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.

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.

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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”.

I know. Where has BetterECM been?

You must be thinking “Is this blog going to die?”

Well, 2008 has been a very busy and challenging year. I am finally taking some time off to rest and recharge. I have missed writing and sharing my thoughts and experiences.

I’ve found that writing posts for BetterECM helps me focus my thoughts and gain clarity around the challenges of making ECM better for a global company.  I also plan to share some of what I have been working on.

For those who kept checking and who did not delete the BetterECM RSS feed from their reader, I thank you!

Just wanted to let everyone know we made it through hurricane Ike pretty much unscathed. Only minor damage to some trees and the power was out for two days.

So, with this new experience since moving to Houston under my belt I guess I can say I am really a Houstonian now.

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!

It has been a long journey but we are finally getting settled in Houston. Thought this shot at night would be interesting. Enjoy. If you click on the photo you will be taken to some additional pictures shot during the evening.

Well the article I wrote, “The Swiss Army Knife of ECM?”, was published in the AIIM Guide to ECM Purchasing.

I talked about this article and posted the article I submitted back in February.

Some of the other articles in the guide are very good. I recommend taking a look.

Well, another year has gone by since I started BetterECM.  Wow, how time flies.  Writing posts for BetterECM continues to be a very valuable experience.

This has been a significant year of change. For myself, a big career change leaving the vendor world (software or solutions provider) to that of a major customer with global needs. I am still getting my arms around this massive challenge. For the industry, the changes in the marketplace continue with the recent announcements this past year: Autonomy acquiring Meridio in October 2007 and HP acquiring Tower Software in March 2008.

I am still struggling to post more often, but my new role at BP has made writing posts consistently difficult. I will strive to improve.

Here are some interesting statistics as of today:

• Total Views: 110,606
• Best Day Ever: 575 Readers — Tuesday, August 14, 2007
• Totals

• Posts: 160
• Comments: 254
• And the most interesting metric: 43,435 spam comments

Looking forward to the next year…

I had the pleasure of speaking at a joint AIIM and ARMA event in Chicago last week. Joyce Osborn organized the event and did a fantastic job gathering over 150 attendees.

Even though the weather was raining last Tuesday, the audience was lively and had great questions.

I have posted the slides I presented at Slideshare.net or you can view here if you click through to my Blog.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe has a good post discussing the acquisition of Tower Software of Australia by HP: HP expands archiving, e-discovery, and compliance portfolio with acquisition of Tower Software.

I have been anticipating Tower Software being acquired by somebody for over three years.  At one point, I thought HP would acquire Open Text. Hmm, I wonder if they went after Open text and the price was too high?

Anyway, I will be interested to see what HP will do with Tower combined with their Integrated Archiving Platform. I will be skeptical of the combined solution due to the limited scalability of Tower Trim. When I speak of scalability, I am referring to supporting a global organization with tens of thousands of users spread across the globe. This scenario is not easy to support.

I saw this post last week when I was trying to catch up from my recent travels: Peter O’Kelly’s Reality Check: Toshiba’s HD-DVD going the way of Betamax | Technology | Reuters.

I have been waiting to see who would win the  war. Anyway I decided to wait and see who might win and I was glad I did.

This weekend I was at one of the warehouse stores and they had both the Sony Blu-ray player and the Toshiba HD DVD player. The Sony was $380 and the Toshiba HD DVD was $75.  The funny things was that the employee that asked if he could help me had no idea that anyone buying the $75 HD DVD player would be buying something that will be useless in a month or so

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.

From Arpan Shah’s blog: “We just posted advanced SharePoint videos and whitepapers on TechNet”

The videos and white papers are located here

I wrote this article for an AIIM E-Doc Buyers Guide last summer. I am not sure if it will be published and almost forgot I wrote.  Recently I started sharing it with some colleagues and thought I really should share this with my readers.

So, here you go. This is very high level and serves as an overview of MOSS as it relates to ECM. I think it can be used to help educate folks who are not familiar with MOSS. I hope you find it useful.

Read the article

Well only two months into 2008 and my travels have made it difficult to keep to my goal of at least one post per week.

Over the last two weeks I was on the road in London for a week of meetings followed by a week in Lisbon, Portugal.

This was my first trip to Lisbon and I had a chance to tour the city and visit Sintra.  If you ever get the chance to visit Sintra I highly recommend it. The Palácio da Pena, or “Castelo da Pena” is a stunning example of Portuguese architecture from the Romantic period.

Well it happened again. My friend Jesse Wilkins who writes Informata, tagged me this last week with my second memetag. I was tagged last year and had to write 5 things you didn’t know about me.

This one is a bit more challenging since I have to come up with eight more things other bloggers and my readers do not know about me. So, here goes, eight things that others don’t know about me, and then I will tag eight people to carry on the meme. I know – sort of like a chain letter.

1. I have tried a great number of professions/jobs throughout my life including; lawnmower mechanic, boat engine mechanic, bowling alley mechanic, security guard, Navy pilot, aviation safety officer and aircraft crash investigator, stock broker, Chief Information Officer (CIO), company president, consultant, Chief Technology Officer, and now Director for Information & Records Management at BP.
2. I love music. I enjoy most genres except country western and played the trumpet and french horn in high school. I listen to music to help grease the creative skids when trying to write articles, papers or need to do some thinking.
3. My first car was a 1958 American Rambler which I paid $90 for. I subsequently restored the car from one end to the other, including rebuilding the engine. I know, pretty slick looking car right?
4. I read constantly and sometimes have two or three books going at once. Sometimes I do not finish a book and lately I have decided that’s OK. I guess I am a learning junkie and I am always looking for new inputs and ways of approaching problems.
5. I love cooking (like Jesse and Alan) and really like grilling. I guess my love for cooking rubbed off on my youngest son who is now a Sous Chef for the JW Marriott Grand Lakes, Orlando.
6. Over the years I have lived in 19 different cities (one of those in Okinawa, Japan) with the current city being Houston, TX.
7. I was very active in Boy Scouts growing up and attained Eagle Scout with a Bonze Palm.
8. I love photography. It started in elementary school when my father bought me a darkroom kit (digital had not been invented yet ). I specialized in infrared black and white photography during college and now I am getting into digital with my Nikon D40X and I use Adobe Lightroom for processing and Photoshop CS3 for special processing. I have a lot to learn.

Now, to return the favor and tag eight more: Eddie, Frank, Jason, Arpan, Lawrence, Ed, Joanna, Rob

I added a new page to BetterECM today which has all the presentations I have uploaded to slideshare last year.

I hope my readers find this new feature useful. Let me know what you think.

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.

Back in August I wrote about the photo safari my wife and I took in South Africa. Well it took some time to work through almost 1,000 pictures I shot and process them. I really enjoy photography and this trip and experience reminded me how much I have missed exploring the world through a lens. Anyway I wanted to share some of the pictures. The sunsets were spectacular!

If you want to view a small subset of the pictures I took I uploaded some of them to Zooomr and you can click here.

Had a little fun with this one.