suite vendors; they have been recently joined by almost every image capture software company or scanner manufacturer with their "scan to SharePoint" solution. I, for one, would be seriously concerned about our future business if Clearview was only an "image solution" or "scan to SharePoint" solution vendor. While the early pioneers of these technologies enjoyed
some exclusivity, it has quickly become a very crowded and non-differentiated vendor landscape. But I’ll save the "scan to SharePoint" discussion for
our next column.

Based on the volume of "integrations" announced with SharePoint, I thought it might be appropriate and maybe appreciated if I discussed what this means to end user organizations, and help those who are seeking to extend SharePoint into a full ECM platform better understand some of the options that are available in today’s ECM vendor landscape.

Why are so many legacy ECM vendors announcing SharePoint "integration"?

This question is actually fairly simple to answer. What else can they do? Of course, I can say this with a little bit of pride in that Clearview saw, anticipated, and planned a next-generation ECM solution suite based on SharePoint. However, as you may very well know by now, SharePoint in many cases replicates some very foundational ECM capabilities like document management functionalities that have been the lifeblood of many document, content, or image-based solution vendors.

I think that many have ignored (and will continue to ignore) the impact SharePoint has had on dramatically changing the ECM solution model. The effects of this will likely be seen for many years to come. Legacy vendors, in a reactive mode and trying to respond to the unexpected disruption SharePoint has had in the ECM business community, are trying to position themselves as a higher-value, yet complementary (but at a higher price, of course) value add to SharePoint’s core ECM capabilities.

So let’s be bold and suggest that perhaps the "integration phenomenon" isn’t necessarily one of brilliance or innovation. It is more appropriately described as the only thing legacy ECM vendors can come up with right now to protect their proprietary solutions, aging architecture, and
high-dollar costs.

SharePoint "integration" defined

I will try to explain exactly what this means to you from a user organization or knowledge worker perspective. As I see it, this is not unlike a short-lived strategy that occurred in the 1990’s in the ECM space. This was the Open Document Management Alliance (ODMA) initiative that was designed to allow content systems to interact with one another and exchange information using standards that each vendor was adopting into their solution suite. Essentially, the "integration" that I’ve observed within the ECM market takes on one of two forms: a co-existence model or a migratory (or archive) model.

The Co-existence Model

In the co-existence model, systems are essentially allowed to "play nice" with each other. This would be like having adjoining hotel rooms with a shared doorway between the rooms. This allows us to pass between the rooms, yet each room contains individual resources with its own set of furnishings
and accommodations.

ECM vendors have built an integration that commonly takes on the form of Web Parts built for SharePoint. This enables the SharePoint user to execute a search and view content that is stored within the legacy ECM content repository. In most cases, you can search and view it, and sometimes you can even choose to move it from the ECM repository into the SharePoint repository as a copy of the original, or move it completely from one source to the other.

As organizations move to adopt SharePoint as their intranet, collaboration project platform, or even for their internet sites, they can leverage the existing investments that they have made in the legacy ECM product—for a period of time. Unfortunately, just like in the adjoining hotel room example, the two do not really offer any aggregate higher value in combination. The only way we can actually enhance our space and enlarge our living quarters (or make the two more meaningful in combination) would be to rip down the wall and create a new and expanded space.

The Migratory or Archive Model

This model really plays into the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that SharePoint is not or will not be strong enough in its functionalities and capabilities to provide a true information management platform.

In this model, it is suggested that the user organization use SharePoint for content creation and editing during the collaborative phase of the content lifecycle. Once the content is finalized and no longer requires edits, it is migrated to the legacy ECM repository for long-term archival and management.

This to me actually has a little more merit than the first model, yet it still is not a long-term and sustainable value proposition for maintaining disparate information silos or allowing redundant functionality to be conducted in non-standardized procedures or user experiences. Legacy ECM solutions have their own "take" on document management, library services, and versioning that is not aligned with the new de facto standards introduced by Microsoft via SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007 functionality that is available "out of the box."

Where does "integration" fall short?

I would like to suggest that the biggest concern with the entire "integration" element is wondering how long it will take intelligent business leaders, IT professionals, and records professionals to realize that they are not gaining any uniformity in their policy enforcement, security, or audit standards by maintaining disparate systems with overlapping user experiences and functionality. At the end of the

day, the "integration" story just doesn’t seem to provide organizations with the consolidated ease-of-use in user access and use of content—nor does it do anything to simplify the back-office management of the information management infrastructure.

What are the alternatives today?

Unfortunately, there has not been the same level of innovation around ECM solutions for SharePoint as there has been in "integration" pitches. Real innovation means vendors starting from scratch or tearing down their product to the foundation and rebuilding it. Neither of these is really attractive or viable for vendors in today’s business climate.

I would invite you to explore Clearview’s unique approach to providing a new era of ECM that is built solely upon and innovatively leverages SharePoint’s native capabilities to deliver a new platform for ECM that speaks to modern technology and business needs. With Clearview, your collaborative needs for SharePoint and your security, governance, or compliance requirements for enabling better control over your business information truly come together in a unified and simplistic ECM solution.

April 2008 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

SharePoint is off to a great "ECM" start in 2008

A Review of Key Industry events

The beginning of 2008 has been challenging due to our declining economic situation in the United States. Uncertainty abounds throughout corporate America, almost regardless of business or industry.

It was just about this time last year that Microsoft® SharePoint® 2007 (the third release of the product lineage) was introduced and met with rapid adoption and very visible demand. Now, almost one year later, it appears that the viral nature and customer interest in SharePoint is not yet letting up. Coming fresh off of travels to AIIM ECM industry events as well as SharePoint events, I would like to recap what I have seen and experienced so far this year with the "SharePoint Effect" and discuss how it is impacting the ECM community.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008

Attendance figures at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference (interestingly held on the same dates as the annual AIIM Exposition and Conference) are
alone compelling. Event planners had capped the event planning at 3,000 attendees, but due to unexpected demand, the ceiling for attendees was
raised to 3,800. The conference completely sold out and at the time of the event, still had a waiting list of over 800 people who could not acquire passes. Microsoft has noted that the event will be increased in size next year to accommodate the high demand from the user and partner community.

One particular point of interest was that this year’s event was keynoted by none other than Mr. Gates himself. This certainly demonstrates that Microsoft
is putting a lot of heavy hitters behind the SharePoint product and the community. I must admit the novelty of seeing Bill Gates in one of his last keynotes prior to retirement piqued my own personal interest and I made sure to get in line early. I wound up in the fifth row along with my Clearview colleagues; my photo of Bill Gates was a particular highlight of the week, no doubt exposing my inner geek.

Perhaps one of the key takeaways from Bill’s presentation was his deep knowledge of SharePoint (as is his knowledge for all Microsoft products). It is
very rare to find a key executive from a company so large to have such depth and breadth of knowledge and to be able to articulate that to the audience. My take on Bill’s presentation was the message, "We are just getting started with SharePoint." As Microsoft’s platform for business applications, the manner in which SharePoint ties the front office to the back office infrastructure—as well as to all points in between—makes it a particularly effective and attractive solution. No wonder Bill revealed that Microsoft is anticipating SharePoint 2007 license revenue in excess of 1 billion dollars when Microsoft closes out its fiscal year in June 2008.

The remainder of the event was very motivational. As the week went along, more and more people approached the Clearview booth, interested in
learning more about ECM, how it can help their business, and how Clearview makes ECM relevant to the SharePoint community. It became very clear
that this

market—what I might refer to as the Microsoft SharePoint market—is rapidly developing and can provide a source of great ECM revenue growth and attachment for the foreseeable future.

The one complaint I might have about the event was the lack of tangible ECM presentations around transactional content processing and other business value-aligned presentations. The ECM track was pretty lightweight and I heard many attendees voice some surprise that there wasn’t a little more depth in this particular track of the conference.

AIIM Exposition and Conference 2008

I am quite positive that the AIIM organization is pleased that they divested their interest in the conference itself a few years back. The attendance at the event continued its decline, with the last day being pretty much worthless (from a vendor’s perspective, at least). I had one of my long-time industry acquaintances text message me while I attended the SharePoint Conference to tell me he was at the "AIIM funeral" and how wise it was that I had elected to go to the SharePoint event instead. This year’s AIIM conference once again lacked any noticeable advances in ECM technologies, as reflected by lackluster announcements from key industry vendors.

Now not all was bleak at the event, as my colleagues at Clearview were present in the Microsoft partner pavilion, and Clearview enjoyed one of the highest (if not the absolute highest) level of visitors to any Microsoft partner booth. This illustrates that ECM continues to garner high demand and interest, especially when aligned with SharePoint in such a clear and comprehensive manner as we have done at Clearview.

I know that 2009 will most likely see the event having more and more "co-located" events at the same time and venue. This certainly is one way of increasing traffic to the show floor, but it is not certainly driving higher quality of real live customers with ECM budgets and projects in tow.

AIIM ECM Solutions Seminar Spring 2008 Series: "The SharePoint Effect"

I still believe that one of the best efforts from the AIIM organization has been their rapid response to the SharePoint phenomenon and their ability to create a venue for ECM and SharePoint constituents to come together and align these two worlds of collaboration and ECM in a meaningful fashion.

I am currently en route to the Denver event after having just launched the first event of the Spring tour in Houston last week. It was incredibly motivational, with over 180 total attendees and approximately 110 of those attending our Clearview presentation. We are looking forward to what the rest of the
six-city tour will hold. I personally look forward to meeting some of you and discussing the SharePoint effect and how it is impacting your organization–whether you are an end user of ECM or SharePoint technologies or you are a reseller or systems integrator with a business built around either of these two technology powerhouses.

If you’d like to see what cities are in the lineup and register for one of the events, you can do so by visiting www.aiim.org/ecmseminar. I hope to see
you there!

February 2008 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

The Shortcomings of Legacy ECM: Why "Next-Generation" ECM Suites Provide More Attractive Returns on Your Investment

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) continues to become one of the most highly-sought business applications, driven by such critical initiatives as regulatory compliance, internal governance, business efficiency optimization, and customer service level enhancements. With such a push, it is crucial
for customers to understand the shortcomings of legacy ECM suites – and how next-generation ECM solutions can drive much higher success rates, enterprise-wide adoption, and high-value return on their ECM investments.

One element that has held ECM back from really delivering enterprise-wide value is quite simply cost. Not only the cost for the software licenses themselves, but also the cost associated with implementation and installation, project management, and integration with business applications – all of these drive the traditional cost for legacy ECM to such a point that ECM is often reserved for "the special few" inside the organization. Those often
turn out to be either departments with robust budgets, or those who have a critical business need or mandated corporate strategy that justifies this
cost. However, at the end of the day, cost is one of the key reasons that ECM is not on every single desktop in the organization. Modern era or "next-generation" ECM suites are taking a different approach to how they license the products along with the correlating costs – with an end result of driving ECM to every single worker desktop in the enterprise so that ECM becomes a standard part of the operational infrastructure.

The second element where legacy ECM solutions fall short is around the complexity and cumbersome nature of the products. This is to be viewed and judged both from the information, knowledge, or process worker (end user) viewpoint, as well as from a back office administration and manageability viewpoint. As products have been created over time, most have been developed with a strong emphasis on functionality from a software engineer or programming analyst viewpoint. This makes the products too complex for a non-sophisticated end user to learn and to feel comfortable using on a daily basis. This becomes further complicated because as the richness and functionality of the products extend, usability and manageability become more complex. This is one area where next-generation ECM suites truly shine as they are focused on the end user ease of use. One way this is accomplished
is by using Microsoft familiar user experiences (Office and Outlook) as a standard for user interface design. As you explore an ECM implementation, if
the product is not intuitive and your users do not feel comfortable with it, they won’t use it. So whether you pay $100 or $1,000,000 for your ECM
solution – it will not be successful.

The last element and the newest pitfall of legacy ECM suites is technology. As we all know, technology has changed dramatically over the past four or five years – and it’s not looking like it will slow down anytime soon. The problem here is that most legacy ECM suites were built upon technology platforms that originated back in the 1990s. These platforms are now quite outdated and highly disruptive when you look at introducing them into a modern technology environment. Issues from interoperability to lack of adherence to modern standards are just the beginning. And to add insult to injury, these systems are still commanding top-tier pricing for their old technology.

I find it interesting how some of these legacy vendors often brag about the number of add-on modules that they have. Some legacy vendors even talk about how broad and rich their product suite is, citing the dozens or over 100 modules available in their product. I refer to this as the "Frankenstein" syndrome of the ECM industry. This means that over time, vendors have stitched on, bolted on, or put together a variety of functional modules to round out their ECM suite. While the functionality will "walk and talk" it is often that the products aren’t highly attractive to look at, especially if you peel back the layers and look at the underlying technology architecture and platform.

The other way legacy vendors try to mask their technology shortcomings is the "lipstick on the pig" trick. In today’s modern technology era, web services and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) are high-interest elements – if not requirements – for the savvy buyer. Since most legacy ECM vendors have not fully modernized their solutions as technology has changed, they accommodate Web Services/SOA buyer demands by creating a web services layer or wrapper over the old technology. While this will provide SOA functionality on top of the old technology platform, one has to ask -- at what cost to performance, price, and ease of use?

This again is another high-value differentiator that contemporary "next-generation" ECM suites bring to their end user organizations. These new solutions have been built exclusively upon new technology standards that enable the solution to fit into your modern IT infrastructure with comfort and reliability. Above all, they provide a stronger value in their performance, manageability, and interoperability with modern Microsoft technology and architecture. Many actually can extend your current investments in Microsoft technology – SharePoint is one of them, just to name a current hot topic in the ECM space.

In summary, legacy ECM offered by household name brands in our industry may not be providing the value that modern ECM buyers seek. The educated consumer should perform ample due diligence as they are evaluating solutions so that they can make sure they are getting the right returns on their ECM investments – both today, and well into the future.

 

January 2008 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

The Value of SharePoint-based ECM Solutions

2007 has been recorded and archived into our history books. In the technology sector, it was quite a year and no recent activity has generated the relevant phenomenon that Microsoft® SharePoint® has created within the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) segment of the software market.
While virtually every ECM vendor with some market presence or name recognition has announced their "integration" with SharePoint, there have been
few to adopt SharePoint as a cornerstone of their ECM platform. With SharePoint’s rich and deep inventory of ECM functionality designed to meet the business needs of the masses, customers seeking out and evaluating SharePoint-based ECM solutions will clearly become a pervasive business trend in 2008 – and beyond.

Attractive Cost Promotes Widespread User Adoption

One clearly compelling interest in SharePoint for ECM deployments is the perceived attractive cost model. While there is still some confusion about SharePoint being "free" (Windows SharePoint Services is incorporated into the licensing of Windows Server 2008), even the more costly Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) creates a very wide price differential between it and traditional ECM product license costs. Of course, it is important to keep
in mind that license is only one part of the total cost of ownership – the services required to create an ECM solution from scratch on top of the
SharePoint base platform can be sizable given that it is a platform and not an "out-of-the-box" ECM solution.

Next-generation SharePoint-based ECM solutions provide organizations with similar license and associated services costs savings over traditional
ECM products, while providing rich and valuable extended functionality for enterprise-class associated content services on top of the SharePoint platform. With these new and attractive license and pricing models, companies can now afford to adopt ECM across the entirety of the business enterprise.

Extend SharePoint to Complete the "ECM Stack"

Even with rich and deep functionality, one could easily view SharePoint’s ECM capabilities to be centered around Microsoft-generated content since SharePoint provides excellent Document Management, Forms Management, Web Content Management, and Email Management services. Yet core
ECM transactional content functionality such as Document Scanning and Imaging, Report Management, and Enterprise-class Business Process Management (BPM) are not provided natively within SharePoint today. Microsoft very publicly directs customers to leverage Partner built solutions to deliver specific ECM components such as Document Imaging to fill any functional disparity.

Modern SharePoint-based ECM solutions take this one step further by providing a comprehensive and highly-unified ECM suite built upon SharePoint
that delivers complete ECM functionality and management (also known as the "ECM stack") for all forms of business content. SharePoint-based ECM
suites further extend SharePoint’s native ECM attributes with rich, enterprise-class features like Advanced Content Lifecycles, Unified Policy Administration, Central Audit Logging and Reporting, and Intelligent Content Organization – all features normally associated with much more costly ECM solutions.

The Perfect Fit within the IT Infrastructure and the Desktop

True SharePoint-based suites provide a most compelling case for the appropriate and sound fit within the modern business IT environment. With Microsoft’s substantial presence on corporate desktops and inside the IT infrastructure, it is easily understandable why the utilization of SharePoint functionality for ECM solutions is attractive to Microsoft-centric organizations.

User Adoption via the Familiar Microsoft User Experience

While cost can be a limiting factor to broad organizational adoption of legacy ECM solutions, the usability or classic "ease-of-use" has caused many
ECM deployments to fail. This is attributed to the complexity and cumbersome nature of legacy ECM systems not being designed for the modern information worker (end user).

With Microsoft Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007, Microsoft has delivered rich ECM functionality seamlessly woven into the fabric of Microsoft’s desktop applications. These capabilities along with future Microsoft ECM functionalities embedded into the desktop will undoubtedly become the de facto standard for content and collaborative ECM process functions. This will drive a significant and painful divide between the organic functionality historically developed by legacy ECM vendors and the new Microsoft-associated standards for ECM functionality being continually introduced onto the desktop.

By leveraging contemporary SharePoint-based ECM suites, the familiar Microsoft interface and user experience is carried elegantly from the authoring applications and information worker applications, and will continue throughout the associated content lifecycle within the ECM content application itself. The Microsoft familiar experience and associated intuitive interface promote rapid user acceptance and broaden the successful adoption and
deployment rates that can be experienced around the ECM suite implementation.

The New Wave of SharePoint-based ECM: Beyond "Integration"

Responding to the tidal wave of interest around SharePoint within the ECM software community, legacy ECM vendors quickly introduced their SharePoint integration. Virtually every integration announcement has been a "co-existence" approach that does not provide incremental value or aggregate business enhancement to maintain the continued usage of a legacy ECM product.

SharePoint-based ECM solutions extend native SharePoint functionality with the added value of transactional Document Imaging, Report Management,
and BPM, along with enterprise-class Unified Policies and Content Services rivaling the older and costly, yet recognizable names in the ECM industry.
They also deliver Microsoft-only functional experiences around native SharePoint capabilities such as Document Management, Forms Management,
Email Management and Web Content Management – with enterprise-wide standard functionality and consistency.

There is little doubt that SharePoint will raise the bar for the ECM community and it will raise the associated value that consumer organizations will
reap from emerging SharePoint-based ECM suites. The savvy IT executive or business manager who explores SharePoint-based suites for ECM
strategies will find that they can achieve enhanced business content control and management, broaden user adoption across the enterprise, and enjoy higher, longer-lasting returns on their ECM investments. This can all be achieved while minimizing the impact on both the information worker desktop as well as the internal IT operational infrastructure. This is the value that users of SharePoint-based ECM suites will experience in 2008 – and well into
the future.

 

December 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

SharePoint-based ECM Solutions – Highlights from the AIIM ECM Roadshow

It has been just about a month since the Fall AIIM Roadshow completed is 14 city tour of the Midwest, North and Southeast regions.  As you may know, this year’s subject for the Roadshow was “ECM Meets SharePoint.”  Since Clearview participated in four cities with speaking engagements, I wanted to pass along elements that I picked up from this Roadshow and share them with you. 

SharePoint is the Hottest thing to happen to ECM since…

I don’t really know how to complete this sentence.  I continue to be amazed at how pervasive and viral in nature the entire SharePoint subject has
become within the ECM space.  And it’s just getting started.  This interest permeates the ECM Reseller community and ECM end users, as well as Microsoft-associated partners and end users.   I will explore the whole Microsoft-associated subject later in this column as it is an interesting element
for you to think about and consider, especially if you are a current ECM/Imaging VAR or Reseller. 

I may have said this before, but I definitely see SharePoint as the most impactful and meaningful “hype-cycle” that our industry has experienced. 
Because of the significance of Microsoft entering this space via Office/SharePoint, it has really brought our industry to new heights of interest and
visibility that no other single vendor introduction has historically effected.  I see all of this as good, as it is opening up a brand new market segment
for the ECM community. 

Why are Businesses Interested in SharePoint-based ECM?

I recently came across a new white paper offered by a fairly new player in the ECM industry that took a less than flattering stance on SharePoint’s role
and capabilities in the ECM space.  Besides not doing much for this company’s relationship with Microsoft, this type of approach really does a disservice to our industry.  It only creates more confusion and misinformation in an industry that has suffered long enough from this illness.  I’m quite hopeful that
as organizations come into contact with this information, they understand that, once again, traditional ECM vendors are struggling with their SharePoint strategies – and those that have none can do nothing but take potshots at SharePoint in order to try to survive.

The reason SharePoint is resonating so clearly and in an increasing way to business organizations as they examine their ECM strategy is fairly simple.  
In today’s business landscape, it’s common to see Windows as the desktop OS of choice, Windows Server as the network infrastructure, MS-SQL Server
as the database engine, and MS Office as the desktop suite on the information workers’ desktops. Since SharePoint fits seamlessly into this environment,
it becomes a painless and somewhat simplistic decision for companies to extend the ECM strategies toward SharePoint. 

However, at the AIIM Roadshow, it was very clear that we are at the first-level of the SharePoint learning curve in this market.  This is evidenced by the lack of understanding as to what SharePoint is, what it does or doesn’t do – and not only from an ECM perspective.  I’m actually surprised as to how little most ECM vendors really know about SharePoint given that they’ve all made some sort of “me, too” integration announcement around SharePoint.  Unfortunately, I can’t say that I’ve seen any of these announcements or SharePoint integrations that really offer meaningful value to the consumer.  These all appear to be vendor-based value messages designed to prolong legacy vendors’ attempts to protect their historical ECM revenue prices and margins.

So How Does SharePoint Fit with ECM?

This is a fairly complex question to answer – so I’m going to attempt to answer it from two different vantage points:

a.      What are the ECM capabilities of SharePoint?

b.      How does this reconcile with legacy ECM product capabilities?

What are the ECM Capabilities of SharePoint?

When Microsoft first launched SharePoint 2007 (the first version of SharePoint to deliver ECM capabilities), the messaging surrounding SharePoint’s capabilities was a little vague or ambiguous.  Since the launch, Microsoft has worked with AIIM, ECM industry veterans, and others to more clearly define what they now refer to as SharePoint’s ECM sub-capabilities.  Evan Richman, SharePoint’s Product Manager for ECM has done an excellent job of clearly articulating that SharePoint isn’t an entire ECM solution, but a platform that provides some very rich and powerful ECM capabilities. 

As you examine those capabilities, you will see that they have a heritage of controlling and managing Microsoft-based content, specifically Office suite content, Outlook/Exchange content (email), along with Expression for the Web-based content.  Once you begin to understand that SharePoint’s content capabilities were designed for Microsoft-based content, the specific ECM capabilities that SharePoint provides (and those it doesn’t) become very comprehensive and more understandable. 

The ECM sub-capabilities are Document Management, Records Management, Email Management, Forms Management, and Web Content Management. Clearly missing from these capabilities are core components such as Document Imaging and Enterprise Report Management (aka COLD).  Since these two types of transactional content can represent upwards of 70% of a business organization’s content management requirements, you begin to better understand that SharePoint wasn’t designed to be an ECM product, but rather it provides ECM capabilities that better manage Microsoft-generated or supported content types, while providing a platform for broader ECM functionality delivered by partner-built solutions (like Clearview, for example).

How does this reconcile with legacy ECM vendor solutions?

Herein lies the problem for customers.  The ECM functionality provided by SharePoint now directly overlaps with organically created capabilities built by legacy ECM vendors over the years.  So I’m not really sure how it will ever “fit” nicely, which is why most of the legacy ECM vendors are offering an “integration” or co-existence strategy.  They try to suggest that there are higher value requirements that SharePoint doesn’t deliver in order to try to justify their historically inflated price points and margins.  The reality is that while SharePoint’s ECM capabilities might not be the absolute best (depending upon who is adjudicating), in reality they are “good enough” (and perhaps beyond) to meet the critical requirements of most business organizations today.

I think that where you see the “fit” with SharePoint and ECM is with new age ECM vendors like Clearview, who have built a SharePoint-based ECM platform.  This uses all of SharePoint’s ECM capabilities natively as components of the ECM architecture, but augments those with additional functionalities for high-value ECM requirements like Document Imaging, Report Management, and Business Process Management.

This gives the customers the best of both worlds, and delivers a truly innovative alternative to using SharePoint alongside and overlapping with a legacy ECM product.  After all, having a single solution that embeds SharePoint gives the Microsoft-centric or SharePoint customer exactly what they need to provide rich ECM but still leverage SharePoint and Office functionality natively as Microsoft designed.

I truly believe that the ECM market and its future evolution are going to be very interesting to see over the next three to five years.  While SharePoint is the main catalyst for change today, what I find intriguing is contemplating which IT infrastructure vendor is going to try to “one-up” Microsoft, and what its SharePoint competitive solution will look like.

For now, I think the over 85 million licensed users of SharePoint today (primarily for Portals/Collaboration) are a great new market for ECM and the value it can painlessly add to their existing investments. 

In closing, AIIM has just announced that the Spring Roadshow (post-AIIM Expo) will maintain the same topic.  Clearview has signed up to speak in all six cities – so maybe I’ll have a chance to meet you in person! 

  

October 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

SharePoint® meets ECM – Comments on the Current AIIM Roadshow

I just returned from Rai Wasner’s ECM VARfest, put on by the The Rheinner Group (www.rheinner.com).  It was an excellent event where document and content related resellers convene annually to network, understand changes occurring in the market, and learn how to better position their businesses to achieve future success.  I continue to be amazed by the visibility and the impact that SharePoint® is having on the ECM space.  Of course, since the team here at Clearview is uniquely poised to ride the SharePoint wave in a favorable way, we are pleased by the momentum and visibility this has created for SharePoint-based solutions.  At the VARfest, I spoke with the owner of a long-term and successful ECM reseller and he says it best: “Mike, in my 20 year history in this industry, I have never experienced such a compelling event that is having a short-term, and perceived long-term, transforming effect on the way I run my business.”  Even more telling perhaps is that there were a number of non-traditional ECM resellers at the event (companies that originated from the copier dealer landscape, for example) who were telling me that their customers were already inquiring about SharePoint and asking them what they could offer that incorporated a SharePoint strategy. 

Each year, AIIM puts on the spring and fall ECM roadshow. This is an event that travels to 12 major cities in the country during each roadshow and presents a compelling topic that has current market relevance. This fall’s roadshow is entitled “SharePoint Meets ECM.”  Obviously, this provides even greater evidence that SharePoint is having a broad and significant impact on the ECM market. Credit goes to AIIM for getting in front of this at an early stage and trying to help the classic market better understand how SharePoint differs from traditional ECM products.  If you are interested, you can find out more about the event and see the cities and dates for the roadshow by going to www.aiim.org/ecmseminar.  Due to the compelling topic and obvious relevance, Clearview will be exhibiting and I will be speaking at the seminars held in Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

At the roadshow, as I currently understand it, one of the key messages is to suggest that ECM and SharePoint can “co-exist” in order to provide full ECM functionality while leveraging the value that SharePoint offers.  Being a member of this ECM community for many years, I respect the need to protect the legacy ECM business, and understand that many of the traditional ECM vendors have worked with analysts to craft this message.  However, I’m not convinced that this message and positioning is better serving the consumers in the market, or if it is better serving the traditional ECM vendors trying to protect their future revenues. 

I have had the opportunity to see a number of vendors portray their “SharePoint strategy.”  I describe these as being either a “co-existence” strategy, or a “content migratory” strategy. 

In the co-existence message being put forth by a set of vendors, the strategy is one of “shared existence” within the organizational environment.  For example, let’s say you have deployed a legacy product or a variety of products, perhaps from a variety of vendors.  Now your organization sees the very rich collaboration and application platform that SharePoint can provide as a significant component within a Microsoft® technology infrastructure.  So what do you do?  In this model, you would keep the legacy products running, and place all new content repositories into new SharePoint Site Collections (also referred to as “sites”). Via a programmatic integration module (obtained from a priced module from the legacy vendor), the SharePoint portal users can see and access not only the new content sites, but they can also access the third party historical repositories of content and documents provided by other ECM vendors.

In the content migratory message that is being presented by several of the larger ECM vendors, the SharePoint repository becomes a “temporary” facility to manage content during its active or creative stages.  Once the content is finalized and needs to be archived for long-term retention or even enhanced records management, the content is “migrated” from SharePoint and placed into the traditional ECM repository from the third party vendor to provide increased security, records management, retention, and other high-value content services. 

The issue that concerns me in these approaches is whether real value is provided to the consumer.  I can’t help but wonder when the educated consumer will begin to ask, “Why should I keep multiple systems?” But perhaps the more significant question would be, “Where is the incremental value of these strategies?”  It seems to me that these strategies also propagate new and larger challenges for the consumer by creating and maintaining disjointed silos of information across the enterprise.  Not to mention the cost and resources associated with maintaining multiple systems from multiple vendors. 

There is an alternative to the co-existence and migratory strategies presented to the market by the legacy ECM vendors.  It is one where the strengths of SharePoint are embedded into a new age content solution as a key part of the architecture – and where the end result is a simple, comprehensive solution utilizing SharePoint but providing the higher value content services desired via extended solutions built upon SharePoint.

 

August 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

Defining ECM -- and where SharePoint® Fits

In my last column, I discussed some of the news hype along with the positive effects and potential impacts on the ECM industry that has or will
come about with Microsoft’s recent Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) introduction. Since the last column, Microsoft has announced that
SharePoint has generated $800 million in revenue and is projecting a whopping $1 billion impact in 2008. If this doesn’t spell "g-a-m-e c-h-a-n-g-i-n-g"
then I am not sure what it takes to get folks to realize it really IS a whole, new ballgame – for customers, for vendors, and for the broader ECM industry. Grazie, Microsoft.

Now one of the biggest challenges that has come about from the hype and the huge Microsoft marketing blitz around SharePoint and ECM has been
defining "what is SharePoint?" or maybe more importantly "what isn’t SharePoint?" when it comes to describing an ECM solution. In our discussion today, we’re going to review this question and help readers understand, with the aid of some newly crafted Microsoft positioning, exactly where SharePoint fits within an ECM strategy.

To begin: let’s first define ECM or "Enterprise Content Management." Well, on second thought, that itself could take another two or three month’s worth
of columns to cover in its entirety. Let me better narrow my focus to illustrate how most of the industry uses the term "ECM" and what we mean by an
ECM solution.

Enterprise Content Management as a term (most credit Documentum for its origination and definition) is not illustrative of the market segment to which solutions are offered (e.g. enterprise, mid-market, small to medium businesses, etc.). Rather, ECM describes a suite that is capable of managing literally
all types of business content and the associated technologies and functionality needed to support the capture, storage, management, protection, and
delivery of the business content. This seems to fall in line with the usage of the "enterprise" classification – even Microsoft is using this to describe richer functional editions of SQL 2005 and SharePoint itself.

So what are the required functions and technologies of true Enterprise Content Management solutions? Gartner, Forrester, and other analyst groups
are now defining specific guidelines in order for a vendor to be able to include their product suite in the ECM category. These guidelines suggest that a vendor must deliver five or six portions of what we call the "ECM stack" in order to be truly categorized and recognized as an ECM provider. One of the reasons for this is that many vendors that provided isolated components of the stack were calling themselves ECM vendors. This is one of the mistakes
the AIIM/ECM community has made for years – confusion in posturing and definitions. In response, the analysts have tightened up in order to mitigate
some of this confusion.

The "ECM stack" is loosely defined, but most vendors would acknowledge that it is comprised of a majority of the following core technology functions:

a. Document Imaging (including Capture/Scan technologies)
b. Document Management
c. Enterprise Report Management (COLD)
d. Web Content Management
e. Email Management
f. Forms Management
g. Records Management and Retention Services
h. Workflow & Business Process Management (BPM)

Some vendors might also include Digital Asset Management as a component of the stack, and there may still be others I’ve neglected here. But for our purposes, and for defining SharePoint’s position within the ECM category, we’ll limit our stack to the above list.

In my previous column, I mentioned that one of the issues when Microsoft first began messaging and positioning SharePoint within this market was
that the usage of the term "ECM" was a little loose and invoked broader functional attributes than what SharePoint could really support or offer out
of the box. This confusion extended around the market from customers, to industry analysts, through resellers and vendors – and perhaps right on into Microsoft internally. Many actually thought SharePoint could be a full spectrum, head-on alternative to the broader and richer ECM suites offered by
industry icons like EMC Documentum, IBM, OpenText, and others. However, after further due diligence, it was discovered that while SharePoint’s
functionality is rich and quite impressive on many fronts, it is not a full ECM suite or end-to-end "stack" solution; rather, it offers a portion or contribution toward a complete ECM solution.

Now some may not agree with this next statement, but I think many will agree that eventually Microsoft "gets it right." And to their credit, they have
worked closely with various ECM industry analysts, vendors, and other interested constituents to refine their positioning (as most vendors do over the
life of their solutions and products). I think many in the industry will be quite pleased with the outcome as this refined and narrowed focus for the
strengths of SharePoint is presented to the market.

Essentially, Microsoft has most recently referred to SharePoint’s key functionalities as "ECM-Sub Capabilities." This messaging highlights that there
are key attributes or components of the broader ECM stack that SharePoint fulfills quite nicely – and others that it currently does not speak to. Below is
an excerpt from a recent slide deck presented by Microsoft personnel to illustrate this new positioning.

This slide clearly highlights the strengths and rich functionality that SharePoint provides with the latest release. As you can note, Microsoft highlights
four key areas:

a. Document Management
b. Records Management (we believe this also includes Email Management)
c. Forms
d. Web Content Management

Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t other capabilities that SharePoint can fulfill – especially with partner-provided solutions that round out the stack. But let’s save that discussion for another month’s topic...

So the best way to think of SharePoint based upon this messaging today is that it truly does provide some great "sub-capabilities" or portions of the
broader ECM stack. But today it cannot be seen or classified as a full ECM solution on its own without the complement of partner provided components
and solutions.

July 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

The Microsoft® and SharePoint® Play in ECM: Good News from the 2007 Microsoft Partner Conference

I am writing to you fresh off the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference held in Denver, Colorado on July 10-12. This event is attended by approximately 10,000 Microsoft registered partners and employees, and showcases all the latest good things carrying the Microsoft brand.  One
item that’s worth highlighting is the new coffee table-type PC referred to as the “Microsoft Surface.”  The demo was truly impressive and it actually
looked like it could do for the home PC market what Apple® has recently done to the cell phone market.  The most relevant item that came from this
year’s event was the newly refined messaging and positioning that Microsoft has introduced for SharePoint within the ECM market.  (More on this new messaging to follow in future editions of this column, so stay tuned…)

Now when I say I’m fresh off the Partner Conference, let’s quantify that just a little – and perhaps you’ll understand why I’m a little more verbose than normal.  I am about three hours off a red-eye (and I do mean TRUE red-eye – as in a two hour flight that leaves at 12:30am Mountain Time and arrives
on the East Coast at 5:30am).  If you’ve not flown Frontier Airlines, I’d like to give them kudos – for a low-cost airline, the service was great, the plane
was clean, and the $5 TV in the back of each headrest is a great feature!  It sure helped keep me awake in the middle of the night as we made our flight across the country.  Okay, enough about flights and back to the topic at hand.

As I mentioned in my last entry, Microsoft has certainly stirred and shaken the ECM industry with its prelude up to and subsequent launch of Microsoft
Office 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (aka MOSS).  If you’ve not yet heard of SharePoint, I’d be willing to bet that you might also think Paris Hilton is a luxury hotel located in France. 

Seriously, I am surprised by just how loudly Microsoft’s announcements have reverberated within the ECM vendor community (as one might expect
as there are a lot of the name brand vendors who are concerned about the future of their classic business models). But perhaps what’s been most
striking is the number of customers that are inquiring and taking serious interest in understanding SharePoint and its ECM capabilities. Of course,
there are large enterprise organizations with sophisticated and sizable IT resources (both $$$ and people) who are already implementing or looking at SharePoint as an alternative to classic ECM vendors or products. But I’m especially intrigued at how quickly this interest level appears to be initially moving downstream into the mid-market at such an early stage of the introduction.  I recently had a mid-size community banker asked me about SharePoint. 
This was fairly amazing to me as in my past experience, the smaller an organization, the thinner the available IT resources and available expertise to
try to implement a solution that is not necessarily “out-of-the-box.”   Obviously, we can’t discount the Microsoft factor at any level of the market.  Now
I can’t project if this trend will continue, or at what pace, but if you have personally seen or experienced the integration (and investment) that Microsoft
has placed into SharePoint 2007 and the Office 2007 suite, the value proposition and the appeal of SharePoint to any organization using the classic
Microsoft Office products is quickly understood.  At least on the initial surface.

And certainly don’t look for this hype to subside anytime soon.  After all, no single ECM vendor since the invention of Micrographics machines has had
the marketing budget or the industry impact that Microsoft holds on this space.  Rather, I expect the rumbling to continue as word has it that Microsoft
has made SharePoint one of their key sales and product growth initiatives for their 2008 fiscal year (July 2008 to July 2009).

So is all this noise a good thing or a bad thing for ECM?  I, for one, think it’s a fantastic event in the lifecycle of the ECM industry.  Now some of my enthusiasm could be directly attributed to the mere fact that I’m part of the Clearview Software team.  If you didn’t know, the team here at Clearview saw the Microsoft market-changing earthquake coming – and decided to build an innovative next-generation ECM suite to ride the subsequent tidal waves that would carry a new league and class of ECM products into the market.  After all, this market is well overdue for a little shaking up, at least in my humble opinion.

The second reason that this is a good thing, and perhaps the relevant reason to you, is that Microsoft is going to do for ECM what no other single
(or combined) vendor has been able to do: promote the value and significance that ECM technologies truly deliver to the business infrastructure. 
Microsoft’s reach to every desktop in the organization and back to the IT center of the office world will probably be the best thing (aside from the word “compliance”) that has happened to this segment of the software industry.  So from this perspective, every single ECM or document solutions vendor will
be grateful.  For customers who have had trouble conveying to executives or boards the business value and justification for the ECM investment – I think you’ll find Microsoft doing you a big favor as well.

However, there has been one small drawback to Microsoft’s entry into the market. They caused a little bit of confusion as they used the term “ECM” in a broader form that initially portrayed far more overlap with virtually any vendor in this space – new or old.  I think this may have done Microsoft a little disservice, as well as created confusion in the users’ minds regarding exactly what parts of the ECM stack SharePoint could service. 

Now back to the good news from the Partner Conference.  I had the chance to sit through a new presentation that is demonstrating a true maturing and greater understanding of ECM from Microsoft’s perspective; specifically illustrating how SharePoint is postured within a broader ECM stack of functionality and where it really shines.  I thought this was one of the best pieces of Microsoft product marketing that I’ve experienced to date.  It shows that Microsoft went to market, listened to customers and partners, and then refined their messaging to reflect how SharePoint really offers value to the end user.  This new and well-constructed messaging, clearly articulating the ECM capabilities and functionality, will undoubtedly serve Microsoft, their partners, the customers, and even the industry at large very well.

So – now that I’ve spent my column this month talking about the Partner Conference and SharePoint perspectives and messaging, I’ll get to the heart
of this new messaging next month. In the August column, I will be sharing with you exactly how Microsoft is messaging the real value and strength that SharePoint brings to customers as a platform component within a broader ECM solution stack.

June 15, 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

Reflections on ECM after the 2007 AIIM Conference & Expo

Summer seems to have arrived early, and I’m for sure happy when you consider the Michigan winters and the cold temperatures that are typical of
this region.  It has now been about five weeks since the AIIM show wrapped up in Boston, and what an interesting show it was. I thought this would
be a good topic of conversation for us in the “summer edition” of my ECM industry commentary article (or blog if you will) on ecmconnection.com.

I can remember when each AIIM show in the 1990s would bring about a swell of announcements and new feature introductions – most of them to
leapfrog competitors and to differentiate products one from the next.  I recall years where the buzz on the floor was about how one vendor could put
a red line annotation on a document image, and another could add a yellow highlight.  Or that another vendor could store and view a Microsoft Word document.  Remember those days?

The AIIM show that probably generated the most buzz and subsequent fall out in recent memory came in 1995 when Microsoft announced their plans
to place a free Imaging Viewer into the Windows 95 desktop operating system. Of course, many industry fellows viewed this as the end of the market.  Game over – Microsoft now owns the imaging marketplace.  The resulting screams of imaging vendors as they leapt from the top of the Moscone Center
in anguish could well be heard across all of the San Francisco Bay area – and maybe a little beyond.

Now I bring this up first of all to have a little laugh, because as we all know, this didn’t end the industry as we know it; and I honestly can’t remember
one vendor that can attribute their demise to Microsoft’s Imaging Viewer announcement.  However, the buzz that resulted from that one singular
announcement certainly dominated the news at that show – and subsequent industry reports and speculation for many, many months afterwards. 

Secondly, I mention this to compare and contrast how very different the AIIM event has been over the last few years.  No real major innovation or compelling functional announcements have stirred the industry nor set the next ruler that every vendor scrambles to incorporate into their offering. 
Rather the recent shows seem to provide more vendor emphasis on business application requirements and on actually solving business problems. 
Overall I think this is good, but I would suggest that the end result is that the ECM space became a little uninteresting – and certainly led to extreme
parity between competitive solutions – such that differentiators became a subjective blur.  The resulting  customer impressions and perceptions were
that “all the ECM products we’ve seen look alike.”   I think this has made customer decisions difficult – and has led to very little forward movement in
overall innovation and contemporary approaches to how ECM is deployed, used, and exploited to the value of the business organization.

(Okay, now cue camera back to AIIM 2007)… and guess what?  Just when you thought it was safe… Microsoft does it again!

I honestly don’t recall a new product launch or introduction that carried more buzz and commentary up and down the expo hall aisles (both leading up
to and at the actual event itself) than Microsoft’s launch of Office 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) at the event.  If you had not already heard of SharePoint, you have most likely heard about SharePoint during the event and discovered that Microsoft now plays in ECM with this innovative introduction (or you were watching CNN the entire three days of the event in between recuperating from late night vendor parties).

Unlike the town criers that rang gloom and doom with Microsoft’s last announcement, I, like many others, think that Microsoft’s larger-than-life entry
into the ECM market via MOSS (also known as SharePoint v3) could represent that “tipping point” for the ECM industry that we’ve all been longing for.   

At the least, Microsoft will undoubtedly bring a new level of credibility to this market with their household (and business) brand recognition and associate clout.  This is something that our industry has sorely lacked for quite a while.  Even though IBM, EMC, and Oracle have been making some small inroads
with their offerings, Microsoft will dominate the buzz over these other players.  If you don’t believe me, then count on one hand how many announcements you’ve seen reported from the other vendors vs. the number of MOSS-related news and notes that span virtually every publication, website, and email newsletter in some form or fashion since the event in April. 

I give kudos to Microsoft for this announcement and delivery.  I think that this will drive visibility and importance for ECM to the point where it will soon
be seen as a “business infrastructure requirement” just like email, accounting systems, and other essential software applications needed to operate a contemporary business.           

But at the end of the day, perhaps the larger question still looms in many folks minds long after the show buzz has passed.  Is MOSS actually an real ECM solution or is it a platform of functionality --- or in some folks minds…What exactly is SharePoint (or what isn’t it when compared to a traditional ECM functionality matrix?)

Unfortunately, the examination of this topic is a little larger than the space I’m allocated each month.  So stay tuned and watch for next month’s edition
which I will further discuss Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), how it fits into an ECM strategy, and hopefully give insights into why MOSS was
the most impactful news to hit this industry – since Microsoft’s last announcement at AIIM.

Enjoy your summer and I’ll look forward to our next opportunity to visit here at ecmconnection.com.

April 13, 2007 -- ECM: It's a Whole New Ballgame!

Welcome to the inaugural issue of my monthly communiqué to the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) community – I’m very excited to have
this opportunity to provide a feature column of industry perspectives and emerging issues to the readership of ECM Connection. As a long standing
veteran of the content and document solutions market space, I can see that we are going through some very interesting times…in fact, we may be just getting warmed up for the changes and advancements to come over the next 12 to 18 months. So in an effort to keep you abreast of the dynamics and
key elements of this new era of ECM, each month I will highlight discussions and viewpoints around key topics that I believe are reshaping our industry (along with the vendor and product landscape) as we now know it.

Beginning with the May edition of ECM Connection, I am going to dedicate our column discussion on perhaps the most significant change that is underway, the one that is going to have immediate and far reaching impact on the market and our industry. This change – if you haven’t already guessed – is the the formal and accelerated push of Microsoft® into the ECM space with the launch of Office 2007 and SharePoint® Server 2007 (MOSS). After recently attending an AIIM Advisory Trade Member executive meeting, it was clear that the introduction of Microsoft as a significant player and platform provider in the classic ECM market is going to alter the landscape of products and solutions that are offered to our customers forever.

As we look toward the remainder of the year, I will focus our conversations on some of the modern and emerging technology elements and aspects
that are transforming ECM solutions – those that end user buying organizations, or value-added system integrators, should be carefully examining when making purchase evaluations or partnering decisions.

I’m also going to dedicate articles to the emerging business challenges that ECM can address, such as new business operation or process requirements,
and compliance issues and corporate governance such as the recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (commonly referred to as FRCP).

The traditional ECM value proposition of creating the paperless office environment has been far expanded (but should not be forgotten) by the new and emerging compliance related areas, as well as operational and process elements in which ECM provides substantial business value. The annual AIIM Conference & Expo is undergoing an evolution too – it should be pretty interesting to see what AIIM 2010 will look like. So to that end, I’m going to help readers understand some of the emerging elements and issues that are reshaping and changing the way products and vendors have been evaluated and scored up to now.

As the title of my column suggests, it’s a whole new ballgame and whole new era in ECM. I look forward to exploring the many aspects of this new era
with you each month. Have a great April, and for those of you that will be attending the AIIM Conference & Expo in Boston this month, I invite you to stop
by and introduce yourself. I will, of course, can be found in the Clearview Booth #2658.

Check back soon for next month's column!