Tag Archives: IBM

BLUG – I’ll be there

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BLUG

I’m going to the Belux Lotus User Group conference that is being held in Antwerp, Belgium.

Am I a big Lotus user? No – not really.

Then why am I going? Because the sessions they’ve got lined up look excellent!

There are three main streams – Development, Administration, and Business/Other. I’ll be attending the “Business/Other” sessions.

Social Business

At this years “Lotusphere” (IBM’s big conference), there was a big focus on Social Business. And and looks like this will be playing a big part at BLUG.

After what looks like a very interesting Opening Keynote, there will be a Panel Discussion on  ”Social Business”. Does this “buzzword” actually has any credence?

Members of the “Panel” include Luis Suarez, who has been living without e-mail the last 4 years, Femke Goedhart, an IBM Champion (and someone that I met at a SharePoint event last year), Stuart McIntyre, a Social Business Consultant (and author of the blog Collaboration Matters, and Chris Miller (aka IdoNotes) from Connectria.

This is one discussion I’m looking forward to.

Further in the “Business/Other” stream there will also be sessions on Cloud Computing, Balancing freedom the freedom of social media with the corporate restrictions that are often necessary, hearing how to “survive” in the business world without e-mail, as well as some other interesting sessions.

As I mentioned, I’m not a big “Lotus” person, but I feel that you can learning can come from all different sources. So I’m ready to learn. I’ll be there with my notepad (yes – the paper-based version) taking notes.

I’m also looking forward to meeting some of the IBM/Lotus crowd. (If you see me there, come and say “Hello”).

Nerd Girls

And…before I forget - I’m looking forward to seeing the Nerd Girls. At Lotusphere 2012, these girls organised the “Spark Talks”. These talks are very, very good (and inspiring). I wrote about one of the Spark Talks in an earlier post, and I am keen to see what the girls have organised this time.

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AIIM’s CMIS Product Guide!!!

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AIIM CMIS

Wow – call me Happy and knock me to the ground.

AIIM have just released their standards based Product Guide focused on CMIS. Being an AIIM Professional Member I was quick to download a copy.

For those of you unfamiliar with CMIS (Content Management Interoperable Services), one of my earlier posts “Small Brain Notes on CMIS” explains it more in detail.

About 9 months ago I started writing a blog post that would give an overview on the CMIS market at that stage. A lot of Vendors had recognised the real benefit of CMIS and were all making plans to implement it one way, or another.

My post did have some promise. (Click here if you’d like to view it in it’s unfinished glory). However I was not happy with the incompleteness of it, and decided, at the stage not to publish it.

The AIIM document is not comprehensive (which AIIM states clearly in the Introduction). It covers 13 vendors, and describes the CMIS enabled product of each of them along with more detailed information on the use of the product as well as (where possible) the CMIS capability support of the product.

Products covered in AIIM’s Report:

  • Alfresco Web Quick Start
  • Alfresco Activiti
  • CMIS Export for Kodak Capture
  • Content View
  • Documentum Content Management Interoperable Service
  • Fresh Docs
  • IBM Connections 3.0.1
  • IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition 8.4.3
  • IBM FileNet Content Manager 5.0
  • IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5
  •  Nuxeo Document Management
  • Open Text ECM Suite 1.0
  • SharePoint 2010
  • WeWebU Open Workdesk

The authors hope that later versions of the guide will contain more vendors.

In the start of the Guide there is a very good introduction, and an article by David Choy (chair, OASIS CMIS Technical Committee). David Choy has also recorded a brilliant video, awhile ago, in which he explains CMIS. This was a great tool when I was trying to understand what CMIS was all about. (You can view the video here.)

After the vendor review, there are a couple of articles by Laurance Hart (@piewords) and Stephan Waldhauser (@WeWebU).

Following the articles, there is an excellent list of CMIS Resources, which I am going to look through when I get some time.

Taking into account that (at AIIM’s own admission) the Guide is not comprehensive, it is still a very handy document to give a better understanding of the CMIS landscape.

My only criticism is: Guys – when you are creating a PDF – do it properly. Get each section properly bookmarked, as well as the TOC hyperlinked to the corresponding page. It’s not hard to do; it makes the Guide a lot more usable (when viewing on screen).

Click on CMIS in the tag cloud for my other CMIS posts.

CMIS is here … but where?

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Note – this post is in a draft format. It was written in June 2010 and was never published. The information in this post is not complete.
I have released it now as part of my AIIM CMIS Product Guide post.

CMIS 1.0 was ratified in the beginning of May 2010. This is the standard that will allow interoperability between the various content management systems that are currently on the market. For more information on CMIS, refer my Small Brain Notes on CMIS. Go and read it now, and when you are finished, click on the back button. I’ll be waiting…

Ok – now that you understand a bit of what CMIS will offer, let’s ask the question – when will it be available in these disparate content electronic content management systems?

Let’s look at the list of companies that were associated with the creation on CMIS 1.0

And…who is ready for CMIS?

Founders

These three  were there in the beginning, and developed the initial draft.

Reviewers

The following companies also played a part in the moulding and shaping of the CMIS standard:

  • Alfresco – Version 3.3 (available now)
  • Open Text,
  • Oracle,
  • SAP

Others Adapting their systems to be CMIS compliant:

  • ASG Software Solutions
  • Content Technologies ApS
  • Day Software
  • Ektron
  • ESoCE-NET
  • Exalead, Inc.
  • FatWire
  • Flatiron Solutions Corporation
  • Greenbytes GmbH
  • Harris Corporation
  • Nuxeo
  • Saperion AG
  • Sun Microsystems
  • Vignette Corporatio

Here is a list of the vendors with regards CMIS compliance.

Vendor Product CMIS Support Timeline
Alfresco Alfresco 3.2 Available for testing
EMC Documentum First half of 2010
IBM Content Manager Second First half of 2010
IBM FileNet P8 Second First half of 2010
KnowledgeTree KnowledgeTree 3.7 Available for testing
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 First half of 2010
Nuxeo Nuxeo DMS 5.3 Available for testing
Open Text Enterprise Library Services (ELS-Beta) CMIS connector available now
Open Text Open Text ECM 10 Mid 2010
Oracle Oracle Universal Content Management Not known
SAP SAP DMS Not known
Sense/Net Sense/Net 6.0 Available for testing
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CMIS – what are the adoption plans for 2011?

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I’ve been following the CMIS protocol from when it was a “cool idea” till when it became a ratified protocol, and have been seriously wondering what impact it would have on the ECM world (click here for an earlier post).

Recently Generis held a short survey to gauge the feeling of the industry. I’m not sure how scientific the survey was or how many companies were surveyed. And the resulting whitepaper is…I have to say it…ugly. In any case here is a summary of their findings:

  • Most of the companies that responded to the survey use multiple Content Management Systems
  • 26% of the respondents are looking at moving to a common platform, while 52% have no plans, and will keep the systems they have
  • 40% are planning a new system, and 43% are planning system upgrades. Just under 40% are planning content migration. (Note – each respondent may be planning more than one project next year).
  • CMIS doesn’t seem to play a big part in the projects.
  • 87% state that Usability and UI are critical, while 75% consider Richness of Functionality as a High requirement.

[You can read more about the survey here]

What does this all mean? Well, based on Generis’ survey, it seems that CMIS will not be pushed by the users in 2011.

However, other bloggers have also made comments on the future of CMIS in 2011. Laurence Hart predicted at the end of 2009 that 2010 would not be the year of CMIS. In his predictions he quoted Lee Dallas who said “there needs to be application vendor adoption to really create impact.” True! Especially looking at the survey results from Generis.

So will a vendor step up and “force” the others to follow suit? Many vendors have already put into place CMIS functionality (either in the form of a server, or a client). Microsoft introduced in it SharePoint 2007 (administration pack), and it is included as out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2010. Drupal have been busy. As has Alfresco. IBM (FileNet) introduced support for CMIS in V5.0 of the FileNet Content Manager. EMC promises CMIS support in Documentum 6.7.

It seems that each ECM vendor has been quietly toiling away to support CMIS.

But to what end? Is it a case of “Field of Dreams“, where (to paraphrase) “It has to be built before they come”.

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Pie’s blog post: Top Predictions For 2010, and Reflecting on Pie’s 2010 Predictions

Craig Rhinehart’s Post: Top 10 ECM Pet Peeve Predictions for 2011