AIIM Webinar: SharePoint and Your Information Infrastructure

I was the speaker for this webinar last week with AIIM and EMC. Here is the synopsis:

On the surface, implementing SharePoint as an enterprise content management solution seems simple and straightforward. After all, pop in your disk and, voila, SharePoint is installed. Yet, like every other single piece of information technology, deciding the proper role for SharePoint in your organization becomes complicated. Fast. How do you determine the role that SharePoint can play in your ECM strategy? We’re here to help.

SharePoint can, and will, play a key role in many organizations’ enterprise content management strategy. However, other than for some smaller companies, SharePoint is not an ECM infrastructure in and of itself; it needs to integrate with and be extended by other products for issues such as compliance, storage management, document imaging, etc. Discover how to leverage the capabilities of both SharePoint and ECM tools, including issues around interoperability. We’ll conclude with a look at potential return on investment.

To view the archived event click HERE. Hope you find it useful.

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,ECM,AIIM,SharePoint

sharepointgovernance.org Launches

There is a new destination for those looking for SharePoint governance best practices and lessons learned from those of us in the trenches implementing SharePoint.

Check it out at: www.sharepointgovernance.org

I am pleased that I was asked to be one of the  peers on the site and look forward to sharing some of the lessons and best practices we have developed. I also look forward to learning form other peers and the “gurus” about how best to leverage SharePoint for managing information effectively.

What is a Common Information Infrastructure?

A Common Information Infrastructure (CII) is a set of interoperable information management technologies along with common enterprise-wide standards, associated business processes, support and governance models, and enterprise-wide technical architectures. Phew! That is a mouthful!

The resulting environment provides the common framework required to ensure that system use aligns with organizational priorities and streamlines document and records management and collaboration efforts across the organization. This is not an application that is installed on some giant server in the the sky. Moving to a CII becomes a strategy and involves the journey to migrate from current reality to the future CII realization along with defining and providing services and support to the consumers and customers of the CII.

The primary characteristic of the CII is the ability to effectively manage electronic documents, electronic records, and other electronic information commonly referred to as unstructured data through their entire lifecycle. That lifecycle begins at creation or receipt and extends to the appropriate destruction at the end of that information asset’s life, based on business and compliance requirements.

The CII is not just technology but includes the necessary common processes and support models to effectively translate business requirements into information solutions by leveraging a consistent, predictable, and centrally managed set of technologies.

Typically the technical foundation of the CII will emerge based on the predominate technology deployed and in use within an enterprise. For many enterprises that technology will be Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, which is an integrated solution for managing the entire life cycle of different types of content, including documents, forms, images, email messages, instant messages, and more. Thanks to an intuitive user interface that integrates with common Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Office and Outlook, user acceptance and adoption should be high. This integration with familiar tools allows users to effectively manage information as an extension of their normal workload without having to significantly change the way they work.

In my next post I will discuss some of the dependencies and critical enablers for realizing the promise of moving to a Common Information Infrastructure.

With this post I wish all my readers a happy New Year and look forward to increasing the conversation about Better ECM in 2009.

Technorati Tags: ECM,SharePoint,MOSS 2007,Microsoft,CII,BetterECM

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For Most Enterprises: "An ECM Solution From a Single Vendor is a Myth!"

I made this declaration while speaking at the AIIM’s Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum last month in Austin, TX. None of the 150 executives in the audience disagreed with me.

Why do I make this claim?

Well, in some instances small to midsize organizations will be able to deploy an ECM solution on one vendors’ technology. But in reality, most larger organizations have many different document management, web content management, records management, etc. technologies deployed.

Typically this happens because of mergers and acquisitions where each organization deployed different technologies over time. Or it happens because technologies were chosen at different time periods over the last 10-15 years. A good example of this phenomenon happens when an organization implemented web content management many years ago and then chose an ECM solution several years later. The ECM solution may not be from the same web content management chosen. Now most ECM vendors provide a complete set of functionality. Most have done this through acquisition of the different capabilities, but 10 years ago the most ECM leaders (EMC Documentum, IBM (FileNet), Oracle, Microsoft, and Open Text) did not have web content management.

My organization uses both Documentum and SharePoint. We also have a some Open Text, Interwoven, and Vingette deployed.

So what can you do? Pick one vendors’ technology and throw out the others over time? In some cases this strategy is not realistic.

In the next series of posts I will talk about moving to what I call a “Common Information Infrastructure”.

Technorati Tags: AIIM,ECM,FileNet,Microsoft,SharePoint,MOSS 2007,Documentum,Records Management

Great List of MOSS Hosted Sites

Hat tip to Michael Gannotti for identifying this fantastic list of SharePoint Public Web Sites. I tune into Mike’s blog  regularly for great tips and innovative ideas on how to use SharePoint.

The real hat tip goes to Ian Morrish at Ian’s SharePoint Blog for compiling this list of public sites built on MOSS 2007. Ian also has a lists of great resources for SharePoint including a pretty extensive blog listing.

Thanks Ian!

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Microsoft,SharePoint