Two  weeks ago I spoke on a webinar hosted by SpringCM.  My presentation focused on how to take a structured and methodical approach to defining and executing an ECM strategy. You can download the slides I used slides below, and/or if you prefer listen to the recorded webinar here.

As is always is the case when I speak on a webinar , I intended to provide repsonses to all unanswered questions posed by the audience, here in my blog.  Well, history was made two weeks ago. For the first time, all questions were answered during the one hour time slot. (You can listen to the webinar complete with Q and A here.)

So, this follow-up blog post focuses exclusively on the results of the quick polls we took of the approximately 200 attendees during the webinar.

It is interesting to note, right from the start, that  nearly half (47%) of the audience members worked in organizations that had an ECM strategy.

Why is this interesting? For a few reasons. First, it indicates that the ECM market still has lots of legs, and that the need to build a deliberate strategy for leveraging the capabilities of ECM still exists in many organizations . In fact, the fact that the 47% that have a strategy nonetheless attended this webinar indicates, IMHO, that a need to maintain that strategy and weigh new options is a important to many organizations. Again, IMHO, this is a best practice, to keep the ECM strategy green by continuously updating it in order to take advantage of lessons learned and emerging new technologies and techniques (among these today SharePoint and Cloud Computing.)

The value of having an ECM strategy is reflected in the percentage of organizations that have or  plan to have document-based applications between themselves and customers and partners.

I believe it is no coincidence that 48% of the webinar audience indicated that they planned on having document-based applications with their customers and partners. This is likely the same group (note the 1% difference in groups)  that indicated that they had an existing ECM strategy.  An organization might be able to cobble by with a lackadaiscal approach to managing its business content, but when that content is integrated into serious business applications, especially those that involve outside parties, a defined strategy for managing the content is essential.

As mentioned above, SharePoint represents a new offering in the ECM strategy equation. It is clearly a technology that has garnered much attention. So, we asked those webinar attendees that indicated that they had an ECM strategy, if SharePoint was a component of that strategy. The results were a bit surprising. Only 57% indicated that it was.

I say the results are surprising because most other market data concerning the take-up of SharePoint, including our own earlier research, typically positions the presence of SharePoint in organizations a bit higher. (In our own study it was 65% and 23% more planning on it.)  What I believe the results of this poll may indicate is that SharePoint  is still predominately  used as an ad hoc approach to file sharing and simple collaboration, and thus for some, is not positioned as part of an official ECM strategy.  Positioning Sharepoint as part of a corporate ECM strategy requires significant further investment in time, money and effort – involving integration with complementary functionality including process management (e.g. BPM and workflow). This was a topic discussed in more detail on our last webinar.

Given that the webinar included advice on extending ECM into the Cloud, we asked the audience members if their organization had deployed any applications in the Cloud. Not surprisingly, a small majority, 56%, indicated no. Past market research I have conducted on this point has yielded similar findings.

Despite the success of SaaS-based applications, such as SalesForce.com, for example, many organizations have yet to fully embrace the Cloud. I believe this will likely change in the next year, based on my unofficial tracking of market activity (e.g. related webinars, trade-show presentations, traditional press coverage and Twitter activity.)  In fact this observation prompted me to tweet yesterday “Is it me, or is Cloud Computing the new SharePoint? Is seems to be everywhere.”  The comment sparked a fair amount of Twitter activity and a discussion thread on LinkedIn.

Lastly, we asked about application priorities in the upcoming 18 months. Respondents were given 9 candidate applications to select from. For the most part, responses indicated that a wide variety of business applications are being targeted. The most popularly selected (by40%) application was project collaboration.

Herein lies the value proposition for having an ECM strategy. By establishing an ECM platform (whether a single product, or conglomeration of products orchestrated as a single platform in which best of breed approaches and functions work seamlessly together), organizations can deploy any number of targeted and specific business applications on top of the platform. Even in cases where a turnkey vertical/horizontal application is deployed, it often makes good sense to deploy such an application built on the underlying enterprise platform, to minimize further customization and integration.  This point was further discussed in the last webinar.

So on that note, I’ll remind you that if you missed the first webinar in this series, focused on ECM, SharePoint and  Cloud Computing specifically, you may want to read that follow-up blog . It contains links to the slides and recorded session, as well as many definitions – including – what is ECM.

On February 23, 2010, I was a featured speaker on the SpringCM webinar entitled “Making SharePoint Work.”  The slides from the presentation can be found here.

Additionally you can listen to the archive of the webinar.

In the webinar, I reference a survey and study I conducted on SharePoint user experiences.  You can access that paper here.

There were many questions asked and some answered during the webinar.  As has always been my policy, I will answer all outstanding questions, in this case, in this blog post, save for those posed to my co-presenter,  Jeff Piper of SpringCM.  Jeff has posted his answers separately.

So without further ado, here goes:

Q: What is ECM?

A:   I find this question eye-opening because all too often, those of us in the industry forget that terms and acronyms we use on a daily basis have not yet been fully absorbed into the general business lexicon.  ECM stands for, at least in the way I use it,  Enterprise Content Management. There is no standard definition for it, but it is an acronym and phrse that I am very opinionated about. Rather than state my definition here, I refer you to another recent post, in which I define ECM.

Q:How can SharePoint and/or SpringCM be used for project management?

A: I find this question somewhat confusing, and hope that my answer addresses it properly. Neither SharePoint nor SpringCM (or any ECM product for that matter) provides project management per se. There are methodologies, practices and programs that specifically address project management. Indeed, these could be used to manage the roll out of an ECM and/or SharePoint implementation. Functionality in either product (e.g., collaboration and wikis) could be used to augment project management. Functionality in SpringCM (e.g., workflow) could be used to manage specific processes.  But again, neither provides a full-fledged project management system.

Q: Does MS SP 2010 provide new or added functions for integration to third party applications via .Net?

A:  Microsoft has added much to the integration capabilities of SharePoint in 2010. Programmer interfaces exist for not only .Net, but also REST, XML, and JavaScript.  In addition to enhanced APIs, there is better integration support in Visual Studio 2010, Visio, and SharePoint Designer 2010.The list of improvements made in this regard is extensive, and I will not try to list them all here. You should refer to the Microsoft site for more details.

Q:  How can SharePoint work in a cloud environment?

A:  This question is not as simple as it may seem. First – Microsoft provides 2 SaaS (Software as a Service) versions of SharePoint.  So there are 2 ways to access Sharepoint in the Cloud (Saas).  But it must be appreciated that these are limited siloed deployments. The access to SharePoint in these cases is “in the cloud”, but the focus of the webinar was how to EXTEND SharePoint into the Cloud, not how to simply access it that way. Extending SharePoint via the Cloud refers  to making SharePoint an integral part of cloud-based business applications. In order to do that you either have to undertake a rigorous amount of customized development, or leverage the connectivity of SharePoint into a Cloud-based application – such as SpringCM for ECM, workflow and other related applications.

Q:  Is it best to utilize SharePoint as your ECM or use it as a portal that is integrated with other Document/Records Management solutions that have all the existing features such as image capture?

A: The essence to the answer was a major theme of the webinar. While the webinar focused on leveraging the Cloud to extend the reach and capabilities of SharePoint, it started by  making the case that few organizations use SharePoint as an ECM solution.  It is part of a solution. Based on market trends, SharePoint is best used as an internal website for simple document management,  file sharing and simple collaboration.  Based on the definition of ECM provided above, it should become apparent that SharePoint should not be positioned as the ECM solution or even platform, it is a component.   (See the next two questions and answers for additional examples of how/why SharePoint would not be positioned as the ECM solution.)

Q:  What are the Records Management capabilities of MOSS 2007 vs MOSS 2010?

A: SharePoint users ranked the records management capabilities of SharePoint very low in the survey I conducted. Overall market opinion is  that records management is not a core strength of SharePoint.  I am aware of more than one system integrator that make a good business integrating records management into SharePoint.  While SharePoint does provide some records management capability , the Microsoft product development blog site itself states that the records capability is “not intended” for customers with serious/confidential records needs. Little has changed in this regard between 2007 and 2010.

Q:  Has anyone added  MOSS 2007 Records Management Application to SP?

A: (See the response to the preceding question.) Additionally, yes, I am aware of  organizations that have integrated records management products/functionality into their SharePoint environment, and know of  several system integrators that make a fair living from doing this. I suspect the genesis of your question stems from the fact that MOSS 2007 lacks “serious” and simple to deploy records management capabilities.

Q:  Can you give me some more examples of what complex applications are?

A:  Let me put this question into context, for those who were not part of our live audience. A major theme of the webinar was the need to extend SharePoint with complementary tools and functionality in order to support complex business applications. This was specifically stressed in this webinar because a strength of SpringCM is workflow and BPM functionality, functionality required in order to automate complex business applications. But, the audience wanted to know what is meant by the phrase “complex application.”   This is somewhat of a subjective question –  complexity is in the eye of the beholder. That said, complex applications typically involve intricate multi-step and multi-participant workflows. They often encompass multiple sub-processes, and several decision points. They often require access/integration between several content resources and applications.  Some examples include: contract management, case management, claims management (e.g. processing an insurance claim), event planning, on-boarding new customers and employees, product lifecycle management, loan applications, SOP (standard operating procedures) development and management, and new drug submissions.

Q: You talked about scaling.  Did you mean development or performance scaling issues?

A:  Both.  Development scalability relates to the issues  addressed in the webinar around tools, skills, and complexity in delivering business process and document management applications.  Performance scalability is something that cloud can address by accessing a shared resource optimized for Enterprise Content Management, but perhaps more importantly by eliminating the complexity of operating and managing all the hardware and software components necessary in, for example, a customer-facing case management application, where crossing the firewall creates all kinds of challenges in native SharePoint.

Q: ­We are just getting ready to install MOSS 2007 at our company.   What areas of SharePoint are noticeably strengthened in versions 2007 and 2010?

A:  Wow – loaded question. Improvements made in SharePoint 2007. I will not attempt to answer that here. SharePoint 2007  is now 3 years old. I do not succinctly recall what was added in 2007, but do recall that it was this release that turned the general market perception about SharePoint around. This was the first release of SharePoint in which organizations began discussing real application development. But there still lacked much functionality.  Some of that is addressed in 2010.Enhancements include: improved user interfaces (especially concerning content creation), tighter integration with MS Office, better integration capabilities (see discussion above regarding .Net), enhanced support for virtually all web browsers, much improved and centralized administration capabilities, enhanced navigation and search through increased support for meta data (i.e., tag clouds, formal taxonomies, user-created folksonomies,  bookmarks), support of  “in-place records,” (i.e., locked official files),and inclusion of three different types of search (including integration with FAST search, which Microsoft acquired a few years back – cost of this functionality still not released). It should be understood that the statements made here are speculation as SharePoint 2010 has not been released yet.

And now for the final question:

Q:  Our gov’t agency deployed SharePoint 4 years ago without a formal deployment plan, project management plan, or governance. Now, SharePoint is unwieldy…no guidance on site design, permissions are not managed.  How do we get back control and add some management?­

A: This question reminds me of the old joke “A tourist in New York stops a man on the street and asks ‘How do I get to Carnegie Hall?’, and the man answers “Practice, practice practice’.”   Unfortunately there is no easy answer to your question. You need to undergo a full-scale ECM strategy development project.  This will include an inventory of all the current SharePoint sites.  There are two pieces of good news I can provide however:  1.  Misery loves company – you are not alone. Many organizations have released SharePoint without a strategy and suddenly find themselves in a runaway uncontrolled environment.  In fact that was one of the findings in teh SharePoint research I conducted. A significant portion of user organizations did not know  the number of SharePoint sites or volume of content housed within SharePoint inside the organization.   2. SpringCM will be hosting another webinar on April 13, with me as a guest speaker, this time focusing on how to conduct a needs assessment and build an ECM strategy.  Register now,

Information Architected Market Alert (IAM Alert):
Iron Mountain announced yesterday that it had acquired Mimosa Systems, Inc., an enterprise-class content archiving solutions provider, for approximately $112 million in cash. (see press release via Iron Mountain or coverage on TechCrunch)

Colliding the Cloud and Premise

Iron Mountain is a curious company with a very large installed base from it’s traditional business of storing physical items for “safe, offsite, long-term storage.” Given the nature of most people in businesses as information hoarders, their traditional business has been remarkably robust, even giving the flailing economy.

What many people do not realize is the growing and significant impact of digital content that is “under management” by Iron Mountain. The split-personality of their physical and digital businesses not-withstanding (they reportedly have issues with the sales teams on either side of the virtual fences of the business not proactively selling across departmental or business unit lines), the digital business is booming as well, due in large part to concerns around rapid (and as low-cost as possible) response to eDiscovery issues.

Cloud 1st, Premise 2nd – Reverse of the Norm?

Back in 2007 (see Carl’s coverage of the acquistion of Stratify by Iron Mountain), Iron Mountain made one of it’s first explicit moves to directly address eDiscovery concerns with it’s acquisition of Stratify, a cloud-based offering used to outsource discovery activities with dedicated processes, semantic intelligence, etc..

Intrestingly, even though Iron Mountain’s longest line of business has been in the physical world, the Stratify acquisition jumped the straight past the traditional “legacy world” of on-premise solutions (to an extent) and straight to the cutting edge.

With the acquisition of Mimosa, Iron Mountain rounds out the portfolio for eDiscovery (integration and post-acquisition pains not withstanding) by specifically pulling in a solution that focuses on content where it lives in the largest typical buckets – those being email (as much as my fellow 2.0 pundits like to tout that email is dead, I can assure you it is not, and won’t be any time soon), SharePoint (that slow-moving content platform that is raising all boats), and for those still unmanaged files on desktops, file servers, etc., they can tap into the unmanaged areas as well.

The Theory Is…

If you’ll pardon the pun, Iron Mountain’s strategy appears to be (and which I largely agree with) if you can’t move the (content) mountain into active management, bring the mountain into passive management, so that in case of emergency, you stand a chance of actively managing your way out of costly, and expensive legal proceedings.

While you cannot anticipate every emergency, contingency, nor accurately forecast risk, by setting up both a proactive information architecture for your normal 80% of daily content concerns, being able to embrace solutions like what Iron Mountain is aiming for with this acquisition (we’ll see how long it takes to connect the vision to a seamles customer experience), allows you to break down both your normal legacy content walls, and burst up and out to cloud-based offerings to get the best bang for the buck. While I did not use this exact example in a recent webinar on Collaboration (see slides), I believe the graphic is still useful nonetheless.

The next time you’re looking at an overhaul, installation, or minor tweak to your own information architecture, enterprise content management or eDiscovery capabilities, take a look at this graphic and see if you have spent enough time, money and effort to cover your bases adequately.

Destroy and Converge

This general movement of destroying silos or at least virtualizing and providing access across multiple silos of information is a continuing theme (well past it’s time to come to broader light), that we also covered in a past IAM Alert on Present.ly and SharePoint, and which is being covered in a Cloud/SharePoint webinar today, by my colleague Carl Frappaolo (stay tuned for link to the archive).

Expect more on the cloud and virtualization front as enterprises finally take to heart what software startups (and the US Government) has known for many years now. High costs and barriers to the flow of information = bad business, and not just bad legal outcomes.

Are You Embracing Hybrid Strategies?

Weigh in with your success or failure stories, and let’s keep pushing the boundaries. We have a long way to go, but there has never been a more exciting time to be involved in these areas.

If we can be of help via our assessments, consulting or workshops, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Information Architected Market Alert (IAM Alert):
Intridea announced today a new open source, free Web Part (an add-on for SharePoint) to embed Present.ly (Intridea’s enterprise microblogging offering) within SharePoint. (see press release and Intridea site)

Enter Microblogging

With the rise of Twitter in the consumer-facing world, has come the enterprise-facing versions of microblogging, with solutions such as dedicated offerings from Yammer and Present.ly, to the embedded capabilities within larger suites/platforms.

It seems clear that entirely stand-alone enterprise microblogging is not a “market” in and of itself, and the real trick, from a usability and adoption/change management standpoint, that microblogging, as with other forms of collaboration, need to be embedded within the flow of normal work, NOT as a separate interface.

Integrate to Disintegrate (Silos)

With this release of an integration point into the “elephant in the room” of Enterprise 2.0 – Microsoft SharePoint (which surprisingly does not currently have microblogging, nor, based on research we had done earlier in 2009, a usable wiki nor blogging capabilities), the power of an ecosystem around a major player in the market is helping to integrate and raise awareness ACROSS the market, as to the benefit of features and the overall system.

The benefits of light-weight communications (ala microblogging, streams) are tremendous, and in embracing the 2.0 methods of microcommunications (transparent, widely spread) vs. the siloed communications of traditional microcommunications (private IM conversations on specific platforms, such as LiveMeeting, etc.) is beginning to gain momentum, driven by the “twitter effect” (for those who see value in Twitter, of course). But it is still fairly early days for this capability, and the need to provide multiple ways to consume and use microblogging, whether stand-alone, integrated into a general platform (SharePoint) or a purpose-built Enterprise 2.0 platform (PBWorks, Thought Farmer, SocialText, Open Text, etc.), is key to getting microblogging/microsharing off the ground and into a sustainable mode.

Whether there is a market for microblogging per se, I would expect that purely stand-alone microblogging is going to disappear, as it is more of a feature than a “product.”

Where does your organization stand on microblogging/microsharing? Are you using Present.ly and similar microblogging tools, integrated suites WITH microblogging inside, Twitter (and damn the consequences), or none at all.

Information Architected Market Alert (IAM Alert):
Google has been resting on it’s laurels (simple/streamlined search) and primary revenue stream (AdWords) for far too long, it would seem.

Introduced last week at the Google I/O developer’s conference is their latest entree the “Google Wave” offering (see preview announcement of Google Wave at Google). (Note: This offering is currently only available as a developer preview – meaning it is a “closed door” preview at this point.)

The Evolution of a Wave

From the team in Australia that brought out Google Maps functionality as an independent company (Where2), acquired by Google in 2004, has been hard at work for the last several years in rolling out what is being called “Google Wave.”

As I mention frequently, technological innovations take time to disperse, and the “overnight success” takes somewhere around 10 years to finally find a home. Credit this thinking with Geoffrey Moore of “Crossing the Chasm” fame, Everett Rogers from his 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovations, and others.

In this case, as an old hand in the enterprise portal world (I had worked at Delphi Group for 13 years, from 1994 to 2007), having been involved in the earliest days of the enterprise portal movement and evolution across a series of portal seminars and conferences, research and consulting work from 1996 to 2002, I have to say, on the one hand, I am happy to see Google more directly embracing the portal metaphor.

On the other hand…

Congratulations Google, you’ve invented the real-time portals that CoreChange (later acquired by OpenText) among others had pioneered roughly 9 years ago. Why not simply acquire rather than re-invent this capability?

What is a wave?

From Google’s description:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

Don’t we have these pieces already?

Live/real-time communications already exist in the form of IM, microblogging (ala Twitter), video chat, etc.. – or from the Google universe, via Google Talk and Google Chat.

Document-based sharing is already available as well, via Zoho, Microsoft Live, and of course Google Docs (documents, spreadsheets, and presentations).

And by distinction of being “web-based” – all of these are already shareable on a common platform – the browser.

So what’s new?

Back to the Future

As with many things Googley, the “great Google” sky tends to approach new technologies from the consumer-oriented point of view, which is a much easier market to address, and allows for faster and larger scale experimentation. The prior portal players, with the exception of Yahoo! and Excite (which was sadly gutted and destroyed many years ago), the “typical” portal platform was created up front with an internally focused “enterprise view.”

To that end, some are touting Google Wave as an “all in one” killer – aimed at Twitter (created at the hands of many ex-Google employees – any animosity?), at IM (AOL, MSN, Yahoo!), and even at e-mail (take your pick).

The primary purpose of a portal (in the past or now), is to bring together the separate islands of functionality or underlying systems into a single dashboard, view or, that’s right, portal.

If you recall the early days of Google, they specifically built a search interface that was the anti-Yahoo!, Excite et al. Sparse, simple, streamlined for search and search results.

As happens with many software companies, when you do not currently have a solution or capability (whether due to focus, laziness, or inability to compete), the obvious play is to deny it’s importance.

In 2005, Google launched iGoogle which is of course a personal portal, complete with Google Gadgets (also known as widgets, portlets, and various terminology from other portal offerings). It would appear that the portal metaphor has legs, and Google is finally aligning it’s offerings to continue on the evolutionary trail already well established by other companies.

Time to Unify the Google

What appears to be happening with Google, and is a trend I’m seeing over and over again, is that there an increasing amount of simple but very specific tools being created (the vast majority of both the Web 2.0 and Enteprise 2.0 solutions),  which stirs up competition and innovation with tools that quite simply, get things done.

On the other hand, and the other extreme, more pointedly, is the desire of some companies to get the “all in one” solution, such as, witness the billion dollar market for Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS2007/SharePoint 2007), and the acquisition sprees of OpenText, Oracle, IBM, Sun, and the “large enterprise” players.

The Mashup Middle Ground

Re-enter the portal play – while it’s quite easy to argue that Google Wave is nothing new, and perhaps misses the pros and cons of earlier portal offerings, there is no doubt that this is part of a re-birth of portal technologies.

Which is perfect timing for a shaky economy – as we say in nearly every consulting engagement… You probably do not need MORE technology in your organization. You just need to make your existing investment work much more effectively, which is exactly what a portal “meta layer” will allow you to do.

Standards are more broadly adopted and understood at this stage in the market, and there is a far greater chance that portal implementations in 2009 and beyond will happen in weeks to months versus the 6-18 months of days past.

Will Google Wave be the Portal Saviour?

It seems unlikely that, early buzz aside, Google Wave will “own” the portal space any time soon, but if nothing else, it may cause Microsoft to realize once again that they have some turf to defend – after all, SharePoint initially came to be known as a portal framework, although it has rapidly come to be known primarily as more light-weight filesharing and search platform.

It will be interesting to see who rallies around Google Wave as a platform for development ON TOP of this infrastructure, as has happened with Salesforce.com, Amazon’s cloud services, and Apple’s iTunes Music Store (among others), and otherwise, exactly how much market share Google itself takes directly via Google Wave.

What’s YOUR Take?

Does Google Wave has a place in your portal or collaboration strategy? Replacing existing systems? Supplementing? Have never had such capabilities?

Let us know – this will be an interesting fight to watch.

Is Your Information Architected for Collaboration?

If not, let us bring our portal, collaboration, process, and content expertise to bear on YOUR project.

It it is entirely likely that you will not need to spend a single dime more on technology to get far better use of any investments you have already made.

Or if you have not yet invested in collaboration, let us help you make the most cost-effective choices in Doing Collaboration Right. It’s not just the technical tools you use, but the entire business environment as well.

• More about our Collaboration Consulting Services
• More about our Collaboration Education/Training offerings

There is a phenomenon in the content management world called SharePoint, which, like it or not, has really changed the level of awareness of electronic content concerns in businesses today.

While SharePoint has nearly made content management a commonplace term in organizations, it’s not as though SharePoint or any other solution is perfect.

To a certain degree, the Basic Content Services of SharePoint will be “good enough” that many businesses will not run into severe problems any time soon.

However, there are a variety of deficiencies of SharePoint that I hear from time to time – one of which is the Red Herring of almost any discussion, which is “will it scale?” Another, relating to businesses who take uptime, availability, and governance seriously is, can you REALLY manage the content in SharePoint as well as we’d like?

Listen to the podcast interview (below) between Ted Orme, Director European Operations for RepliWeb and Dan Keldsen, Co-founder and Principal of Information Architected discussing the pros and cons of SharePoint from a scalability and governance perspective, and how these concerns are not at all NEW to the content world.

If you are currently using SharePoint – have you experienced problems in rolling-out large-scale sites, or changes to those sites?

If you are using alternatives to SharePoint and are considering SharePoint as a supplement or replacement to existing solutions, such as from OpenText, IBM, EMC/Documentum – do you already have practices and processes in place that can easily be transfered to the SharePoint realm?

Please feel free to contribute your comments, concerns and questions, and together, we can make the most of ANY content management system, regardless of the provider. After all, your business is more likely to be about something else OTHER than running a content management system.

Is your Information Architected to get out of the way of your business, or better yet to fully support your business?

Listen now!

Listen to the Interview: IAM Talking: Scaling SharePoint Deployments… and Surviving

Is your Information Architected for SharePoint or Enterprise Content Management as a whole?

Contact us at 
617-933-9655 to discuss how you can reap the benefits of an architecture that will enable you to maximize the value of your content, information and knowledge without pursuing a painful and expensive re-architecting of your systems.

More details on our practices in these areas can be found at:

• Information Architected for SharePoint
• Information Architected for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Free resources on SharePoint

We have made a variety of free resources available regarding SharePoint, including a whitepaper written in early 2009, a series of nearly 100 questions answered from client inquiries in recent months, case studies, and more.

• Information Architected Resources for SharePoint (free)

SharePoint seems to rank nearly as high as Twitter in any given conversation these days – although I’ve yet to hear Oprah talk about SharePoint (not that I’m watching).

While there are many reasons not to adopt SharePoint or to use it as THE 100% solution for your content management, portal, search or workflow needs, it most certainly IS having a huge impact on our industry

Why is this?

What are some of the strengths of the “core” of what many call SharePoint’s “Basic Content Services” capabilities, and for the purposes of true enterprise-wide or cross-enterprise deployments, what are some of the hazards to be aware of regarding how information is organized and shared within a SharePoint environment?

Are the capabilities of SharePoint enough, if you care about managing and maximizing the value of your information? Are the tagging and taxonomy capabilities of SharePoint sufficient, or seriously deficient?

While we will not answer the questions to their entirety in this slightly over 22 minute podcast – I hope it prompts you to question whether your current or planned strategy for the use of SharePoint, or really, ANY content management system, is up to the full task or tasks you’re trying to accomplish, particulary with regards to organizing schemes such as tagging, metadata or taxonomy models.

Listen to the podcast interview (below) between Lowell Anderson, Vice President of Marketing at SchemaLogic, and Dan Keldsen, Co-founder and Principal of Information Architected discussing the pros and cons of tagging versus taxonomies, where some of the weakness and strengths of SharePoint sit, and where we might be heading with SharePoint and the types of concerns that customers of SharePoint have in trying to wring out the most and best effective use of SharePoint in their organizations.

Is your organization struggling with SharePoint schemas? Succeeding?

What are the pros and cons that you have seen?

War stories you’d like to share?

Please feel free to contribute your comments, concerns and questions, and together, perhaps we can all be that much wiser as the market overall, and SharePoint itself matures.

Listen now!

Listen to the Interview: IAM Talking: Smarter Tagging in a SharePoint Enterprise

This is the fifth post in which I provide answers to questions that were posed, but not answered during the webinar I conducted on SharePoint. (See Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 for additional questions and answers.  You may also listen to the recorded webinar, during which many other questions were addressed as well.)

This post is comprised of questions that center around the concept of SharePoint as a component to an integrated solution, including co-existence with other ECM products, issues of integration and how best to position SharePoint.

So without further ado…

Q: Can you please give me a ballpark idea of what a SharePoint developer costs per year?

A:  During the introduction of the webinar, and my initial blog post on the subject, I mentioned that one trend that led me to the conclusion that SharePoint is building in market momentum is the daily listing of job openings I receive through my ECM job market agents, for SharePoint developers.  The market survey also found that lack of SharePoint experience and expertise was the number 1 greatest challenge to deployment (and partner expertise #5).  As a result of such trends, those with SharePoint experience and skills are in demand and command fairly high salaries.  I estimate that an average cost is between  $60 – 125k year, based on company, location,  experience and industry.  (In Boston, where I am located about $90k)

Q:   Is it true that all documents must be stored into a database?

A:  Yes, in order for the documents to be managed within SharePoint they must be stored in the  content databases.

Q:  How is SharePoint a component for the ECM solution?
A:  In a word through integration.  But it is likely that the issuer of this question had something slightly more strategic in mind.  Several times during the webinar I mentioned that the survey data indicated that SharePoint is predominately used as a component to an overall ECM strategy, not as the entire ECM system.  This observation was based on the various data points that showed SharePoint being used in many departments across the enterprise, but in few instances as a standard or heavy usage within any business application.  When asked what business applications SharePoint was used in, a few received a “not at all” ranking, and many received a “somewhat”, only.  This infers that other tools or components are being used by these organizations to achieve their ECM solution for that business application.  Also – when SharePoint functionality was ranked by our survey respondents, you may recall, that file sharing and collaboration were used heavily, but many others were ranked as having minimal use.  Thus in order to integrate the SharePoint component into a full ECM strategy (with search, records, web content etc.)  it would have to be part of a component, not the whole system.  So back to the original and terse answer – integration.  And yes there is quite a healthy business growing around this at the moment.

Q: Do you have any knowledge or experience with SharePoint in a university setting? Would you recommend its use in that environment?

A: I have no direct knowledge of SharePoint being used in a university or college setting. Are any of you out there using SharePoint in an academic environment?
That said, there is no reason why SharePoint would not function as well in a university setting, as in any other settings.  (I have personal first hand knowledge of SharePoint in health care, financial services, professional services, insurance, manufacturing and government.)  The point to remember is that the same SharePoint strengths and weaknesses encountered in these other verticals will be the same of academia.   (See the market report for detail.)

Q: What type of bushiness application is the best fit for employing SharePoint?
A: According to the market report, SharePoint is most often used for internally facing collaborative portals and knowledge collaboration applications.  As mentioned in earlier posts, and elaborated on in the market report, filing sharing and collaboration were the most highly ranked (by far) SharePoint functions.  SharePoint can be used as a component of other business applications, but as my experience and the survey indicate, this happens through considerable integration with other tools, platforms and applications. Therein lies the reason for the survey finding that SharePoint implementations are most often complicated by integration issues.

Q: For those organizations that relayed customization as an issue, please elaborate…was cost of customization the issue? Was the customization exercise more difficult than expected? Please elaborate.

A:  I will elaborate to the degree I can.  The survey did not delve too deeply into this specific issue, but did shed some light. Half of the survey respondents indicated that the deployment of custom SharePoint solutions required more effort than expected.  The biggest obstacles cited were (lack of) developers and toolsets, and integration with existing applications.  So yes, customization is apparently a major issue, specifically with regards to integration, as opposed to customizing the SharePoint interface itself.

Q: Is it fair to say that SharePoint is being used mostly as a portal application?
A:  Based on the survey data, yes, the number one application was internal or employee-facing portals.

Q: Are there OBVIOUS [all caps provided by submitter of the question] differences between mid sized and large companies in terms of usage and/or satisfaction?

A:  Interestingly enough – NO.  I did run several slices through the data, and found that size organization had little to no influence on overall levels of satisfaction, functionality usage or applications that SharePoint is applied to.

Q: My personal experience is that SharePoint may not be as prevalent in Europe and other parts of the word. I’m curious if this is true or just my limited exposure to the market.
A:  OK all you European ECMers out there – what do you say?  I can only comment based on what I have heard from colleagues in Europe, that the SharePoint fervor is much like that in the US.  Anyone agree – disagree?

Q: Microsoft with the new version of SQL 8 told us that now SharePoint can be used to manage XML files natively and apply a record management to those collection. What do you think about that? We still believe more in a solution like Marklogic, Soft AG Tamino or Ixiasoft TextML to do that type of job. What do you think about our opinion?

A:  MicroSoft makes many claims regarding SharePoint, and all are technically true.  Does it provide records management – yes, but as the survey revealed most SharePoint users do not utilize the records management functionality.  Why – well among those that do use it, it gets poor-fair grades. So while I have no doubt that SharePoint can version control and records control an XML file, I seriously doubt it does so with the same degree of functionality and control that XML specialized tools, such as those you listed in your question, provide.  If your strategy includes specific and dedicated use of XML files, I would recommend, at least for now, managing those files in an XML-oriented tool. So – I agree with your opinion. -Great minds think alike .

Q:  [Note:  Two user questions are presented here, as they both focus on a similar issue and can be addressed in a single answer.]

• Hi How do you see SharePoint interfacing with a specialized ECM product such as Livelink from Open Text. Can they co-exist? Thanks
• My organization uses FileNet as its main document repository. We have plans to move toward SharePoint as our document management solution. Even so, FileNet will be around for years to come. Can SharePoint be used to manage content across multiple repositories?

A:  The short answer to this question is a resounding YES. Literally every ECM solution provider has a SharePoint integration story to tell.  Open Text has been the most vocal and direct about this, but if you look at the marketing collateral of the ECM vendors (including but not limited to Open Text, IBM/FileNet, EMC Document, Oracle/Stellent, Spring CM, ClearView, and even open source ECM provider, Alfresco) you will find a SharePoint integration story. Of course, in this context, it is important to reiterate out a survey finding – integration is a major challenge to SharePoint solution development. Not only is there the labor and time involved, but first and foremost you need to have a strategy – and no “solution provider” can provide you with that. As business users and developers of content, as records managers and compliance officers, as information architects, you need to determine the appropriate approach to integration.  Is SharePoint a single point of access front-end, or one repository on the backend, accessed by another ECM/portal solution.  Does (some) content get developed in SharePoint and then managed by another ECM at some point in its lifecycle? Does search provide the bridge between the systems. The possibilities are almost limitless.  Each should be evaluated from a cost benefit/risk perspective.

And that leads me to the next set of questions.

Q: [Note: Several related questions are presented here, and addressed with a single response.  ]

• How do you get started with a SharePoint implementation?

• What happens to organizations over a couple of years that implement SharePoint without a strategy or a governance model?

• If we are planning on deploying all facets of SharePoint in the next year, what are the largest pitfalls we should try to avoid?
• Do you think that some of the expertise lacking in organizations is that organizations are underestimating the need for expertise in ECM/EDRM etc and that part of the problem is fundamental ECM design
• Was any information gleaned as to the governance and taxonomy development PRIOR to deployment – or have most not bothered?
• Do you think based on the low price point of SP there is an expectation of not properly investing in proper front end consulting?
• Are you seeing today that companies are not setting a IT governance before rolling out SP? How do you avoid recreating a file server file management strategy in SharePoint?

A:  Perhaps my response is a bit prejudiced by the fact that I have spent the better part of 20+ years building ECM strategies for organizations, and proselytizing on the importance of strategy and information architecture.  So, how do you get started with a SharePoint implementation?  Do a needs assessment and develop a strategy. Position SharePoint within the strategy, understanding its role and value proposition.  Integrate it into the same information architecture and governance model that you have for all of your business content.

That said – I am a practical realist and so I will add that it is sometimes advisable to simply just get started – i.e. SharePoint is simple enough to support the creation of  a handful of collaborative sites, as a learning experience.  Let your community explore the merits and drawbacks of SharePoint.  BUT – do so with eyes wide open – and be at the ready with a strategy. In other words, there is no harm in facilitating exploration as long as it is monitored responsibly, with an intention to migrate “successes’ into an ECM strategy and corporate governance, and constructively delete and learn from “failures.

Avoid the pitfall of believing that SharePoint is easy.  Yes, I know I just stated that it is easy to get started, but realize that is all you are doing. As the survey respondents indicated the biggest challenge to scaling is developer talent and integration issues. Also, as the survey respondents indicated, be aware of the fact that in many cases specific SharePoint functionality (e.g. records management and security) may not meet your organization’s needs.  So be prepared to augment SharePoint with complementary tools and technologies.  Do not “settle” for SharePoint functionality, unless it is “good enough” for the demands (lack thereof) of your organization. (Sounds like a strategy right?) If an organization allows SharePoint to organically grow without any governance or management over a period of 1 or more years, they will likely end up with at  best – a host of individuals sites that meet the needs of individual communities, but that represent a risk because there is no way to manage or appreciate what is contained in the sites. (These organizations have not learned from the e-mail and Notes compliance problems of the past).  They also will likely end up with silo solutions, severely limiting the value of the content repositories.

Unfortunately adequate planning and strategizing often does not precede an ECM implementation, and the chances of that occurring only increase with a tool such as SharePoint which can appear to be “so simple” initially. I have said it before, using e-mail is very simple as well, and that is what has gotten many organizations into a sticky and often expensive situation.  Ease of content creation and sharing leads to lack of control, lack of governance and no establishment best practices.  This situation is potentially viable for unsuspecting SharePoint users. But not only is this a matter of risk and best practices, it can also lead to under utilizing SharePoint.  The last questions was a good one – how do you avoid simply creating file share? Answer: – plan and strategize.

Whew – that was a loaded set of questions that led to a lebgthy answer.  BTW – the observatiosn and opinions asserted in teh last response are being echoed in teh interviews I am conductiong with SharePoint users.  Some interesting case studies are emerging – and are forthcoming.

On that note – if any of you out there feel you have an interesting SharePoint experience to tell (positive OR negative) – I would like to hear it and share it with our community. Contact me though this blog – or e-mail directly – cf@informationarchitected.com

With that I conclude this post with some good news – I am almost done addressing these webinar questions.  The next post, which will focus on some hard hitting technical and competitive issues, will be a bit different – so stay tuned …

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server began to take the ECM world by storm with the introduction of MOSS2007. 2007 was the year in which Microsoft realized that it could make (nearly without trying, or without coordinated effort – YET) a billion dollars USD through the sales of an ECM platform.