This is the second installment of “The Problem With ‘E’ in ECM” – Follow this link to read the first post.
When you look at the impact SharePoint has made in the content management arena the metrics are truly astounding. So much so that we now talk about SharePoint as a market unto itself. ISV’s and integrators [...]

Real Group Story: “The goal in implementing content technologies and related processes is really to apply management principles to content. Unfortunately, “management” too frequently gets conflated with “control.” This is a common thread through many definitions of ECM in particular: “controlling unstructured information.” Yet, management is much more than control. Good management also features enablement and empowerment. Management implies rules, but also supports creativity — often in different amounts in different contexts.”

Complete Story

It is already happening, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are CMIS-base custom clients being developed and released that are taking some of the pain out of using ECM systems.  I’m not talking about open source clients, but commercial clients with dedicated teams and one goal, to make money.

I know that there is pain in the use of ECM systems, and not just because I use them.  I know this because of one simple metric; In my list my most successful ECM projects, the top of the list is dominated by systems that do not use the default user interface.  I’m not talking about customized clients.  I’m talking CUSTOM clients.

A Market is Born

Well, there are some companies that are addressing the problem.  As I said in my Fierce Content Management guest piece on The Future of CMIS, two companies are leading the way by taking existing custom ECM client applications having them use CMIS to create a broader market for their software.

Generis updated their existing common interface, CARA, to leverage CMIS to work against multiple repositories.  WeWebU has announced plans to follow suit with their OpenWorkdesk interface in the second quarter of this year.

This is great!  Companies are looking to address the largest pains out there with ECM systems.  We may actually be entering the time of true Application Separation!  I’ll address some impacts shortly, but first, let’s look at what I saw over the past couple of weeks.

There is a Market, Now

So, three things triggered this post.  The first was watching Generis’s CARA application being shown to a continuous flow of prospective clients at last week’s DIA EDM conference.  Many were Documentum users, but there was a healthy collection of SharePoint users as well.  The response was consistently positive across the board.  Even those that said they were happy with their existing interfaces were impressed.

The second was talking to a company that was starting over fresh.  They had written a set of architectural principles that they wanted every component in their new Knowledge Architecture to meet.  Documentum’s interface didn’t cut-it.  The platform may have cut it, but having spent years being ignored by EMC, they were moving on to another platform.  They did feel that CARA, using CMIS and being browser neutral, met the bill.  They still had tests to run, but they were enthusiastic about the prospects.

Those two events showed me that there is not only a market for applications, but potentially a strong market.

The final triggering event is this Implementation Spotlight on CARA3 on the Ext JS website.  They used the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build CARA, using Ext GWT to round out the functionality.  This allowed them to build CARA very quickly, allowing them to hit the market quickly and to throw in all sorts of cool features with very little effort.  The result is quick, light-weight, and browser independent.

The important part about the article, while it has a healthy amount of marketing, it gives you more background into what led them to develop a CMIS-base interface and about the underlying technology.  The first is important from a market perspective.  The second is pretty cool from a development perspective.

Enough on that, on to what this means…

The Landscape is Shifting

This is actually part of a perfect storm.  Look at this:

• ECM Platforms have gotten stronger to keep up with the increasing volume and more diverse nature of content.
• ECM interfaces have been steadily falling behind the innovation curve.
• CMIS allows a common way to communicate with a repository.  Chemistry is providing a common implementation for those that already support the JCR standard.
• Documentum and FileNet were bought by EMC and IBM.  Oracle bought Stellent, but they aren’t the user-friendly people.  Open Text bought everyone, leading to a shifting product lineup that leave people wondering if they are coming or going.
• Open Source ECM has matured, providing multiple options for an ECM platform.
• Microsoft has been Microsoft.  They are fixing every problem with SharePoint, but they haven’t caught-up to the curve yet.  Meanwhile, their biggest flaw remains, Works best with Microsoft products. (IE and with SP2010, Silverlight).

Fun fact: Did you know that many ECM vendors charge a separate license for their user client?  I wonder if they could take that money and buy a better client for less?  That is what we are about to find out.

We are now looking at vendors creating custom user interfaces.  Generis may have been first to release, but they are going to be far from the last.  WebWeU has been aggressively marketing their interface and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is released.

History says that the first couple of vendors typically don’t win the war in software (Wordstar, Novell, AOL).  When you take that into consideration, you can see why it is way to early to make any judgments regarding either of these offerings.  What we can say is that unless things change, this may become a permanent market niche.

Until Open Text buys them all.

Disclaimer

This time, there really is something to disclaim.  Generis is a partner of my company, Washington Consulting, Inc.  While my company, as policy, does not accept any revenue from any technology vendor if their software is used/purchased by a client, there are still some co-marketing efforts and lead-sharing that takes place.

That being said, this post was entirely MY idea, not my company’s or Generis’s.  I heard about the spotlight and thought it would be a good time to highlight the first commercial CMIS client already in the market.  In six months, there will be more competitors and it is entirely possible that one will be better.

None of this changes the fact that the release of this client shows that CMIS is already changing the Content Management landscape for what I hope is the better.

The sheer volume of content that is generated by an organization in this day and age is nothing short of staggering.

Now where is that file?

Even more daunting is the task of managing that information for compliance and record keeping. The records that an organization must keep clearly qualify as content, and in today’s volatile economy and regulatory climate, records management functionality in an Enterprise Content Management system is not simply a nice-to-have capability, but a necessity.

To meet the need for managing the lifecycle of content and information, Alfresco recently announced version 3.2 of its ECM solution. Significantly new in the release is a records management module, Alfresco RM, as well as some advanced e-mail archiving functionality.

The Records Management module meets the Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification and it is thus far the only open source solution to achieve this. The RM module enables administrators to set up storage policies that manage the retention of data so that records that are no longer needed for compliance may be deleted or archived. The module also defines rules for moving content, so that the most current versions of records are kept in easily accessible storage locations, such as faster drives, while archived material is stored on slower drives. This not only keeps records organized, but also speeds up the process of accessing the content.

As an integrated component of Alfresco ECM, the RM module uses the same single repository as the rest of the suite. The module also features support for complex transfers, role-based permissions, legal holds, and saved searches to speed up searching for content.

The new e-mail archiving functionality in Alfresco 3.2 leverages new IMAP support, which allows users to access content via an e-mail folder in any IMAP client. Through the folder, content can be added into the central repository by drag-and-drop. The new functionality also supports the ability to configure attachment handling, such as pulling out attachments from e-mail and archiving them, or keeping them embedded in the e-mail.

The ability to manage records and integrate tightly with e-mail clients for archiving adds to Alfresco ECM’s appeal as a solution for organizations that need to manage content and ensure compliance. Managers seeking an integrated approach would do well to consider this solution.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Open Source DAM Solution For Managing Rich Media Assets Now Available

BOSTON, February 4, 2010–Nuxeo, the Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company, announced today the general availability of its open source Digital Asset Management offering Nuxeo DAM.

Nuxeo DAM is the latest application based on the Nuxeo open source ECM platform, Nuxeo EP. Nuxeo DAM addresses the complex and resource-intensive demands of managing the rich media assets that companies rely on. Designed to meet the creative and ever-changing needs of marketing and brand managers, as well as the custodians of digital artifacts in education, government, military and cultural institutions, Nuxeo’s digital asset management software opens up new opportunities for the creators, users and consumers of rich media to take control of their critical image, video or audio content.

According to Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca:

Nuxeo DAM has the same high level of flexibility as its underlying platform – Nuxeo EP – thanks to its extension-point, plug-in infrastructure. Thus, Nuxeo DAM can be adapted and customized to create a new kind of media-intensive content application matching ever-evolving business and creative needs.

Nuxeo DAM is the first application of its kind to meet the currently available draft of the OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. Nuxeo, along with many other industry leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe Systems, is involved with CMIS. CMIS is a proposed standard for interoperability across multiple ECM and web content management systems that is expected to be approved this year. Nuxeo EP, as the underlying ECM platform offering from Nuxeo, includes a CMIS Server, based on the latest CMIS specification, ensuring that packaged applications such as Nuxeo DAM and Nuxeo DM benefit from the interoperability enhancements.

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Every now and then, I read a post/article/tweet that makes me slam my head against the nearest hard surface.  The culprit this time was an article titled Cloud Content Management to Challenge ECM?

I saw the title and was intrigued.  I then read it and realized that the author had started falling for some market speak.  I quickly determined that the fault was not completely with the author.  Yes, they had fallen under the spell of some marketing and should have been strong enough to resist.  The real villian here? Box.

Remove the Cloud

Okay, lets think this through, logically.  First, let’s look at Box’s definition of Cloud Content Management.  When you look at it, you see them describing a SaaS offering.  More importantly, you are seeing them talk about the advantages of hosting it on the internet as opposed to your server room.

What we are seeing is a change in platform, not actually a change in the solution.  (Well, they talk about that some, but hold on a second.)  When we talk about ECM, we talk about solving problems and making content available throughout the organization.  The Enterprise signifies that we are dealing with all of our content, not just images or the content from the finance department.

When you go to the cloud, you remove the firewall headaches and the scaling headaches and make them someone else’s problem.  You are still solving the same problem of managing your content.  You still have to manage security by creating accounts.

When we started consolidating servers and placing them into server rooms instead of in people’s offices back in the 90s, we didn’t rename anything.  The applications and the problems they were solving were exactly the same.

What is changing is the delivery model.  SpringCM calls it right when they say they provide a SaaS ECM Platform.  PERFECT!  A Cloud ECM Platform would also work as a title, though a little less specific than SaaS.  You are qualifying ECM, not “Content” or the “Content Management”.

The platform should not be in the description.  When was the last time you saw Windows Content Management or UNIX Content Management?  How about LAN Content Management or WAN Content Management?

Note that Box is pitching themselves more like Google Docs than SpringCM, but you will notice that Google Docs doesn’t throw hype terms around. (Aside from “Google”)  Box’s pitch actually describes Omnipresent Content Management to some degree, though it is a stepping stone due to constraints imposed by technology.

That said, the article itself cared less about the “Cloud” and focused on the interface.

The Cloud Doesn’t Make the Interface

This is where I blame the author of the article.  He does makes a very good point about the standard ECM interfaces:

arcane user interfaces and culture of exclusion that’s associated with older software. ECM has this tendency to lock everything away in its place, and the Web is opening up news ways of working with content that allows us to view and interact with it in a collaborative, constantly refreshed context.

The solution isn’t the cloud.  The solution is creating new interfaces.  It is leveraging Enterprise 2.0 solutions.  It is being created by independent vendors that hope to leverage CMIS to create new, powerful, universal clients for ECM systems.

The web is a great proving ground for the interface technology, but it can live outside of the Internet.  Just because you have only seen a feature on the web doesn’t mean it can’t be part of a non-Internet solution.  That is one thing the ECM industry has to work on.  Separate the applications from the platform and allow the interfaces to evolve more rapidly in response to the changing environment.

The interface may be sweet, but it is actually not a feature of cloud computing.  It is a result of clever developers and product managers that have either figured-out what users want, or got lucky.

Let’s keep one thing in mind, many organizations like their firewalls right now because security in the wilds of the Internet has too many unknowns.  Check-out this summary of some of the current trends on ECM in the Cloud over at CMS Wire.

To Sum Up

I’ll put it simply.  Anyone that buys into the term “Cloud Content Management” probably doesn’t know the space.  I understand vendors want to create the next catchy term and make a mark. We don’t have to play along.

If you try and use the term in a conversation with me, be prepared for a million questions.  You will have to defend that term to the death.  I will spare employees of Box that have no choice, but anyone else is fair game.

Box’s offering looks neat.  They have a good vision.  Just don’t call it Cloud Content Management.

Since the early days of CMSReport.com, I have been providing a list of the top 30 Web applications that interest me the most. This list is called CMS Focus. If you take a close look at this list, you will find that I currently need three additional content management systems to complete the list of thirty. Which CMS/ECM would you recommend be placed on my list?

One of the three CMS that I’m considering to focus on is EPiServer. Deane Barker, a CMS guru from Blend Interactive, has a lot of good things to say about EPiServer. I have a lot of trust in Deane and if the WCM is good enough for his company then it’s likely good enough to be placed on my list.

If you prefer to see your product comparisons placed in a matrix or quadrant you have come to the wrong site. I don’t believe in complicating the simple as picking 30 preferred CMS isn’t really that difficult to do. The 30 Web applications on my list are what I consider “game changers” or “attention getters” in the world of CMS and ECM. If I’m not completely sold on the product, it is often the user groups and support communities behind the CMS that convinces me or not on whether I should focus on the Web application here at CMS Report.

So if you would like to recommend a CMS or ECM to CMSReport.com, this is the time to do it. Feel free to leave a comment below or send it my way via Twitter. I’ll be anxiously listening to what you recommend.

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First of all, it’s my pleasure to recognize Alfresco’s 5th birthday. In January 2005, a group of eleven of us started on a fantastic journey from a familiar world, Enterprise Content Management, into an unfamiliar one, Open Source. During this time, we have re-kindled our excitement for ECM, learned a lot about open source and become the largest private open source company. Not bad for a little company in suburban England.

One of the things that we have had to learn and be flexible on is the whole area of open source licenses. It’s been nearly three years since we went to the GPL license with Alfresco Community. The GPL was and is the most widely used open source license and provided a fairness of use that meant that we could feel comfortable to grow the project, company and brand. Alfresco is now one of the strongest brands in both open source and ECM.

Now we have grown the Alfresco brand considerably since its beginning, we believe that we can now move the Alfresco repository to the LGPL license. This moves us back to the model that is similar to the JBoss license model (see JBoss’s “Why We Use the LGPL”), which we experimented with in the very early days of Alfresco. Compared to 2005, we see more of an opportunity to be a platform beyond individual applications, particularly with the emergence of CMIS. What the LGPL license provides over GPL is the ability to link in the Alfresco repository without affecting proprietary software that links it. As stated in JBoss’s document:

We use the LGPL for JBoss because it promotes software freedom without affecting the proprietary software that sits alongside and on top of JBoss.

This reflects our feeling too. The LGPL code is share and share alike, but you can link it with any proprietary code without affecting the license of that code. We have considered more liberal licenses as well, but we currently have two main LGPL components – Hibernate for database access and JBPM for workflow – which prevent us from going to something like Apache or BSD licenses. However, this is something we may consider changing in the future.

We do this in the spirit of making Alfresco available as a CMIS platform and a general ECM platform to build content applications without inhibiting your business opportunities. What we hope is that your applications will build demand for Alfresco services from Alfresco Software, particularly in larger enterprise environments.

What this means practically, is that we are changing the license of all the software in the alfresco.war file. This is not an overnight operation, since every single files header needs to change to reflect the new license. Thus the license officially will change with the Alfresco 3.3 Community release in March. If you wish to consider alfresco.war today as LGPL, you may do so.

If you are an enterprise customer, then this won’t affect you. You still have a full commercial license from Alfresco and have the full freedom of those terms.