Alfresco, SharePoint and iPads.... Oh my.....

Well what a busy two days I have had, and I need to blog them properly, so I guess this is really just a heads up. I have been out of the office to an Alfresco 3.2 "lunch and learn" yesterday, visited the Microsoft Canada building this morning for a "SharePoint 2010 for social computing" seminar and then this afternoon we had an excellent SharePoint 2010 provided by Microsoft at our premises. Lots to write about.....

And that does not even include the iPad !

Headlines

• Alfresco 3.2 - sorry Microsoft, but I would say this is a 'real' ECM system !

• Alfresco 3.2 is a "virtual" IMAP server, allowing you to view your repository and drag and drop from any IMAP compliant email client - nice feature.

• SharePoint 2010 for social computing - well of course its playing catchup, and will never be 'as good' as the best of breed tools provided by smaller, more agile providers BUT it may well be good enough for many enterprises - goodness knows if we could get this into use in my organization it would be more than "fit for purpose".

• SharePoint 2010 in general - lots for MS to be proud of, lots for customers to be looking forward to. There are lots of enhancements to 'ECM' - which are really EDRM features (but expect a future post on the death of the 'ECM label' !) - things like unique Document ID's for persistent linking (URI's) and enhanced records functionality. Actually quite impressed with the Managed Metadata Service - as our MS guy noted, when he working with clients as a consultant he had 'built' this functionality about 4 times in the last 4 years......

And then of course, there was the iPad.........

A big congratulations to Leo LePorte and his TWiT organization for their live coverage of the event, excellent viewing. I know its targetted as a consumer device, but I just started thinking immediately of the possible enterprise uses, as a laptop replacement, event as a 'thin client' desktop for some knowledge workers! Seriously all the people who turn up to meetings in our building with the big Lenovo ThinkPads, just so they can ignore the meeting and read their email - sorry, I mean just so they can access a pertinent document, and make the occaisional note.....

For example, got SharePoint 2010 (including Office Live), a decent secure wireless infrastructure in your building, a "unified communications" app' and I can see this being a seriously useful piece of kit. Of course, its still does not multi-task, but like I said, its supposed to be a "living room' device. I am looking forward to the Linux / Android powered competition from the likes of Asus and Acer though :-)

Mashable.com already has a good list of 9 possible alternatives, go take a look and see what you think.