7 pillars, 3 layers and a Beehive.....

Oh yes, as the bizarre title may suggest, I am combining some related themes in this posting :-)

As I noted in my last post, my colleague Carmine who has been down in San Jose at KMWorld & Intranets 2008 pointed me in the direction of Micheal Sampsons 'Working with people you can't be with' blog. So today I have been reading up on his '7 pillars of IT-enabled team productivity' (you can download the free overview here) and I noted that he had written a posting on mapping his 7 pillars model to the '3 levels of information management' a model developed by James Robertson (Step Two Designs).

So, before we delve into this, lets first layout what the 7 pillars and the 3 levels are respectively:

The 7 pillars:
1. Shared Access to team data
2. Location-Independent Access to Team Data, People and Applications.
3. Real-Time Joint Editing and Review.
4. Coordinate Schedules with Team Aware Scheduling Software.
5. Build Social Engagement through Presence, Blogs and IM.
6. Enterprise Action Management.
7. Broaden the Network through Automatic Discovery Services

The 3 levels of information needs to be considered in an enterprise Info Management strategy:
1. Corporate (information needed by all staff)
2. Divsion, team, business unit
3. Individual

So I will leave Micheal to do the mapping between the two models, but keep both of the lists above in mind, as we move onto the next related topic, Oracle Beehive.

I have been trying to find the time to read up on Beehive since the press release from the Oracle World conference earlier this week. Beehive is Oracle's 'next generation' collaboration tool product. Beehive is a server product that uses open standard protocols and API sets to provide secure collaboration via the individuals preferred client e.g. Outlook.

So what exactly does it do, and what does this really mean ? Well its a server end collaboration system that to me takes a 'consolidating approach' that hits plenty of the buzz words for protocols and API's such as;

• SMTP, IMAP and Push-IMAP for email messaging
• XMPP for Instant Messaging and 'presence'
• FTP, WebDav and JSR170 for 'content management'
• CALDav for calendering

Add on to these a full SOAP based web services layer, the usual LDAP integration and even BPEL integration for 'workflow centric collaboration' and you can see how Beehive my start to hit a lot of peoples requirements for enterprise 'collaboration 2.0'. You can read more here on the Oracle site, with plenty of data sheets, whitepapers etc to download. This CNET coverage also includes video of the products introduction on stage at the Oracle conference.

So it strikes me that either by using any of the clients Beehive supports, including Outlook, Zimbra, Pidgin (IM client) Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird etc, or by cutting code and building portlets to integrate Beehive functionality into your enterprise portal, you could possibly draw together information from all 3 levels in order to satisfy at least 4 of the 7 pillars;

So obviously Beehive could facilitate the 1st pillar, providing access to shared team data, and the 2nd pillar too, which is mobile access to that same data, and this equates to the middle layer of the 3 information layers, the group, team, business unit layer. It does this through providing team workspaces.

But on the subject of workspaces, Beehive also provides a 'personal workspace' which addresses the 'individual layer'. Add to this the use of a client like Outlook or Thunderbird which inlcude an RSS reader, (or an RSS reader portlet) which could be aggregate the 'enterprise' layer through provision of pertinent data being pushed out by RSS / ATOM and we are starting to pull the threads together.

The CALDav support should address the 4th pillar, coordinating scheduling, and the built in IM and Voicemail functionality hits the 5th pillar, building social engagement through IM and presence. So it sure seems that we getting towards very sophisticated, 'collaboration 2.0' able to support both content centric and process centric collaboration.

I would love to find the time to map the 7 pillars and the 3 layers to Prof. Macafee's SLATES model of Enterprise 2.0 and then evaluate Beehive, IBM's Quickr and even EMC's CentreStage against the whole lot ! Maybe I could set this as a little 'project' for my friends at CMS Watch :-)

Sharepoint, Google and other stuff from KMWorld & intranets 2008

My colleague, Prescient Digital Media's general manager and VP of consulting, Carmine Porco has been attending KM World & Intranets 2008 in San Jose. He was doing his session on 'How to measure Web 2.0 Content' but he also dropped us an email pointing out a couple of sessions, so I wanted to pass that on, plus some other related stuff:

So, Carm thoroughly enjoyed Michael Sampson's session on Sharepoint as a collaboration tool. Eric Mack covered nicely on his blog here: Sharepoint as a collaboration tool, an independant evaluation

Eric also blogged on many other sessions, including a favourite speaker of mine, Dave Snowden and also Darren Gibbons of ThoughtFarmer.

Michael also blogged on many sessions.

Building on the Sharepoint theme, Alan Pelz-Sharpe has posted 3 Continents 1 Sharepoint story
over at CMS Watch. Alan notes that the coin has dropped and orginisations are implementing MOSS as well as an ECMS not instead of, or as an ECMS. Music to my ears thats for sure. Alan notes that some people have suggested CMS Watch are 'anti-Sharepoint' and he resonds that is not so, its just that CMS Watch are pro-informed choice, and very much 'for' informed customers.

My personal opinions are right in-line with Alan's, in fact my recent most recent article on the Prescient site; "Square pegs in round holes - where Sharepoint fits in your enteprise architecture" opens with the statement that I am not anti-Sharepoint, but that I am anti-oversimplification. In other words there are no information management panacea's and a solid requirements analysis along with a well thoughout strategy and proper planning will ensure that you implement a technology solution that will meet your business needs.

Another long standing acquitance of mine, James Robertson of Step Two Designs was also at the conference, presenting the Intranet Innovation Awards 2008 - congratulations to all the winners :-)

Finally, as I did not get to attend myself I did not get to meet up with me'old matey, Martin White of Intranet Focus Ltd in the UK. Martin is an enterprise search guru who always stresses the importance of people where it comes to search, as in the management of search by a search team, so please check out his blog posting on the Google Search Appliance lunch, but I warn you, if you appreciate a rather wry (or even dry) sense of humour, don't be eating or drinking when you read this - I would not want you to spray your keyboard........

Vendor support for different elements of CMIS - updated

Updated below - response to a question asked in the Webinar

So, I am currently listening to the AIIM webinar on Collaboration, and the intro from IBM, the sessions sponsors, noted something I had not picked up on elsewhere - different vendors have promised to support different elements of the CMIS standard, as in how they will implement the standards dual approaches of Web Services, or RESTful programming:

Vendors supporting both Web Services (SOAP etc) and REST:

• IBM
• Alfresco

Vendors supporting Web Services only:

• SAP
• EMC
  
• OpenText

Vendors supporting REST only:

• Microsoft
• BEA Oracle

I for one would have thought that the BEA Oracle WebCentre (the product formerly known as BEA Aqualogic) would have supported the full web services approach ?

As I have already said, it will be interesting to see which vendors back up the rhetoric with action.

Update: I asked the IBM representative (Cengiz Satir Sr. Offering Manager IBM Enterprise Content Management) if they would push CMIS forward to get the WCM, RM and DAM issues covered. He responded that CMIS does not / is not meant to cover these complex use cases as its meant for interoperability of 'Basic Content Services'. Now, he should know what he is talking about because as he mentioned IBM has 4 members on the CMIS committee, however its quite a surprising answer to me.

Jeetu Patel of Doculabs chipped in with a comment on how broadbased interoperabilty standards initiatives can only ever get more important.

CMIS - will it be 'real' ?

One of the links in my previous post was to the CMS Watch take on the release of CMIS by their analyst Kas Thomas. His final paragraph is:

"Here's hoping IBM, EMC, Microsoft, and the others will follow Alfresco's early lead and actually implement CMIS rather than (as they did with JCR) just issue press releases about it."

Well a big 'amen' to that one !

When I was at the Open University we were using EMC Documentum as our heavy duty back end for the 'eProduction System' in other words digital asset management, collaborative team working and workflow for producing all the universities learning materials, be they destined for presentation in print, on the web, as an ebook or as multimedia.

One of the 'front ends' for presentation is the Moodle open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). However getting Documentum to talk to Moodle required some development work ("no, you don't say.....") . The developers decided to lever the architecture of JSR170, the Java Content Repository standard, which as Kas notes above, might have generated some press releases from EMC, but never actually made it as far as Documentum Content Server becoming JCR compliant. Moodle meanwhile is PHP, so there was a PHP to Documentum connector built, using JCR as a 'framework' (basically replicating calls etc). It was 'sort of' successful (?).

Now imagine if both Documentum Content Server and Moodle had been CMIS compliant or had CMIS comliant 'modules' - it would have been sooooo easy.

So this is my 'wide eyed enthusiam' posting, I truly hope all the vendors put their money where their standard is, so to speak, and actually follow Alfresco's lead by getting this into their product sets ASAP (or at least help OASIS to get a version 1.0 ratified as soon as it can).

World Peace declared in ECM industry... CMIS is here ! Updated 12th Sept

Updated - I have added additional links to blog posts from Craig Randall and the Observing Content Management blog, that later notes something I had intially missed:

"The following use cases are out of scope for the initial set of deliverables:

• Records Management and Compliance
• Digital Asset Management
• Web Content Management
• Subscription and Notification Services”

So RM and WCM are not in scope yet eh ? Mmmmmm'

________________________________________________________

OK, not quite 'world peace' (wishful thinking eh?) but we must welcome the birth of a new 'standard' the Content Management Interoperability Standard or CMIS to us..... :-)

What does it mean - well I am not sure, I kept of the 'puter at home last night and only picked this up this morning via a 'press release' email from EMC, and I am still digesting it all, but of course plenty of sharper people than I have hit the pressess already, so please check out the links below:

Enter CMIS a proposed ECM-SOA standard - Pie says he is 'almost too excited for words' !

CMIS - be careful what you ask for - MMm' the Big Men On Content seem less excited than Pie...

Dogs and Cats: EMC, Microsoft, IBM, & Alfresco release CMIS - ECMArchitect

CMIS - its not JAS - Chuck Hollis of EMC

Announcing the CMIS specification - Microsoft Sharepoint Team blog

Announcing the CMIS specification - MS ECM Team blog

Alfresco releases first CMIS implementation - John Newton of Alfresco

CMIS the new lingua franca of EMC - CMS Watch

ECM standards war: bye bye JSR170 hello CMIS - Bex Huff

CMIS - Craid Randall

CMIS - Observing Content Management



The actual specification (version 0.5 full) is available from EMC developer network here:
http://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-1605

The official press releases are here:

• EMC
• Alfresco
• Microsoft
• OpenText

SAP have been mentioned too, but I can't see a press release from them anywhere.

Although CMIS appears to have been an evolutionary off shoot of the stalled AIIM 'iECM' initiative, it is being handed to the OASIS standards body for ratification as a standard. (Hopefully the other vendors will exercise constraint on MS in this one, unlike the ISO fiasco with document standards).

So, enjoy reading that lot, plenty of opinion pieces to follow I expect !

Lean Intranets ?

Patrick Walsh on his manIA blog has referenced Toby Wards Intranetblog specifically the posting 'Intranet 2.0 sits on the back burner' and then goes onto write some really interesting stuff on the concept of 'lean' intranets.

If your not aware of what we mean by using the word 'lean' in this context its actually refering to the concept of 'lean manufacturing'; I wont go into detail here, but here is the wikipedia article and Patrick covers it nicely in his article.

So please go and read Patricks article 'Intranet 2.0;the need for lean intranets', because I feel the need to digest his thoughts thoroughly before responding here with some commentary.

WCMS from 'The Level'

Yesterday we had a very nice Webex Demo of the WCMS product from a company called 'The Level'. An excellent demo and big thanks to them for finding the time to show us the product, which was very nice, with a good interface, very nice localisation features and a flexible workflow tool.

Anyway, go look them up for yourselves: http://www.thelevel.com/ 

New Sharepoint article on Prescient site

My latest article on the Prescient Digital Media site is entitled "Square pegs in round holes - where Sharepoint fits in your information architecture".

Yes, thats a bit of a mouthful I know, but its also quite descriptive dont you think ? So if your interested in where MOSS fits into your particular business scenarios, enterprise architecture of information management strategies, check it out.

Documentum 6.5 and Enterprise 2.0

Well the serendipity of the blogosphere strikes again :-)

So whilst I mentioned Oracles new E2.0 direction and my own thoughts on EMC's moves in the space in my last two postings, Bill Ives over at his Portals and KM blog has an excellent posting entitled "EMC Documentum moves into Enterprise 2.0" where he gives an excellent summary of the E2.0 'feartures' available in the 6.5 release, with plenty of screen shots and links (so I am not going to repreat any of it here).

Bill says he got to speak to Lance Shaw, "Group Product Manager for Knowledge Worker Solutions' and having met Lance at various EMC conferences in the customer feedback sessions, I know he is a very passionate man where it comes to giving people the tools to make their working life easier.

Anyway, as Bill has saved me a lot of work, go check out his posting !