Christian’s slidedeck on productivity and gamification is certainly worth highlighting…
I have just discovered the Technology Services Group (TSG) blog. It has some really great posts in it. The Technology Services Group work with ECM technologies, and their posts describe how they apply these.
On December 10 they published a post titled “Predictions for EMC Documentum in 2013“. While their other posts have had some great material in them, the above mentioned post didn’t impress me.
TSG made predictions such as “Webtop Installations will start to Fade“, “Lots of Interface Evaluations“, and “Slowly Upgrading to D7“. These predictions are not very hard to make. Whenever any software company brings out new versions of their software (often which makes the earlier version obsolete), companies start considering, and evaluating the new software, Sorry – that’s a no-brainer.
Further to that, there were predictions that, in 2013, “Performance will be a hot topic” (when isn’t performance a ‘hot topic’? I’ve never heard anyone say “performance is slow, but that’s ok”), “Mobile Demands continue to grow“, and “Cloud Discussions, but Slow Adoption“. For these last two, there is nothing really surprising about them (“wow - did you know that people will be wanting to use an EMC app on their mobile device?!”).
The second to last prediction “SharePoint Discussions are Dead” reinforces what others are also saying (Even Gartner has ranked MS SharePoint lower this year in their Magic Quadrants, and you can read more on this in Herman Prasad’s post)
This leads me to the last prediction: “Maintenance Costs Increasing“….<speechless>
TSG – I’m not trying to be mean. You have written some great stuff, but these predictions are hardly that.
Refer: 14 Unfulfilled Promises
In my post “FirstDoc & D2″ I told you all (breathlessly) that there was going to be a webinar where CSC were going to discuss their plans regarding EMC’s D2 interface.
Unable to Fulfil Due to a family commitment I was unable to attend this webinar. I had contacted with some people at CSC beforehand to to see if it would be recorded. The answer I got was “Yes”, but since then I have been advised that, because of the commercially sensitive nature of the webinar, it wasn’t. I certainly understand that that decision has been made. As such, though, I am not able to actually deliver on this promise.
In an earlier post I discussed how EMC’s are now licencing D2 technology from C6, and that this meant that CSC are having to change their user interface strategy.
Well…on Tuesday, 6th of March, there is a webinar that will reveal what has been going on “behind the scenes”.
Some of my favourite CSC people will be discussing CSC’s “new, improved” customer interface strategy as “FirstDoc embraces D2″ (their words, not mine).
I’ve been following this with interest for awhile, and I’ve registered for the webinar.
I’ll let you know all about it after the 6th.
Related articles
In my earlier post about the FirstDoc User Group conference that was held in Vienna earlier this year, I wrote about CSC’s User Interface strategy.
To recap – CSC produce technology that provides a compliance layer for content management systems. Although available for SharePoint systems (under the name “FirstPoint), the predominant application is “FirstDoc” which is built to work with, and integrate into, EMC’s Documentum.
The native FirstDoc client application is interwoven into Documentum’s client application and, as a result, CSC need to ensure that they shadow any architecture decisions EMC makes.
Over the last few years EMC have been making it clear that their way forward (with regards to their client applications) was to be with a technology called xCP. This would allow developers to create applications through configuring and then assembling components. The core idea is that “complex solutions are composed from interaction of Documentum objects with business processes”. Initially it was made clear that this technology was for case-based applications, but, the later versions were being promoted as the “interface solution”. (You can download EMC’s whitepaper on xCP here).
At the same time, EMC have announced that they had made plans to retire their current client application “WebTop”, and the idea was to replace it with xCP technology. CSC had been invited to be involved with version 2.1 of xCP to ensure that FirstDoc functionality could be tightly integrated with it.
At this year’s Momentum, however, EMC announced that they had licenced D2 technology from a French company called C6. (You can read the announcement here.) C6 have been EMC partners for a long time, and I recall seeing them at many previous Momentum conferences, where they have certainly caught people’s attention.
C6′s products work on the basis of “configuration“, and will be technology for “content-centric” applications.
C6 have also released x3, which is a “widget-based, agnostic browser, client interface that enables to extend the use of D2 Client to various browsers such as: Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera.”.
Obviously this will offer incredible advantages. Especially in this mobile-age, and especially for industries (such as Pharma), that, because of strict compliance requirements (and the overarching mindset that that brings with it), have not been as ”agile” as they could.
CSC have announced that they are working together with EMC to ensure that the tight integration between CSC’s FirstDoc client interface, and D2, will be maintained.
I am watching this space with interest…
I’ve just signed up for a webinar that KnowledgeLake are holding entitled “Realizing True Records Management with Microsoft SharePoint 2010“.
KnowledgeLake were gold sponsors at the SharePoint Best Practices conference that I went to in London earlier this year, and, I have to say, it was a top-notch event. I had visited KnowledgeLake’s booth and I’m curious about how good their product actually is.
So, it was with interest that I read the “Reasons I should attend“. These included the following:
Now, the first reason seems to be pretty standard when describing the virtues of any content management system. As is a demonstration, as well as hearing a customer case study..(Just change the name of the ECM system.)
What really grabbed me by the short and curlies was the second reason “Discover why SharePoint will succeed in records management where other ECM platforms have failed“. Now, this is interesting…I want to hear about this secret sauce that McSharePoint has.
Reason 4 is also one that got my attention. Here the phrase “enterprise approach” really stood out. I’ve been involved with SharePoint since 2007, and, coming from an ECM background, it was very evident to me that SharePoint 2010 is now being hawked as a bigger beast. And this is not only in the “functionality” of SharePoint 2010, but also in other ways. There are more “enterprise-level” whitepapers out now, and the official Microsoft SharePoint training is focusing more on the “business-side” rather than just pure technology.
I’ve registered for the webinar. I’ll be taking notes, and will try and report back on my findings.
Reference Links
I’ve been very aware of something for awhile now…and that is “I don’t know where I fit in”. However, it wasn’t until recently when I read Nick Inglis’ blog post that I really came to realise that my “problem” is actually not an uncommon one.
In his post Nick comments that when he’s speaking at a SharePoint event, he often gets categorized under “Other“.
This is because (as he states) the SharePoint world doesn’t quite have a place for those who do work with SharePoint but in an ECM/ERM/Governance capacity.
The Salem Consulting Group have made a list of “plausible” SharePoint roles. I have listed them below, and have added a quick description in between parentheses. These include:
(Note – The original post (authored by Ian McNeice) from Salem offers a more detailed description of these roles. The link is at the end of this post.
In Nick’s post, he describes an “Information Professional“.
These are the people that have been busy developing models of governance … and have been driving forward the conversation about how SharePoint can be used as a “proper” ECM (and yes, maybe even ERM) system.
Looking at Ian’s list, I think the closest role that matches this is the “Information Architect”. This is the person who insists on maintaining a correct classifications, taxonomies, etc while has expertise in document management, version control techniques, data retention polices, publication and archiving practices.
Being prompted by Nick’s post, and then looking through Ian’s post has certainly help me better “label” myself.
Prior to this, even though I have worked in the Document Management field for over 10 years, I could never find a way of describing my skill set to a “SharePointy” (is that what you call a SharePoint fan?). I can set up, and administer SharePoint sites. I can design user interfaces. I can set up farms, as well as write kick-ass documentation. But I could do more than that.
Thanks to Nick and Ian, I’m going to go and update my LinkedIn profile.
Excellent References
As mentioned – I didn’t get a chance to go to Momentum in Berlin this year.
However I was able to get a pretty good idea of what was covered thanks to the great streaming video that EMC had, as well as the great tweets that be “tweeted”, and the excellent blog posts that were written.
I’ve been to a few Momentum’s now, and while they are a great opportunity to really “talk” with the EMC people, and their partners, I always had the feeling that the things I heard, I had, more or less, heard at the previous Momentum, or that what was big one year, suddenly falls to the wayside.
Now I realise that changes to strategy get made all the time, and that new technology takes more than one year to design, develop and integrate, and it’s great to see that EMC is: a) responsive to changes in the market environment, b) keeping its customers well informed of the progress that they are making, but to mention a few examples…
It wasn’t until I spoke with a colleague, who made a similar comment, that I started to really think about this. Then I saw this tweet from Jed Spink that I realised that others also had the same thought.
@HimannshuSharma Nothing that new that I saw at #mmtm11 – perhaps others got more roadmap around SharePoint?—
Jed Spink (@jedspink) November 09, 2011
I appreciate that my view might not be a perfect one, and that there might be situations where I am wrong.
I want to hear what you think? Am I right? Or am I totally wrong?…
I’ve just discovered the EMC Momentum app. Even though I’m not at the conference – this looks like a great tool to have!
It lists:
Check out the maps of MMTM11
Watch videos from MMTM11
Man! What a great tool!
Read more about it here
(https://community.emc.com/thread/120187)
