Commentary

IT can't control information flow forever

Ron Miller — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:53:09 -0400

I recently responded to a problem posted on one of my social networks about sharing files between home and work. I suggested the person use Dropbox. I was a bit shocked to learn that the person's IT department had blocked Dropbox. Apparently fear of sharing trumped employee convenience, but is that fear warranted and is it time for CIOs to simply give up control? When I was at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston recently, many speakers suggested it was time to give up control because there are simply too many ways to work around whatever road blocks the company tries to throw in front of employees.

Like sand through your fingers

Even as IT tries to control the enterprise computing environment, it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. The whole nature of Web 2.0 and its enterprise counterpart, Enterprise 2.0 is it puts computing tasks that once required the help of highly technical staff (like IT) into the hands of non-technical (or not very technical) end users. As users feel this growing independence they chafe at traditional controls, especially when it gets in the way of them getting their work done. My example in my opening, the guy who couldn't access Dropbox at work, was a case in point.

John Newton, co-founder and CTO at Alfresco, finds the evolution of enterprise control interesting. "The conversation has moved from, 'you have to control everything' to 'you ought to control everything' to 'you can't control anything because people will find work-arounds.'"

Pick your battles

Some companies have decided to ban external social networking tools because they are afraid of liability or (more likely) that employees are simply "wasting time" on Facebook. Companies that are doing this, are failing to get involved with marketing conversation that's going on, on Facebook and Twitter. You can hear exactly what your customers think about you. Just last week, I had (and continue to have) problems with my Comcast Internet connection. I complained about my customer service experience on Twitter and heard directly from @comcastcares, a group inside Comcast that monitors Twitter chatter to get in front of issues like mine.

Lots of companies are taking this proactive kind of customer service approach. It doesn't mean that everyone needs access to these tools, but it doesn't make sense to unilaterally cut them off either without thinking through the reasons first. And the fact is if you block Facebook on your network, users can simply pull out their smart phones and get to it that way. It's hard to control the computing world, when people have direct access outside of your control in their pockets and purses.

Analyze your thinking

For some CIOs and IT staff it's simply a gut reaction. If it's on the open web, it must be bad and we must control it, but cloud computing services like Dropbox, Facebook and so many others are not inherently bad. Most executives probably won't give up total control for some time to come, but it may be time to think about why you want that control, and if it's in the best interest of the way that your employees share and collaborate today, whether it's in-house or interacting with customers, partners and suppliers.

If after thinking it through, you have a legitimate gripe, then set a reasonable policy. Simply trying to control it all is likely an exercise in futility in today's open computing environment. You have to figure out those areas that truly matter most because of regulation, business interest or other reasonable policy drivers. If it doesn't meet that criteria, you might want to just let it go, and control what makes the most sense for your organization and how you do business today. - Ron

The conspicuous absence of ECM at Enterprise 2.0

Ron Miller — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:32:31 -0400

As regular readers are no doubt aware, I spent a good part of last week catching up on all things Enterprise 2.0 at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. For a subject that deals with a significant amount of content, there was a dearth of ECM presence here this year. Other than Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) SharePoint (which was here to publicize its E20 chops) and a couple of open source representatives--Cheryl McKinnon, CMO at Nuxeo and John Newton, CTO at Alfresco--as far as I could tell, everyone else stayed away.

All that chatter is content

Last year, I remember EMC and Open Text came for a visit, but not so this year. When you think about Enterprise 2.0 activity, whether it's microblogging, status updates or blog posts; it's all content and as the sheer amount of this content grows over time, it begs to be managed. That’s why I found the absence of ECM vendors more than a bit curious. They could really make a case for themselves at a conference like this.

What to keep?

Much like email, Enterprise 2.0 content could build up quickly, especially in a large company. Regulated industries (and everyone else) may need help deciding what to keep, what to archive and what to toss. And how do you find those nuggets of information inside the mountain of inane chatter that most won’t care about? It takes a sophisticated system to handle this type of activity. You would think ECM would be screaming from the rafters that their tools should be managing this content, yet they weren’t.

Is this a search problem?

Sid Probstein, CTO at search vendor Attivio was here and he was genuinely excited about the possibilities and opportunities that Enterprise 2.0 present. He sees search tools like his as a way to get at underlying information such as who is an expert in a certain subject based on their social activity. He says content like blog posts is actually much more structured than you imagine, and Attivio search technology can get at this information and find answers to individual questions locked inside the Enterprise 2.0 information stream.

Is ECM giving up on E20?

What’s interesting is that last year, ECM vendors were at the conference, but they weren't talking about content management per se. Instead, they were discussing their own E20 offerings and how they were equipped to deal with E20 functionality and manage the resulting content, the way they always have inside the CMS. It’s hard to believe they have given up on this space, especially as I wrote last week (in The attack of the big Enterprise 2.0 Vendors) that larger vendors like IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) are suddenly in this space in a big way. It leaves me wondering why ECM vendors aren’t in there competing hard for that revenue.

When is ECM going to wake up and recognize an opportunity that’s obviously staring them in the face? That these vendors decided en masse to take this show off is surprising and it makes me wonder if the industry is giving up on E20. But with such obvious connections, it’s just hard to believe that would be the case. If they haven't given up, they better get back in the game...before it’s too late. - Ron

The attack of the huge Enterprise 2.0 vendors

Ron Miller — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:28:04 -0400

A funny thing happened at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston between last year and this year. All of a sudden larger vendors have discovered this space in a big way and it's changed the complexion of the conference and of the market. For the last couple of years, with the exception of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), small vendors with small booths including Socialtext, Jive and Traction dominated the show. And while they're all still here, the big boys like IBM (NYSE: IBM), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), SAP and Novell have shown up too. A trend like this is hard to ignore and it means the market is starting to mature.

Where did they come from?

It seems these big players have come out of nowhere with tools that look eerily similar. They have watched the space from afar and seem to sense the market has reached a point where customers are looking for more complete solutions from established brands. That said, these tools all have a Facebook look and feel and they all do basically the same thing, providing a place to build a profile, add friends, post links and status updates and so forth. There seems to be very little to differentiate these players from one another. Of course, the same goes for the smaller vendors, but it leaves me wondering: When the big guys take over the playground, do the little guys stand a chance?

Survival in the niches

While there will very likely be some significant consolidation in the market moving forward, this probably isn't a death knell to all of the small players who have been around for a while and understand the market so well. For instance, I was talking to Chris Yeh, VP of marketing at PBWorks, a SaaS-based Enterprise 2.0 tool. It too has a standard look and feel, but Yeh says, he saw this convergence coming last year and he had his team focus on specific niches. So the company has decided to concentrate on agencies like PR and advertising because these customers engage in a lot of collaboration in and out of house.

They look at smaller companies in these markets who don't want to build infrastructure and the SaaS solution provides them with Enterprise 2.0 functionality without making huge investments. What's more, PBWorks lets people outside the customer's company use the service for free, something that the license-driven big players aren't likely to do. (Microsoft offers a special license for this purpose, but it will cost extra of course.)

Big players move slowly

Another way that the original wave of Enterprise 2.0 companies can continue to thrive is through innovation. Ben Kiker, CMO at Jive, candidly admits he doesn't have Microsoft's marketing budget, but he believes his company can move more quickly and innovate faster than the larger companies can (and I agree). And Jive has large customers today like Alcatel-Lucent and CSC (both of which presented at the show) proving that they can compete with bigger brands for large customers.

Platforms and infrastructure

Andrew McAfee, the MIT professor who coined the term Enterprise 2.0 back in 2006, said at the Keynote on Tuesday that the focus of Enterprise 2.0 today is on building a platform and backend infrastructure to support the software. This plays to the sweet spot of the larger vendors looking to sell some combination of software, services and hardware. The platform appeals to enterprise customers looking for a single point solution that covers the functionally they are looking for.

At this point in its evolution, many companies recognize the value of Enterprise 2.0. The smaller vendors have laid the groundwork over the last several years, and now the giants are coming in for the kill. It might not be fair, but it shouldn't be unexpected. It's the nature of the business for bigger players to watch and pounce when the market is ripe. As the Enterprise 2.0 market matures, change is inevitable, and we seem to be on the cusp of a major one. It should be interesting to see where this goes in the next year. - Ron

Time for Enterprise 2.0 to grow up

Ron Miller — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:42:54 -0400

I'll be attending my third Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston next week. It's a great conference and I always learn a lot, but I hope the conference is moving forward this year. MIT professor Andrew McAfee coined the term back in 2006 to define a set of software and services that emulated Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, Twitter and Facebook inside the enterprise. The idea was to take all the best parts of these tools and move them behind the firewall where workers could collaborate and share information in a more natural way than traditional enterprise tools.

Here we are in 2010, and it's time we grew up. This isn't a wildly new approach anymore, so here are some broad themes I'm hoping we are past:

Mixing up the open web and enterprise 2.0

Let's hope at long last we don't hear panelists mixing up the open web and Enterprise 2.0 (as I wrote after last year's conference in "Why are we still blurring Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 Concepts"). The whole idea of Enterprise 2.0 is to move the Web 2.0 concepts in-house. That means any of the concerns you might have about the open web really don't apply. So please, I don't want to hear anyone even mention Facebook and Twitter when discussing Enterprise 2.0. They are different.

The generational myth

Another issue that always seems to come up when people want to find a way to dismiss Enterprise 2.0 concepts is that it's only for the younger generation. Again, this is just nonsense (as I wrote last year in "The Enterprise 2.0 generational myth"). The fact is older people are embracing Web 2.0 tools like Twitter and Facebook, and are therefore fully capable of learning and using similar tools inside the enterprise. To suggest that older workers can't adapt to a changing work place is really insulting, and in fact, according to a case study presented at last year's conference by Lockheed Martin employees, age wasn't even an issue when they implemented an Enterprise 2.0 framework. As I wrote last year:

"Keohane reported that the older population had no problem adjusting to these new tools. They even wanted the ability to customize and create mash-ups."

Security issues

Another big concern we seem to hear every year is that somehow you'll be compromising security by using Enterprise 2.0. Without a doubt, you should have a set of policies and procedures in place for the open web, and employees still have to follow certain common sense procedures in-house like not publicly discussing the impending layoff or the upcoming IPO, but beyond that, it's as safe and secure as any in-house communications tool. I don't hear people screaming about the evils of instant messaging and email, so why do we continually hear about security issues with Enterprise 2.0 tools?

I'll be spending next Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston and next week's issue will be largely devoted to conference coverage. I'll let you know if these issues have been tabled once and for all, or if we are hearing about new issues in the world of Enterprise 2.0. - Ron

Note: We'll be publishing on Thursday (June 17) next week instead of Wednesday.

The year of the tablet

Ron Miller — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:33:49 -0400

Unless you've been living under a rock this year, you know about the phenomenal success of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad. Peter Kafka reports on the All Things Digital blog that Apple has sold 2 million iPads in just two months. By any measurement that's a successful launch of a new device, and we can expect many similar devices to follow in its wake. That could have a major impact on content producers and content management software.

Haven't we been here before?

Many of you may recall an earlier iteration of the tablet computer. They were basically laptops, which you could reconfigure to carry like a tablet. The trouble was, they still included a full keyboard, which made them heavy and awkward to carry around. My doctor's office still uses this type of tablet, and they lack the elegance and beauty of the iPad tablet, which may account for their stunning lack of traction.

Then came the iPad

That brings us to this year when Apple, after literally years of rumors, finally released the iPad. It's easy to dismiss the iPad based on what it doesn't have such as a USB port or a camera, but Apple did what Apple does best on a new device like this, it made sure it got what it included absolutely rock solid.

That includes a drop-dead gorgeous display, an incredibly responsive touch screen and an a screaming fast Internet connection. I'm not just delving into hyperbole here. These are the key strengths of this device.

Here come the rest

On the heels of the iPad, we will see many competing devices throughout this year and into next year. Already we have heard announcements from Asus, Google Android (NASDAQ: GOOG) partners (like this one from Motorola), Dell and HP (NYSE: HPQ) (which had a Windows tablet ready to ship when it purchased Palm earlier this year and pulled an about face).

I'm sure there will be many offerings, which undoubtedly will fill in some of the perceived short-comings of the iPad including Flash support, USB ports and a camera.

Content opportunities

The tablet revolution presents opportunities for content providers, especially newspapers and magazines, which see these devices with their associated App Stores as potential revenue opportunities.

They also present another issue for content management. First of all, there is yet another form factor to deal with, and unlike cell phones, it's looking at least for now, screen size could be all over the place. What's more, you will have to present your content, not just in a variety of browsers, but also in a variety of application development environments, which could prove challenging. Throw in the Flash versus HTML5 argument and it leaves content producers and managers in a very difficult place.

This screen size issue could be solved with XML templates for different presentations, but the tablet could also present some serious technical challenges moving forward. Content producers will need to decide just how many tablet and cell phone platforms they can realistically support. Like all markets, it will take some time for it to sort itself out, but in the mean time content providers and managers need to be vigilant.

You can't afford to wait for the market to settle, so you have to pick several strategic platforms, while understanding that market will be shifting and changing rapidly. It's not an easy position to be in, but in the "year of the tablet" it looks like you're not going to have a choice, but to jump right in. - Ron

Records management could be moving to the cloud

Ron Miller — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:53:52 -0400

Last week I wrote about some broad trends causing major shifts in the ECM market (in "Could we be witnessing the end of ECM as we've known it"). Tony Byrne from Real Story Group reacted to my piece by saying I got the big pieces right, but I failed to account for what he called "prosaic document imaging/management/records management." Interestingly enough, I was at the annual MIT CIO conference last week and spoke to Mark Forman, a partner from KPMG who consults with the federal government (and who was recently interviewed by sister-site FierceGovernmentIT). Forman said increasingly he's seeing business processes, essentially document management functions, being done in the cloud, and he thinks it won't be long before this is the norm.

Is the enterprise ready for RM in the cloud?

Before we get too far with Forman's comments, let's step back in time, way back to last Fall at ARMA where I attended a session run by Alan Pelz-Sharpe of Real Story Group called "Weathering the storm--The future impact of cloud computing on records management." At the time, I wrote that the consensus was that there was no real precedent for records management in the cloud and that the idea scared record keepers to no end. While Pelz-Sharpe did point out some benefits of cloud computing, the panelists weren't terribly bullish about the idea because it was unclear who owned your data and who was responsible should a regulator or court order appear on your door step asking for specific information.

Fast forward to spring 2010

Forman is not as concerned with the details because he said transaction processing is going on in the cloud right now every day. In fact, when the federal government implemented recovery.gov, it began processing the very kind of transactions in the cloud, that those records managers at ARMA were so afraid of. Forman says he's beginning to see the walls coming down for many transaction-based processes. He believes we are witnessing a transition from client-server computing to Software as a Service computing and he predicts these services will become increasingly commoditized.

Commoditizing business transaction processing

There's that word again, the same one we saw popping up as a broader general ECM trend in last week's column. It could be that we are seeing the same type of transformation going on at the business transaction-processing level. Forman says you can take a paper bill, electronic fax, electronic form or data entry feed and service companies like Esker, One Network and CloudInvoicing.com will accept the appropriate type of content, ingest it into the appropriate application and take the necessary action, whether that's generating an invoice, paying a bill or whatever financial transaction you need done. Forman refers to this as "Business Transactions as a Service" and he sees it as a big content/records management trend moving forward.

Forman says the notion that people won't store and pull financial data in the cloud just isn't valid. It's happening today on recovery.gov. And the fact is, if the government feels secure enough to conduct business transactions in the cloud, where security and privacy are dictated by law, it seems that you can begin to explore this type of approach in the private sector. There is a lot FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) being spread about cloud computing, but we are moving ever closer to a cloud future and you need to be looking at this as an option for your company if you want to stay competitive. - Ron

Are we witnessing the end of ECM as we've known it?

Ron Miller — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:40:02 -0400

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."
~REM, It's the end of the world

It's been a wacky couple of weeks in the ECM world, hasn't it? Even those who follow the industry as closely as I do, had to be surprised by the confluence of recent events. Consider these recent blog posts, comments and announcements:

Jon Marks asked in his Jon on Tech blog if the "E" (for enterprise) made sense any more in ECM.
Lee Dallas wondered in his Big Men on Content blog if the "E" mattered and if "C" was the new "E" (I think we may have to get Elmo in here to referee).
SharePoint 2010 had a huge coming out party in New York City.
Nuxeo CMO Cheryl McKinnon wrote on Facebook on the day SharePoint was released: "The #ECM world needs to write down today's date as an important turning point. Most won't get it for 2 yrs, but that's not my problem."
At EMC World last week, it seemed that EMC was abandoning its core roots in content management and going for a broader play. In fact, EMC dropped the name "content management" from the Documentum group, opting instead for the name Intelligent Information Group (IIG).

Holy enterprise content, Batman. What the heck is happening here? Let's take a deep breath and think about three factors that have come together to get us to this point: SharePoint, the cloud and open source.

The SharePoint factor

McKinnon for one sees SharePoint taking over many of the functions that traditional ECM vendors, such as Documentum and her old company, Open Text, have previously dominated. In her view, and also EMC IIG president Mark Lewis' view, the world of ECM--partly because of SharePoint and partly because of cloud plays like Box.net--will become increasingly commoditized in the coming years.

When you also factor in that each vendor will be able to access one another's repositories through CMIS, and that this is probably only going to broaden as the CMIS standard matures, suddenly ECM as a pure content repository looks like a losing proposition to companies like EMC, who are used to making a lot of money on the deal.

I'm not sure I'm quite as confident about SharePoint's position as McKinnon, but clearly it has had a massive influence on ECM, even if it doesn't really do "E" or "M" all that well (but allows end users to create plenty of "C").

The cloud factor

The other big factor hanging over ECM these days (yes, the pun was intended), is cloud computing. EMC is first and foremost a hardware company. They bought Documentum so they could sell more hardware. That's what they do. As such, the public cloud doesn't really work for them.

Even though Rick Devenuti, who is COO for the EMC IIG, gave the cloud lip service in his keynote at EMC World, it didn't really factor into the new vision he laid out. One person who didn't miss this, was Laurence Hart of Washington Consulting Group who was put off (to say the least) by the current direction of the company. Hart wrote in a post on his Word of Pie blog that even when he attended EMC's Cloud Computing Roundtable, he wasn't terribly impressed by the cloud story he heard:

"It is obvious from the 'vision' that is presented, that Documentum isn’t in the cloud and that it isn’t a priority," Hart wrote.

Yet companies like SpringCM are already there offering modularized solutions that meet the needs of customers. Another company knocking at the door, but not quite there yet is Box.net. These companies are not selling huge monolithic packages. They do not require massive investments in hardware. They do not have installation cycles measured in months and years. These solutions are ready to use. The vendor deals with the hardware. You pay for what you use, and upgrades are incremental (unlike SharePoint which comes along every few years and wreaks havoc on the installed base, even when there are improvements).

The open-source factor

And finally we have the open-source factor. That's where companies like McKinnon's Nuxeo come into play, along with John Newton's (the man who helped develop Documentum, by the way) Alfresco. These companies have the audacity to give the software away, an approach that Lewis scoffs at. He will be the first to tell you, he's in business to make money, but he can't compete with free. That's why he changed the name of his division, and developed a new information-driven strategy because he desperately wants to show customers his company provides real value beyond the pure act of managing content in a repository.

There's probably still plenty of money to be made at the lower end of the market, which could account for why McKinnon feels so giddy about the developing state of affairs. It could also account for Lewis' angst. He sees the writing on the wall. He sees the commoditization and the lower margins coming for ECM, and maybe that's why we have luminaries like Marks, Dallas and Hart arguing over the validity and accuracy of the name we have given this industry these last 10 years. It appears, dear readers, that the industry is transforming before our eyes. It seems to have happened over night, but it's probably been coming for a long time.

The Real Story Group recently changed its name from CMS Watch because it didn't feel it accurately reflected what it covered anymore. Maybe that name change was a more general harbinger of the direction of the entire industry. Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it. It certainly feels that way, doesn't it? - Ron

Content still makes the world go around

Ron Miller — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:57:45 -0400

Last week I looked at the growing influence of mobile content. This week I want to look at the increasing importance of quality content on your company's marketing and brand image. I'm seeing more and more companies recognize the power of good content. While I was at AIIM a couple of weeks ago, I met with Whitney Tidmarsh the Chief Marketing Officer at EMC and she shared a white paper with me about compliance called Creating Winning Strategies for Information Advantage. The interesting thing was that EMC's brand was not front and center on this piece. You had to look fairly hard to find it. The website where you could go to learn more information doesn't include the EMC name in the URL. It's called councilforinformationadvantage.com. Is it strange for EMC to hide from its brand in this way? Not at all. It's part of an increasingly popular marketing technique built around creating content and using that content to drive brand and market initiatives without banging customers over the head.

Following the wisdom of David Meerman Scott

David Meerman Scott, who is author of the best selling books, World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing and PR has been one of the major influencers around this movement. When I asked Tidmarsh if she was familiar with Scott's work. She just smiled and said she was. Clearly the idea of good content without a product-centric message is taking hold in businesses large and small.

Businesses that have used traditional advertising and marketing channels in the past are learning about the power of content to drive the kinds of messages they want customers to hear. In the case of EMC, it was that not enough companies are paying attention to compliance and governance issues. Instead of a scary message about what happens when you fail to build good compliance practices, they gathered a group of customers with many years of experience and they created a white paper to let their customers tell their story.

Scott says when companies truly understand the market problems that their products and services solve for buyers, they transform marketing from "product-specific, ego-centric gobbledygook" into into valuable information people are eager to consume, and that they use to make the choice to do business with these organizations.

"Instead of creating jargon-filled, hype-based advertising, you can create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to—if you take the time to listen to them discuss the problems that you can help them solve. Then you’ll be able to use their words, not your own," Scott says. "You’ll speak in the language of your buyer, not the language of your founder, CEO, product manager, or PR agency staffer. You’ll help your marketing get real," he says. This is precisely what EMC is attempting to do with the white paper.

Sharing instead of hoarding

Another side of this content over advertising is the idea of sharing content instead of hoarding your information. I met with Tony Byrne and his crew at the Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch) at AIIM and they let me know that I could get a journalist's pass to their online research. Now, this content is literally the lifeblood of the Real Story Group, so why would they share it with a journalist?

By sharing it with me says, founder and president Tony Byrne, he hopes to get the word out to potential customers about what they are doing.

"In a nutshell, we hope you'll ask us more and better questions. Stuff like: "I saw in your evaluation of Vendor X that the platform is a mixture of Java and .NET technologies...why is that? What do customers think?""

Content may or may not be king, but one thing is certain it has a power associated with it. When you share it and package in the fashion EMC and Real Story Group have, two organizations with vastly different goals, you can drive people to your products and services in noninvasive ways. Advertising still has a place of course, but good content can deliver your message subtly, and it may just be more effective than you ever imagined. - Ron

Mobile content takes center stage

Ron Miller — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:47:31 -0400

Mobile devices have exploded in the last couple of years. Whether we are talking about the wide-spread proliferation of cheaper smartphones, the new iPad (and the upcoming line of wannabes) or even the netbook phenomenon, it's clear our devices are getting smaller and we want to have our data packaged and available wherever we are. That means content providers need to provide content in whatever form consumers want. In some cases this may mean tuning the content layout to the device. In others, it might mean creating an app to access your content.

Just last week, HP rocked the technology world when it purchased Palm. The purpose of this purchase was to give HP its very own mobile operating system. Many people believe, HP will use Palm WebOS as a platform to build iPad-type devices as well as a line of smartphones. HP recognized that mobile was the key to the future and bought Palm as a way to take advantage of it. Whether that was a smart choice is debatable, but it's undeniable that mobile content is where we are headed.

Tuning your content to the device

If you are designing websites today, you have to include the ability to detect a device type and tune the content accordingly. One good example of this, is the Amtrak website. When I found myself early for a train last year while on a business trip to New York City, I pulled out my iPhone, opened Safari and found Amtrak. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amtrak had device detection and presented me with a website that was smart-phone friendly. It had a simple menu for the home page and when I made a selection I discovered it had been designed with scrolling lists to make it easy to select the information. I didn't have to scroll left and right to see the entire screen, nor did I have to use the iPhone's pinch-zoom feature to see the content. It was laid out for me for the device I was using.

That Amtrak had taken this step was a delightful surprise, but you would be amazed how many sites haven't. If you are a content-centric business (and which aren't these days), you need to make sure your site works in a similar fashion to Amtrak's. If you fail to do this, you risk aggravating your users and sending them elsewhere. With competition so fierce (pardon the expression), you must have this capability to contend.

Getting on the app bandwagon

The other way to deliver content is through the growing number of app stores. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) started the App Store phenomenon and they remain the most successful, but everyone from Android, to Blackberry (NASDAQ:RIMM), to Nokia has one. In fact, PaidContent.org reports that the number of App Stores grew from nine to 38 in 2009, and there are even more on the way. This makes it pretty hard for content providers to place a sound bet on any particular one, but a February report from ReadWriteWeb shows that there are six leaders in the space with Apple being the clear top dog.

Whichever route you use to deliver mobile content, you need to have a mobile content strategy if you want to be relevant. Chances are you need some combination of mobile site design and mobile app design. HP certainly recognizes where the future is, and you need to devise a strategy to be there too or you risk banishing your content (and your company) to obscurity. - Ron

Most data shouldn't have an unlimited life

Ron Miller — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:02:45 -0400

One thing is clear: There's lots of data out there and it's only going to grow. The question then becomes: What do we do with it and how to do we manage it? Lately, I've heard some people suggest that we should just keep everything forever, a strategy that makes little sense to me. I realize I'm not a records manager and I don't know what they face on a daily basis, but as an industry observer, my gut tells me the save-everything approach is simply foolhardy.

There's just too much data (and we're making more)

At his keynote last week at AIIM 2010, John Mancini, president of the AIIM Trade Association, said one of the trends having a major impact on content management was the explosion of data. As I reported in last week's Editor's Corner, as though we don't have enough human-generated content, Mancini pointed out there will soon be data from things, what is being coined "the Internet of things."

If we are generating mountains of data, it seems the first thing you would start to consider is what to throw out, right? But Cyrus Mistry from Google had this to say about data: "Be open and transparent. Everyone gets access to all data and keep it forever." Whoa. Really? Forever? He did put some limits on it such as payroll data, and while I welcome transparency and openness, this seems to be stretching the limits for even the most liberal among us.

He's not alone

But Mistry wasn't alone with this assertion. There were others making the same claim. Deirdre Woods, Wharton's CIO and associate dean said essentially the same thing: "Let your users have access to all data and keep it forever." I just about fell out of my chair when I heard her say that. Of course, Woods works at a research school. Data is valuable and people want access to it (maybe forever).

A corporation is a different animal. You don't need emails from 10 years ago or every cafeteria menu since 1972. There are and should be things that are disposable at every organization (even Wharton and Google), and if you're smart you practice information lifecycle management (ILM). This puts some controls and discipline onto the process. It defines what types of data you save, what you throw out and when you delete it forever and always.

It's the litigation, stupid

It's always handy to paraphrase James Carville's 1992 campaign mantra: "It's the Economy, Stupid." When it comes to data, it's all about legal exposure. You don't want a smoking gun sitting amongst that pile of data. Just ask Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) if you doubt me. The firm's email trail is what has them in trouble now with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It may be that federal law requires them, as a financial institution, to keep these emails for a certain extended period of time, but it may also be that they never instituted an email deletion policy and it came back to bite them when the SEC came through the door looking for evidence in its case.

In my opinion, if you aren't required to keep it, and it doesn't have some business value, then you should get rid of it, plain and simple. You should absolutely have a lifecycle for all of your electronic data because if you don't--Ms. Woods' and Mr. Mistry's advice not withstanding--you are going to be in trouble if you ever get hauled into court or if a regulatory body such as the SEC starts sniffing around. On the other hand if you have a defined policy in place, the judge or regulator is far more likely to be sympathetic. What are you waiting for? Go get organized for goodness sake, before it's too late. The data pile isn't get any smaller, that's for sure. - Ron

Optimism returns at AIIM 2010

Ron Miller — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:23:50 -0400

"Information doesn't manage itself. It never will."
~Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Real Story Group Analyst

I spent part of this week visiting AIIM 2010 and I sensed a distinctly different mood from the gloom and doom I experienced last year. A year ago, we were deep into an economic crisis and it seemed the entire focus of the show was on return on investment (as I wrote in "Recession casts a long shadow over AIIM 2009"), but this year was a new year, and optimism ruled the day in the content management industry. Nary a word was heard about ROI this time around.

Instead, the message this year focused on mountains of information. We heard information will continue to grow and it will even come from the most unlikely sources (such as smart devices transmitting information). Mostly we heard that we need to do a better job of managing information and of course we need content management systems to help achieve that goal. And maybe customers were ready to hear that message. The crowds seemed a little larger and the buzz on the floor a little bit louder.

Last year actually wasn't so bad

Before we start making comparisons, however it's important to understand that maybe last year wasn't as bad as we think it was. Just because the economy as a whole was in the doldrums, doesn't mean that content management was affected in quite the same fashion. In fact, according to analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe from The Real Story Group, it was actually a very good year for many vendors.

Speaking at a presentation on ECM Markets and Trends, Pelz-Sharpe stated "This [content management] industry was not impacted as much by the economy as other parts of the IT sector. As a sector as a whole, it grew and continues to grow." He said that part of the reason for this was that in a down economy, ECM vendors could sell their products as a way of reducing costs, mostly through staff reduction using process automation to replace labor-intensive manual tasks.

Of course, the success level varied from vendor to vendor and product to product, but overall he suggested that it wasn't quite as bad as popular perception would have lead us to believe.

Information explosion

A common theme at this year's show was the explosion of information. We have the rapid proliferation of smart phones offering more opportunities to create content (and hence manage it). We have more and more digital assets like videos, sound and pictures. We have collaboration tools helping us generate and publish all sorts of content more easily. As though that weren't enough human-generated content, Michael Rogers, who has the totally excellent title of Futurist in Residence at the New York Times Company, pointed out at the show's launch keynote address, even devices could soon generate content.

That's right, he predicted there will soon be what he called "an Internet of things." Inanimate objects like lights and heating and cooling systems will have sensors and radios and could be broadcasting information--data you need to capture and yes manage. Rogers says the worldwide engineering standards organization IEEE is working on standards for cars to transmit data. "Think," he speculated "how much data will come out of that." Indeed.

Data, data everywhere

It was enough to scare you a little (which might have been the intent). I was joking that the message was in stark contrast to last year's ROI/Value message was "you can't afford not to have content management."

Perhaps Pelz-Sharpe summed it up best in the closing remarks of his presentation when he said, "For those working in this industry, you are in a good place. [These issues] are not going anywhere, and it's only going to grow." Those are words that have to make any content management professional smile. It was a new year, a different year. The sun shined brightly, children laughed and optimism returned to AIIM. - Ron

Time for Apple and Adobe to bury the hatchet on Flash

Ron Miller — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:51:23 -0400

The whole Apple-Adobe Flash battle took an ugly turn last week when Apple announced its new iPhone OS 4.0 and some interpreted the language in the developer's agreement to ban the use of Flash altogether. Needless to say, this did not go over well and the war of words got even harsher when Adobe Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow, (unofficially) told Apple to "screw itself" in his personal blog. I'm as big a fan of Apple products as anyone, and I realize I've gone back and forth on this subject, but I'm here to say, this has gone way too far and it has to stop. Whether each company realizes it or not, it's the customers who are suffering.

iPad/iPhone and Flash

After recently purchasing an iPad and as a regular iPhone user I can tell you that running into the Flash wall on these devices is no fun. If you try to visit any popular video site (except YouTube, which Apple sanctions for some reason), such as Hulu, you get an error message that Flash isn't supported. If you try to play an embedded video in Facebook or click a link to one in an email, the same thing happens. Now, c'mon Apple, these are expected behaviors on any device: You click a video and it plays. You absolutely shouldn't be encountering an error message.

What's more, if you go to a site that even has a single Flash element built in (like a chart), you have to deal with the error message every single time. This is distinctly unfriendly and it really doesn't have to be this way. Apple and Adobe must be able to find some common ground on this, right?

The future isn't now

I realize that HTML5 is coming and I understand that it will probably resolve a lot of these issues at some point in the future, but the future is some nebulous time down the road. Right now, many sites use Flash and for Apple to block it is in some ways inhibiting my experience as a user. I get that Flash can crash (and does), but I've had applications crash because of bugs on the iPhone and iPad and it has nothing to do with Flash. At this point, as nice as these devices are, they aren't without flaws.

It's really time for Adobe and Apple to take a step back, take a deep breath and find a way to bury the hatchet because as things stand right now, users are running in to road blocks. Developers aren't sure where they stand and Apple appears arrogant, rigid and downright unfriendly--not exactly how a company which has built a reputation on being cool and hip wants to be perceived. Adobe needs to work harder to make sure that Flash is bug free and they have to admit there are issues with it.

In the end, if these two companies find a way to work together we all win. For now, we have to deal with immaturity and angry recriminations and error messages when we try to visit a site with Flash running. That doesn't work at all and it's time to deal with it and move on. - Ron

iPad could have enterprise value (but not how you think)

Ron Miller — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:33:13 -0400

There's been a lot of debate this week about the iPad's utility in the enterprise. My colleague Lynnette Luna had a column this week on how the iPad is speeding up the "consumerization" of the enterprise. Other writers have talked about how the iPad is not completely appropriate for the enterprise, chiefly because it lacks a file system and it doesn't support multi-tasking (yet). Still others have pointed out the obvious business apps such as iPad optimized versions of iWork applications. All these have a place in business I suppose, but I think many writers are missing the point about the iPad at work. It's simply not a conventional computing device and it would be a mistake, I believe, to treat it as one.

So how should businesses be using the iPad?

There is no right way of course, but I have a different vision for the iPad at work. I have seen how companies like Open Text have exploited the iPhone App ecosystem to develop an app that lets iPhone users access Open Text functionality wherever the employee happens to be. (They also just released a Blackberry app.) Now, I've heard that there isn't exactly a one to one relationship between apps developed for the iPhone and those developed for the iPad. iPhone apps have to be tuned to the iPad, but this isn't an insurmountable obstacle for developers who have already been around the block once with Apple's development tools.

If employees want to use the iPad as lightweight device to take on the road (even lighter than a laptop), than so be it. There should be an app for that. And content management companies would be foolish to ignore this obvious opportunity. The idea is to give users access to content wherever they are using whatever device they wish, and by all accounts, the iPad is going to be a very popular device.

Just log me in

Another way to exploit the iPad is using an App called LogMeIn, which gives users access to their PCs or Macs (at work or home) from the iPad. This way they can navigate their own file systems even in the absence of one on the iPad. See, you just have to figure out how to exploit this device and there usually is a way to make it do what you want. Then of course, there is always the good old-fashioned world wide web. There is no doubt that whether an app exists or not, that users can access the web from the iPad.

By providing gateways into the enterprise, users should be able to log in to the enterprise system and navigate through it, whether it's the content management system or another business application. The key here is to make sure you have a site that can detect the device, a mobile phone or iPad, and adjust the site accordingly. It's not always pretty trying to navigate a site that hasn't been tuned to the device, although the iPad is probably much better suited to normal viewing than a 3.5 inch mobile screen would be.

Of course, those folks who are hell bent on making it a conventional device can wait for iPad wannabes like the upcoming HP slate device that was "leaked" on YouTube recently. Microsoft too has leaked a video of a digital journal. These devices will no doubt put to rest all of the criticisms of what the iPad can't do, but they will lack one key element: They won't be an iPad. And chances are your employees are going to want the real thing. It's up to you to figure out how to make it work for them. - Ron

AIIM 2010 preview

Ron Miller — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:32:06 -0400

Welcome to the AIIM 2010 Preview Issue. This year's conference will mark AIIM's second year in Philadelphia. Last year's show took place under the shadow of a massive recession. This year, as we climb slowly out of the economic malaise, it will be interesting to see how this affects show attendance and if visitor's are still in window shopping mode, or if they are really ready to make some purchases.

As I pointed out in my post, "It's still about doing more with less," in this week's AIIM preview issue, even customers ready to make a purchase may be taking a go-slow approach. However, I'm betting that vendors will be trying to steer the conversation away from last year's big theme of ROI and more toward the value their products can bring the customers (a more conventional sale). Until we get there though, it's really hard to know. So let's go. On with the show.

Ready for some speeches?

There is always a lot happening at AIIM. If you want to learn more about content management (and who doesn't?), then this show has much to offer across every aspect of the content management industry. Each day starts with speeches from some of the industry's biggest names. You can start your day with a keynote from someone like Michael Rogers, MSNBC's "Practical Futurist" and technology expert, who kicks things off on Tuesday with a presentation on the challenges companies face in a tough economic climate. Not enough for you? How about a general session lead by Google's Cyrus Mistry on Wednesday morning or one from Microsoft's Ryan Duguid on Thursday.

Throughout the day, there are 14 tracks and more than 100 sessions delivered by some of the biggest names in the industry. New this year is a mobile content management track and three sessions devoted entirely to SharePoint. Check the program and find the ones you want to see. There's so much, it sometimes makes deciding what to attend difficult.

Learn something

If you want to learn there is so much opportunity, starting with the pre-conference workshops on Monday and continuing with presentations throughout the day from Tuesday through Thursday. Throughout the day, on the Expo floor you'll find the Application Showcase Theater, which offers case study presentations from real application end users. There's also an eDiscovery Pavilion, which is new this year, where you can learn about eDiscovery issues; a Channel Connection, where VARs and consultants can get together; and a whole host of other activities designed to educate you and provide you with networking opportunities. Check the website or conference program to learn about them all.

You can talk directly to more than 150 vendors on the Exposition Floor. You should take the opportunity to walk the floor and ask vendors direct questions about how they can help you solve your content management issues. I recommend giving yourself at least part of one day to take advantage of this.

Don't forget to use the conference to network and get to know people in the industry. You can do this at the workshops, the floor schmoozing centers, or you can attend the opening night networking reception from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm in the Grand Ballroom at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where you can interact with content management industry pros and listen to the music from the band, Tower of Power.

This preview has only scratched the surface of this conference. Go online at www.aiimexpo.com and plan out your visit ahead of time. There's so much to do and see, and you'll be glad you did a little homework up front, so you can get the most out of the conference. - Ron

You may want to avoid hacking your open-source CMS

Ron Miller — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:31:58 -0400

Seth Gottlieb has an excellent blog on content management called <content here>. Recently, he had a post about The Onion's adventures with Drupal. It's a story that illustrates the issues companies face when highly customizing an open source content management system. According to Gottlieb, when The Onion went with Drupal 4.7, they had to "hack the core" to allow for the high visitor volume they expected to their very funny and popular website. What The Onion couldn't anticipate was that Drupal would eventually solve this problem. The trouble was that by the time they released updated versions, The Onion's hacked version was so different from the original, it could no longer afford to upgrade without sacrificing its substantial customizations.

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the problems companies could face when customizing open-source tools to this extent. The good news is that you have access to the source code. You can change and shape it to your company's needs--something that would be impossible to do with a proprietary choice like EMC or Open Text. They simply wouldn't allow you to see the source code. The bad news is that once you customize the code to the extent The Onion did, you are on your own. Even the community can't help you, and when inevitable upgrades come along including security fixes, if you've forked from the main build as much as The Onion did, you can no longer take advantage of the changes without substantial pain on your part. But if you stick with the main build and don't divert too much, you have a lot more freedom with the open-source options.

Learn from The Onion's experience

Joe "Zonker"Brockmeier is a freelance writer who has been writing about open-source software since the mid-90s. He's also the former Community Manager for openSUSE, a Linux distribution. He says that The Onion's experience should be a cautionary tale for any publisher. "Don't get out of sync with upstream [the main project] or you will regret it later," he says. He adds, "Customizing the core platform [as The Onion did] is asking for hurt. You're signing up to apply security fixes piecemeal or live without them. You're jumping off the upgrade path and missing out on the features that will come in the next version and the next and the next."

Customize the smart way

Brockmeier says you can avoid The Onion's pain if you plan well and use the tools that the open-source projects offer to make changes. "Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, etc.--most open source CMS solutions offer enough extensibility via plugins that it's really not necessary to deviate from the mainline version. Instead, do your customization via plugins and themes. The mainstream projects are sensitive to breaking themes and plugins, and they tend to avoid changes--or at least broadcast them very loudly when they're coming--that it's fairly safe to invest time and effort into plugins," Brockmeier says.

He says that it's likely that many of the same changes you are doing yourself, in house a la The Onion, are the types of changes that the community is working on. Chances are, if you see a deficiency, so do other people and they are working on it.

In the end, The Onion moved to Django, a tool Brockmeier explains is meant to be hacked and therefore might be a better choice for them. For most publishers, however, sticking with the core build and customizing in the fashion that Brockmeier recommends is probably the best way to go. But, he says, you can't be too critical of the path The Onion took, because it's impossible to know where a project like Drupal (or any other open-source CMS) might end up.

That said, if you are looking at mass customization, do your homework and make sure that what you're trying to do isn't already in the works for a future version. You could save yourself a lot of headaches in the long run if you do. And if you do opt for mass customization, make sure you understand what it means for your organization long term. - Ron

Global search market grew by leaps and bounds in 2009

Ron Miller — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:17:42 -0400

If you're wondering why Google and Microsoft are engaged in a death struggle over search, you need look no further than the global search numbers for last year. comScore, an organization that tracks this type of information, reports phenomenal search growth across the world. When you consider that searches translate into ads, which translate into dollars it's no wonder that Microsoft wants a bigger piece of this global pie. Unfortunately for them, it's Google's world and the rest of the search engines just play there. (View data on the top 10 search properties)

Some wild eyed numbers

Consider some of these numbers from comScore's research:

Search grew by 46 percent worldwide in 2009.
This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 2.9 million per minute.
The United States ranked first in worldwide searches with 22 billion followed by China with 13 billion. (View geographic data on searches)

No surprise: Google number one with a bullet

It should surprise absolutely no one that Google owns the lion's share of this market with over 66.8 percent of the total global search market. It is no wonder that Steve Ballmer had to admit that his company's search engine, while a nice side project for Microsoft, cannot hope to compete (as I wrote on my DaniWeb blog in "Ballmer's Right: Google Owns Search"), but Microsoft spent a lot of money last year launching Bing and it paid some dividends. The report puts Microsoft as the fastest growing of the web search properties growing 70 percent to 4.1 billion searches. Of course, when you compare that to Google, which garnered of 87.8 billion searches, it puts things in perspective. And when you stop to consider that 4 billion searches represented just one day's search across the entire world, these two players aren't really in the same league.

Google dominates the worldwide search market to such a huge degree, that Yahoo! sites, which came in second with just over 9.4 billion searches, were an astonishing 78 billion or so searches behind Google. Think about those numbers for a second and it's no wonder the entire world is so threatened by Google's growing dominance. And even while Google dabbles in its other hobbies including broadband, social media, energy, health records, cell phones and more, search remains the company's bread and butter, for it is through the search engine that Google continues to generate the greatest percentage of its income.

Follow the money

What the report doesn't say is what this all means in terms of income. I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing that for each billion searches, there is an X factor of income involved. Anyone who has a website knows there is a critical mass, a tipping point if you will, where it all comes together. You suddenly can expect a certain number of hits per post, a certain number of click throughs and comments and so forth. The same logic has to apply to ads. With more people visiting, the more likely you are to get more clicks, and the greater the income; and if the ads are based on eyeballs, then you can just imagine what kind of rates Google would get compared to its closest rival some 78 billion searches behind. It's probably not going to get the same kind of money for ads.

When you see these numbers laid out so starkly, it helps you understand the commercial search engine market in no uncertain terms: It's Google and the rest of the pack. comScore's numbers bring a stark clarity to the state of today's market. Google has virtually no competition and Microsoft and others currently represent almost no threat to them. - Ron

In defense of CMS Users

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:46:28 -0500

There's nothing wrong as far as I can see.
We make it harder than it has to be,
and I can't tell you why. - Eagles, "I Can't Tell You Why"

Over the last couple of weeks, a couple of writers whom I have a great deal of respect for, Seth Gottlieb and Jeff Cram, have written blog posts suggesting that end users can't handle Web Content Management Systems (CMSs) because they are too difficult or too technical. These folks have gone so far as to suggest that CMS designers should probably ignore the non-technical end user. As much as I like Seth and Jeff's work, this week I'm here to support the non-technical CMS users of the world. I'm here to remind everyone that users aren't stupid and these systems aren't that hard. They're really not.

I've used a lot of CMS tools as an end user, and you don't need to be a computer expert to use one. If you've used a word processor, you can use the average CMS. Most systems I've seen have been designed with the everyman in mind, and more often than not, people who write the content want to control the publishing of it. And that just makes sense. The whole idea is to take this out of the realm of IT and put it in the hands of the people who are creating the content.

Do you really want to wait for IT to publish your updates?

A few years ago I wrote a case study about a company based in Florida. Every time they needed to update the company web site, they had to send a request to the IT team in Hong Kong. This was retail; prices changed, products changed and it was nuts to wait several days for an IT team half way around the world to get the changes, then find the time to post them to the website. And if there was a small mistake (and there often is), the process would have to start again. How is that sensible or efficient? It's not.

What makes more sense is to let the people who write the stuff, publish it. This is not rocket science. These systems should absolutely be aimed at the people who use them, not some geek in IT who understands back-end administration, but knows squat about the front-end business.

Let's give 'em a little credit, shall we?

If users can write the content in Word, they can take it a step further and publish it to the company website by clicking the Publish button. The CMS I use to publish this newsletter lets me import Word documents if I was inclined to write my documents there. I'm not, but many business users are, so that works, right? You import the Word document, add some links, run a spell check, click the Submit button and you're done. How difficult is that?

I understand that exposing some users to the entire system could be problematic, but there are lots of features in Word most of us never use, and it it doesn't mean we can't write some copy, such as a memo or a manual. You just ignore what you don't need. In my experience with non-technical end users, they know what they need to know and they don't really care about the rest.

It's time we stopped thinking that those people who are technical can use these systems, while less technical users aren't capable enough to deal with them. I wouldn't want to set one of these systems up from scratch. But once it's in place, I think I can handle it, thanks. I'm not stupid and neither are most business users.

Users will figure it out, work will get done and we will all be happy. It's certainly preferable to waiting for some guy in IT (or even marketing) to update the website for you. - Ron

When content management gets personal

Ron Miller — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:12:48 -0500

When we think of content management, we mostly think of managing vast repositories of content across large organizations. We might also think about managing complex web properties, but what about our own personal content--the stuff we generate ourselves every day on our own computers? We have music files, pictures, documents, websites we visit, blogs we read and so much more. Every year hard drive space gets cheaper and cheaper and we collect more and more digital bric-a-brac. How are we supposed to keep track of it all?

Those of us who have been around since the beginning of the PC revolution have always organized our content the same way that we did in physical file cabinets. We have virtual folders and sub-folders, and we have tracked our content in this way for almost 30 years, but it's never been terribly efficient at the enterprise level, and it's only marginally better on the personal one. Let's face it, we need a new way. In fact, each one of us could use a mini-CMS.

Files and search can help

Unfortunately, there isn't a Documentum for individuals, but an organized hard drive can help you find the material you want. If you know your stuff, you can find your way through your hard drive quickly and easily, but not everyone is that organized. Some people need help and even a nice graphical view of your drive can't always help you.

Good search tools are certainly a blessing and I've found that Apple's Spotlight is a great way to find my stuff. Just type the first couple of letters and it finds the files, applications or whatever you're looking for in nothing flat. Unfortunately, not everyone is running OSX, so it becomes more difficult. I haven't tried the Google indexing tool in a while, but I remember it sucking resources the last time I tried. Apple has managed to do this without draining the machine in the process.

A little tag will do you

I've been thinking lately about tags as a way to organize your work. I was working on a project that has several different file types. I assigned a tagging system to organize them within the project folder, so that chapters were labeled CH, appendices began with APPX and stand-alone documents were labeled SAD. This made it easy to sort and find the different file types within my project folder.

I was organizing some email in a sub-folder the other day and I was just throwing all the email related to a given project in there, but I started thinking about how great it would be if I could tag the email so I could easily find the most important ones. Unfortunately, there wasn't a way to do that in that particular email client. If I had been using Gmail, I would have been able to create a project tag with an IMP extension (for 'important') to make it easy to find those important ones later.

How about an organizational tool?

Tools like Evernote (which I've written about here before) can help you organize your stuff in notebooks with tags, then access the content from your computer, smart phone or the web. For instance, I have a notebook for this column where I can "jot down" different ideas as they come to me. I can also collect blog posts and articles that might be a jumping-off point for an article idea. Tagging lets me organize those items within the notebook to make it easier to find the different types of content down the road, especially the ones labeled "idea."

As you gather greater amounts of personal content, just as in the enterprise, it gets more difficult to keep track of what you have and where you put it. Tools like Evernote can ease your information burden, but it sure would be nice to have a better way to track all of your content. Chances are hard drive space will continue to get cheaper and as it does, you will need to find more intelligent ways to organize and find your own content. Anyone working on that mini-CMS? - Ron

What if content management were 3D?

Ron Miller — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:17:34 -0500

I recently saw the Michael Douglas/Demi Moore 1994 movie called "Disclosure." In the movie (which explores sexual harassment in the workplace), Michael Douglas was working for a computer company that created a 3D virtual reality database. The user would put on special glasses and he was literally inside the database with the data. He could walk inside a library of content, interact with it and touch it.

I had coffee this week with Maria Korolov who writes extensively about virtual reality. During our conversation, I began thinking about what it would be like if someone designed a content management system in three dimensions. Think about how useful it would be to get all your company's content laid out in front of you in a graphical view in which you could literally walk inside the system. How cool would that be?

How about the interface?

We discussed how a 3D interface could reveal the content in new ways. For example, you could have a map of content types in front of you and you could simply touch one to go to see all of that content, or you could have sign posts, which when touched would transport you magically to the designated content "room." If you wanted to, you could even use a transportation metaphor and drive or take a train or bus to your data, which would allow you to browse other content types along the way.

The data could be, as in "Disclosure," in virtual file cabinets or you could present it in whatever ways you found useful such as flipping through the pages of a book. There could be a ticker tape of micro-blogging chatter running above the file cabinets. There could be virtual meeting spaces organized by topic, which if you were authorized to join, could take you to a virtual conference room (or any space you wish). You could ask, as in "Disclosure," for help finding your way, or the interface if designed correctly, would provide the guidance to get to you to the data you need.

Korlov pointed out that an interface like this would be much more intuitive than the classic menu-driven graphical user interface we use today. You would be able to interact with the data in the same way you have always found content in the real world, but within a sophisticated virtual world.

Is this possible?

Korolov suggested that this type of world is probably closer to reality than you think. Standards like Open Sim have been established to help create open, standards-based virtual worlds, which could potentially provide a way to do what CMIS is doing today--link content repositories from different vendors--so that you could build applications to access any data or cross 3D worlds regardless of who created it.

While Korolov admitted this type of application is probably at least several years away, and that some key pieces are still missing, you are already seeing some fairly sophisticated applications of 3D worlds in places like Second Life today.

This isn't going to happen tomorrow, but if you look down the road to where technology like content management (or any enterprise software) might be in 10 or 15 years, it's possible that we are seeing the ground work in places like Second Life. Movies such as "Disclosure" presented what seemed to be science fiction technology, when it may actually be a prediction of the way we look at content in the future. - Ron