Email management and email archiving

I have just read with great interest this short piece on "defining email archiving versus email management" by Alan Pelz-Sharpe at CMS Watch.

Its interesting because I early this afternoon I had been chatting with the manager of the 'Content and Storage Services Team' - the techie's who run our ECMS, about getting the Documentum Client for Outlook (DCO) implementation moved up the schedule, as people are asking for it.

I agree with Alan the and previous work he cites, that email management and email archiving are very different, and thats why our ECM tender (ITT / RFP) of 2 years ago specified both. The DCO integration with Outlook at the front end allows individuals to use their knowledge and experience in managing their email, either manually via drag and drop, or automatically by setting up Outlook rules, but the email resides in the main ECMS and not in the dreaded .PST file !

At the back end, at least for this implementation, Legato EmailXtender provides the archiving product, but EMC now markets a 'Documentum Archiving for Email' solution.

Again what was interesting to me was that Alan suggests not many organisations take this 'belt and braces' approach, but we had 'seen the light' more than 2 years ago (but admittedly had been tardy in implementing it).

Possibly even more interesting though, is that we have completed the 'email management and archiving triangle' with a training programme for users, seeing email management as one particular aspect of overall information management, and as per usual in my opinion, the greatest tech' will get you no where if the users are not clear on what they are supposed to be doing with it !

The only constant..... is change...... (updated)

Well thats certainly the recent trend in the wider information management market place ! So Oracle finally got their hands on BEA. This now gives Oracle 4 enterprise portal software offerings - confusing future there eh ?

Actually two postings already offer some analysis / comment. Janus Boye over at CMS Watch offers his usual insightful analysis of how the four portals fit together. I don't think I am being particularily insightful myself, when I say this is appears to be all about SOA and the middleware stack, BEA technology being generally regarded as good. However I am no expert on SOA nor do I have indepth knowledge of the BEA or current Oracle middleware stacks.

However to follow up on comments Laurence made over at Word of Pie, where despite my rash of spelling mistakes in my comment (it was late) Laurence branded me the eternal optimist. I shall explain. What I said was that the best integration I have seen between a portal and EMC's Documentum is that provided by the 'Knowledge Directory' feature of BEA Aqualogic User Interaction (the product formerly known as Plumtree Portal). So, wouldn't if be nice if Oracle sold off ALUI and ECM could snap it up ? This would give an nice alternative front end to EMC's content management suite, and perhaps a serious alternative to MOSS in the 'ECM for the masses' market ??

And then....... Sun buys MySQL.... !

Update: Actually this posting on the Portals and Content Managment blog (PCM.blog) gives a nice short summary of recent activity, and asks the question whether EMC will acquire a Portal / Middleware stack ?

And; Toby Ward over at Intranets.blog pulls together some more Oracle / BEA analysis in this posting.

I have been tagged....

So Laurence over at Word of Pie has tagged me, after he got hit by Craig Randall, but he blames Billy Cripe for setting it in our direction..... eh eh :-)

Anyway the point of this game is to share 8 things my readership will not know about me, and then tag 8 others (which could be difficult for me - I am not sure I know 8 other bloggers in the ECM corner of the blogosphere well enough.....).

So here we go on the easy bit:

• I have been in two of the UK's three armed forces (have medals to prove it)
• I am a graduate of the 'Elven School of Infantry' ( a bit of an 'in joke', sorry)
• I did archery at school (see above)
  
• I am a member of the Mars Society
• I worked on the UK's ill-fated Beagle 2 mars lander project
• I have never learned to drive (well I have never taken the UK driving test)
• I have a stange accent (Kingston Upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire - even other 'yorkies' can spot it)
• and to follow Laurences post, when I grow up, I want to be a 'real' rocket scientist (like Robert Zubrin or Colin Pillinger)

So, I think I will return to this later to name the next 8 'victims'....... :-)

Butler Group ignoring EMC's Business Process Management ?

What an interesting day this is turning into. So, this morning I sat in on a demo by one of our Documentum experts for our Research School. They have a requirement to build a 'system' to handle research grant submission, which is currently mired in the "email with Word attachments" chaos. Andy did a great demo of a rapid prototype he had banged out using Documentum workflow and content lifecycles, whilst I chipped in with a demo of eRoom (for general collaboration around the grant submission process).

4 hours and many meetings later, I get an email saying I can download Butler Groups new report on BPM, so I did. Now, I have not read it properly yet, but I flicked through the 'Technology Audits' chapter - no sign of EMC ! OK then, on to the 'Vendor and Product Profiles' chapter - still no sight whatsoever of the EMC Business Process Suite , which since the integration of the ProActivity product line is a lot more than 'just' Documentum Workflow. I am a tad surprised by this omission, but perhaps when I have read the full document it will make sense (??).

Microsoft gets FAST

OK, so put your hands up if you saw that one coming ? My crystal ball did not pick it up, thats for sure.......

Is this because MS wish they had bought Convera's RetrievalWare technology ? I guess its possible that FAST's own technology would provide a welcome filip to MS web search, and certainly MS already had a partnership with FAST to put its search behind Sharepoint, or is this about getting RetrievalWare to build out a 'full' enterprise search stack. This would start with Enterprise Search Express at the bottom end, through its bigger brother to the RetrievalWare stuff at the high end, could that be the real reasoning behind this ?

By the way, I have not posted for over a month, for which I apologise, there is plenty of interesting stuff out there, even if the holiday season does slow things down a bit. No, in my case, its the fact that we will soon be leaving the UK for pastures new in Canada. So, posts may continue to be few and far between whilst I attempt to get a lot of stuff done for my current employer, find a new employer, decorate (and sell) the house, oh yes and I better get round to finishing my AIIM BPM course too........

UPDATE: according to the CMSWatch coverage by Adriaan, actually I am the only one hibernating at the back of a cave, and everyone has been expecting this (MS buying FAST, not me moving to Canada.....) :-)