Just a quick update to let you know that each week from now until December we will be featuring speakers at this years Online Information Conference (IWR's sister event).
It's a chance for them to give you a taste for what they will be discussing and for you to see in advance something that might be of interest.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Monday, 22 September 2008
SharePoint: pros and cons
Sorry to bang on about content management again, I do have better things to do with my time, honestly. It's just that a bit of news caught my eye again at the tail end of last week. A lot of noise is made by commentators about the impact of SharePoint on the industry. You certainly can't talk about content management, or ECM, these days without mentioning Microsoft's disruptive product, but you certainly can talk until the cows come home about whether it's a full ECM solution or not.
Usability has often been talked about as the secret of SharePoint's success; users love it and IT has to just deal with it. But there are other reasons. John Powell, chief executive of open source ECM vendor Alfresco, told me it was more about the distribution mechanism - being hooked into Office you might say has given SP an unfair advantage. Love it or hate it though, and most users seem to love it, SharePoint has certainly raised the profile of ECM in the enterprise.
The perception therefore has been that SharePoint's gain has been its rivals' loss, especially in the mid-market space where it has really made hay. But the latest findings from analyst firm CMS Watch reported that the ECM market is thriving more than ever before...actually more that most other areas of IT.
The truth is that SharePoint has spread the content management gospel, educating users that, yes, they probably could do with some tools to mange their content actually. Far from buying the vendor line that SP can be all things to all people, buyers are beginning to understand that they will need to look elsewhere for certain capabilities SharePoint can't provide, such as imaging and capture, said lead analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe.
So, judging by the report, the prospects fort IT buyers are pretty good. Prices are coming down, choice is increasing and firms are beginning to fill the gaps in the market. It's obviously more complex than that, but generally speaking it's not a bad time to be looking at re-evaluating your ECM systems, as many vendors are now offering integrate with SharePoint, so for example, you can keep your highly usable SP front-end, but take advantage of more enterprise capabilities provided by other vendors underneath.
Usability has often been talked about as the secret of SharePoint's success; users love it and IT has to just deal with it. But there are other reasons. John Powell, chief executive of open source ECM vendor Alfresco, told me it was more about the distribution mechanism - being hooked into Office you might say has given SP an unfair advantage. Love it or hate it though, and most users seem to love it, SharePoint has certainly raised the profile of ECM in the enterprise.
The perception therefore has been that SharePoint's gain has been its rivals' loss, especially in the mid-market space where it has really made hay. But the latest findings from analyst firm CMS Watch reported that the ECM market is thriving more than ever before...actually more that most other areas of IT.
The truth is that SharePoint has spread the content management gospel, educating users that, yes, they probably could do with some tools to mange their content actually. Far from buying the vendor line that SP can be all things to all people, buyers are beginning to understand that they will need to look elsewhere for certain capabilities SharePoint can't provide, such as imaging and capture, said lead analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe.
So, judging by the report, the prospects fort IT buyers are pretty good. Prices are coming down, choice is increasing and firms are beginning to fill the gaps in the market. It's obviously more complex than that, but generally speaking it's not a bad time to be looking at re-evaluating your ECM systems, as many vendors are now offering integrate with SharePoint, so for example, you can keep your highly usable SP front-end, but take advantage of more enterprise capabilities provided by other vendors underneath.
Monday, 15 September 2008
The standards are coming!
Hot on the heels of the attempts by the Content Group and BSI to create a publically available specification for Enterprise Content Management products, last week saw a very interesting announcement at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit. During one of the keynote presentations, analyst Mark Gilbert informed us of "one of the most interesting things I've seen in my 15 years as an analyst". No, it wasn't Bill Gates being spotted unicyclying down Regent Street in a Google branded baseball cap, it was the news that IBM, EMC, and Microsoft and others are all working together on greater interoperability.
Unlike the news from a month or so back, which involved consultancy The Content Group and other players looking to create best practice in defining and implementing ECM projects, this is a proactive vendor move, with IBM, EMC, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle, SAP and Alfresco on board. Apparently they've been at it behind the scenes for over a year now and plan to submit their work to standards body Oasis. Maybe it isn't as surprising as it sounds though - as Gilbert said during his presentation, the big vendors have probably listened to their customers' gripes, looked at their sales, and realised that non-interoperable products in this market aren't going to help anyone. In fact siloed environments are only going to add to customer frustration, and if they look to buy best of breed, organisations are going to look to those that can interoperate better.
So what's it all about? Well, according to open source ECM player Alfresco, the so-called Content Management Interoperability Services specification is now at draft implementation phase. The objective is to deliver a common API that can be used to write ECM apps that will work anywhere. The Alfresco release reads: "Just as the database vendors standardised on SQL in the 1980s, today's leading ECM vendors have developed a draft specification with the goal of delivering and enabling interoperability across content repositories."
Bold sentiments indeed, but with the backing of virtually every major ECM vendor, this could mark a real tipping point in the ECM market, and if successful, will make the lives of IT buyers so much easier. In many ways it's a sign off the growing maturity of the market - it's not there yet, but this is certainly one to watch in the coming months.
Unlike the news from a month or so back, which involved consultancy The Content Group and other players looking to create best practice in defining and implementing ECM projects, this is a proactive vendor move, with IBM, EMC, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle, SAP and Alfresco on board. Apparently they've been at it behind the scenes for over a year now and plan to submit their work to standards body Oasis. Maybe it isn't as surprising as it sounds though - as Gilbert said during his presentation, the big vendors have probably listened to their customers' gripes, looked at their sales, and realised that non-interoperable products in this market aren't going to help anyone. In fact siloed environments are only going to add to customer frustration, and if they look to buy best of breed, organisations are going to look to those that can interoperate better.
So what's it all about? Well, according to open source ECM player Alfresco, the so-called Content Management Interoperability Services specification is now at draft implementation phase. The objective is to deliver a common API that can be used to write ECM apps that will work anywhere. The Alfresco release reads: "Just as the database vendors standardised on SQL in the 1980s, today's leading ECM vendors have developed a draft specification with the goal of delivering and enabling interoperability across content repositories."
Bold sentiments indeed, but with the backing of virtually every major ECM vendor, this could mark a real tipping point in the ECM market, and if successful, will make the lives of IT buyers so much easier. In many ways it's a sign off the growing maturity of the market - it's not there yet, but this is certainly one to watch in the coming months.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Changing Business models
How do you make money from your content without sacrificing your rights? It's the big question to every company that provides information online.
Following on from the opening presentations at the Global Information Industry Summit, the contentious issue of protecting IP while seizing new business opportunities was where assembled delegates really got to chew the fat.
In terms of maintaining meaningful copyright online, it's all about regaining control of the content. In terms of new business models its recognising opportunities when they present themselves and then being able to deliver them to the customer without hurting your business.
There was a mass of ideas and methods that were explored in sessions through the day, but it was the panel session moderated by info guru David Worlock that was most successful in its attempt to understand the issues.
The idea was to consider which business models will be the most appropriate for publishers to adopt. Should all online content stick to the tradition of being free or is a subscription model actually more effective? Is a hybrid of the two where a solution lies?
With panellists from Nature Publishing (Steven Inchcoombe), Dow Jones (Simon Alterman), Thomson Reuters (David Craig) and the FT.com (Rob Grimshaw) the discussion examined how the business, financial and scientific publishing worlds have sought to find their own solution.
After Worlock shared the collective relief of the audience following a successful experiment of the Hadron Collider the panellists soon got down to the bare bones. Dow Jones' Alterman pointed out that the business model of content provider and publisher was and continued to be quite simple, it was about selling content to an audience and making sure there was an audience for that content.
FT.com's Grimshaw was bullish in the defence of his organisation's stance of how to manage its revenue stream with its mixture of limited free content and corporate subscriptions. He said the FT defended its right to choose its own business model and not be dictated to from outside. The FT would never be ashamed of putting value on its content he added.
A friendly dig by Worlock suggested the FT's approach was "The great laboratory of business models"
Meanwhile Nature's Inchcoombe reminded us that in NPG's long and illustrious history their business model had always been a bit of a hybrid anyway with content originating from its community of scientists and researchers that form the bedrock of its business.
David Craig from Thomson Reuters made a salient point asking what the customer is using your information for. What was it about the content that they got value from? Furthermore, the value they placed in your content was based on what they could do with it, how it helped them do their job.
It was good to have a reminder that ultimately that is what it's all about.
Following on from the opening presentations at the Global Information Industry Summit, the contentious issue of protecting IP while seizing new business opportunities was where assembled delegates really got to chew the fat.
In terms of maintaining meaningful copyright online, it's all about regaining control of the content. In terms of new business models its recognising opportunities when they present themselves and then being able to deliver them to the customer without hurting your business.
There was a mass of ideas and methods that were explored in sessions through the day, but it was the panel session moderated by info guru David Worlock that was most successful in its attempt to understand the issues.
The idea was to consider which business models will be the most appropriate for publishers to adopt. Should all online content stick to the tradition of being free or is a subscription model actually more effective? Is a hybrid of the two where a solution lies?
With panellists from Nature Publishing (Steven Inchcoombe), Dow Jones (Simon Alterman), Thomson Reuters (David Craig) and the FT.com (Rob Grimshaw) the discussion examined how the business, financial and scientific publishing worlds have sought to find their own solution.
After Worlock shared the collective relief of the audience following a successful experiment of the Hadron Collider the panellists soon got down to the bare bones. Dow Jones' Alterman pointed out that the business model of content provider and publisher was and continued to be quite simple, it was about selling content to an audience and making sure there was an audience for that content.
FT.com's Grimshaw was bullish in the defence of his organisation's stance of how to manage its revenue stream with its mixture of limited free content and corporate subscriptions. He said the FT defended its right to choose its own business model and not be dictated to from outside. The FT would never be ashamed of putting value on its content he added.
A friendly dig by Worlock suggested the FT's approach was "The great laboratory of business models"
Meanwhile Nature's Inchcoombe reminded us that in NPG's long and illustrious history their business model had always been a bit of a hybrid anyway with content originating from its community of scientists and researchers that form the bedrock of its business.
David Craig from Thomson Reuters made a salient point asking what the customer is using your information for. What was it about the content that they got value from? Furthermore, the value they placed in your content was based on what they could do with it, how it helped them do their job.
It was good to have a reminder that ultimately that is what it's all about.
Global Information Industry Summit and challenges for the information world
After enjoying an extended break last week, I found myself straight back in to the throng of things. Today, I've spent time with fellow delegates at this year's Global Information Industry Summit which for the first time has been staged in London.
From a content provider's perspective it was an interesting day, the Keynote from Hugo Dixon, Editor in Chief and Chairman of financial analytic news site; breakingviews.com was a handy session full of advice on how to make a successful business from an online content platform.
Hugo outlined how the decline of print journalism has continued to challenge traditional publishing business models, citing that many under 30's rarely (if ever) buy newspapers for the source of their information. Older generations are also moving away to online and mobile platforms.
Of course we've all known that for a while now, but what Hugo discussed was helpful in understanding what does work. He explained that just pushing content online isn't good enough. Quality writing and access to information is key but it has to be paid for. At breakingviews.com they were one of the first to successfully use a subscription model, their rivals have since followed suit.
From what I understand, Hugo believed some of the key questions content providers and problems need to consider are how do they defend their revenue base? Will costs have to be cut and will that lead to a loss of talent if that doesn't happen?
The other issues are that professionals are bombarded with information, yet they demand sophisticated content, anything else is pretty much worthless to them as they don't have time to weed through the detritus. Nor are they prepared to put up with second-rate insights. Add to this the matter of speed, particularly in financial reporting and analysis and the challenge is a significant one.
Something to bear in mind for the rest of the summit...
From a content provider's perspective it was an interesting day, the Keynote from Hugo Dixon, Editor in Chief and Chairman of financial analytic news site; breakingviews.com was a handy session full of advice on how to make a successful business from an online content platform.
Hugo outlined how the decline of print journalism has continued to challenge traditional publishing business models, citing that many under 30's rarely (if ever) buy newspapers for the source of their information. Older generations are also moving away to online and mobile platforms.
Of course we've all known that for a while now, but what Hugo discussed was helpful in understanding what does work. He explained that just pushing content online isn't good enough. Quality writing and access to information is key but it has to be paid for. At breakingviews.com they were one of the first to successfully use a subscription model, their rivals have since followed suit.
From what I understand, Hugo believed some of the key questions content providers and problems need to consider are how do they defend their revenue base? Will costs have to be cut and will that lead to a loss of talent if that doesn't happen?
The other issues are that professionals are bombarded with information, yet they demand sophisticated content, anything else is pretty much worthless to them as they don't have time to weed through the detritus. Nor are they prepared to put up with second-rate insights. Add to this the matter of speed, particularly in financial reporting and analysis and the challenge is a significant one.
Something to bear in mind for the rest of the summit...
Monday, 8 September 2008
Omnidox takes on the big boys
A little while ago I reported on the exciting happenings taking place at the Internet World trade show in Earls Court. Well, I say exciting, but it's all relative I guess. The main topic of debate in the content management arena seemed to be the suitability or otherwise of many big-name, big-brand products to enterprise requirements.
Enterprise IT shoppers were warned by various experts that they should not necessarily go with the big boys because their products may not be a good fit for many of them, and are likely to be costly, unwieldy and require lengthy implementations. Instead, IT managers were advised to clearly establish their requirements and then seek out those vendors whose products provide the best fit. Not that these experts were slagging off the IBMs and Documentums per se; it was more a polite suggestion that buying from a big vendor will not necessarily meet all your content management needs, despite the claims that may have been made by said vendor.
Well, now a perfect example of what they were talking about - a smallish vendor operating in a very specialised segment is accruing some rather impressive customers like Scottish and Newcastle, Virgin and Barclays. Now document management is probably one of the least sexy areas of possibly the least sexy technology field ever - content management - but with its Omnidox product, Stortext could well be on to something.
Perhaps most importantly, it's an on-demand product; if anything is going to encourage firms to take a chance on a smaller company like this, it's going to be the delivery model. On-demand, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, whatever you want to call it, has long been hailed for its low start-up costs, low overheads and impressive RoI and nowhere is this more telling than in the content management space.
Stortext's Mark Iveson told me that the figures alone are persuading some big names to jump on board. And it makes sense - if you're spending upwards of 100k on software, licenses, servers, maintenance etc etc, you might well look for simpler alternatives. Another benefit, as he said, is that new functionality can be turned on at any time, for all of your users, removing the nasty business of upgrade paths every three years. And features can be hidden or otherwise according to role, so users are not lumbered with a whole heap of functionality that is neither relevant or useful.
Now, I'm no SaaS evangelist, but it will be interesting to see if any of the big content management vendors take a leaf out of Stortext's book and start to roll-out on-demand versions of their products.
Enterprise IT shoppers were warned by various experts that they should not necessarily go with the big boys because their products may not be a good fit for many of them, and are likely to be costly, unwieldy and require lengthy implementations. Instead, IT managers were advised to clearly establish their requirements and then seek out those vendors whose products provide the best fit. Not that these experts were slagging off the IBMs and Documentums per se; it was more a polite suggestion that buying from a big vendor will not necessarily meet all your content management needs, despite the claims that may have been made by said vendor.
Well, now a perfect example of what they were talking about - a smallish vendor operating in a very specialised segment is accruing some rather impressive customers like Scottish and Newcastle, Virgin and Barclays. Now document management is probably one of the least sexy areas of possibly the least sexy technology field ever - content management - but with its Omnidox product, Stortext could well be on to something.
Perhaps most importantly, it's an on-demand product; if anything is going to encourage firms to take a chance on a smaller company like this, it's going to be the delivery model. On-demand, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, whatever you want to call it, has long been hailed for its low start-up costs, low overheads and impressive RoI and nowhere is this more telling than in the content management space.
Stortext's Mark Iveson told me that the figures alone are persuading some big names to jump on board. And it makes sense - if you're spending upwards of 100k on software, licenses, servers, maintenance etc etc, you might well look for simpler alternatives. Another benefit, as he said, is that new functionality can be turned on at any time, for all of your users, removing the nasty business of upgrade paths every three years. And features can be hidden or otherwise according to role, so users are not lumbered with a whole heap of functionality that is neither relevant or useful.
Now, I'm no SaaS evangelist, but it will be interesting to see if any of the big content management vendors take a leaf out of Stortext's book and start to roll-out on-demand versions of their products.
Monday, 1 September 2008
SharePoint splits the field
It's a truth universally acknowledged that Microsoft SharePoint has really shaken up the content management market since it burst onto the scene a few years ago. Well, according to the latest piece of research by independent analyst firm CMS Watch, the arch disruptor is really going at it in the enterprise portals space.
SharePoint has made the huge impact it has thanks to a few factors, according to CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. Microsoft has done a great job of evangelising the product, so that the vast network of developers and consultancies under its wing, for right or wrong, think that SharePoint can basically solve all of their problems. The truth, of course, is slightly more mundane - it can't. In addition, the commonly-held perception that SharePoint is free may have helped to drive its popularity, Byrne suggested. The reality, yet again, is somewhat different - although the underlying service comes at no cost, the pounds can quickly mount up as extra functionality is piled on top.
CMS Watch's Enterprise Portals 2009 report which was released last week notes that SharePoint's rivals are desperately trying to claw back their share of the market by adding high-end functionality that Microsoft cannot currently provide, in a bid to differentiate. Specifically, deep integration with heavyweight, and more importantly, non-.Net based CRM, ERP and other systems is one area where Oracle, IBM and the rest have a chance, because Microsoft's offering is widely regarded to be too lightweight in this area. Web 2.0-type functionlity was also mentioned in the report as one area where the high end portal vendors are looking to capitalise on areas SharePoint has traditionally been weak in.
But that strategy may turn out to be a tad problematic for them, because you can be pretty sure that this hasn't gone unnoticed in Redmond. As Byrne commented, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft improves what it's doing in the social software space, perhaps with the release of Office 14 in a couple of years. And it will also be working SharePoint's ability to integrate with non-.Net enterprise systems - it can technically be done via BizTalk, says Byrne, but it's still not ideal.
One other interesting trend to note from the report that make Microsoft ever so slightly worried though - the open source firms seem to have SharePoint firmly in their sights for "simpler scenarios", with Apache, eXo, Liferay, and uPortal all recently undergoing major upgrades and rapid expansion.
SharePoint has made the huge impact it has thanks to a few factors, according to CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. Microsoft has done a great job of evangelising the product, so that the vast network of developers and consultancies under its wing, for right or wrong, think that SharePoint can basically solve all of their problems. The truth, of course, is slightly more mundane - it can't. In addition, the commonly-held perception that SharePoint is free may have helped to drive its popularity, Byrne suggested. The reality, yet again, is somewhat different - although the underlying service comes at no cost, the pounds can quickly mount up as extra functionality is piled on top.
CMS Watch's Enterprise Portals 2009 report which was released last week notes that SharePoint's rivals are desperately trying to claw back their share of the market by adding high-end functionality that Microsoft cannot currently provide, in a bid to differentiate. Specifically, deep integration with heavyweight, and more importantly, non-.Net based CRM, ERP and other systems is one area where Oracle, IBM and the rest have a chance, because Microsoft's offering is widely regarded to be too lightweight in this area. Web 2.0-type functionlity was also mentioned in the report as one area where the high end portal vendors are looking to capitalise on areas SharePoint has traditionally been weak in.
But that strategy may turn out to be a tad problematic for them, because you can be pretty sure that this hasn't gone unnoticed in Redmond. As Byrne commented, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft improves what it's doing in the social software space, perhaps with the release of Office 14 in a couple of years. And it will also be working SharePoint's ability to integrate with non-.Net enterprise systems - it can technically be done via BizTalk, says Byrne, but it's still not ideal.
One other interesting trend to note from the report that make Microsoft ever so slightly worried though - the open source firms seem to have SharePoint firmly in their sights for "simpler scenarios", with Apache, eXo, Liferay, and uPortal all recently undergoing major upgrades and rapid expansion.
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