Commentary

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

Are you ready to be the president's social media guru?

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:37:35 -0500

I follow Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick on Twitter. One day about 18 months ago, after observing some pretty pedestrian tweets, and in a flippant mood, I tweeted to the governor that I thought his tweets were boring and I would be happy to be his Secretary of Social Media. Within a few moments, I received an email from a representative of the governor that his digital media coordinator wanted to talk to me. I connected with him on the phone a day or two later, and while he joked he wasn't ready to offer me a cabinet-level position, we did talk about social media strategy for a half hour or so.

This week, the president of the United States let it be known he was looking for a Social Networks Manager. Again, it's not cabinet level, but it's probably the best social media job in you'll ever come across, and it's up for grabs.

Do you have what it takes?

I'm guessing it would take a special person to be the president's social media mouthpiece on the web. You would have to be engaging and charming and ready to answer any challenge. I'm trying to picture the interview.

Part 1 would take place in 140 characters. The DM interview would consist of a series of direct message questions. Your job: To respond succinctly in 140 characters and dazzle the president's social media team--talk about pressure.

Next you would be asked to write a haiku to post to Twitter in response to Sarah Palin's recent speech to the Tea Party convention:

Sarah Palin speaks
Mocks the hope-ee change-ee thing
Our mouths are agape

Nice Job.

Part 3, you have to find five jokes about Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, and post them to the president's Facebook Fan page. Piece of cake. The jokes are found and posted. You're feeling good.

Your final test; it's 3 am, your cell phone rings. Some guy named @SenBrownMA is on Twitter complaining about the cost of healthcare. You need to respond. Your palms are sweating. The president's agenda hangs in the balance. What do you write?

No easy task

The job description says that there's pressure and the hours are horrible, but think about your position in two years. If you can represent the president and do the job well, you can work anywhere for anyone. You will be a social media god. Sure, it's no easy task, but someone's got to do it. Look inside yourself and ask yourself, do you have what it takes to be the POTUS's Social Networks Manager. Well, do ya? - Ron

Maybe Steve Jobs was right about Adobe

Ron Miller — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:31:27 -0500

Last week, after reading about Steve Jobs' stinging criticism of Adobe, I wrote a spirited defense of Adobe Flash in my DaniWeb blog. I'm here today to say I was wrong. I should probably have known better than to challenge the wisdom of Sir Steve, but after getting comments from several knowledgeable people and reading some follow-up posts, I'm convinced that Flash is dying a slow death and HTML 5 and other technologies could finally drive a stake through its heart.

The original comment from Jobs about Adobe being lazy and uncreative around Flash seemed overly harsh to me and not completely accurate--at least from some of the ways I've seen Adobe use the Flash platform, such as Adobe AIR for instance. But a post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, a publication I have a great deal of respect for, made me rethink my position once and for all.

The bug won't die

The TUAW reported about a bug that one programmer, Matthew Dempsky, has been complaining about for 16 months. In spite of Adobe's assertions that the Flash Player was bug free, this programmer insisted there was a bug. The TUAW post even included a link that crashes Firefox (it really does, so you have been forewarned, if you try it). Turns out, that Dempsky was right, and after all this time, Adobe finally fessed up to the issue. Seems like, instead of publicly denying it for all those months maybe they should have in the words of the Oscar Rogers character on SNL, just FIXED IT!

What can save flash?

Kaz Thomas, a CMS Watch analyst, suggests a radical solution on his assertTrue() blog: Make Flash totally open source. Thomas says that will solve a pair of large problems for Adobe:

"Flash finds itself at a crossroads now: It has two huge hurdles to overcome if it is to survive as a mainstream platform. One is Apple: Steve Jobs has made it quite apparent that he doesn't want Flash on the iPlatform. The other challenge is HTML itself (specifically HTML 5)."

Thomas also suggests that Google may create its own video format, but he points out that it will take 90 percent adoption to declare anyone a winner. I will point out that Flash currently boasts 98.9 percent penetration on a billion computers worldwide. It's hard to unseat that, and it won't happen over night, but open sourcing Flash opens up a whole new opportunity for Adobe, one they would be wise to consider.

Open source worked for PDF

I like the open source idea. It will allow the community to clean up after Adobe (and it won't take 16 months to FIX IT) and will ensure that Adobe stays relevant for years to come. If you look at what Adobe did with the PDF, this approach makes a lot of sense. Anyone can use the PDF format and there are tons of low-cost and free uses making it a standard for moving documents. Adobe continues to make money by developing a more sophisticated Acrobat product than most of the rest of the market.

Flash could work the same way and if Adobe's smart, I think they should start listening very carefully to this idea. Otherwise, they might not like Steve Jobs' decisions about Flash, but they will have to live with the fall out if they try to take him on. - Ron

Avoiding the content silo trap

Ron Miller — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:13:50 -0500

In last week's Editor's Corner, I looked at the reasons I believed we were moving away from the umbrella term 'enterprise content management' and returning to the idea of different types of content management for different jobs. To that end, I defined three main categories: Document management, web content management and business content management. While, I think it's essential to define the different types of content management clearly for customers, and to avoid ambiguity and confusion, the last thing I want you to do is to take those categories and see them as hard and fast. The categories give us some structure to better understand the different types, but content is rarely fixed in one place. It actually flows across these categories depending on the circumstances.

For instance, you may want to make a PowerPoint sales presentation available for others to use a template for similar customers. It could also be web content you want to display on the company website (either publicly or just for partners and internal audiences). Similarly, a contract becomes a record once it is executed, but should also be a business document for others who are writing similar contracts. In an ideal world, content gets reused and re-categorized many times.

Why we created an umbrella term

The idea of 'enterprise content management' developed because we wanted to define a term that illustrated that content didn't and shouldn't stay in one place. It needed to move across the enterprise. By defining a single term to encompass all content management, we solved one problem, but we created another. The trouble was that there were too many types of content management under that term and it might have confused people.

Theory versus reality

No doubt content management vendors were happy to take that umbrella term and run with it, hoping to be a one-stop shop for customers looking for a range of content management solutions, but customers rarely if ever work that way. Content management solutions more often than not, get installed over time in different parts of any large organization using different vendors for a variety of purposes. The system broke down because customers installed point solutions, regardless of the terms that were getting bandied about.

Content silos and CMIS

As companies developed a fragmented content management strategy, there were unintended consequences. The content got locked inside each vendor's solutions and came to a hard stop. When an organization wanted to share that content, it needed to develop expensive customized solutions to move content from one vendor's silo to another. Vendors heard this complaint loud and clear and began looking for ways to move content across different vendor repositories. Enter CMIS, which should become an OASIS standard later this year, and should help alleviate this problem, at least to some degree.

There is little doubt that we need to simplify how we describe content management solutions, while avoiding the content silo trap. Companies need to share content to help employees reuse instead of reinventing the wheel, and to help them find information and knowledge locked inside different vendor solutions across an enterprise. While we may look for ways to simplify the lingo, we must always leave the content free to flow wherever workers need it. That should always be the ultimate goal of any content management solution, regardless of the terms we use to describe it. - Ron

Why document management is suddenly sexy again

Ron Miller — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:56:05 -0500

Everywhere I turn lately I see good, old-fashioned document management getting showered with attention. Why this sudden burst of love for dowdy old DM? It seems folks are figuring out that an umbrella term like "Enterprise Content Management" is actually confusing. Instead of helping people understand what content management means, it's trying to lump many distinct jobs together. After all these years, apparently we are all just figuring this out. Pulling out Document Management and other content management terms into separate categories is suddenly desirable.

To sort things out, I decided to take a look at some different forms of content management this week:

Document management

If you think about it, what we call content management has its roots in paper records management. Back in the day, we would gather our files in file cabinets. After a time, we moved them into boxes, recorded the box number and contents in a paper ledger and put the box in a warehouse. It was simple and it worked. These days, the successors of these old record keepers still exist. I saw plenty of them at ARMA last Fall in Orlando. Today many of these people have to worry about putting digital information in virtual boxes, although a surprising number still worry about paper too.

Records tend to be a specific type of information you have to save and maintain on a document lifecycle. These could be W-4 forms, medical records, insurance claims, grades, even email or instant messaging conversations. What you consider records probably has a lot to do with what business you're in and what regulatory requirements you have to adhere to.

Web content management

Web content management specifically deals with creating and maintaining information on web sites. This is a distinctly different function from managing records/documents and other forms of enterprise content (which I discuss below). Web content management today is heavily geared toward marketing folks, but there are two distinct audiences involved in any web project. First, there are the designers who design the look and feel of the site along with the back-end systems to keep it running and feed it fresh content.

Then there are the front-end, content editing and creation tools where the folks who create the content do their job. If the first group designed the site correctly, the content creators only have to enter their information, select the graphical elements, choose the page to publish to and click a button. These people shouldn't have to worry about look, feel or appearance because the first group set that up, and the CMS manages it for them automatically.

Business content management

This is a new term I just made up (at least I think it's original). It's the area most people consider "enterprise content" today. It's any type of content created in the enterprise that's not a record and doesn't get published on the website. This involves business documents like Word documents, training materials, documentation or PowerPoint presentations. It could also include content generated in Enterprise 2.0 social media tools.

Content Management at this level provides a way for employees to save and access existing material. It helps prevent reinventing the wheel and aids employees in finding knowledge wherever it exists in the enterprise. It gives people access, based on their security clearance, to a range of existing material. If material has good tags and a good search engine associated with it, employees should be able to access and use this content as needed.

I suppose I could also have broken out XML content management as a fourth type. This is where you create chunks of information, such as for a user manual, then use XML coding to pull the chunks together into a coherent documentation set, with shared content, and a common look and feel. You may even share the content with internal or external systems and streamline complex processes such as translation.

Perhaps by trying to simplify content management over the years with a single term, we have actually caused more befuddlement than clarity. Maybe it's time to get back to the basics by helping enterprise buyers better understand what they are buying through more accurate labeling. That could be why we are seeing more calls for a return to a document management category, and it could explain why document management is suddenly the new black. - Ron

Might business be the real target for an Apple Tablet?

Ron Miller — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:33:13 -0500

Apple recently announced a January 27th event and speculation is rampant that it will finally reveal the long awaited Apple tablet computer. As the discussion about the Apple tablet-style computer has unfolded over the last 18 months or so, I have always assumed it would be a device marketed with consumers in mind, but what if it has utility in a business setting as well? In fact such a scenario might actually make more sense. Let's take a closer look.

Do consumers need this device?

I recently wrote a post for my DaniWeb blog questioning whether there was even a market for tablet-style PCs. The fact is we have smart phones and we have netbooks and I'm wondering why would we need what essentially amounts to an oversized iPhone. Rumors have the price pegged at $1000, although until we actually hear from Apple, nobody really knows. If it is that expensive though, it's going to make even the most avid geek think twice about buying one.

What if business is the real target?

Remember Tablet PCs? These days you might see them in in your doctor's office where the doctor enters notes into your electronic medical record, but these devices have always been extremely expensive (much more than the projected $1000 price tag for the Apple tablet) and never really took off beyond small niches like medical settings. But a recent post in Venture Beat caught my eye. Apparently Apple Sales reps have been talking to hospitals about using their tablets.

They would be cheaper and far less awkward to carry around than the heavy tablets. On the downside, they lack a keyboard, which I'm sure many doctors would demand. If Apple were willing to sell one--they have refused to even let third parties develop them for the iPhone--doctors could leave external keyboards on desks in examining rooms and connect via USB or even wirelessly. Doctors doing rounds in hospitals could use checklists and the onscreen keyboard to enter information about their patients as needed.

Does it have utility in other businesses

There is little doubt a thin, light-weight device would have utility in many settings besides medical. R&D labs would be a great place for instance. In fact, any place that isn't too typing-intensive would be good. And you have to think if these devices take off, third-party developers will begin to write business applications that take advantage of the touch screen medium just as they have for the iPhone. Perhaps Apple could open a business arm of the App Store for tablets.

It would also give Apple a way into the enterprise, a market that for the most part has eluded them so far. If they could get internal developers inside the enterprise using Macs to develop Apps for the tablet, they could create an internal Mac ecosystem in an entirely new and likely lucrative market. It's hard to imagine that Apple can live solely in the consumer space forever. The enterprise would be a fresh territory and a potentially very lucrative one.

Hard to know what's going to happen with these devices until we see one, but maybe the consumer isn't the primary target (or at least the only one). Maybe there is room in business for this device too. Should be fun to see what happens. - Ron

eBook reader news from CES shows developing market

Ron Miller — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:32:50 -0500

There was a flurry of eBook news coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. (You can read a good round-up of the announcements here.) The sheer number tells you that companies believe that there has to be a market out there, and as we move into 2010, we are seeing a natural technological march forward as the devices enter another development cycle.

It's unclear how the space will shake out moving forward, but the market as it stands certainly cannot continue to sustain such a fragmented marketplace. Sooner or later, we are going to see companies drop out and others consolidate. For now, let's take a look at some of the trends from these product announcements:

Screens get thinner and more flexible

The screen size is all over the place, but it's clear that some readers are getting thinner and more flexible as with the Skiff Reader. I believe at some point in the future, the screens could bend and fold and we will be able to size the screen to suit our computing needs, but for now, perhaps this flexibility is a step in that direction.

Color is coming

One huge limitation of the current crop of readers is they are mostly black and white, which is fine for most novels, but for a host of other reading--including newspapers, magazines, graphic novels, and text books--it's a huge limitation. Color will be a big step forward for using readers to distribute a variety of content beyond books.

Reader software as a platform

The Blio software Sharon Fisher wrote about last week is a new approach that separates the software from the device. Up until now, the device manufacturer developed software to run the reader, which makes perfect sense. Blio provides a software platform that anyone can use to read ebooks, whether or not they own a reader. It's full color and it's supposed to simulate the experience of reading a traditional book. You can download the software for free and try it. I wonder if others could also take this approach and develop competing products. It's something we will be watching.

Developing independent screen technology

It's not only independent reader software we are seeing, but also screen technology such as the new Qualcomm mirasol technology. There have been complaints aplenty about the eInk technolgy which has a noticeable delay when turning pages. I noticed this recently when I had the opportunity to stop at a Sony Reader kiosk and try the device in person. If a competing vendor can come up with something better, it will only help sell more Readers.

Perhaps we'll see more niches develop as companies try to develop one device for those who read for pleasure, another for students and researchers and a third for people to read newspapers and magazines. Or perhaps the developing Tablet market will circumvent a need for a separate reader device. It's very much a moving target right now and we will likely see new technologies and approaches in the coming year as the market continues to develop and take shape. - Ron

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Why local newspapers still matter (a lot)

Ron Miller — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:33:18 -0500

Last week in Northampton, Mass., a town close to mine, there was a horrible crime. Close to a dozen fires were set in a two hour period. Two people died. Several houses were completely destroyed. Possessions were forever lost. Lives were turned upside down with the flick of a mad man's match. It was a crime so horrible in its scope that the governor himself came out to survey the damage the next morning.

Picked up beyond the local area

It was a story so large that the New York Times picked it up; and the Boston Globe, the region's largest daily newspaper gave it serious play. But I didn't learn about this story from the NYT or the Boston Globe. I learned about it because it was splashed across the front page of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the newspaper of record for the city of Northampton. It was a subject so intensely personal to the residents of the city and those nearby, and so locally focused that only a staff of writers who understand the city could give it the detailed coverage it deserved. Only local reporters could understand the neighborhood, the people who lived there, the relationships and the businesses. Sure, the outside reporters could come in and describe it too, but they would (and did) sound like people who swept in and asked some questions and wrote a story.

All comes back to local level

There is nothing wrong with coverage from large news outlets, but this story proved to me the importance of local news. It is vital to the life blood of a community to have a source of news, a record of events of local life, a place where you know you can find information--whether it's about the local elections, the school budgets or the horror of an event of this nature. And the coverage does not stop the day after, but lasts for many days. It includes stories about those whose homes were burned, how the city is coping, detailed profiles of those who perished and stories of the brave fire fighters and police officers who dealt with a two hour nightmare that was unimaginable for the community. The regional paper might cover it for the day or two after and when an arrest has been made, but they can't and won't follow it like this. They can't afford to assign the resources, especially these days with ever tightening budgets.

The current reality

Yes, there are a growing number of local sources of news including social sources, but these can't provide the depth that trained reporters brought to bear on a story of this magnitude. Some like NYU professor Clay Shirky have suggested that even though newspapers provide an undeniable service, the daily newspaper delivery method is no longer sustainable. I think to a large extent that's true, but at the same time I recognize (and so does Shirky) that there is a compelling need for the service that newspapers provide, especially at the local level like this.

Let's face it, right now, there are lots of alternatives out there for getting general news about what's going in the world, but there really aren't many great options for getting local news. Even when you factor in sites like iBrattleboro.com and local review services like Yelp, there is still a huge need for local news and local advertising. As I was paging through the Hampshire Gazette today, I saw an ad for a men's and women's basketball double header at UMass. Where could UMass realistically go to advertise that package if there weren't some local newspapers left to do it? They could put it on their website and they could use social networking, but to reach a broad local audience, the local newspaper remains the best option.

The Globe and NYT may swoop in on the big stories like this, and they might even do a decent job, but they can never bring what local reporters bring to the table. I write this because so many papers folded in 2009 and without a local newspaper, there has to be a huge hole in these communities, especially when an event of this proportion happens. It's entirely likely we will get to a place in the next decade that replaces the paper as we have known it, but there is little doubt about the clear and compelling need to have a place to process local events, whatever that ends up being moving forward. - Ron

My Predictions for 2010

Ron Miller — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:12:13 -0500

This is my last Editor's Corner for 2009 and I'm pretty much obligated to use it to make predictions for next year. I found it interesting, in this week's top story on the Forrester 2010 survey, that I was able to match many of the survey results with pieces that I had written throughout the year. Proving yourself right in hindsight is always easier than speculating on future events; but what the heck, it's the last column before the holiday break so let's go for it.

CMIS passes and is implemented

I'm not going out too far on a limb here when I predict what's likely inevitable, the passage of CMIS as a standard by OASIS. The specification has already been released as 1.0 and it looks like even if it requires a bit more fine-tuning, we should see this happen some time in the first half of 2010.

Mobile content access explodes

With many analysts predicting a huge uptick in the use of smart phones over the coming year, more vendors will be providing mobile access to enterprise content management tools. Walk into a cell phone store and you are actually hard-pressed to find phones that don't provide Internet access, and business users are sure to help feed the smart phone sales surge. Earlier this year, we already saw companies like Open Text providing iPhone apps that give users access to Open Text content management tools from the phone, and we are likely to see more of this across a broad range of popular platforms in 2010.

Google Wave takes shape

This year we saw the bleeding edge of Google Wave use, and while most users including yours truly are still trying to understand how this will work in practice, it's clear there is huge potential. What's more, some recent purchases by Google including AppJet and DocVerse are expected to be incorporated into Google Wave. In 2010, look for it to begin to take shape as a collaboration platform with Google providing more understandable and compelling tools and use cases for business users.

SharePoint 2010 online pushes cloud computing forward

One of the compelling stories coming next year is the release of SharePoint 2010, which includes a hosted version. I'm predicting that this version will be more popular than many people might think, and not just for small business users looking to take advantage of SharePoint tools at a lower price point. So long as Microsoft can handle the capacity without too many growing pains, it could serve to help push the popularity of other cloud vendor solutions.

Open source CMS solutions gain ground

Companies looking for lower-cost more flexible solutions have to be looking at these offerings, especially given that the likes of Alfresco, EZ Publish, Nuxeo, Drupal, WordPress and many others have entered mainstream use with thriving communities and growing support ecosystems. Look for open source solutions to continue to gain market share on (and perhaps even begin to build partnerships with) more traditional vendors in 2010.

Enterprise 2.0 matures

As Enterprise 2.0 tools matured this year, we began to see initial concerns around security and productivity fade. Businesses are starting to understand the benefits of using these solutions to increase productivity and capture knowledge in an organic fashion. Companies will continue to adopt Enterprise 2.0 solutions throughout 2010, while debates over words like social computing fade away and more successful use cases push sales of these tools.

So there you have it: My predictions for 2010. I want to close by thanking you, our readers, for your support throughout the year. In 2010 look for our new regular section called Industry Voices where industry experts provide guest posts on a regular basis. Enjoy your holidays and I look forward to continuing the conversation in 2010. - Ron

A look back at my favorites from 2009

Ron Miller — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:19:31 -0500

This time of year, we tend to look back at what we accomplished for the year, and in that spirit, this week's Editor's Corner is devoted to the most interesting columns from FierceContentManagement this year. This is our first full calendar year publishing the newsletter--as we began publishing in July, 2008--so it's a good opportunity to review what we've accomplished before launching into 2010.

The Editor's Corner is my chance to stretch out each week and discuss broader industry trends. It's not easy producing a column like this every week and I have to be constantly vigilant to find ideas I can expand upon. It was a big year for content management and fortunately, I was never at a loss for ideas (well, almost never). Keep in mind that this is a purely subjective listing, based on what I personally liked best. Next year we plan to query you, the readers, for your favorites.

Highlighting the best columns is a difficult exercise, but here are some of them in no particular order:

Rolling your own CMS just doesn't make sense
I reacted to a column suggesting that developing your own CMS was the best way to go. Obviously, I disagreed with this notion. There may not be a perfect solution out there, but going your own way seemed even more flawed to me.
The recession casts a long shadow over AIIM 2009
I attended the AIIM show in Philadelphia last March at the height of the current recession, and the talk was all about ROI and how to maximize investment. It was hard to miss the trend and I felt compelled to write about it.
Why are we still blurring Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts?
I wrote this one one after attending Enterprise 2.0 in Boston and observed that there was an annoying tendency to mix these two concepts. It also offered me the opportunity to slip in a reference to the old Mike Myers' All Things Scottish skit on SNL.
You could learn a lot about content from Jason Bourne
I like this one because it was so spontaneous. While watching the Bourne Ultimatum one night on TV, it struck me that Bourne was awfully good at accessing and using content and it gave him a big advantage over his pursuers, allowing him to always stay one step ahead. I'm fairly sure the writers never thought about in these terms though.
Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure?
This was another case of "riffing" off of an idea I picked up in a blog post. In this case, Janus Boye was posting in his blog ahead of a presentation. He threw out one of many ideas, suggesting perhaps vendor payment should be based on project success, and I ran with it. I didn't necessarily agree with this notion, suggesting there were many factors at play affecting the success or failure of a project.

Honorable mentions go to: Could ECM save the American justice system and Time for the news business to get its head out of the 20th Century.

So there you have it, my choices for my favorites for the year. I feel fortunate to have this outlet each week and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it. As always, thanks for reading each week, and I welcome your comments and feedback. Look for my 2010 predictions next week when I begin to look forward to the coming year. - Ron

Busy week for Google

Ron Miller — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:01:40 -0500

It's been quite a week for Google, a company known for keeping its name squarely in the news through unrelenting innovation. Google pioneered the idea of a "lab" to offer consumers a chance to experiment along with them. It is constantly trying new things, some as ambitious as Wave and others much smaller like Google Fast Flip. But this week was a big one, even for a company that keeps itself directly in the spotlight the way that Google does, as it came out with several major announcements. Let's take a look at some of these:

Google Goggles

Perhaps my favorite was Google Goggles, a brand new program designed for Android phone users that lets you take a picture of an object such as a landmark, book, painting or a business card using the phone's built-in camera. The program analyzes the data and then presents a set of results based on the analysis. What makes this so innovative is that it gives you a way to get information about something when you have little or no other context.

If you're staring at a monument and you have no idea what it's about, you could ask a local (if you know the language) or flip through your guide book, but even if you have a mobile phone with you, with Internet access, if you don't have enough information, you have no real way of finding details. By providing a means of visually analyzing a picture and returning a set of results, Google is entering new search technology territory, one which is highly innovative. Keep in mind these are early days for this technology, so it's probably hit or miss right now. But if they can pull this off, it will differentiate them in a big way from competitors trying to gain ground on them.

Real time search

Google also announced they would be incorporating Facebook and Twitter results into the search results stream, a step that should break the barrier between social networking tool and search engine. In other words instead of looking in the Facebook tool online, you can now generate results as part of the normal stream of search results, but how this will work and whether it will be desirable remains to be seen.

Users who want to work in one place may find this useful, but others might find it crowded. I hope they provide filters to turn off features like this if the results are cluttering the stream with unnecessary information. In addition, it makes me wonder--from a business perspective--how Google will parse ad revenue with Facebook and Twitter. On the other hand, with Bing entering the real-time fray, Google had to come up with an answer.

Living stories

As though these announcements weren't enough, Google also announced "Living Stories," a collaboration with the New York Times and Washington Post in which they present news stories on a single page with the latest news, related links, background and so forth; all in one convenient place. Click to see something and it greys out indicting you've already seen it when you return to the page. View some background stories from a longer piece of news (such as the war in Iraq) and it collapses so you don't have it cluttering your pages. There are content filters to let you see just information about sub-stories within the major stories if such a break-down is required.

This is an interesting approach to news presentation, and it makes the news organization and Google more complete partners, but again it makes me wonder from a business perspective how they would share revenue in such an arrangement. But it's creative and innovative and it provides a way for newspapers and Google to work closely together to benefit each party. I look forward to seeing how this works out.

Believe it or not, I haven't even covered everything including the controversial location-based search--controversial because presumably Google knows where you are. According to PC Magazine, Google executives claim they have launched an impressive 33 search features in the last 67 days. Do you think they're feeling the heat from Bing a little and want to show the world, they still matter? Whatever the reason, Google is continuing to innovate and that's good for searchers everywhere. - Ron

I have 24 Google Wave invitations. Leave a comment with your email address or contact me directly if you want one.

Microsoft promises improved governance in SharePoint 2010

Ron Miller — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:09:45 -0500

A couple of weeks ago when I announced on Twitter that I would be interviewing a SharePoint representative, I invited my followers to send me concerns I should ask about. One big concern that came back was about site governance across multiple SharePoint sites. This isn't surprising given the ease in which users can create SharePoint sites. The result is that governance often gets overlooked, but should an eDiscovery order come in, having so many sites (many of which probably aren't even active) makes it very difficult to find and isolate data you may need.

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Ryan Duguid, senior product manager ECM at Microsoft, and I asked him how Microsoft planned to improve governance in SharePoint 2010 without sacrificing ease of use, no easy tightrope for Redmond to walk.

A look back at SharePoint 2007

Duguid says that governance is sometimes a casualty of ease of use. "One of the realities behind it is that, because of the ease of use of setting up SharePoint sites, there are a lot of people who have not appraoched SharePoint deployment with the same rigor they would with an enterprise content management system like Documentum." He adds, you wouldn't see someone hand end users the disks and say, go set up most any ECM system. SharePoint gives end users the power to set up sites with relative ease and IT departments sometimes relinquish their normal controls because they can pass it over to end users and step away.

But Duguid says that although Microsoft has made every attempt to educate companies about the "right" way to set up sites, a lot of companies have ignored their advice. "Not everyone follows our guidance," he says. "We have done a lot of education. We have an entire set of SharePoint deployment services that we helped fund." Duguid says that in SharePoint 2007, companies should have been turning on version control and retention schedules (among other things), but it's clear that many companies weren't doing this.

Looking forward to 2010

Microsoft couldn't help but hear the complaints because even with its attempts at education, I'm constantly hearing about problems with SharePoint and governance. In some ways it's a bit ironic because when Microsoft attempted to control and restrict as it did with Vista, the results weren't very good. Yet when it errs on the side of ease of use as with SharePoint, it hears complaints from IT and governance/security pros. It's hard to win.

Duguid says in 2007, there were basic eDiscovery controls in place, but they have expanded these dramatically for 2010, making it possible to declare any piece of content as a record with all of the record keeping control that goes with that. "We have expanded the scope of holds in 2010, to include any piece of content in the SharePoint environment," he says. This could be traditional content like a document or social content such as a blog, wiki, discussion or announcements list. Duguid says this gives enterprise administrators more control.

He says that for 2010, Microsoft was trying to provide more comprehensive records management capabilities to give record keepers a more traditional set of functionality. "Our goal for 2010 is to bring all the constructs to bear, to declare anything as a record in place, send it to archive, apply in-place holds or extract information from a secure archive [along with] workflow to manage information."

It's clear that Microsoft has heard the concerns of administrators, but until we see 2010 in action and see how well it lets administrators find information across multiple sites, it's hard to know just how rigorous these tools really are. For now, you can download the SharePoint 2010 Beta and try it for yourself. If you do, leave a comment and let us know your experiences. - Ron

Publishers can beat free Google eBooks

Ron Miller — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:13:46 -0500

After reviewing a couple of classics from Google Books recently, I'm convinced that publishers should not see Google as a threat to their business. Last month the folks at Astak sent me a review unit of their new EZReader Pocket Pro, a small eBook Reader to try. I was pleased to get it because I had researched and written about eBooks and eBook Readers, but only tried them briefly at demos. This time, I wanted to download some of the free classics that Google had scanned and see first-hand what the fuss was about.

While the classics are less controversial than the more modern books, there is still a business out there for publishers who produce classic literature, and traditional publishers can't be happy about Google giving these books away. After sampling a couple, I can tell you that with a little effort, publishers could easily provide a higher quality product--one that justifies fees.

It's scanned and looks it

After searching for several authors, I found it was harder than I would have thought to find an actual novel. Sure, there were tons of academic criticisms, but finding the novel itself proved more challenging. It actually required that I go pre-20th century. For my samples, I downloaded "Wuthering Heights" and "David Copperfield." I was immediately shocked by the quality. Those of us who are a certain age likely remember using micro fiche to do research in the library back in the day. It had the same feel to me.

The cover pages show scan marks and there is scanning "noise" on many pages. It has the library plate from the college library where the book lived. It's not a great presentation and it's something that any book publisher with an imagination could produce in much higher quality and take greater advantage of the electronic medium.

For academic and preservation purposes

These books were put online in the quickest way possible, scanned in high-speed scanners, no doubt. The idea was not to make the books presentable, but to make them searchable. Google is not, after all, in the book business. First and foremost, it is a search engine. While these books, are available online and you can find them and use them for free, they do not offer the highest quality and they are not the most comfortable to read. They are simply there for the record.

Book publishers (much like other content providers) complain loudly about Google, but just like public libraries didn't kill the publishing industry, neither will Google Books. This service is not meant as a replacement for quality publications. Those of you who really want to delve deeply beyond research purposes to find the sources you need, are probably going to want something that's easier to read and one that has been optimized for an eBook Reader experience.

So far, Google has failed in this regard, and book publishers should seize the opportunity to differentiate themselves from what Google is producing instead of complaining, litigating and worrying. Publishers still have a much higher value proposition. They need to get out there and sell it. - Ron

I'll be doing a more comprehensive review of the EZReader Pocket Pro in a couple of weeks.

Microsoft director defends SharePoint 2010 social features

Ron Miller — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:05:55 -0500

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the social features in SharePoint 2010 and I wasn't exactly effusive. Based on the list I received in the press release, I wasn't wowed by what I read. I recently got the opportunity to discuss these new features with Christian Finn, director of SharePoint and get his perspective on these new features.

Three core scenarios

In my post on the new features, I wrote: "I'm actually a little disappointed in this announcement because it seems a little thin to me." When I asked Finn about this, he naturally disagreed, saying "We don't agree that it's thin. We nailed core scenarios around 3 scenarios." He went on to outline these scenarios, which include:

Social networking: The ability to connect with others in the organization.
Social content: This includes blogs and wikis for sharing content.
Social feedback: The ability to tag documents and other content.

Finn admitted that 2007 lacked some core functionality, especially that tagging piece, which I was surprised hadn't been added until now, but Finn said SharePoint 2010 has filled that gap and then some. The new version includes the ability to create a tag profile, so you can find out about what interests an individual based on their tag history.

But Dan Keldsen of Information Architected thinks the social features are bound to be behind the curve, just because of the time it takes to develop a product like SharePoint. "Microsoft is always going to lag behind their smaller and more agile competitors. It's simply the nature of the development cycle for Microsoft. Features that were "locked in" for design 2 years ago are finally going to ship in 2010. In the meantime, smaller competitors such as Box.net, PBWorks, SocialText, Jive as well as Google (via Google Apps, Sites and now Wave...) have been running like the wind to build light-weight platforms with social computing features first and foremost, while SharePoint has this functionality added afterwards, clearly as an after-thought."

Different Role for Partners?

Because 2007 lacked some core social functions, it was up to partners to fill "gaps in the plumbing," as Finn put it. But in 2010, he says Microsoft is providing much of the social functionality, and this means a new role for the partners. Instead providing tools to cover missing functions, Finn says, "[The partners] can innovate on top of what we've done."

As an example, he points to how to use the increasing amount of social data that should be available in SharePoint 2010. Finn says there is much more rich data about who employees converse with, how they spend their time, what they read and so forth. He says SharePoint provides some ways to track this information, "but we don't do deep visualization of this information in a visual social graph way, so that's an opportunity to build on top of what we're doing."

Keldsen says none of this is actually very relevant to his clients. "I can't say that I have seen many clients who are choosing not to use SharePoint simply because the wiki isn't good enough, or because tagging isn't embedded well. It's because SharePoint simply doesn't accomplish what they want, at the pricepoint they're looking for, and it's a concern above and beyond individual features."

Still a Step Forward

The fact is that I haven't seen SharePoint 2010, so I can only take Finn's word for this, and of course it's his job to give it the most positive spin possible. Keldsen says, "Anything that can be done to integrate the user experience more tightly, to avoid having to jump into separate systems for tagging, or to declare records, or determine how to pipe in your own feeds from multiple sources, is going to drive usage, and (one would hope) the productive use of these systems." So to that extent, Kelsden (and I) see the new functionality as a step forward.

But whether these features are quite as rich as Finn makes them out to be remains to be seen. I have the feeling that the partners will probably have a bigger role than he suggests, but we will have to wait until the product is out there and the feedback is in to make definitive judgments about this. - Ron

I went on Twitter yesterday and I asked people what questions I should ask Finn in my interview and people suggested I ask about governance, record keeping and CMIS, but unfortunately these are not areas that Finn typically covers. I'm in the process of setting up a second interview with a relevant contact and I will write about these issues in a future post.

Enterprise 2.0 naysayers emerge

Ron Miller — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:54:03 -0500

We are happy to announce that next week, we will be publishing a One on one interview with Andrew McAfee, the man widely credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0. Just last week the Enterprise 2.0 Conference debuted their west coast version in San Francisco, proving the growing interest in the technologies around the term. But even while it seems that Enterprise 2.0 is heading into the mainstream of the corporate consciousness, a group of naysayers is emerging who question the need and the validity of Enterprise 2.0.

Pushback is Good

There is no such thing as a perfect technology that is right for every organization, but the Enterprise 2.0 umbrella term has been around long enough to have some successful cases in play and to understand it well enough to suggest it's more than a flash in the pan. That's why I was surprised to see Dennis Howlett's stinging missive against Enterprise 2.0 in his ZDNet blog last week. Yet his is just one voice in a rising chorus questioning Enterprise 2.0 as a concept.

I think push-back is good. It forces people to think through their positions, to look at the subject from different angles and to sharpen their own understanding of the technologies and how companies can use them, but I also think there is a clear place for Enterprise 2.0.

Technology versus Politics

Most every organization is drowning in information. Any technology that makes it easier to share and get at information is going to be helpful, and to me that's what Enterprise 2.0 technologies at their core enable an organization to do. Yet there are always issues involved when making transitions from one technology to another, and one of the core tenets of Enterprise 2.0 is simplifying the technologies to the point that people are free to make many adjustments on their own (within the framework of organization rules and norms of course). This independence is threatening to many in any organization who have created their value by being the technical gate keepers. If the technology forces the gates open, you don't need those individuals any more, at least not to the same extent. The front end suddenly belongs to the population at large, but the back end networks and systems still require those same technical folks to operate.

The other big bugaboo here is the idea of "flattening the hierarchies." To many, when they hear this, it means that the authority of management is suddenly going to be usurped by a democratic utopia created by workers communicating freely with Enterprise 2.0 tools, but that's not how I see the term at all. What these tools provide is a means for *everyone* in the organization to communicate in the same set of tools. That means that you might end up communicating with a manager whom you never would have talked to using email or the corporate gatekeeper system. While it gives equal access through communication, I don't see Enterprise 2.0 changing the way organizations are structured in a real sense, but many critics overplay this because it speaks to a real concern of managers who might be considering Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

There Are Use Cases

When I was at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston in June, I saw a presentation where McAfee interviewed two men from Lockheed Martin (which I wrote about in The Enterprise 2.0 generational myth), who had helped implement an Enterprise 2.0 technology set in an organization that is about as top-down, security conscious and staid as one can imagine. Yet this company was able to successfully implement a system and find ways to answer all of the issues and criticisms that developed along the way (and McAfee did a splendid job of addressing those concerns in a rapid fire Q&A with the Lockheed Martin representatives).

The fact is that companies have implemented these technologies successfully. Can it be done badly? I'm sure there are examples of that. Are there people who have called themselves experts who don't understand enterprise politics and technology? That's probably true as well. Are there cases where it has been tried and didn't work? I'm sure there are those too, but the fact is that you can't simply sweep the entire Enterprise 2.0 set of technologies aside. In my view, Enterprise 2.0, while by no means a communications panacea, can contribute to better communication and knowledge sharing, which should be welcome outcomes in any organization. - Ron

Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure?

Ron Miller — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:21:33 -0500

Janus Boye is hosting the J Boye Aarhus '09 Conference this week in in Aarhus, Denmark. Boye wrote a post on his blog ahead of a session he is hosting on web content management called Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges. The blog post covers a lot of ground, but one line jumped out at me:

Perhaps customers should explore ways of tying payments to actual project success?

This was not the gist of the post by any means, just an idea Boye was throwing out there, but it got me thinking about just who is responsible for the success of web content management projects, and is it fair to the vendor to tie payment to actual success when many times projects get tied up internally due to factors well beyond the vendor's control? I asked Michael Krigsman, who writes the IT Project Failures blog on ZDNet, who was ultimately responsible for the failure of the project.

The customer is always right?

Krigsman suggests that in the world of commerce that the customer is usually right when issues arise and it's up to the vendor to fix them. "An old truism says, 'the customer is king' and nowhere is that more true than implementing enterprise software." But he adds that it doesn't mean that the customer doesn't have a significant role in a project's success.

"It's easy and tempting to blame the software vendor or system integrator when projects run late, over budget, or do not achieve planned results. Human nature suggests that blaming an external party is always easier than examining our own role in the failure situation. In my experience, however, many projects fail because groups inside the customer organization have different goals and measures of success," Krigsman says.

Put it in writing

One way to minimize the likelihood of project failure, whether we are talking about WCM or anything else, is a well-written contract with clear expectations and milestones where payments are tied to these milestones. Of course, the vendor is going to put in caveats that put some responsibility on the customer to provide the environment to meet those milestones, so in that sense it's a two-way street (and Krigsman adds a third component in large software installations: The system integrator).

"The Devil's Triangle of failure consists of the enterprise buyer, software vendor, and system integrator. Contracts that align external vendor payments to milestones and specific measures of customer success can help reduce waste and keep vendors efficient," Krigsman says.

What's the best course?

Ultimately, the blame game doesn't serve anyone or get you to the end goal of a successful project. Like any large enterprise project, you have to know your needs and express these to the vendor. "The best content management projects address specific business goals, with defined outcomes and concrete expectations about results. Projects without concrete expectations and measure of success are far more likely to fail than ones where these are defined carefully in advance," Krigsman says.

So in the end, you could tie your payment to project success, but as Krigsman says, you better have your ducks in a row and your goals clearly stated, because if you don't, you'll have nobody but yourself to blame. - Ron

Please Note: On Nov 16th, we will be publishing an interview with Andrew McAfee, who is credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0. Watch for it!

White House continues to get value from social networking

Ron Miller — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:40:55 -0400

During his successful campaign for the White House, Barack Obama was able to harness the power of social networking in a way that no other candidate had ever done. As I wrote in an Editor's Corner just after election, "Obama's Victory Proves the Power of Web 2.0:"

"No matter what your politics may be or whom you voted for last Tuesday, one thing is crystal clear about this election: Barack Obama was able to raise money, build a grassroots army of supporters and communicate with his many followers using Web 2.0 tools."

As the president's first year has drawn on, he has tried to apply many of these same techniques to keep communication with citizens open, and to advance his own political agenda.

Pushing healthcare reform

The most prominent issue of the moment is healthcare, and President Obama has used his arsenal of social media tools--including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube--to push his legislation. Just last week when it looked like public support for the healthcare bill might be flagging, the president was able to call on his social network and do something remarkable. On October 21st, the president posted a request on his Facebook page for 100,000 calls to Congress.

By mid-day, they had surpassed this number and were calling for 150,000 calls. By the end of the day, they had blown through this and ended up with 315,000 calls. This is impressive no matter what your political leanings; it shows the power of using Facebook and other social tools to push an agenda, especially when you have a politician with followers who are ready to act. In this case, it's not clear what the outcome will be, but certainly members of Congress must feel the pressure that kind of power brings to bear on the process.

Going open source

Just this week, the president's web team announced that Whitehouse.gov was moving to an open source content management system. They chose Drupal, a tool that made our list of "Top 5 Open Source Content Management Systems." This was a big boost for the open source software movement in general, but it was done for a number of reasons including trying to build in more social interaction into the system than was possible under the previous system. Tim O'Reilly writes in a blog post called "Thoughts on Whitehouse.gov Switch to Drupal" that this was done to increase the flexibility of the underlying CMS:

"Drupal has a huge library of user-contributed modules that will provide functionality the White House can use to expand its social media capabilities, with everything from super-scalable live chats to multi-lingual support."

What does this mean to you?

While building social tools into the process increases interaction and could make the government more accountable, and yes democratic (small d), it also provides a way for politicians (and you) to build tools to interact with constituents in ways that were not possible before. Now, just think if you apply these kinds of lessons to your own business to encourage transparency, accountability and communication internally and externally. It could change the way you do business and give you access to a powerful communications platform.

The president has repeatedly demonstrated how to use these tools to communicate with a group of engaged followers. Imagine those same people were going to bat for you, for your products or to support your company. It would give you a powerful force working for you that doesn't require a huge investment to implement. Of course, you won't have the reach of the president, but you have the same opportunity to motivate and interact with employees and your customers, and you would be foolish to ignore it. - Ron