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

Microsoft Finally Releases The DoD 5015.2 Add-on For MOSS

Well, this has been a long time coming. I am happy to see that Microsoft finally released the DoD 5015.2 Add-on for Moss 2007 a couple weeks back while I was trekking around the UK and Europe.

I am proud of the work our team did in creating the new features for the MOSS Records Center last year.  The extremely collaborative nature of the project and development with the Microsoft  Product Group using the SCRUM agile methodology during the project showed me the possibility of a high performing team with this methodology.

I plan to implement the MOSS Records Center with the Add-on in the next several months.

Here is the Microsoft Post: Announcing the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit for SharePoint Server 2007.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MOSS 2007,DoD 5015.2,Records Management,ECM

How Did They Do That?: DoD Records Management Add-on For MOSS 2007 White Paper

This comes under the heading of “How Did They Do That?”. This white paper (Records Management Solution Demonstrates Power of SharePoint As A Development Platform) that is available on the Microsoft Downloads site, provides some details of the “MOSS as a Development Platform features that were exploited when we built the DoD Records Management Add-on for MOSS.

Another white paper by one of my former colleagues, Vishwas Lele, is a great treatise on using MOSS as an application development platform. You can download it here.

Technorati Tags: MOSS, records management, Microsoft, ECM, white paper

MOSS 2007 DoD Certification FAQs

Microsoft has a new web page on the Office site entitled “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 receives DoD 5015.2 certification” that provides some frequently asked questions regarding the DoD 5015.2 certification of SharePoint 2007. There is also a link to the press release.

Technorati tags: MOSS2007, Microsoft, DoD5015.2, SharePoint, ECM, Records+Management