Will the 2010 AIIM expo + conference be cloudy? – Repost From AIIM ERM Community

This is a repost from my blog post on the AIIM ERM Community Expert Blog…

Will the 2010 AIIM expo + conference be cloudy?

I am looking forward to the 2010 AIIM expo + conference this year after missing the conference the last two years. I always learn something new and it is a great chance to meet some really smart people.

One topic I am interested exploring extensively is how the ECM market is responding to the “Cloud Computing”. There has been quite a bit of hype over the last couple of years and it will be interesting to see how far the ECM vendors have gone to close the gap between myth and reality.

First let’s make sure we are all on the same page. I will use Forrester’s definition for cloud computing: “A standardized IT capability, such as software, application platform, or infrastructure, delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use and self-service way.” Pretty straight forward, right, then why all the confusion?

Microsoft and the Cloud

Microsoft has been heavily promoting both their Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Windows Azure. These are two distinctly different offerings with BPOS delivered as software as a service (SaaS) and Windows Azure delivered as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). So how are these two offerings different? Here is a simple definition of these two offerings:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

IaaS (Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Microsoft’s Azure) provide virtual computing environments allowing customers to use web service interfaces to launch instances of operating systems and associated blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider’s administrative console to start, stop, and access and configure their virtual servers and storage.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS):

With SaaS the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure and their software product over the internet for use as a service on demand. Good examples of SaaS offerings include web-based email and applications from Google, CRM (sales management & reporting) from SalesForce.com, SharePoint, Exchange Email and Office Communicator from Microsoft with BPOS.

Other ECM Vendors and The Cloud

No doubt the other ECM vendors at the 2010 AIIM conference will be talking about their Cloud offerings. Looking at the conference agenda and reading the descriptions of the keynote sessions the only session which discusses the Cloud is the keynote entitled “Reinvent Work, Collaboration, and Innovation in the 21st Century” by Google’s Cyrus Mistry.

Reviewing the conference sessions, I did not really see many sessions (only a few) addressing ECM in the Cloud. So it will be interesting to see what is being talked about on the exposition floor by the ECM vendors. When I searched for “Cloud Strategy” on EMC’s website the recommended link in the search results was Virtual Computing Environment coalition (VCE) which looks like it is targeted at enterprises who want to create a “cloud-like” utility computing capability within their firewalls also known as a “Private Cloud”. I will be interested to see if EMC is working on a similar SaaS offerings to Microsoft’s BPOS.

My goal this week will be to see who really “get’s it” and understands the implications and challenges of managing your corporate information in the Cloud. I want to see who has already thought through the personal data privacy and e-Discovery implications. I will be really excited if I find someone who has gone the extra mile and defined an implementation pattern and methodology for leveraging the Cloud for ECM. I am not holding my breath on this one.

I’ll let you know what I find out this week.

Technorati Tags: AIIM,BetterECM,SharePoint,ECM

Why I do this? (Part 1) – Repost from AIIM ERM Community Blog

As I mentioned in my post “Joining a Very Special Group” I was invited to write about Electronic Records Management (ERM) on the new AIIM ERM Community.

The following is the first post I made on the AIIM ERM Community Expert Blogs last week.

Why I do this? (Part 1)

Ever wonder how or why you wind up doing what you do? Sometimes people set out on their career journey with a very specific destination in mind and carefully plan the development of that career along with very specific goals. That is not what happened for me.

I fell into the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business purely by chance. Over 30 years ago my career goal was to become a pilot and I achieved that goal after completing my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering and successfully completing flight training in the US Navy.

I had an interesting career in the Navy, got to see the world, had some amazing experiences, and met some amazing people. Through my experiences I decided that flying for one of the airlines was not something I would enjoy once I retired. In 1988 as I looked at what might be the next big thing, I decided to go back to school and retool. I went back to my alma mater, University of Florida (Go Gators!), and completed a Master of Science in Computer Science.

I was lucky enough to serve as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a Navy aircraft research and development organization before I retired from the Navy. During my time as CIO I saw how critical the “I” in that job title really was. Information was critical to the success of the research and testing of the next generation aircraft and weapon systems.

After retiring I joined an IT software and services company that had a very robust workflow solution. This is the part where serendipity comes in. The DoD 5015.2 records management standard had just been issued and one of our customers wanted a document management solution, which would also comply with the brand new DoD 5015.2 standard. This was my chance to create a new integrated document, records, and workflow management solution using PC Docs, Provenance’s ForeMost, and our workflow software. This became one of the first integrated document management suites (IDAM as coined by Gartner) on the market and was the first integrated suite to become DoD 5015.2 certified. I guess I was a pioneer of sorts.

Anyway, I went on to become the President of the records management company (which became TrueArc), created AutoRecords and was awarded a patent, and provided the first DoD 5015.2 certified integrated records management solution for Microsoft’s SharePoint 2001 (version 1). I also successfully led the acquisition of TrueArc by Documentum in late 2002.

Over the last 8 years or so I have been focused on creating solutions, which help businesses effectively manage information and extract the most value from one of their most important assets. Although I have focused primarily on leveraging SharePoint as an information management platform over the last couple of years I have been working on effective ways of using Documentum and SharePoint together.

So, as you can see, I never really started out planning to be in the ECM business. In some way I fell into this career. But I really didn’t answer the hypothetical question “Why I do this?” yet. But I will.

In Part 2, I will delve more deeply into the answer to this question…

Technorati Tags: BetterECM,AIIM,Records Management,SharePoint,Compliance,TrueArc

The New AIIM Communities Goes Live

The new AIIM Communities online platform went live today. Most of the AIIM Expert Bloggers already have made posts to the Electronic Records Management (ERM) and Enterprise 2.0 communities.

I am honored to join such a distinguished group of expert bloggers. We will be writing regularly and I really look forward to reading my fellow bloggers’ posts. My first post, “Why I do this: Part 1”, is up and I will have another post up later today. I plan to write about the AIIM expo + conference next week.

Let me know what you think!

Technorati Tags: AIIM,ECM,records management,BetterECM

Big News! – Office and SharePoint 2010 Released to Manufacturing

I received the email announcement late yesterday that Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 was officially released to manufacturing. This is a significant milestone for the next version of SharePoint and for Microsoft. Congratulations!

Some Volume Licensing Customers will be able to download the English products starting April 27 and customers will be able to purchase the new products through Microsoft partners starting May 1.

BetterECM will be in Philadelphia this week at the AIIM expo + conference and will be spending some time with the Microsoft team and Partners.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,BetterECM,AIIM,Microsoft

Joining a Very Special Group

I saw Greg Clark’s post over the weekend and realized I had neglected to mention; Starting later in April I am joining a very special group of thought leaders; aka the “AIIM Electronic Records Management Expert Bloggers”.

So, besides trying to climb back up on the BetterECM blog horse and start writing more frequently, I now will have Bryant Duhon cracking the whip to make sure I get my weekly AIIM ERM Expert Blog post in on time. This should be fun and the most exciting thing will be to see what my “expert” colleagues will have to say.

If you have topics that you would like me to tackle or questions you would like me to try and answer please add a comment and let me know. As most of my readers know, I am not bashful and love to take on challenging topics and issues head-on.

This should be fun!

Technorati Tags: ECM,BetterECM,AIIM,Information Management